Donald Trump’s energy strategy is simply drill baby, drill. How quaint. And totally wrong for the world we now live in. Climate change is a fact of life as evidenced by 1 in 1000 year weather every time you turn around. We haven’t been energy independent since about 1920 regardless of what Republicans say, we can’t even effectively refine our own oil production. Yet the answers to our energy crisis are right in front of us.
Natural gas and nuclear power need to be our two transition fuels. These should baseload our electrical grid with 24/7 power, allowing to continue expansion of renewable sources. Both have issues that need resolution, but they are the two lowest net carbon power generation fuels we have. We should freeze shipments of LNG despite the insane investments that have been made to export this, because the methane emissions from production, liquefaction and transport are deadly sources of greenhouse gas. Plus, it should be obvious that we are setting ourselves up for a shortage where one day we wake up and realize we’ve shipped all our gas overseas, followed by a sudden price spike in residential heating costs. My guess is that’s less than ten years out. Oil and gas companies don’t care, they are just pursuing capitalism, which is all about making the most money for the fewest people in the shortest time. Nuclear power has a massive waste disposal problem which has to be addressed. Disposal on federal land, away from aquifers, using the best technology we have, must be a top priority. Getting the waste out of all of the operating power plants will reduce the possible dispersion or proliferation of waste and allow other options to advance as quickly as possible.
Solar energy and to a lesser extent wind are the cheapest forms of electrical generation today and can help diversify the electrical grid. Residential solar panels decentralize the grid and don’t necessarily require new distribution networks. Both require improved battery or other energy storage methods that should also be a top priority for government driven R&D. One example of alternate energy storage that could be utilized at central solar power farms is electrolysis of water and subsequent storage then burning of hydrogen. Great onsite use of excess power generation and produces a clean fuel with no carbon impacts. New Cloud or AI data storage projects should be required to provide their own standalone power supply including storage rather than aggravate our already overstressed grid system for unknown or unquantifiable “future” benefits. You want to build AI centers, provide zero carbon power for them as well. Solar power is a great example of the trade-offs with tariff policies. Today we have high tariffs on solar panels from China, because American producers can’t compete on cost. While government should be driving R&D work on cheaper panel manufacture at the pilot scale, one also needs to ask what is the overall objective? If the objective is to convert as many households, farms, etc to solar power to supplement and decentralize the grid, then we should use as many low cost Chinese panels as possible. The key is to maintain the production of the electronics (microinverters) in the US, both to avoid the potential for grid tampering from overseas, but also because they are the highest value added component. In the meantime, rapid adoption of solar panels drives local job creation for installation and maintenance, spread out geographically by use, not centralized in a few highly automated panel factories which won’t provide jobs throughout the country. Why isn’t that approach a good thing from the jobs standpoint? Do we really want to dominate solar panel manufacture or increase installation of it as quickly and cheaply as possible?
Passenger vehicles should progress to EV technology as quickly as possible, which if one really does the math is at least 20 years. There are roughly 240 million passenger vehicles in America and at an optimistic rate of 12 million built per year it’s 20 years. Obviously it’s longer than that as we are starting from a low base and aren’t going to be able to even produce 12 million per year anytime soon if Trump cancels the entire EV program. The scale of the battery business required to make this possible will require battery recycle to be 100% once we get to max production. That will significantly reduce the new materials required, slowly eliminating the environmental quagmires created by massive mining projects. In the meantime, conservation remains a key way to reduce greenhouse gases, so reimposition of and an aggressive ramp for passenger vehicle MPG standards should be part of the strategy for the next ten years at least. One very clear difference vs. past use of the standards. There should be minimum requirements in addition to overall fleet targets. Very simply, larger vehicles, SUVs and especially pickup trucks have historically been horrendous in terms of gas mileage. That has to change.
Commercial trucking should be retooled to run on biodiesel. I really don’t think an electric semi fleet is a practical or even a desirable outcome, as it only stresses the critical materials issues even more than focusing on the passenger fleet. We should be identifying what the most effective crop(s) there are to grow for biodiesel production and migrate the American farm effort over to this instead of corn to ethanol, which is not energy efficient. Large scale agribusiness operations would be ideal for this, allowing the smaller family farms to redirect toward producing more local produce and fruit. Local production is fresher, reduces transportation needs and can substitute for imported crops. The ethanol and gasoline refineries need to be revamped to process both our own shale oil production and biodiesel, which ultimately allows us to have a carbon neutral fuel for transportation to leverage with the carbon free input of passenger EVs. Once biodiesel is up and running at scale we can eventually look to produce jet fuel from it as well, and possibly use it for container ship transports, etc. Transportation needs to be targeted to be EV or biodiesel driven to maximize use of our tremendous agricultural capacity. Growing crops for biodiesel can likely reduce fertilizer, pesticide and fungicide use as well compared to large scale mono crop cultures like corn. This will make a positive impact on water supplies, chemical exposure to carcinogens, etc.
Coal burning plants should be shut down asap and converted to natural gas. Safely handling/disposing of coal ash in something other than leaking ponds is a major environmental issue for resolution that still affects groundwater everywhere near one of the ponds with selenium and other toxic metals.
R&D work on nuclear power needs to continue, both for smaller, safer design fission plants but also to keep on the path to a true fusion reactor. Sure, maybe it’s a pipe dream, but the potential is so far off the charts in terms of benefits it has to be pursued.
Hydrogen fuel gets lots of commentary but frankly the idea of using it as a passenger fuel seems way too dangerous to me. It requires very high pressure for storage, it burns colorless and smokeless making leaks very difficult to find until they burn through something and everyday citizens connecting a “hydrogen hose” up to their vehicle is beyond frightening. This is a country where people still smoke and use cell phones next to gas pumps, hydrogen is flammable/explosive almost throughout its entire concentration range. Besides, the vast majority of hydrogen is being produced by reforming natural gas, hardly a “green” fuel. No wonder the oil and gas companies constantly tout this.
Conservation has always been the cheapest source of energy and needs to be a critical part of any national energy strategy. Improving efficiency of energy consumers and reducing losses from HVAC are huge levers to help mitigate energy demand and transition periods.