Write your congressman! Demand he examine this web site and get our country working
seriously on energy storage solutions. The reasons for for the United States to be
energy independent are compelling.
- Economics! Why pay $3.00 per gallon of gasoline when we could have electric
power for much less? Additionally we won't be importing electricity,
but creating it here, thereby boosting our domestic economy!
- National Security! What if our "Friends" in the Middle East Create another "oil
crisis"?
- Environment! Lets stop burning oil and use clean electrical power! We can take the
"high road" internationally on Global Warming!
Instead of spending billions of dollars on defending our oil interests
in the Middle East, what we need is a concerted effort involving research, and advanced planning. The
research needs to go into energy storage, the advanced planning should be for energy
generation and distribution. Considering the size our our economy and the
size of the U.S. budget, this project is very much within our reach. Several alternatives exist for getting
this project going. We could have the federal government offer a prize to the first team that creates
a viable energy storage device meeting the necessary criteria. This puts the job in the
private sector, but does not insure its success. Due to the importance of this endeavor we should
have the federal government take the lead and create a "crash" program. By dedicating
some of our national laboratory's resources to this project, as well as forming
public-private partnerships, this goal could be accomplished in a reasonable timeframe.
If we want it to happen quickly we need to do something like this:
- Start new and encourage existing research into energy storage to insure
that we can meet our goal within five years.
- Plan for and begin construction of the additional power generation capacity that
will be required.
- Plan for and begin construction on the additional power distribution capability
that will be required.