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Future Energy
eNews IntegrityResearchInstitute.org June
26, 2007
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| 1) Civilian Aero Startups Claim Their
Space NASA sees role for private-sector missions | |
| Loring Wirbel 4/16/2007 URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000881 | |
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Colorado Springs, Colo. --Aerospace industry giants were giving a fresh crop of space cowboys a deferential nod at the National Space Symposium here last week. The startups--some founded by entrepreneurs who made their fortunes in technology--have ambitious plans for the civilian use of space.
Where launch and module ventures garnered snickers from aerospace stalwarts early in the decade, the efforts are now gaining quiet respect. Brewster Shaw, general manager of the NASA systems business unit at Boeing Co., said skepticism about commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) efforts at achieving spaceflight would be a mistake. And anything good for space commerce is good for NASA and the space community at large, Shaw said.
The new crew includes several founders who are veterans of the Internet revolution. Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, is the CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which he launched in 2002. SpaceX, as it is known, claimed a partially successful launch of its rocket on March 20, though it did not achieve orbit. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, has been less forthcoming about his company, Blue Origin, which has used a spaceport in west Texas to conduct test launches of a vertical-liftoff reusable vehicle.
From Russia with love
Boeing executives see companies like Bigelow Aerospace and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactica, which dangle the possibility of "space holidays" before well-heeled consumers, as breaking ground for the expansion of the space market from government-only applications into the consumer realm. The lure of such a possibility was evident here last week, as former Microsoft Corp. executive Charles Simonyi became the latest "tourist" to plunk down $25 million for a trip to the International Space Station (ISS).
At the official unveiling of his plans last week, Bigelow had to dispel notions put forth by Rocketplane Kistler and some online commentators that he intended to design "space hotels." Not only are his modules less expansive than a true multidwelling hotel, Bigelow said he also intended to narrow his customer base to sovereign (nation-sponsored) clients and corporate clients. The sovereign customers would include only those types of spacefarers who would be cleared for an ISS trip.
Bigelow said his goal of offering a four-week, low-earth-orbit trip at an inclusive training and transportation cost of $14.95 million by the year 2012 was one step toward a goal of bringing the cost of space tourism to $30,000 or $40,000 per journey.
Bigelow's Genesis I was launched last summer by ISC Kosmotras, a commercial launch system jointly sponsored by Russia, Ukraine and the Republic of Kazakhstan. Its successor, the Genesis II, has already been shipped to Russia for a planned launch in late April. The Genesis II will have living passengers--ants and scorpions--and will feature 22 cameras linked via FireWire and Ethernet. The module is 4.4 meters long, with a diameter of 1.6 meters at launch, expanding to 2.54 meters after inflation in space.
Bigelow's Galaxy spacecraft, which is expected to launch next year, will carry test subsystems for human habitation. As early as 2010, the first true module--the three-person Sundancer--will launch. The year following Sundancer's flight, Bigelow will launch a bus-and-node superstructure to link with the BA 330, a six-person full-size module.
"Make no mistake about it, these vehicles will stay on the ground if we cannot show both technical feasibility and economic practicality," Bigelow said. "The manned launches will be based on a dry landing after orbiting, as we don't feel you can justify landing on water with commercial cost constraints."
While the modules are being developed, Bigelow is opening dedicated ground stations to communicate with the spacecraft. Communication nodes already have opened in Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada, and Bigelow wants a minimum of nine ground stations before moving forward.
Aerospace executives running through the details of NASA programs like Constellation and Orion admitted to a twinge of jealousy last week at the ad hoc nature of the startup launch and module companies. Where every vehicular design must go through layers of fault-tolerant and redundant steps mandated by the federal government for commercial spaceflight, entrepreneurs can cut a few corners in their designs.
The startups must assume the liability risk for transporting humans, of course, and the newcomers must comply with regulations from agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration and Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, the little information gleaned about Bezos' Blue Origin came from so-called "scoping hearings" the company held in Texas, required by federal law.
But compared with the layers of bureaucracy necessary for the NASA Constellation program, the space-tourist startup program seems easy.
Private enterprise will prevail
"The rules of private enterprise will determine the winners," Griffin said. "NASA has worked out a particular way to conduct space missions, but it's not the only way to do so. I would be shocked to the soles of my shoes if we had determined the best way to do things."
Griffin said he assumed the type of customers who might be potential space tourists would be well aware of the general risks involved in spaceflight and the particular risks that might be encountered with a launch vehicle or spacecraft developed in the private sector.
Show me the money
Bigelow said the suborbital business was challenging enough to warrant calling its pioneers the "space musketeers," but it also carried the promise of being profitable within a decade--provided commercial efforts went beyond rich space tourists into sovereign-nation astronauts and corporate leasing clients.
Demand exists today: Virgin Galactica has received $20 million in deposits based on the work of a sales staff of two, Tai reported. The key to making the company viable for regular launch, he said, was to reject the busy Mojave Space Port in California and to work with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson at creating a dedicated Virgin spaceport in that state. Virgin anticipates spending $250 million up front before achieving revenue, he said.
Musk, who is aiming at a mix of cargo and passengers for his SpaceX systems, said that his company expects to have a positive cash flow by the end of this year--notwithstanding the joke that "the commercial space industry turns a large investment into a smaller fortune as quickly as possible." SpaceX has gained customers from developing nations, from intelligence agencies and from NASA's COTS program.
"I'm pretty satisfied," Musk said. "The philosophical objectives of creating a private space company and turning a profit are closely aligned."
Tai said that some space platforms don't really showcase the innovation capabilities of the U.S. engineering community. The impetus of a competitive environment replete with startups could spur the type of innovation seen in the computing industry, he said.
Hoyt Davidson, general partner of Near Earth LLC, said that physical exploration of space needs to be publicized so as to bring young engineers into startups. If it takes billionaires like Bigelow and Branson to jump-start the process, Davidson said, so be it. | |
Prof. Valeriy Maisotsenko, May 15, 2007,
www.idalex.com and www.coolerado.com
Renewable Energy is advance
national energy goal to change the way we power our homes, businesses, and
cars.
The world leader in automotive
thermal technology Delphi Corp. has since license the manufacturing right to
produce the special heat and mass exchanger, which realizes the M-Cycle, and has
just begun to mass-produce this product (Coolerado Cooler) for stationary
building air conditioning, vehicular air conditioning, etc.
I would like to meet with you
and your colleagues in order to discuss the potential for a technology
partnership in the pursuit of evolving breakthrough energy efficient products.
I am convinced that the M-Cycle will provide with an opportunity for rapid
development of new renewable energy technologies for cleaner environment and
greater world. energy independence.
For more information about the M-Cycle, visit web sites at www.idalex.com and www.coolerado.com
Dr., Prof. Valeriy
Maisotsenko
Chief Scientist,
Idalex Technologies Inc.
Phone: 303-375-0878
Fax:
303-375-1693
vm@idalex.com
4)
Ultra-Efficient Photovoltaics
Peter Fairley, Technology Review, June 15, 2007
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18910/
The
new class of materials enabling the world's best solar cell has a bright future.
A solar cell more than twice as efficient as typical rooftop solar
panels has been developed by Spectrolab <http://www.spectrolab.com/>, a Boeing
subsidiary based in Sylmar, CA. It makes use of a highly customizable and
virtually unexplored class of materials that could lead to further jumps in
efficiency over the next decade, making solar power less expensive than grid
electricity in much of the country.
The cell, which employs new
"metamorphic" materials, is designed for photovoltaic systems that use lenses
and mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays onto small, high-efficiency solar
cells, thereby requiring far less semiconductor material than conventional solar
panels. Last month Spectrolab published in the journal Applied Physics Letters
the first details on its record-setting cell, initially disclosed in December,
which converts 40.7 percent of incoming light into electricity at 240-fold solar
concentration--a healthy 1.4 percent increase over the company's previous
world-record cell. Other groups are developing promising cells based on the new
type of materials, including researchers at the Department of Energy's National
Renewable Energy Laboratory <http://www.nrel.gov/> (NREL), in Golden, CO.
The NREL researchers will soon publish results in the same journal showing that
their NREL's designs are tracking Spectrolab's, improving from 37.9 percent
efficiency in early 2005 to 38.9 percent efficiency today.
Metamorphic semiconductors resemble the high-efficiency cells used in space. Like the cells that grace satellites and planetary landers, they employ three layers of semiconductors, each tuned to capture a slice of the solar spectrum (solar panels have only one active layer). These semiconductor layers are assembled, one upon the next, by altering elements fed to a crystal growing in a vacuum. To avoid growing crystals filled with energy-trapping defects, device designers have until recently employed only a limited repertoire of semiconductors, such as germanium and gallium arsenide, which form similar crystal structures.
Metamorphic materials provide flexibility by throwing off this structural constraint, employing a wide range of materials, including those with mismatched structures. "The parameter space you can explore using mismatch opens up a whole world of possibilities," says NREL principal scientist Sarah Kurtz <http://www.nrel.gov/pv/video_dan_david_text.html>.
What makes this possible is the addition of buffer layers
between the semiconductor layers. This technique was employed in the early 1990s
to make high-speed transistors combining silicon and germanium, and then
introduced to photovoltaics later in the decade by Cleveland-based semiconductor
developer Essential Research <http://www.essential-research.com/>.
Spectrolab has, however, seen the best results. Its 40.7 percent metamorphic
cell improves on Spectrolab's best conventional cells by incorporating new
semiconductors in the top and middle layers that excel at capturing infrared
light that was all but missed by the cell's predecessors.
Such high output
may be just the beginning. Raed Sherif <http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2005/354.html>,
director of concentrator products at Spectrolab, says there is every reason to
believe that these metamorphic solar cells will top 45 percent and perhaps even
50 percent efficiency. Sherif says those efficiencies, combined with the vast
reduction in materials made possible by 1,000-fold concentrators, could rapidly
reduce the cost of producing solar power. "Concentrated photovoltaics are a
relatively late entry in the field, but it will catch up very quickly in terms
of cost," he predicts. (See "Solar Power at Half the Cost <http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18718/page1/>.")
Sherif
says that right now his company is focusing commercialization efforts on the
older and better-known designs, which currently deliver 35 to 37 percent
efficient modules and could improve to 40 percent efficiency within two to three
years. But he says the metamorphic approach is more likely to achieve the 45
percent efficiency level the company hopes to hit within six to seven years.
Sherif estimates that a 40 percent module would reduce overall cost by about 14
percent if Spectrolab holds at its current $10-per-square-centimeter module
price, while a 45 percent cell would trim system costs by an additional 9 to 10
percent.
Boeing anticipates further cost reductions as other components improve or are mass-produced. Under a $29.8 million concentrated-photovoltaic development partnership with the Department of Energy announced this spring, Boeing promises to cut the delivered price of electricity via concentrated solar to 15 cents per kilowatt hour by 2010, from an estimated 32 cents per kilowatt hour today, and to cut that price in half again by 2015. That would make solar power less expensive than electricity from the grid in much of the United States, where the average price of electricity in recent months has been about 10 cents per kilowatt hour.
Spectrolab's competitors, meanwhile, see metamorphic materials as a way to reduce the use of relatively exotic and expensive semiconductor wafers on which they are now produced. NREL's design, for example, can be lifted off of the germanium wafers on which both NREL's and Spectrolab's cells are grown. The expensive wafers could then be reused. Metamorphic photovoltaic startup 4Power, of Windham, NH, proposes to employ metamorphic buffers to grow high-efficiency cells on the same wafers of silicon on which nearly all semiconductor chips are produced. Silicon wafers are cheaper to buy and process than germanium wafers. 4Power founder Eugene Fitzgerald <http://sauvignon.mit.edu/>, a materials engineering professor at MIT and a metamorphic-materials pioneer, claims that this would cut the cost of growing high-efficiency cells in half.
What remains to be demonstrated, notes NREL's Kurtz, who leads the lab's high-efficiency solar research, is whether solar concentrators--especially their sensitive optics--will prove reliable in the field.
Commentary on Spectralab-Boeing Breakthrough
Nestled in the farmland surrounding the University of
California campus in Davis (UC Davis) is a set of giant vats filled with hungry
microbes. The bugs are devouring cafeteria leftovers and lawn clippings and
converting them into biogas--mostly methane and hydrogen--that
can be burned to generate electricity or compressed into liquid to power
specialized vehicles. However, scientists know little about the gas-producing
microbes living within the reactors. But a new project to sequence the genomes
of the microbes could change that, allowing researchers to figure out how the
bugs perform their digestive tasks and suggesting new ways to make
more-productive bioreactors.
"Sequencing these organisms will give us a
better idea of who the players are so we can better control the conditions or
improve the design to further improve conversion of waste into biogas," says
Ruihong Zhang <http://bae.engineering.ucdavis.edu/pages/faculty/zhang.html>,
the UC Davis bioengineer who developed the system.
Similar bioreactors, known as anaerobic digesters, are
commonly used at wastewater treatment plants. Zhang's bioreactor, however, is
different because it's designed to work on solids, such as food and yard waste.
It works 30 to 50 percent faster than conventional systems and presents a
promising new way to cut back on landfill waste, producing clean burning gas in
the process. (Natural gas, which is primarily made up of methane, releases fewer
toxic compounds into the air than gasoline or diesel fuels.)
An
industrial-sized demonstration unit has been running at UC Davis since last
October, converting eight tons of restaurant waste, cafeteria scraps, and lawn
clippings into 300,000 to 600,000 liters of biogas a day--enough to power
approximately 80 homes. (In Davis, the gas is used for electricity and powers
the nearby wastewater treatment plant.)
Still, scientists know little about
the microbes that convert the waste into gas. "In nature, the microbes that
carry out degradation of organic waste and generation of methane exist in a very
complex anaerobic community, and individual isolates from the community are hard
to grow," says Jim Bristow <http://www.jgi.doe.gov/whoweare/bristow.html>,
head of the community sequencing program at the Department of Energy's Joint
Genome Institute, in Walnut Creek, CA. But in the past two years, faster and
cheaper gene-sequencing methods have offered microbiologists a new tool for
studying microbial communities. Scientists can isolate DNA from a drop of
bioreactor sludge and generate the gene sequence for the entire microbial
community. The Joint Genome Institute will use this approach to sequence the
genomes of the microbes in Zhang's digester next year.
The results should shed light on the types of microbes living
in the bioreactor and the types of genes that predominate. Researchers will also
be able to examine how the community changes under different temperatures and
acidities, which can drastically alter the efficiency of the system. "We want to
compare what kind of microbes are there at different conditions and try to
figure out why one [set of conditions] works better than the other," says Martin
Wu <http://128.120.136.15/mediawiki/index.php/EisenGroup:Community_Portal>,
a geneticist at UC Davis who will lead the genomics part of the
project.
Zhang has partnered with Onsight Biosystems <http://www.onsitepowersystems.com/index.html>,
a Davis-based startup, to commercialize the system. She says the technology has
garnered interest from food producers and municipalities.
6) Cold Fusion - Hot News Again
Bennett Daviss, May 5, 2007, New Scientist http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19426021.000-cold-fusion--hot-news-again.html
Gordon's plastic wafer is the product of the latest in a long line of "cold fusion" experiments conducted at the US navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California. What makes this one stand out is that it has been published in the respected peer-reviewed journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Konrad Lorenz among its eminent past authors (DOI: 10.1007/s00114-007-0221-7). Could it really be true that nuclear fusion can be coaxed into action at room temperature, using only simple lab equipment? Most nuclear physicists don't think so, and dismiss Gordon's pitted piece of plastic as nothing more than the result of a badly conceived experiment. So who is right?
The notion that cold fusion might be possible burst onto the scene in March 1989. That's when chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, working at the University of Utah, announced that they had run a table-top electrolysis experiment in which a fusion reaction took place, producing more energy than it consumed. A world of endless, virtually free fuel seemed to be in the offing - but not for long. Fleischmann and Pons's results quickly proved elusive in other research labs. The hapless pair were laughed out of mainstream science, and most nuclear physicists since have refused to give the slightest credence to the idea. (See "Short History of Cold Fusion" http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/archive/2602/26021002.jpg )
Not everyone gave up on cold fusion, however. Electrochemists Pamela Mosier-Boss and Stanislaw Szpak at the San Diego centre's navigation and applied sciences department were intrigued. Fortunately, so was Gordon, their boss, who provided limited funding for experiments. Mosier-Boss and Szpak have now run hundreds of tests at weekends and during their spare moments, and have published more than a dozen papers in various peer-reviewed journals (New Scientist, 29 March 2003, p 36).
Typically, these table-top experiments have involved lowering an electrode made of the precious metal palladium into a solution of an inert salt dissolved in "heavy water" - in which a large proportion of the hydrogen atoms are of the element's heavy isotope deuterium. In deuterium, the atomic nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the usual single proton. (See "Test-tube Fusion" Diagram http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/archive/2602/26021001.jpg )
When an electric current is passed through the solution, deuterium atoms start to pack into spaces in the palladium's lattice-like atomic framework. Eventually, after a period of days or weeks, there is approximately one deuterium atom for each palladium atom, at which point things start to happen.
Quite what happens or why isn't clear. Whatever it is appears to release more energy, as heat, than the experiment consumes. Proponents of cold fusion claim that the excess energy comes from a nuclear fusion reaction involving the deuterium nuclei.
To get a fusion reaction going normally requires temperatures of millions of degrees, to give the nuclei enough energy to overcome the repulsion between the positive charges of their protons. The result is that two deuterium nuclei combine to produce either tritium - an even heavier hydrogen isotope - plus a free proton, or an atom of helium-3 and a free neutron. Either way the reaction also liberates a large amount of energy.
There is, however, no consensus for how cold fusion might work, and with research groups struggling to reproduce each other's results, most physicists dismiss the few watts of extra energy that emerge from experiments like Mosier-Boss and Szpak's as some kind of aberration. So rather than just looking for extra energy, the pair have deployed a detector long used by nuclear scientists, in an attempt to come up with convincing evidence that nuclear events are taking place.
That's where Gordon's sliver of polymer comes in. It is made of CR-39, a clear polycarbonate plastic that is commonly used to make spectacle lenses and shatter-proof windows - and which can also record the passage of subatomic particles. The neutrons, protons and alpha particles that spew from genuine nuclear reactions shatter the bonds within the polymer's molecules to leave distinctive patterns of pits and tracks that can be seen under a microscope.
The use of CR-39 as a detector goes back decades. In the cash-strapped Soviet Union, most physicists were unable to afford state-of-the-art nuclear instruments. Instead, they became expert at "reading" CR-39 detectors, identifying particles from the shape and depth of the tracks they left behind.
Cold-fusion researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota have used CR-39 since the 1990s, laying the foundation for Mosier-Boss and Szpak's latest experiment. "You don't need complicated instrumentation," Gordon says. "It's an easy detection tool."
Spzak has also developed a technique called co-deposition that speeds up the
process of packing deuterium atoms into a palladium lattice. Instead of using
palladium for the negative electrode in his electrolysis experiment, he uses
nickel or gold wire which is bathed in a solution of palladium chloride and
lithium chloride dissolved in heavy water. When a current passes through the
solution, equal amounts of deuterium and palladium are deposited onto the wire
Mosier-Boss and Szpak say their cells show telltale signs of nuclear reactions, including anomalous amounts of tritium and low-intensity X-rays, just minutes after co-deposition starts. They say the electrode can sometimes become a few degrees warmer than the surrounding solution.
In their latest experiment, Mosier-Boss and Spzak placed wafers of CR-39 against the electrode. When they examined them after running the experiment, they discovered that regions nearest the electrode were speckled with microscopic pits, while those further away were not. A control experiment without any palladium chloride in the solution produced only a few randomly scattered tracks that could be accounted for by background radiation. The researchers have also deliberately inflicted chemical damage on the CR-39: it "looks like fluffy, popcorn-shaped eruptions" on the plastic, Mosier-Boss says, not pits or holes. They are trying to identify which particles might have left the tracks.
Nuclear scientists associated with the project who are well versed in reading CR-39 detectors say the results appear convincing. The pits "exactly mimic typical nuclear tracks in their depth, size, distribution, shape and contrast", says Lawrence Forsley, a physicist who has worked in fusion research for 16 years and is president of JWK Technologies in Annandale, Virginia, one of the San Diego centre's research partners.
Gary Phillips, a nuclear physicist who has used CR-39 detectors for 20 years to capture nuclear signatures and also works for JMK Technologies, is no less enthusiastic. "I've never seen such a high density of tracks before," he says. "It would have to be from a very intense source - a nuclear source. You cannot get this from any kind of chemical reaction."
Many outsiders are less impressed. Some physicists who have seen the initial results of the CR-39 experiments say Mosier-Boss and Szpak must have set up their equipment incompetently, read their data incorrectly, or somehow allowed radioactive detritus to contaminate their cells. Others suggest that anomalous background radiation from an unknown source or even showers of cosmic rays are responsible.
Forsley insists that those objections don't hold water. If there was enough background radiation in the San Diego lab to pock CR-39 wafers with so many pits in such a short time, Mosier-Boss and Szpak "would be cooked", he says. He also points out that any contamination of the experiment or external sources of radiation ought to scatter tracks randomly across the detectors, not concentrate them near the cells' electrodes as their detectors show.
Objectors also point to the difficulty of reproducing these results. While Mosier-Boss and Szpak claim they can produce the reaction at will, other labs have struggled to reproduce consistent, if any, results using co-deposition. One researcher who has had some success is Winthrop Williams at the University of California, Berkeley, who has replicated the navy's experiment with CR-39. At a meeting of the American Physical Society in March he reported similar numbers of pits around the negative electrode. "It is encouraging," says Williams. "I have more work ahead of me to precisely understand and interpret what I am observing."
The lack of a consistent theory to explain how the claimed fusion reaction might occur is another stumbling block. The science writer and debunker Shawn Carlson, who in the past has done research in nuclear physics, listened to Gordon and Mosier-Boss make their case at the National Defense Industrial Association conference in Washington DC last year. He was not convinced. "A collection of disjoint anomalies is more consistent with bad experimental technique than a great discovery," he says. "It would take independent verification from a number of labs to swing the tide in favour of cold fusion."
The sceptics are not having it all their own way, though. Several respected scientists at universities in the US, Europe and Asia are attempting to replicate the US navy's lab experiments. David Nagel, a physicist and research professor at George Washington University in Washington DC who has followed the cold fusion saga since its inception, reports a growing willingness by the US Department of Energy to consider funding experiments to follow up these tantalising hints.
Nagel also detects a more receptive climate at US military research outfits like DARPA and the Office of Naval Research, where he served as administrator and still has close ties. It's not just global warming or the end of oil that's opening people's minds, he says. "It's the weight of the evidence," with new results encouraging physicists to reconsider the case that was so swiftly and firmly closed 18 years ago. "This could be the year when things change for cold fusion," he says. Then he pauses. "Or maybe next year."
Related Links
Canon patent (EP 568 118) for putting large amounts of deuterium in a metal carrier (1994) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14219314.000;jsessionid=IPPFCJKKKBOA
Dana Milbank, June 15, 2007; Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061401876_pf.html
There's a certain irony in Washington's failure to devise a modern energy policy. This is, after all, the one place on earth that is powered almost entirely by wind.
Lawmakers are growing further apart on energy legislation, as Democrats demand alternative fuels and Republicans insist on more drilling. But for both sides, the ability to talk about energy is both plentiful and renewable.
While the Senate held its fourth day of debate on an energy bill, three congressional committees held hearings on the subject yesterday, and the House and Senate Renewable Energy Caucuses held an all-day "expo and forum" in the Cannon Caucus Room. Democratic senators held two news conferences on the subject, Republican senators held a third, and bipartisan groups of lawmakers contributed a fourth and fifth.
Not to be left out, the National Association for Business Economics, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the Electric Power Supply Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and a coalition of environmentalists all hosted energy events of their own.
Talk about a large carbon footprint. The amount of CO2 emitted from the mouths of all these lawmakers, lobbyists and activists was enough to cause part of Greenland to melt into the sea.
"This bill's going to have a tough time," said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), demonstrating his mastery of the obvious at one of yesterday's many news conferences. "My guess is there are many hours of lengthy debate ahead." That's a safe guess, given that the Senate plans for about eight days of debate on the bill -- and Republicans such as Craig are hinting at a filibuster that could derail the whole thing.
"I don't think it's ever going to become law," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) forecast after his own news conference, staged in front of two plug-in hybrid cars. "It's lamebrained." The courtly senator reconsidered. "I shouldn't call it lamebrained," he revised. "But that's how I feel."
Lamebrained or not, the Senate energy legislation is fairly modest. It stays away from radical policies, such as a carbon tax or a cap on carbon emissions. Its toughest provision, a plan to increase fuel-efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, is under siege by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from car-manufacturing states.
"The Senate energy bill started out fairly weak, and we don't see the debate getting any better," complained Eric Pica, who represented Friends of the Earth at a protest by environmentalists on the Senate grounds yesterday.
The coalition of conservation groups had planned to dump a ton of coal on Senate parkland -- they had hauled the anthracite from Baltimore in a rented cargo van (12 miles per gallon). But Capitol Police objected, and the environmentalists had to settle for 20 small buckets of the stuff. "We're going to blacken our hands with the coal," one of the organizers offered the disappointed camera crews.
Minutes later, Republican lawmakers assembled in the Senate television gallery to voice similarly bitter objections to the bill -- for completely opposite reasons. "It doesn't do anything to lower the price of gasoline," argued Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the Senate Republican leader.
Next, Craig lamented a plan to produce 15 percent of the nation's electricity with renewable sources by 2020. The proposal "skews dramatically the reality of what a country can or cannot do," he said. "In the Southeastern states, this is a very big tax because they don't have wind."
It's unclear why the calm winds of the southeast would trouble a man from Idaho, but he warned that Republicans are "very concerned."
Did that message get out? Not without some difficulty. The Republican event was squeezed in between a Senate hearing on "the impact of rising gas prices," and a pair of House committee sessions on biofuels and "climate change mitigation." Within minutes of the GOP's departure from the television studio, Democrats walked in with a rebuttal.
"We do not believe in the president's theory, the Republicans' theory: Drill, drill, drill, more of the same," Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader, taunted. "It reminds me of Iraq."
The senators displayed a chart contrasting two families: The energy-efficient "Baileys," who spend $1,600 a year less than the inefficient "Martins." "You notice it's not just any old chart," said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). "There are families mentioned on that chart."
His colleagues had forgotten to tell Casey that the Martins and the Baileys were fictitious.
The subject had been pretty much exhausted, but Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wanted to add an anecdote about her own "Energy Star" light bulbs. "My husband first bought the wrong ones and so all of our hallways were blue," she said, "and my daughter said it looked like we were living in a bowling alley."
That line would have brought down the house over in the Cannon Caucus Room, where the renewable energy caucus was caucusing among displays of pea pellets, switch grass and filament-free light bulbs. Exhibitors were on hand to talk about landfill gas and to hand out lollipops and bumper stickers saying "I {heart} Wind Energy."
It was a festive gathering, but Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), a champion of renewable energy, delivered a somber message about progress in the capital. "We've been crawling at a snail's pace," he said. "We've been doing little more than nibbling at the edges."
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