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Why We Have No Energy Plan in the United States

By Craig Shields
April 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

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John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, and author of Why We Hate the Oil Companies, spoke with Renewable Energy World’s Stephen Lacey in this week’s podcast. I hope everyone will check this out.

Hofmeister’s viewpoints can be summed up on two bullets:

1) The US government in its current form, i.e., the contention between Democrats and Republicans, has proven that it will never take substantive action to deal with the energy crisis. The system is based on two-year election cycles, and is totally consumed by partisan bickering and electioneering, wherein each candidate is forced into one extreme camp or the other, neither of which makes any real sense in terms of an energy plan.

2) The only way around this is to create an independent organization, similar to the Federal Reserve Bank, to create and manage an energy strategy.

Let me thank Mr. Hofmeister for fighting a battle that I know from personal experience to be a lonely one. Who’s a natural friend of a solution like this? The politicians who will be relinquishing control? The lobbyists who will be banned from plying their trade? The Big Energy corporations who will be forced into the direction of sustainability? You strike me as a man who’s not looking for applause, John, and that’s a very good thing – especially in this case.

And it’s for that reason that I offer you my most sincere thanks and support for the future of your idea. I was a Libertarian for a few decades as a young man (and thus would have abhorred this solution) – until I realized that the private sector has no real interest in dealing with this problem -- one that is now threatening the health and safety of everyone on the planet. At a minimum, it’s only a matter of time until we see gas lines and brownouts – not to mention the other horrors associated with the absence of a sensible energy policy.

Again, best wishes. Keep up the good work.

Craig Shields is editor of 2GreenEnergy.com, and author of Renewable Energy -- Facts and Fantasies (published by Clean Energy Press, 2010)

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The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

1 Reader Comments

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Joel_Fairstein

June 1, 2011

We already have a relatively independent energy organization, the Department of Energy, but its culture is wrong for solving our energy problems. It concentrates funding on its national labs which are plodding, self-serving fiefdoms geared for big, expensive science. Energy independence is about lean and fast, and you'll find that state of mind in the private sector, which receives a mere trickle of encouragement from our government. Witness the recent patent fire sale at DOE and take a look at those patents if you're curious about what our labs have been up to. There's not a single disruptive technology offered among the incremental bunch. Now, compare that to the ARPA-E funded private-sector technologies, all of which are disruptive.

So how do we refocus on getting to Biden's promise? Reverse the direction of intellectual property transfer so that private sector IP is supported by DOE, not the other way around. Increase ARPA-E funding by a factor of 1000. Open the labs up to innovators across the land...give them access to the advanced tools and testing at the labs...and don't make them jump through hoops or pay outrageous fees for that access.

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