What the Green Industry Wants From Obama

Open Letter (a Demand by the People and for the People) to the Honorable Barack Obama, President United States of America (as of 01/20/2009)

?Wall Street titans that have taken taxpayer bailouts are squandering money on spa retreats, golden parachutes and more. Wasn’t this cash supposed to be spent on saving the economy??

Your attention to the herein below Public links is hereby demanded.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/the-10-worst-bailout-boondoggles-slides.aspx?slide-number=5

http://www.bailoutsleuth.com/

We, the People and for the People, hereby demand that you demand an immediate refund to the US Treasury, from all of these Banks, et al, not limited thereto and particularly from AIG, associated therewith misappropriation of bailout funds, and apply such funds toward what you promised to the People, who elected you.

The People from the Renewable Energy sector does not want Government subsidy.

You have the Presidential power to seek the creation of a TRUST FUND (Renewable Energy Trust Fund) from these demanded refunds and with the assistance from the Honorable Steven Chu, Secretary Department of Energy (as of 01/20/2009), create a Credit Facility to all of these companies in the Alternative and Renewable Energy Sector, hereinafter the ?Science Revolution Sector?, enabling creation of jobs and saving the economy. (Every little bit helps; not billions of taxpayer’s dollars).

All other sectors, that can also create jobs, shall be equally considered.

It is highly unlikely that the bailout entities will create jobs and save the economy.

The most important thing the president needs to know is that the current DOE is completely broken when it comes to support for innovation.  There is no mechanism for funding truly innovative energy solutions.  For a DOE proposal to be funded, it must respond precisely to a narrowly drafted solicitation from the DOE.  For example, a DOE solicitation may call for research leading to specific improvements in specific components in a specific thermodynamic cycle being used under specific conditions for thermal energy conversion.  Indeed there is an office to which unsolicited proposal may be sent, but this office has virtually no budget, either for review or for funding.  Their standard response to a truly innovative and scientifically sound proposal is to simply say ?Your objectives are not aligned with those of the DOE,? or something equally asinine.

The NIH, on the other hand, has helped guide a revolution in health advances in the U.S. over the past three decades because they have consistently welcomed unsolicited proposals.  It is not even necessary for the author of a proposal to attempt to identify any particular program to which his/her proposal should be submitted.  It is only necessary that it appear from the title and abstract that the proposal is attempting to do something that might be health related and might be an advance in science or technology.  The Center for Scientific Review does an extremely efficient job of sorting out all the incoming proposals (about 100,000 annually) and sending each one to an appropriate program manager, who in turn sees to it that each proposal is given a respectful peer review on its scientific merits.

Undoubtedly, there are lots of good, innovative energy-related ideas out there that are languishing because the DOE has no interest in anything they have not thought of first.  This problem should be simple to fix.  It could begin by increasing the budget for the Office for Unsolicited Proposals by several orders of magnitude ? to at least several hundred million dollars ? and establishing a division of the Center for Scientific Review to deal with energy-related proposals. 

Now for a case in point.  We at Doty Energy have recently simulated novel processes that will make it practical to synthesize fuels of all types ? gasoline, alcohols, jet fuel, diesel ? from waste CO2, water and cheap, off-peak low-carbon energy.  The process begins by electrolyzing water to produce the needed renewable hydrogen.  Then, a portion of this hydrogen is reacted with the CO2 to produce the renewable carbon monoxide (CO) needed in an advanced Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process to synthesize hydrocarbons and alcohols of all types.  With thorough system optimization, 60% of the input electrical energy can end up in the chemical energy in the liquid fuels produced.  The electrolyzer operates only when cheap energy is available.  Sufficient hydrogen is stored to keep the FT reactor operating at a fairly stable rate around the clock. 

These wind-generated carbon-neutral fuels, dubbed WindFuels, will compete when oil is above $40 to $95/bbl, depending on the cost of the off-peak energy.  Recycling CO2 into transportation fuels using off-peak renewable energy addresses both the oil and the climate challenges, and it completely stabilizes the power grid, no matter how much wind and solar are added.  Detailed scientific, engineering, and economics analyses are available at http://windfuels.com/ .  We call it RFTS, Renewable Fischer Tropsch Synthesis. 

Wind energy is the most competitive renewable energy resource in many regions.  The challenge has been getting wind energy from good sites to where and when it is needed.  Efficient conversion of off-peak wind energy and waste CO2 into standard liquid fuels solves these problems.  Annual WindFuels production per land area in good wind regions will exceed biofuels production density in fertile farming areas by a factor of 4 to 30.

In many areas, the cost of off-peak wind energy is already often below 2 cents/kWhr and it continues to drop as more wind is added.  At this rate, the cost of ethanol and even gasoline from wind and CO2 can be below $1.50/gal.  Already, it is sometimes necessary for the energy producers to pay to get rid of their excess energy to maintain grid stability, and wind is only 1% of the grid energy.  WindFuels is the most promising avenue for carbon-neutral transportation fuels and stabilization of the renewable grid, but the DOE is not interested in unsolicited proposals, no matter how good they might be.

Whatever the pres does, I hope he does it fast and effectively because we need this alternative energy stuff to become a large reality. check out http://www.geothermaldistributors.net