Written by William F. Pickard   

Vanilla policies won’t cut it, but red-hot chili pepper ones just might.


With the nomination of Ernest Moniz to be Secretary of Energy, President Obama has further defined the course of his Second Term. As a Ph. D. in Theoretical Physics from Stanford, you, Professor Moniz, arguably have way more book smarts than most members of Congress, this commentator, and the Man On The Street. That and a dollar bill will get you a soda pop from ’most any vending machine at DOE Headquarters. What’s needed are Machiavellian street smarts (not commonly part of the curriculum at America’s Great Universities) and the immoderate obdurate vocal contumacy to stand four-square for the policies that our descendents in the year 2100 will realize you should have stood for!

First, you will be a member of the President’s Cabinet. Your job is not to be a team player. It is to dream patriot dreams (that see beyond the years) and to do your damnedest to cajole your colleagues, first, into dreaming with you and, second, into making those dreams come true.

Second, the Department of Energy is a huge organization, with huge inertia, huge responsibilities, and an anemic budget. Given half a chance, it will eat you alive. Hire a retired general as business manager, give him a copy of Robert Norris’ Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man , and tell him to play Leslie Groves to your J. Robert Oppenheimer. Then devote yourself entirely to America’s transition from the Age of Fossil Fuels to the Age of Renewable Energy. Chances are that America will get one and only chance to make this shift successfully.

Third, listen to the predictions of Cal Tech’s Professor David Rutledge, one of which is that 90% of the planet’s recoverable dowry of fossil fuel will be gone by around 2070. Equally credible and discouraging predictions exist from other independent groups: your staff at DOE should, at the drop of a hat, be able to cite several others (or else!).

Fourth, as much as it might grieve him, you must tell the President that “all of the above” is not a viable long term energy policy. Because some of the “above” are NOT sustainable, and one of your major concerns must be to assure sustainable energy for Americans as yet unborn. Besides, many of the “above” involve carbon dioxide release -- believed by some to promote climate change.

Fifth, many renewables like solar energy and wind energy are intermittent. The Public does not willingly do intermittency -- especially during heat waves, sports telecasts, supper preparations, or trying to change a wet baby on a dark and stormy night. Many would claim that the capricious flow of energy from solar and wind (DOE calls it the Intermittency Challenge) can not be resolved without building massive stationary energy storage: think in terms of hundreds of energy reservoirs, each holding at least a thousand megawatt-days. Of late, DOE has manifested but little existential concern about this problem, preferring instead to put its money into R & D on batteries suitable for electric vehicles: think in terms of kilowatt-hours. Just how all those auto batteries would be recharged reliably without a robust electricity grid is hazy. So the bad news is that you will have to resolve this conundrum. The good news is that only two hundred billion dollars a year for the next fifty years should go a long way toward resolving it. That’s roughly 2⅔% of GDP. Where the President and Congress will find that sort of money isn’t clear; but the 47% seems like a poor prospect.

Sixth, it may surprise you that, even though massive energy storage is the Achilles’ Heel of renewable energy, comparatively little work is being done on it. You’ll find scientists who tout batteries, like flow batteries or liquid metal batteries or aluminum-air batteries. But these are all “under development”, don’t actually have verifiable performance specs, and can’t be purchased in the competitive market place. Similar uncertainties and problems also plague compressed air energy storage, pumped hydro storage, atmospheric capture and storage of carbon dioxide as synthetic iso-octane, etc. Narrowing this knowledge gap should be relatively cheaper than actually constructing the storage: fifty billion a year for a decade could clarify a lot of issues.

Seventh, you are probably aware that past revolutions in technology have generally required several decades for the new technology to go from 1% of the market to 50% of the market. This means that, if the United States starts NOW, then, between development of the new energy technology and the displacement of fossil carbon use, it will be lucky to have adequate renewable replacement in operation by the last quarter of the century. And probably this also means that you are about to spend countless hours selling renewable energy to people who have trouble coming to grips emotionally with the notion that fossil fuel is really quite limited and really is destined quite soon to become an historical curiosity.

Eighth, you can kick all of the above cans some of the time, and some of them all of the time, but you can’t kick all of these cans all of the time. Endeavoring to do so could precipitate a flawed Presidency.


William F. Pickard [Ph.D., P.E., Life Fellow of IEEE] is a Senior Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. He used to do high voltage engineering, electrobiology and bioelectromagnetics, material transport in higher plants, and cell telephone safety. Now he does societal sustainability and renewable energy.