Category: Energy

President Obama On Energy: State of the Union Adddress

I have waited a long time for a U.S. President to make a strong statement about the need to move away from dependence on fossil fuels and toward a clean energy system. That wait came to an end on January 12, 2016 when I listened to President Obama’s final State of the Union address. His energy-focused comments are reproduced below because I consider them extremely important. Energy issues are critical to our county’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and to enhance future economic opportunities.

What is striking to me in the current primary election political debates in the U.S. is the lack of discussion of energy issues by candidates of either political party, Democrat or Republican. Admittedly energy issues are complicated and there are many interests at play. Nevertheless, we need energy to be an important issue in the upcoming U.S. presidential debates once the candidates have been nominated by their respective parties. Critical decisions have to be made about U.S. energy policy in the next few years if we are to successfully begin to address global warming and climate change issues and protect U.S. interests in the evolving global renewable energy markets. We need the American public to understand the issues as well as the proposed policies and their implications for our future energy system. The world is in the early stages of a history-changing transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and the U.S. must assume its rightful place in that transition. This requires presidential leadership, Congressional action, and millions of individual and corporate decisions to participate in and support this transition. President Obama’s words are an important step in that direction.

President Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address (energy comments)

“Medical research is critical. We need the same level of commitment when it comes to developing clean energy sources.
Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.

But even if the planet wasn’t at stake; even if 2014 wasn’t the warmest year on record — until 2015 turned out even hotter — why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future?
Seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history. Here are the results. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills, and employs more Americans than coal — in jobs that pay better than average. We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy — something environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support. Meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly sixty percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth.Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.
Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. That way, we put money back into those communities and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.
None of this will happen overnight, and yes, there are plenty of entrenched interests who want to protect the status quo. But the jobs we’ll create, the money we’ll save, and the planet we’ll preserve — that’s the kind of future our kids and grandkids deserve.”

It is Time to Take the Next Step on Energy Policy

The following piece was first published on energypost.eu and the text is reprinted here as a new blog post.
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US desperately needs a national energy policy
September 24, 2015 by Allan Hoffman

The US – and indeed the world – is at a crossroads when it comes to the choice on how we want to provide energy services in the future, writes US energy expert Allan Hoffman. According to Hoffman, the US desperately needs a national energy policy that recognizes the importance of moving to a renewable energy future as quickly as possible. Without such a policy, economic growth, the environment and national security will suffer.

There are two fundamental ‘things’ needed to sustain human life, water and energy. Water is the more precious of the two as reflected in the Arab saying “Water is life.” Without water life as we know it would not exist, and there are no substitutes for water – without it we die.

We also need energy to power our bodies, derived from chemical conversions of the food we consume. We also need energy to enable the external energy services we rely on in daily life – lighting, heating, cooling, transportation, clean water, communications, entertainment, and commercial and industrial activities. Where energy differs from water as a critical element of sustainable development is the fact that energy is available in many different forms for human use – e.g., by combustion of fossil fuels, nuclear power, and various forms of renewable energy.

Critical juncture

Today the U.S., and indeed the world, stands at a critical juncture on how to provide these energy services in the future. Historically, energy has been provided to some extent by human power, by animal power, and the burning of wood to create heat and light. Wind energy was also used for several centuries to power ships and land-based windmills that provided mechanical energy for water-pumping and threshing. With the discovery and development of large energy resources in the form of stored chemical energy in hydrocarbons such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas, the world turned to the combustion of these fuels to release large amounts of thermal energy and eventually electricity with the development of steam power generators. Nuclear power was introduced in the period following World War II as a new source of heat for producing steam and powering electricity generators and ships.

My recommendation is to put a long-term and steadily increasing price on carbon emissions to motivate appropriate private sector decisions to use fewer fossil fuels and more renewable energy and let the markets work

Renewable energy, energy that is derived directly or indirectly from the sun’s energy intercepted by the earth (except for geothermal energy that is derived from radioactive decay in the earth’s core), has been available for a while in the form of hydropower, originally in the form of run-of-the-river water wheels, and since the 20th century in the form of large hydroelectric dams. Other forms of renewable energy have emerged recently as important options for the future, driven by steadily reducing costs, the realization that fossil fuels, while currently available in large quantity but eventually depletable, put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when combusted, contributing to global warming and associated climate change. Renewable energy technologies, except for biomass conversion or combustion, puts no carbon into the atmosphere, but even in the biomass case it is a no-net-carbon situation since carbon is absorbed in the growing of biomass materials such as wood and other crops.

Support for renewables is also driven by increasing awareness that while nuclear power generation does not put carbon into the atmosphere it does create multigenerational radioactive waste disposal problems, can be expensive, raises low probability but high consequence safety issues, and is a step on the road to proliferation of nuclear weapons capability. Another driver is the now well documented and growing understanding that renewable energy, in its many forms, can provide the bulk of our electrical energy needs, as long disputed by competing energy sources.

Clean future

All these introductory comments are leading to a discussion of the energy policy choice facing our country, and other countries, and my recommendations for that policy. This choice has been avoided by the U.S. Congress in recent years, much to the short-term and long-term detriment of the U.S. We desperately need a national energy policy that recognizes the importance of energy efficiency and moving to a renewable energy future as quickly as possible. That policy should be one that creates the needed environment for investment in renewable technologies and one that will allow the U.S. to be a major economic player in the world’s inevitable march to a clean energy future.

Before getting into policy specifics, let me add just a few more words on renewable energy technologies. Hydropower is well known as the conversion of the kinetic energy of moving water into electrical energy via turbine generators. Solar energy is the direct conversion of solar radiation directly into electricity via photovoltaic (solar) cells or the use of focused/concentrated solar energy to produce heat and then steam and electricity. Wind energy, an indirect form of solar energy due to uneven heating of the earth’s surface, converts the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy and electricity. Geothermal energy uses the heat of the earth to heat water into steam and electricity, or to heat homes and other spaces directly. Biomass energy uses the chemical energy captured in growing organic material either directly via combustion or in conversion to other fuel sources such as biofuels. Ocean energy uses the kinetic energy in waves and ocean currents, and the thermal energy in heated ocean areas, to create other sources of mechanical and electrical energy. All in all, a rich menu of energy options that we are finally exploring in depth.

Controversial

Energy policy is a complicated and controversial field, reflecting many different national, global, and vested interests. Today’s world is largely powered by fossil fuels and is likely to be so powered for several decades into the future until renewable energy is brought more fully into the mainstream. Unnfortunately this takes time as history teaches, and the needs of developing and developed nations (e.g., in transportation) need to be addressed during the period in which the transition takes place.

The critical need is to move through this transition as quickly as possible. Without clear national energy policies that recognize the need to move away from a fossil fuel-based energy system, and to a low-carbon clean energy future, as quickly as possible, this inevitable transition will be stretched out unnecessarily, with adverse environmental, job-creation, and other economic and national security impacts.

My recommendation is to put a long-term and steadily increasing price on carbon emissions to motivate appropriate private sector decisions to use fewer fossil fuels and more renewable energy and let the markets work. Nuclear power, another low-carbon technology, remains an option as long as the problems listed earlier can be addressed adequately. My personal view is that renewables are a much better answer.

The revenues generated by such a ‘tax’ can be used to reduce social inequities introduced by such a tax, lower other taxes, and enable investments consistent with long-term national needs. In the U.S. it also provides a means for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats, something we have not seen for several decades. It is clear that President Obama ‘gets it’. It is now more than time for U.S. legislators to get it as well.

Editor’s Note (Karel Beckman, energypost.eu)

Allan Hoffman, former Senior Analyst in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), writes a regular blog: Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist.

On Energy Post, we regularly publish posts from Allan’s blog,in his blog section Policy & Technology. His writings often deal with issues at the intersection of energy technology, policy and markets. Allan, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from Brown University, served as Staff Scientist with the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and in a variety of senior management positions at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and the DOE. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Exciting Changes Taking Place in Scotland’s Energy System

I returned recently from a two-week visit to Scotland, my wife’s home country. She and I are now the owners of a flat (apartment in Americanese) in East Kilbride, near Glasgow, that makes visiting with her family much easier.  Another exciting feature is that on all clear days (it happens occasionally in Scotland) we can see, from the flat’s bedroom windows, wind turbines spinning in the nearby Whitelee wind farm, currently the largest operating onshore wind farm in Europe (just under 600MWp). The wind farm is several miles away from the flat.

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The purpose of this blog post is to discuss the exciting developments taking place in Scotland’s energy system, where the stated national goal is to go 100% renewables for electricity supply by 2020. Achieving this goal, whether in 2020 or sometime in the decade afterwards, will rely heavily on Scotland’s large wind resources, both onshore and offshore. As a sparsely populated country (total population is 5.4 million ) with significant renewable energy resources, Scotland “..is in a unique position to demonstrate how the transition to a low-carbon, widely distributed energy economy may be undertaken.”

What is Scotland’s current energy situation?  In Late November 2014 it was announced by the independent trade body Scottish Renewables that “.. with numbers from the first half of 2014, ..renewable energy was Scotland’s largest source of (electrical) power.” Specifically, for the first half of 2014, renewables provided 10.3 TWh of electrical energy, while nuclear power, previously Scotland’s main sources of electricity, provided 7.8 TWh. Coal was third with 5.6 TWh with natural gas at 1.4 TWh.

This increase in renewable generation continues the trend shown in the following chart:

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Installed renewable capacity increased to 7,112 MW by the end of the 3d quarter of 2014 – mostly onshore wind and hydro – with another 441 MW of wind capacity (onshore) in construction, 7,720 MW (onshore and offshore) awaiting construction, and 3,765 MW (onshore) in planning. Small amounts of other renewable generation (biomass, landfill gas, hydro) are also in the pipeline.

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With wind power already generating enough electricity to supply more than total Scottish household demand, Niall Stuart, Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables, sees much more potential in the future: “Offshore wind and marine energy (wave, tidal, ocean current) are still in the early stages of development but could make a big contribution to our future energy needs if they get the right support from government. That support includes the delivery of grid connections to the islands, home to the UK’s very best wind, wave and tidal sites.”

Scottish enthusiasm for renewables was bolstered by a report issued  by WWF Scotland in January (‘Pathways to Power: Scotland’s route to clean, renewable, secure electricity by 2030’) which concluded that, with respect to electricity, a fossil fuel-free Scotland is not only technically feasible but “..could prove a less costly and safer option than pursuing fossil fuel- based development..” that assumes carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology will be operating at scale in 2030. With regard to the Scottish government’s stated goal of decarbonizing the electrical sector by 2030, Paul Gardner of DNV GL, lead author of the report, has stated that “There is no technical reason requiring conventional fossil and nuclear generation in Scotland.”  In addition, Gina Hanrahan, climate and energy officer at WWF Scotland, explained that “The report shows that not only is a renewable, fossil fuel-free electricity system perfectly feasible in Scotland by 2030, it’s actually the safe bet. Pursuing this pathway would allow Scotland to maintain and build on its position as the UK and Europe’s renewable powerhouse, cut climate emissions (electricity generation accounts for one-third of Scotland’s emissions) and continue to reap the jobs and investment opportunities offered by Scotland’s abundant renewable resources.”

What is Scotland’s natural resource base for renewables?  In addition to its existing installed capacity of hydropower (1.3 GW), it is estimated that wind, wave and tide make up more than 80% of Scotland’s  renewable energy potential – 36.5GW/wind (onshore and offshore), 7.5 GW/tidal power, 14 GW/wave power. This total, almost 60 GW, is considerable greater than Scotland’s existing electrical generating capacity from all fuel sources of 10.3 GW.

It is interesting to note that Scotland also has significant fossil fuel resources, including 62.4% of the European Union’s proven oil reserves, 12.5% of the EU’s proven natural gas reserves, and 69% of UK coal reserves.  Nonetheless, the Scottish Government, as discussed above, has set ambitious goals for renewable energy production. This is likely driven by concern for global climate change and the economic potential for Scotland as a major source of renewable energy.

 

 

Two New Books Worthy of Your Attention

I am pleased to use my blog to bring two new books to your attention, one just published and one to be published next month.  Both are highly recommended.

The first, just published by W.W.Norton and co-authored by Lester Brown and several of his Earth Policy Institute colleagues, is ‘The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy’.  It addresses the energy transition that is unfolding rapidly around us and is a topic I have been writing and speaking about for many years, including in this blog. Lester has been an important part of this discussion from day one  and in this book he and his fellow authors “..explain the environmental and economic wisdom of moving to solar and wind energy and show how fast change is coming.” It is a global topic that needs increased public visibility and discussion, one that will impact the energy systems that our children and grandchildren will inherit.  Without going into too much detail I will quote just a few lines from the book’s preface and  the comments of two book reviewers:

“Preface: Energy transitions are not new. Beginning several centuries ago, the world shifted from wood to coal. The first oil well was drilled over 150 years ago. Today we are at the start of a new energy transition, one that takes us from an economy run largely on coal and oil to one powered by the sun and wind. This monumental shift, which is just getting underway, will compress a half-century of change into the next decade.

The purpose of this book is to describe how this great transition is starting to unfold. While the book cuts a wide swath and takes a global view, it is not meant to be a comprehensive study of the world energy economy. Each technology discussed here easily deserves its own book, as do many topics important to the transition that are not discussed in depth here, such as energy efficiency, the “smartening” of electrical grids, energy savings opportunities in industry, and batteries and other energy storage…..”

Reviewer comments: “Brown’s ability to make a complicated subject accessible to the general reader is remarkable..”(Katherine Salant, Washington Post); “..a highly readable and authoritative account of the problems we face from global warming to shrinking water resources, fisheries, forests, etc. The picture is very frightening. But the book also provides a way forward.”(Clare Short, British Member of Parliament).

The second recommended book, due out next month, is Gustaf Olsson’s second edition of  ‘Water and Energy Threats and Opportunities’. The first edition was published by the International Water Association in June 2012.

In my review of his first edition I stated:  “Professor Olssons book, Water and Energy Threats and Opportunities, the result of a meticulous multi-year effort, meets an important and growing need: to define and illuminate the critical linkage between water and energy. He explores the water-energy nexus in detail, and carefully discusses its many implications, including for food production and its connection to global climate change. He properly and repeatedly emphasizes the important message that water and energy issues must be addressed together if society is to make wise and efficient use of these critical resources. Given its comprehensive scope and careful scholarship, the book will serve as a valuable addition to the libraries of students, researchers, practitioners, and government officials at all levels.”

In his expanded second edition Professor Olsson, a distinguished faculty member in industrial automation at Lund University in Sweden and a Distinguished Fellow of the International Water Association, adds additional and updated information on climate change,  energy system water requirements, renewable energy, and a clear and comprehensive discussion of the important subject of fracking for fossil fuel supplies which has recently emerged as a major public issue.

In its first incarnation Professor Olsson’s book qualified as a ‘bible’ on water-energy issues. In its second incarnation it qualifies even more so.

 

Documenting the 1970s – Part 2 of 2

This post is a follow-up to my previous blog post ‘Documenting the 1970’s – Part 1′ which republished President Carter’s June 20, 1979 solar energy Message to the Congress of the United States. Part 2 republishes testimony that I presented on February 25, 1981 to the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. My views were requested by the House Subcommittee because of my role in guiding the multi-agency Federal study, the Domestic Policy Review of Solar Energy (DPR), that formed the basis for President Carter’s proposed solar energy strategy. My testimony reflected my views a little over two years after I delivered the study to the White House on December 6, 1978, and after I had left DOE for another position a year later and had a chance to reflect on how the recommendations of that study had been implemented to date. In those two years the Carter Administration had been replaced by the Reagan Administration and implemention of any solar strategy was now in the new Administration’s hands.

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Oral Statement by Dr. Allan R. Hoffman
Assistant Director for Industrial Programs, Energy Productivity Center, Mellon Institute

before the

Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
February 25, 1981
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee:
I welcome the opportunity to be here today to discuss the
development of our nation’s solar energy policy, and to present
my thoughts on how that policy should evolve in the future. Let
me emphasize that the views I will express are strictly my own,
and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or
organization with which I am affiliated.
Currently I serve as Assistant Director for Industrial
Programs at the Mellon Institute’s Energy Productivity Center.
The letter inviting me to this hearing requested that I provide
some historical perspective on how national solar energy policy
has developed. This is because of my previous role as Director
of the solar energy policy division within the Department of
Energy’s Office of Policy and Evaluation.

In that role I also served as day-to-day director of the Carter Administration’s Domestic Policy Review of Solar Energy, commonly referred to as the DPR. A detailed discussion of the DPR, which formed the basis for President Carter’s June 20, 1979 speech and Message to the Congress, setting forth a national strategy for accelerating the use of solar energy, is included in the full statement I am submitting for the record.

In the few minutes allowed for my oral statement, I would
like to address the other issues mentioned in the letter of
invitation: how well has the Federal government carried out its
solar energy programs, and what should policy be in the future?
The DPR was announced by President Carter on May 3, 1978, and
a Response Memorandum to the President was delivered to the White House December 6th. It contained nine major findings, which are discussed in the full statement, and presented three broad policy options for Presidential consideration.

This Memorandum was digested for 6 additional months by the Domestic Policy Staff prior to the announcement of President Carter’s solar energy policy in mid June. That announcement made a strong statement in support of solar energy, committed some additional funds to an expanded Federal solar effort, and took several steps towards defining a long-term national solar energy strategy. It accepted the rationale developed in the Response Memorandum that use of solar energy systems could reduce the nation’s dependence on, and misuse of, fossil fuels, enhance the quality of the environment, reduce the costs of energy services if oil and gas prices rose rapidly, provide large savings to the economy if major energy systems such as coal or nuclear power fail to achieve expected penetrations due to environmental or other considerations, provide employment opportunities, and enhance important U.S. foreign policy and trade objectives. It also recognized that under any reasonable economic growth scenario, supplies of oil and gas would eventually deplete, and that the nation and the rest of the world would have to rely increasingly upon alternative and renewable energy sources. Therefore, the critical question was not whether solar energy development should be encouraged by the Federal government, but rather at what pace and in what form.

However, other important steps were not taken by the Carter
Administration, which, in my view, raised serious questions about
its commitment to solar energy.

At the time of the President’s solar message, the Federal
bureaucracy needed to receive clear instructions on how to
respond in terms of program activities to the President’s speech.
In fact, a set of Presidential directives to the departments and
agencies had been prepared in anticipation of the President’s speech, but were never issued. It must be remembered that the DPR was a policy, not a program, document. There was a need to move from a policy statement to detailed program plans, a step the Carter Administration took very haltingly.

Establishment of the standing Solar Subcommittee of the
Energy Coordinating Committee, an important thrust of the
President’s speech, could have been pursued vigorously, but was not. It was finally established almost a year later when pressure from Congress began to develop. This Subcommittee has the potential for improving significantly the management and coordination of the Federal Solar program, if allowed by OMB and others to do its job.

In addition, throughout its tenure, the Carter Administration
failed to manage properly the Federal solar energy program. In
my view, this has been a more serious problem than allocation of financial resources. When the Department of Energy was organized, the President split responsibility for solar energy between two assistant secretaries, but didn’t appoint one of those assistant secretaries until his Administration was almost half over. When he finally combined the DOE solar programs under one assistant secretary, he promptly fired the responsible official, who had been in office approximately one year. Appointing a new Assistant Secretary for Conservation and Solar Energy took three and a half months, and a Deputy Assistant Secretary for solar energy was appointed only after an even longer delay.

DOE’s solar energy programs, from their inception, have suffered from serious personnel shortages. Multi-million dollar programs have been staffed at headquarters with one or two professionals, leading to overload situations and unavoidable inefficiencies. Such problems should not exist in a 20,000 person agency. In addition, the role of the Solar Energy Research Institute vis-a-vis that of the four Regional Solar Energy Centers has been a major source of confusion, and the minimal funding provided to the regional centers has seriously reduced their effectiveness in promoting solar commercialization.

The inevitable results of these management failures have been
serious morale problems, loss of program personnel, and strong
and growing skepticism on the part of the public, the private sector, and other levels of government that the Federal government can he effective in speeding solar development.

My personal view is that the Federal government can and
should play a role in speeding solar development, and that this role is clearly suggested by the DPR’ s findings. I might add that this role is not inconsistent with the new Administration’s emphasis on market actions to limit demand and provide adequate energy supplies.

Coordinated and effective information dissemination programs
are required if the public is to make informed choices about
solar energy, and if market forces are to efficiently allocate capital resources. And the public, which is overwhelmingly favorable to solar development, is demanding such information. In this effort, the Federal government will have to work closely with state and local governments, universities, manufacturers, trade associations, public interest groups, and others. It is well to remember the advice offered by a banker in the midst of the DPR: “Bankers listen to other bankers, not to the Federal government.”

The nation needs to develop greater experience with solar energy. My view is that as a nation we should accumulate a sufficient level of experience over the next two decades to allow rapid solarization of the U.S. in the 21st century, if that is the national will. This means learning by doing , and accepting the fact that mistakes will be made. The Federal government can contribute to this learning through support of carefully designed and monitored demonstration programs, and through the use of solar equipment in its own operations. This latter option was extensively explored by the DPR’ s Federal Operations Panel, but has not been widely implemented. Possible causes are the lack of any real support by DOE or the White House for FEMP, the Federal Energy Management Program, which has been struggling to move beyond both Republican and Democratic administration rhetoric for years. Other probable causes are the subsidized energy costs presented to Federal facilities. One example will suffice. The Naval Shipyard at Mare Island, California, near Vallejo, currently pays 8 mills per kilowatt-hour for electricity, a rate far below national average costs for electricity. This is made possible by Bureau of Reclamation subsidies. Under these conditions, it is not difficult to understand a lack of DOD interest in renewable energy systems.

The Federal solar R&D program can be improved by putting
increased effort into long-term basic research, a point
consistent with the new Administration’s approach to energy funding. Emphasis should also be placed on non-electric as well as electric solar applications. This does not necessarily translate into equality of R&D dollars, given the high unit costs of several solar electric systems (e.g., OTEC), but it should translate into equality of effort.

Financing for solar equipment purchases should be on an equal footing with other energy system purchases. For example, a homebuyer should have the option of putting a conventional or solar hot water system into his or her mortgage, and not be

required to finance the solar option in a more costly, shorter term way. The Federal government, through its activities in secondary markets, can help remove such discriminations from our financing system.

Other market distortions which discriminate against solar should also be removed. Creating and maintaining an economic and regulatory environment in which solar can compete equitably with other energy technologies is probably the most important single action the Federal government can take to stimulate solar development. This position is entirely consistent with the new Administration’s market focus. However, l already see evidence that the reality will not live up to the rhetoric. Increased Federal support for nuclear power development is being promoted at the same time that Federal support for conservation and solar energy is being cut significantly. This lack of evenhandedness, if permitted by the Congress, will polarize public opinion and inhibit energy market competition.

Careful attention to consumer protection will also be
required if consumer confidence is to grow during the solar
industry’s early years.

Finally, and importantly, there is a need for greater Federal
coordination with and support for state and local solar energy
initiatives – e.g., local efforts to evaluate the potential for utilizing indigenous renewable resources. It is only through stimulation of such local activities that widespread solar use can occur.

In summary, there are important steps the Federal government
can take to facilitate the nation’s transition to renewable energy use, steps that improve energy market operations: information generation and dissemination, support for local initiatives, and removal of energy market distortions. I agree with the new Administration that commercialization activities are best left to the private sector, which has the financial  incentives to serve the marketplace efficiently. However, it is the responsibility of government to create and maintain an economic and regulatory environment in which effective competition can take place among the means of providing energy services. In such an environment conservation would compete with solar energy systems and other supply options on an equal footing, a position that conservation advocates, solar advocates, nuclear advocates, synfuel advocates, and others should be willing to support. I encourage you to support policies which create such an environment, and which will unleash the creative potential of the American people.

Thank you for your attention. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.