8:00 p.m. EST January 21, 2009, Dawn of the New Energy Order

September 21, 2008

Here's a little speech we worked up for the next President to deliver at 8 p.m. eastern standard time on his first day in office. Say something good and we'll tuck it into the final draft which publishes before the election. We're told this speech could go viral, and with a few tweaks, be delivered by the next President. So, if you want to touch history, if you want a piece of the first democratically crafted presidential speech ever, jump in. (Like the democratically crafted movie "Snakes," only without the flop part). This speech could well be the marker for the dawn of the New Energy Order.

Click here to read the speech.

"Good evening, America. It is unusual for the President to launch a major initiative on Day One, but these are unusual times. Our energy situation, in fact our nation's future, is precarious. We are dangerously dependent on oil. By importing two thirds of the stuff, we are fomenting the greatest transfer of wealth in history, and thus are mortgaging our children's future. Our electrical grid is brittle and outdated. Our energy use impacts the planet we depend on for sustenance. This crisis did not happen in a day (we've been talking about it since President Eisenhower) but it has become clear to all in recent years that we are in crisis.

Imagine for a moment a world where you plug your car into your garage to recharge from the renewable energy setup that you own. Your car charges from quiet, low profile wind generators on your roof that tap the steady night breeze. You don't pay an electricity bill, and sometimes you even sell excess energy you've produced back to the grid. At your office parking garage twenty miles away, you plug into a similar setup. You quickly "top off" your battery, with the help of a smart car-grid interface that tells you electricity is cheap this morning. As demand peaks in the hot summer afternoon, your car acts on a sell signal, releasing energy stored in its battery back to the grid, so that you actually make money on your fuel costs today. You are one of millions of citizens who buffer the grid, helping us to defer building new power plants and electrical transmission lines. For this service, the American government had already cut you a check to help you buy the wind and solar at your house, and your new plug-in car, all produced by a revitalized American manufacturing economy. The technologies I've just described are real and are coming to market in the next year or so.

Even as we've developed a collective urge to do something, our energy choices are somehow still hostage to the partisan. To the crisis, let us bring an abundance mentality that recognizes that the problem is big enough and dire enough to make a place at the table for all of the solutions we've been talking about over the last two years. Let's do something.

Both parties. Every American. Every reasonable solution.

We can drill for oil and create more nuclear power and transition to renewable energy as the basis for powering our country and rethink our electrical grid and rebuild our transportation infrastructure. In fact, we must. This crisis demands all hands on deck, it demands that we put aside our differences and come together to take active control of our future, instead of gridlocking and bickering in a passive partisan standoff that begets year upon year of inaction.

Fortunately our problem comes bundled with a good number of solutions. Market-worthy technology is available to create the new energy order; business and the American citizen are ready to act. The collective will to do something has developed like energy stored in a giant, national coil. It is time to unleash this will and do what needs doing. Within a decade, we can drive vehicles that are powered by buildings, where a smart grid has married the car and building together in mind-boggling ways that are greater than the sum of parts. We can make energy where we use it: at our offices and factories and homes. We can unburden our electrical grid even as we diversify and decentralize the production of power, even as we replace oil with electricity, even as we power vehicles cleanly and even as we do all of this for less cost. We can relegate oil to the heap of common commodities like coffee and paper and lumber, instead of letting it continue to be the super-commodity that it is, overshadowing and driving our relations with the likes of Russia, Venezuela, China, India, Iran and Iraq.

The cost of the new energy order is in the transition, and I am asking you to consider making this sacrifice; to bear the cost of the transition. For our nation, for our children and the generations that follow, for the community of nations we must bear this cost. In the world beyond the transition, we will live and work in a cleaner way, in a more productive and engaging way, for less cost, with greater energy reliability and national security. To get to this world, we must pay the entry fee.

Congress and I have been working over the last month on a comprehensive energy bill that we will pass in early February. The bill allows for immediate drilling offshore. In exchange, we will roll back oil subsidies. Oil is critical to us today, but it is not the fuel of the future, it is a stepping stone to the future. Beginning today, we will invest in our future. The bill provides for $200 billion in funded initiatives, some of which will begin immediately, including incentives for people and businesses to start building a plug-in/building grid on behalf of the nation.

The new energy order will be driven by the newly appointed Secretary of Energy Amory Lovins and Mary Peters, who has agreed to stay on as Secretary of Transportation. They are creating task forces in areas where we need immediate impact. Among these are the Wind Group, which will the pave the way for business to develop the Wind Belt in the mid-West and wind power in our coastal areas. This group will be headed by Jerry Patterson, who is currently the Texas Land Comissioner. Another is the Mileage Fee Group. Jim Whitty is charged with helping automakers and states implement a national GPS-based mileage fee that incentivizes clean, fuel efficient vehicles, disincentivizes driving in rush hour, and creates revenue to rebuild our transportation infrastructure. Google founder Sergey Brin has agreed to lead an effort to implement the Smart Grid, including a focus on building-sited renewables like vertical axis wind turbines, and getting us good legislation to make net metering easy and otherwise encourage renewables and plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles.

We will aggressively pursue and exploit the promise of urban wind power and enhanced geothermal energy. We will build nuclear power plants to augment renewables. We will use the buying power of the United States government to prime the pump for renewable and sustainable technologies and energy conservation efforts, using the Department of Defense and others. Government buildings will become models of energy efficiency and production, achieving gold certification under LEED, the green building rating system, phased in for new buildings over the next five years.

Oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy have their place at the table. But to be clear, the focus of this effort will be to power America with renewable energy. There is enough sun and wind, enough motion in the water, and enough heat within the earth to power America several times over. We have the technology to tap these clean resources. We must address the problems arraying against us, and we must do it now, while we have the capital to do so; before the problems overwhelm us. We will borrow heavily from T. Boone Picken's plan to create power in the mid-West wind belt. We will draw power from the bounty of the the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf Coast winds. We will harvest the sun in the Southwest much as described by the Solar Grand Plan developed by the Scientific American.

America is at its best in crisis. Crisis concentrates our will, engaging a resilient fabric of decentralized power that is unique among nations.  We are three hundred million autonomous individuals that are ready to rise to the challenge as a one nation, to reap the benefits of our collective effort in our time, and for the generations that follow. I ask each of you to join me in meeting this, the greatest challenge of our generation.

Tomorrow we will rise to the dawn of the new energy order. Good night and God Bless America. "

Photo: Georg Hoermann on flickr

Comments

[Mysterymeat]

This is fantastic stuff. Good alignment with T. Boone and others' wish that the candidates get their full energy plans articulated before entering office, preferably prior to the debates.

[EB]

How about a little aside for public transportation? Increased use of trains for intercity travel could go a long way toward decreasing our use of energy.

[Chris]

EB, public transportation certainly belongs in the mix, we'll find a way to work it in. Maybe something about increasing the use of inter-city trains, and developing high speed intra-city trains like those in use in France and Great Britain.

Let us know if you have examples of good programs or technical systems.

[Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D.]

This is the Peak Oil reality. According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.

This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

[Luminara]

If you want a plan for public transport, I suggest you take a look at this plan by Alan Drake, which can be found at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301

[Randy White]

And one more thing America.... copy what Portland, Oregon is doing!

[Chris]

Randy, could you expand on what Portland is doing?

[Anna Synick]

The problem with America is that you are mostly such incredible gullable fools, incapable of critical or independent thought. 'God Bless America, we are in a crisis' - so all you can talk about is your beloved car and how to keep driving. You collectively just don't get it and that's why you're going to go down. You are right: you are in a crisis. To that end you should look to reduce your energy consumption. Let every family have 1 car. Improve public transport. Learn to grow your own vegetables. Have less children. That would be a much more useful step in the right direction.

Of course, since you're incapable of seeing that or curbing yourselves to actually change your lavish ott lifestyle, you're eventually in the not too distant future going to find out the hard way. Then you'll be surprised: 'How could this happen to us, blessed Americans?' It's nearly painful to watch.

Fools!

[Peter Ramenjatchek]

A typical uniformed response to the energy crisis. Some ideas verge on the OK but about 10 years too late. Before this Utopia you describe could come to fruition you will run out of the black gold to provide the power to create your new energy order. Lets get it right oil production has peaked and will start to steadily decline. We are currently just on the shaky top of the peak with the financial crisis creating some demand destruction but not enough to get away from the underlying trend.

To the rest of your suggestions lets look at them systematically.

1. drilling offshore - very expensive and most analysis shows about 20 billion barrels of oil offshore. That will last us about 800 days at our current usage rates.

2. Nuclear - the fools card of energy. Nuclear energy plants take a very long time to plan, construct and bring online because they are so inhernently dangerous. You are looking at 5- 10 years to bring them online and you don't have that time to spare. We also don't have endless amounts of Uranium and if we were to try and make up the oil energy shortfall with nuclear known reserves would be used up within 20 years. Finally, you really want to dump the toxic mess that is the the waste from nuclear power stations onto hundreds of future generations. There is currently neither in the US or anywhere else in the world a long term depository for nuclear waste and remember we are talking a half life of 25,000 years!!

3. Renewables - great idea, lets all have solar panels on our roofs and wind turbines in the garden. Current solar technology is still based on high grade pure silicon, not the sand you find on the beach and guess what there is a world wide shortfall developing. Major current use of all this silicon - computers, plama screens etc. The new range of flat solar panels based on caesium, iridium, selenium panels do hold promise but those are not metals that come in large quantities and we will have to pay countries such as Australia that have large deposits a fair sum to acquire them. That is if they are not using them for themselves.

Urban windpower, you really don't have a clue. One of the biggest killers of wind turbine efficiency is turbulence and urban environments with their high building density are perfect for turbulence. Before you waste any money on a turbine go and fly a kite, if it don't fly straight you have turbulence. So then put a 20 metre mast in the garden and chop down all the tall trees that are interfering with the airflow. Hardly a green solution;)

4. The buying power of the United States government - if you didn't notice we are bankrupt. We are about to owe the world 11.3 trillion dollars. The second largest item on the national budget each year is the interest on the debt to the world currently around $550 billion. I think we won't be getting much more credit and soon the world will be knocking on the door if we don't keep up our repayments. Repossession is not just something for homeowners.

So we may want many things but we need far fewer. We are going to have to learn some painful truths about excess in the near future and the great god of technology is not going to get us out of this mess, because we have left it far tto late and do not have the required lead in time to avert the energy crisis.

[Mama Kin, Esq.]

Hey Synick and Ramanjatchek - do you two know each other? If not, I'm happy to make the introduction; you seem perfect for each other. What a foul stew of negativity spews forth from you guys. I agree with you: there are problems on top of problems in the world, in the USA and elsewhere. You have both proven yourselves adept at identifying and amplifying them. So what do you do for an encore? I think proposed speech is right on target. It's a speech on energy, right? Not a 1,000 page detailed plan on how to rid the world of all problems or make the world love Americans. In the end it worked for me. And your comments made me laugh. Good luck out there.

[Peter Ramenjatchek]

A typical uniformed response to the energy crisis. Some ideas verge on the OK but about 10 years too late. Before this Utopia you describe could come to fruition you will run out of the black gold to provide the power to create your new energy order. Lets get it right oil production has peaked and will start to steadily decline. We are currently just on the shaky top of the peak with the financial crisis creating some demand destruction but not enough to get away from the underlying trend.

To the rest of your suggestions lets look at them systematically.

1. drilling offshore - very expensive and most analysis shows about 20 billion barrels of oil offshore. That will last us about 800 days at our current usage rates.

2. Nuclear - the fools card of energy. Nuclear energy plants take a very long time to plan, construct and bring online because they are so inhernently dangerous. You are looking at 5- 10 years to bring them online and you don't have that time to spare. We also don't have endless amounts of Uranium and if we were to try and make up the oil energy shortfall with nuclear known reserves would be used up within 20 years. Finally, you really want to dump the toxic mess that is the the waste from nuclear power stations onto hundreds of future generations. There is currently neither in the US or anywhere else in the world a long term depository for nuclear waste and remember we are talking a half life of 25,000 years!!

3. Renewables - great idea, lets all have solar panels on our roofs and wind turbines in the garden. Current solar technology is still based on high grade pure silicon, not the sand you find on the beach and guess what there is a world wide shortfall developing. Major current use of all this silicon - computers, plama screens etc. The new range of flat solar panels based on caesium, iridium, selenium panels do hold promise but those are not metals that come in large quantities and we will have to pay countries such as Australia that have large deposits a fair sum to acquire them. That is if they are not using them for themselves.

Urban windpower, you really don't have a clue. One of the biggest killers of wind turbine efficiency is turbulence and urban environments with their high building density are perfect for turbulence. Before you waste any money on a turbine go and fly a kite, if it don't fly straight you have turbulence. So then put a 20 metre mast in the garden and chop down all the tall trees that are interfering with the airflow. Hardly a green solution;)

4. The buying power of the United States government - if you didn't notice we are bankrupt. We are about to owe the world 11.3 trillion dollars. The second largest item on the national budget each year is the interest on the debt to the world currently around $550 billion. I think we won't be getting much more credit and soon the world will be knocking on the door if we don't keep up our repayments. Repossession is not just something for homeowners.

So we may want many things but we need far fewer. We are going to have to learn some painful truths about excess in the near future and the great god of technology is not going to get us out of this mess, because we have left it far tto late and do not have the required lead in time to avert the energy crisis.

[Anna Synick]

Dear Mama Kin, Esq.

With your reply, I rest my case :)

Keep your eyes tightly shut, and everything will be alright. Let's all be positive even if there is nothing to be positive about. Because that's how we can solve problems, right, by *not* acknowledging them.

It's you, my friend, who needs all the luck in the world.

I'm creating my own luck and am well underway to being fully self sufficient and debt free.

How about you?

Anna

[Rossop]

It's a fantasy.

This is never going to happen.

The whole idea that the USA will replace 200 million pickups, SUV's and assorted hoopdi's with 200 million batteries is not only economically infeasible (even when there was a thing called Credit) it's environmentally impossible.

Ignoring of course the 3 - 5 year lifespan of a battery....what will happen to the discarded cells? Recycling efforts in the USA are laughable today, how long do you think it will take to get up to (say) Denmark's standard? I suspect 15 years would be a 'stretch goal'.

The energy and oil requirements to make all these brand new cars (lubricants and tyres especially) would be prohibitive if oil was cheap - $30 a barrel - so in the days of oil being 4 x this figure, there is little chance that most American's will be able to afford them.

The idea of all homes and business having solar cells has merit, however even the PV panels have petrochemical components, so they will continue to rise dramatically in price as oil rises. As for transport for the next 20 years? Think trains, pushbikes and scooters that do 100 mpg.

R.

[Chris]

Thanks for the feedback thus far, it is instructive all. It may make sense to outline the objectives of the speech, the framework, and we may do so soon. An outline could state objectives like:

* fix the problem in our generation
* create measurable milestones in a decade (a reasonable timeframe for focus and action)
* mitigate risks associated with the peaking of global oil production

We're okay with the idea that we're indulging in fantasy. "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was a bit of fantasy that got into the head of Robert Goddard, who was instrumental in developing the rockets that took us to the moon. We come at this more from a desire to address major, looming issues, than from having any particular expertise or handle on solutions. We're open to the suggestions and commentary given thus far, and are eager for more.

Trains, electrified rail, and high speed rail seems to offer, as presented by Alan Drake on the Oil Drum, some Silver BB's (many lesser solutions as opposed to some Silver Bullet). Rail ought to be part of the solution.

Energy efficiency and performance contracts to achieve this may be considered. Geothermal, enhanced geothermal and a host of other technical solutions belong in the plan, if not the speech.

We address this as an American issue because it's what we know and see, and because America seems to have the cultural infrastructure to abet radical transformation. But the issues transcend one country, and the solutions need to come from all over and be applied universally. Operating at the level of one country is just a way to attack the problem.

More feedback and commentary please.

[Adalicia Gustavus]

Anna,

Statistically speaking, you are more likely to solve a problem if you remain positive. It is odd that you suggest, you personally, becoming self-sufficient and debt free is the solution to a global problem.

Good luck,
Adalicia Gustavus ;)

-Keep up the great work, Powrtalk!

[Anna Synick]

Dear Adalycia,

I am at all times flabbergasted when people indicate I'm negative. I think inaction, or pretending problems aren't here, is negative, and short-sighted.

Taking action to deal with a problem is positive, even if it is a tiny step. There are more and more people like me, growing their own food, being more careful with what they've got, recycling, and all the rest of it. I believe that people will increasingly go this way, if only because they'll be forced to once they can't afford getting their food from the shops anymore (or if there isn't any food left - look at Iceland, they're heading there). Now there is an interesting tipping point on the horizon.

Solving the problems we're facing cannot be done on a global scale, as people, governments, and countries simply are incapable of agreeing on how to go about it. There are too many of us, and there are only limited resources. The result most likely is going to be war, and unrest. So the best way and only way is to start with yourself. A single person can start to make a change by starting to change him or herself. You cannot make a change by shouting slogans from rooftops, hoping that people will listen and take action, but not actually *doing* something yourself.

By becoming self sufficient and debt free, I take pressure off an already overloaded system that is going to crash any time soon. Telling others to make changes which they may or may not implement for whatever belief system they have, does not.

Anyway, your reply is rather short on substance so please enlighten me: You obviously consider yourself a 'positive' person, so what are you doing (if you're doing anything at all).

Anna

[John Doe]

The world has limited resources. 10-15 years from now, the word population would have tripled. We must recycle, make more efficient cities in terms of number of people housed in a given area-such as fish have a minimum and maximum stocking rate/ square meter. Goodluck to all and "POWER TO THE PEOPLE!"

[Adalicia Gustavus]

Hello Anna!

I feel we must be talking past each other on a few key points.

First of all, who’s to say creating a blog, embracing new technologies, and doing the best you can to reach as many people as you can is inaction? I’m sorry you have no faith in your government, but in America, one of the ways we embrace our democracy is by using our political power to influence the policies and institutions of government. We rely on social capital to get things done.

You made the distinction between yourself and people who shout slogans from rooftops, and it occurred to me that you are no different. You do not realize how many people are trafficking these websites and with all due respect, the ‘people shouting slogans from rooftops’ may also be striving for a lifestyle similar to yours as may other anonymous people on this website. It makes no difference whether or not you do this electronically, or vocally.

You also say that the problems we’re facing cannot be solved at a global scale, and I am saying that they must be solved at a global scale. I am flabbergasted that you think that you are apart of an ecosystem that is in some way not interacting with mine. Your narrow view of the world and the layers of systems that make it available to you is shortsighted. I encourage you to make that paradigm shift that would make your comments on this blog more appropriate.

-Adalicia Gustavus

[calvin mast]

lets wave our majic wands and poof, green. we will all have hats with either solar panels or wind generators on top of them. We will enforce a system to you thats half reliable and beauracratic but you will feel good about it.
Your problem is not oil,it is the government. This will be run like the postal service or the public school system. Policy is policy, Democrat or republican, you cannot rely on them, they are the true addicts of oil! I want this too but both parties will drag there feet as always. The president may have the right intentions but the system always will override.

[Sir Winston Churchill]

For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.