One of my most enduring memories of Washington D.C. occurred while attending a meeting on Geothermal Energy Development, back in the days before the Iron Curtain fell. In the evening after dinner, I took a colleague from Eastern Europe, on his first American visit, for a walk down the Mall. We walked, almost alone, on a still, bitterly cold, dark evening with fresh snow on the ground, and stars peppering the sky above us to see the sights, including the Lincoln Memorial. We stood staring, like backwoods tourists, through the windows of the Air and Space Museum.

We came back to the hotel for alcoholic refueling, thinking that the energy problems of the time would guarantee unending research funding into new forms of energy, and that our future was assured. That was about thirty years ago, and we were, of course, wrong, at least in terms of the funding and sustained interest in unconventional energy sources. Now we are walking back over some of the same ground. Again, fluctuations in oil prices have removed the immediate perception of the need for alternate supply, and have also weakened the credibility of those of us who try to suggest how to deal with the problem.

Prophecy, particularly when it deals with the near term future runs the risk of being corrected by the actual turnout of events. The ups and downs of energy demand, and available supply–-particularly when tied to the economic fortunes of nations, can make logical projection under one condition, but become apparently hopelessly in error when that condition doesn’t happen. Thus, at the moment, with the declining price, and apparent glut of oil, the public no longer feels that there is a crisis; the credibility of those forecasting a crisis is damaged, and can only be reconstructed over a longer period of time and changing circumstance.

Author's note: I have added a comment to the bottom of the post.

As the first gentle snowflakes of winter settled on the windscreen of my car I was reminded, yet again, of the turning of the seasons and our need for power to keep us warm through the coming months. Last week I commented on how jobs might be created as the pattern of power supply begins to change, particularly with the incentives that might be a part of a new initiative. Two factors often get understated, however, in the current anticipation of the changes that a new Administration may bring. The first of these is the time that it will take to get any decision implemented at a scale that can be meaningful, and the second is the scale itself of the problem that now faces us.

This is a guest post from Neil Howes. Neil is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. The post describes a response to the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Green Paper” (27 August 2008).

Executive Summary

We are proposing that the Government of Australia facilitates the replacement of 50% of Australia’s base-load coal fired electricity generation by financing the building of a high capacity National Electricity Grid (NEG) by 2020. This will interconnect high value renewable energy sites for wind, solar and geothermal energy to enhanced hydro electricity pumped storage capacity enabling these low CO2e energy sources to provide base-load power to major retail and industry consumers.

The objective of the plan is to :

(1) Link the East Coast and Tasmanian electricity grids (known as the NEM - National Electricity Market) to the Western Australian electricity grid via a 1500Km high voltage DC (HVDC) connection between Norseman, WA and Pt August SA,

(2) Build a new 1000 Km HVDC connection between Leigh Creek SA and Roma, QLD to link the SA and QLG regions within the NEM, in order to access solar and geothermal sites in WA, SA, VIC,NSW and QLD.

This would also require;

(3) A high voltage AC (HVAC) extension and upgrade of the WA grid north of Norseman, via Kalgoorlie, to the proposed Pilbara local grid to access stranded natural gas (NG) power in WA mining communities and solar thermal sites in the NW of WA

(4) A HVAC interconnection from Norseman to Esperance and Albany wind power sites with increased capacity HVAC connections along the SW coast of WA t4 Perth. This infrastructure project will assist the development of all renewable energy resources, starting with developing wind resources along the SW coast of WA, West Coast of Tasmania, and coastal and highland wind sites in SA, VIC, NSW and QLD with an installed capacity of 28GW by 2020.

This might have been a story of how a couple of MIT scientists happened upon a breakthrough discovery in the electrolysis of water; but they didn't (and so it isn't). This might also have been a story about an informed media which correctly and skeptically reports on such scientific discoveries -- in the midst of a public relations barrage from a leading university -- but nobody really expects such journalistic vigilance anymore. Instead, this story will try to examine what (if anything) was discovered, and how this news affects the landscape of the looming energy crisis. In addition, given that a number of encouraging research reports have surfaced suggesting a seamless transition to a hydrogen economy, I will revisit the fundamental challenge posed by moving to alternate liquid fuels: getting used to the idea of diffuse energy. (Some names have been omitted to protect the less guilty).