Posted by Congressman John Campbell at 12:00 am on Sep 09, 2010 Comments Off on The Energy Debate
Back in July, I was on the dais for a Joint Economic Committee
hearing on the topic of energy. At one point during the hearing,
one of my Democratic colleagues from New York made the statement
that we could get rid of all oil usage in this country by using
solar power.
This is a nice thought, but one not rooted in any understanding
of reality. I then presented the challenges and opportunities
facing our energy policy and challenged my colleague’s assertion
with the three panelists (from MIT, Texas A&M, and a New York
consulting firm – 2 Democratic panelists and one Republican). All
three agreed with me.
If you take the emotion and proprietary interests out of it, our
energy solutions are much clearer and in less dispute than
conventional wisdom would have you believe. This is the first in a
3-part laptop report on energy discussing where our opportunities
do and do not exist.
The first thing to understand is that we must separate the
solutions for fixed source energy generation (electricity and
heating) from the solutions for mobile source energy generation
(trains, planes, and automobiles). The solutions for fixed energy
are much easier… Read More