Energy: are we being duped?

• Author: Held, Ted
• Position: READER'SFORUM - Letter to the editor

* Regarding your "Defense Watch" column in July, "U.S. Not Ready to Lead Green Energy Revolution," you seem to misjudge why it is that private initiatives are seeming to shy away from energy innovation. This is not true.

I know for a fact that just about every company that can has spent and continues to spend on various internal initiatives to possibly take advantage of energy savings or new technologies that might replace fossil fuels. The costs here must certainly dwarf the piddling $150 million or $400 million you mention that has been wagered by ARPA-E.

One of the reasons why private capital is reluctant to fund start-ups is that anything large enough to make a significant impact on U.S. or global energy use is that whatever might work would require absolutely stupendous amounts of capital and probably enormous lead times. This is not the stuff of small business. As ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar says, there are "enormous hurdles that promising clean-energy technologies must overcome to gain acceptance in the larger market."

And you quote him as saying that current carbon capture loses $50 per ton of [CO.sup.2]. captured. Would you invest in such an enterprise facing the prospects of guaranteed losses for the foreseeable future? Neither would I.

It is not the case that, as Majumdar says, "We have not paid attention to energy ... It hasn't been on our radar screen since the 70s." This is simply untrue. I have watched this field since the 70s and have watched billions of dollars being sunk into schemes ranging from coal gasification to geothermal energy without any prospect of a commercial technology that can compete with fossil fuels with oil costing $75 a barrel. Further, what in the world does Majumdar mean by your paraphrase, "It's hard to justify bankrolling energy technologies as long as the United States doesn't embrace a national strategy to end its addiction to oil." What does he want, a Five Year Plan? Rationing and high energy taxes?

Everybody is for ending our addiction to oil--as long as it doesn't involve personal sacrifice. My bet is that he doesn't have a plan that he could sell. Every few years some crisis or another comes up and policymakers go into a predictable frenzy to find some alternative. The failure after all these years to come up with a solution must at least raise the prospect that perhaps there is no solution except at hugely higher costs.

Maybe you have boundless faith that there's some...