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www.times.org
Fuel from the Sky Energy we can control is more abundant than we think
By David Slawson As America struggles through the shock and pain of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, certain lessons become clear: we need better intelligence. We need to focus on eliminating global terrorism. We need better domestic security measures. Above all else, however, we need to become energy independent. Currently, the U.S. spends $120 billion a year importing foreign oil, much of it from the Middle East. This has resulted in a huge bankroll for terrorist organizations originally founded in the Middle East but now spread around the world, including our own backyard. In addition to the vast amounts of capital spent directly for the purchase of foreign oil, our nation also must spend billions to defend our interests in the region, and we find ourselves with a convoluted, confused foreign policy that attempts to support both sides of longstanding, hatred filed battles. In the process we have become despised by virtually everyone - just so we can keep our cars running and our lights on. It doesn’t have to be so - and it clearly cannot continue to be so. A fundamental strategic plan for the U.S. must be to develop our own enormous energy resources to support our and our children’s future. The U.S. is blessed with vast resources of renewable energy - solar, wind, biomass geothermal. We also, of course, have vast remaining coal and natural gas resources and a lesser but still considerable inventory of oil reserves. We can, of course, choose to mine these fossil fuel reserves and burn them up, at enormous costs to our environment, but even more importantly, leaving us with no hydrocarbon resources to make medicines and fertilizers, and building products, clothing and other durable and recyclable products. This is silly and totally unnecessary. Each day, more solar energy is available in a few Southwestern states than is used for all our energy needs, both for transportation and for all our energy requirements. We have similar, enormous wind reserves in other parts of the country, especially the Pacific Northwest, and we have vast biomass and substantial geothermal resources scattered around the country. The technologies exist today to tap these resources to produce environmentally clean, unlimited supplies of energy for the U.S. and our neighbors. The Southwest U.S. could become, for example, the Saudi Arabia of American. This would create thousands of jobs, create an enormous stimulus to our economy, keep billions of dollars in the U.S. that otherwise would go to foreign counties --- and it would provide much enhanced national security and much reduce need for defending our interests in hostile and politically unstable areas of the world. The most promising, proven technologies for converting the sun’s energy are called “Concentrating Solar Power” systems - dish engine systems, solar troughs and power towers. These systems offer the highest efficiency solar to electric conversion and are well suited for large scale power production in solar farms located on our vast uninhabited hot desert. The electricity can be converted, using water and electrolysis system, into hydrogen. The hydrogen can be piped throughout the U.S. or liquefied and trucked or shipped to other areas of the county. The liquid hydrogen is better suite for transportation uses (because of its increased energy density) and the gaseous hydrogen can be efficiently delivered to remote power plants, homes and industry for hearing or process energy requirements, and for use in fuel cells to generate on-site electricity. In all cases, the hydrogen simply serves as a storage media for the solar energy. When it is burned or electrochemically processed in a fuel cell, the result is electrical energy and pure water. Nothing else. The water, in the form of steam vapor, can be recycled though natural weather events, back to the ocean or rivers. Only a small inventory of water is tied up in the form of hydrogen at any given time. The results of converting solar hydrogen (or wind hydrogen) are dramatic. We can: Stabilize our economy with an energy system not dependent on oil prices that are dictated by foreign cartels; Reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and poisonous unburned hydrocarbons in our environment, with all the benefits: reduce global warming, less urban air pollution to name just two. Create a much safer transportation system. Hydrogen is much safer than gasoline, aviation fuels and diesel fuels. This is well-proven by years of testing by NASA and is based on a fundamental fact: hydrogen is 14 times lighter than air, so in the event of a fire or fuel tank rupture, the hydrogen would rapidly escape updated into the ocean atmosphere, where it would quickly dissipate. If the planes that hit the World Trade Center were fuelled with hydrogen rather than jet fuel, there still would have been horrific damage to the upper floors of the buildings, and likely the loss of many lives in the impact and resulting wreckage. But the fuel would have rapidly escaped upward and away from the buildings. The intense, long-burning fuel and melting the structural steel would likely not have existed. Most importantly, though with a hydrogen based economy our energy supply would be under our control. David Slawson is CEO of Stirling Energy Systems, a solar power developer based in Phoenix, Ariz.
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