Too Much or Too Little Investment in Clean Energy?

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. When he lost office it took his successor a day to start removing them. Think about it.

The energy research sector has lost its motivation and no new thinking has come into action.

The whole game is being played with the limited options only.

Non renewables & renewables have not added any new insights or alternates.

It is the status of saturation & stagnation in a very vital area like sustainable energy.Closed eyes & lack of innovative thinking seems to be the main barriers.

Mind set is caused by existing literatures too.

I, for one, am hoping that the demonstration of the E-CAT LENR 1 Mwatt generator scheduled for November 2011 is successful. Even if it fails, I feal that LENR will succeed in the next decade and provide very low cost and environmentally benign power.

Here is a link for current status:

http://freeenergytruth.blogspot.com/

I think you are betting on the wrong horse. Rossi and Focardi seem to be utterly clueless about how proper science is conducted. I predict failure for their idea.

The problem is not the amount of money, but how DOE spends it. There is no DOE database of technology that is open to review and debate before deciding on what to pursue. Instead, it's the academic grant process and DOE seems convinced that looking under the streetlight for the keys is the smart way to find them. What we need is applied science and engineering, but what gets funded is pure science that has no realistic hope of scaling in the real world, where membranes clog and fresh water for chemical capture is scarce. And where deep saline formations are full of salty brine.

Most of the available money has been wasted on underground storage of CO2 ("sequestration") in depleted oil reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery operations (EOR). There is not nearly enough pore space in EOR sites to accommodate utility-scale CO2 emissions. Sequestration has been condemned by petroleum engineering experts as "a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of CO2 emissions." And it poses a danger to drinking water. But this corporate welfare for oil companies is where the cleantech R&D money has gone.

"Cost sharing" -- the requirement that the grant applicant put up at least 20% of the cost of the project -- bars startups from ARPA-E, which was supposed to foster important innovation and develop new American cleantech companies. Since ARPA-E only funds big projects, ARPA-E in practice is corporate welfare to established companies to deploy the unworkable old stuff.

If DOE were making a credible effort at outreach to innovators, maybe my pessimistic assessment would be different. Look at https://www.data.gov/communities/energy and see what you think.

I suspect that humans will use up the easy, (profitable), sources of energy first. Alternatives will be developed when they are needed..............not forced.

How much should be too much ? Is large scale expansion/installation of Solar

panels ( grid connected) at more than 3 times the cost of power from utility justified ?

Amount of money spent on Solar is very high compared to immense possibility of

geothermal which can provide power 24 hrs a day compared to part service of

wind/solar.

Ultimately Solar is the ONLY energy source. Where do you think all that coal and oil came from in the first place?

As the saying goes; "necessity is the mother of invention", the prospect of making a lot of money overpowers any need for clean energy. When the stakes are big, the opportunity is present to strike it rich. Research which was previously carried on with modest resources, will sky rocket due to the amount of potential good that will come from it. It is the type of research that allows carte blanche spending because of it's perceived importance to the globe. I tend to be a bit cynical when it comes to motive. Companies with nice sounding names like, GE, Cargil and Monsanto will readily jump into the clean energy race when a lot of money is available for the taking. Don't forget! we the people are financing big research grants, not the government. The government is only acting as the manager of our money and feels it is for our "best" interests. Where have you heard that before? It's not a question of too much or too little, but one of accountability. CEO's will vote themselves big bonuses on these big research projects and the lobbyist's will clean up also. It will be a win-win situation for everyone except for the American public. As usual, we will foot the bill and maybe get a few scraps given us.

I know this will generate a lot of negative comment. I say it as I see it. I may be wrong about everything and I hope I am, but I didn't get to be my age believing everything that was told me. There are things that the public will never be privy to; secrets that are kept from the public for "our own good", but benefit those in power.

Anyone who thinks there is too little investment in clean energy is free to step up to the plate and invest more. Go for it!

While we invest in clean energy, we also need to but the brakes on energy consumption. Consumption always seems to keep pace with energy production, either clean or dirty. The world finds more new ways to consume energy than to produce energy.