Brother, Can You Spare 22 Terawatts?

Big ideas for the future of energy

Ronald Bailey | November 24, 2006

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The challenge of supplying the world with carbon neutral energy has a lot of people calling for the launching of a "Manhattan Project" or "Apollo Project." What they mean is that the Federal government should dramatically boost research and development spending for novel energy technologies. Let's recall that the Apollo Project absorbed 5.3 percent of the Federal government's budget in 1965. A comparable expenditure would be $136 billion in 2006—that's almost 5 times higher than the Energy Department's 2006 budget. It is also more than the Federal government currently spends on the agriculture, commerce, energy, homeland security, interior, justice and labor departments. Let's also recall that the Apollo program turned out to be a technological dead end that managed to get just 12 astronauts to walk on the moon. Another telling example of Federal bungling in the energy field was the $20 billionwasted on President Jimmy Carter's Synfuels Corporation which was a pilot project that aimed to make oil production from coal commercially viable. It died in 1985.

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Maybe Nocera is right that solar power is the way to go, but history teaches us to scrap the Apollo Project model for technology R&D. Federal bureaucrats are simply not smart enough to pick winning energy technologies. Instead, eliminate all energy subsidies, set a price for carbon, and then let tens of thousands of energy researchers and entrepreneurs develop and test various new technologies in the market. No one knows now how humanity will fuel the 21^st century, but Apollo and Manhattan Project-style Federal energy research projects will prove to be a huge waste of time, money and talent.

p class="MsoNormal c1"> o:p>  /o:p> /p> p class="MsoNormal c1"> em>Disclosure: I own 50 shares of ExxonMobil stock. So what! o:p> /o:p>

Comments

|10.30.09 @ 4:32PM|#

Okay, 22 terrawatts. Assuming you get an average of around 0.2 KW per square meter, you will need 110 billion square meters, or 110,000 square kilometers. About the size of Bolivia, roofed over.

Cost? Solar is currently running about $5 billion per GW. So figure $110 trillion.

Now, a small modular nuclear plant producing 25 MW is $25 million each. Figure we need about ten thousand...$25 trillion.

Which do you think the world is going to pick?