Seven “grand challenges” for the next five years: plug-in electric cars and trucks, carbon capture, solar power, nuclear waste, advanced biofuels, green buildings, and fusionalternative energy, plug-in electric cars, carbon capture, solar power, nuclear waste, viofuels, green, fusion, Oak Ridge

Lamar Alexander

English

Research Papers in Economics

6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
Page 1 of 9 http://www.mtsu.edu/%7Eberc/tnbiz/economy/lamar.html
 
Business & Economic Research Center | Jones College of Business | Middle Tennessee State University
A New Manhattan Project for Clean
Energy Independence
Seven “grand challenges” for the next five years:
plug-in electric cars and trucks, carbon capture,
solar power, nuclear waste, advanced biofuels,
green buildings, and fusion
(The following is an address given May 9 to about 200
senior scientists and managers of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory plus members of the press.)
by Lamar Alexander
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Senator
Kenneth McKellar, the Tennessean who chaired the
Appropriations Committee, to hide $2 billion in the
appropriations bill for a secret project to win World War II.
Senator McKellar replied, “Mr. President, I have just one
question: where in Tennessee do you want me to hide it?”
That place in Tennessee turned out to be Oak Ridge, one
of three secret cities that became the principal sites for the
Manhattan Project.
The purpose of the Manhattan Project was to find a way to
split the atom and build a bomb before Germany could.
Nearly 200,000 people worked secretly in 30 different sites
in three countries. President Roosevelt’s $2 billion
appropriation would be $24 billion today.
According to New York Times science reporter William
Laurence, “Into [the bomb’s] design went millions of man-
hours of what is without doubt the most concentrated
intellectual effort in history.”
The Goal: Victory over Blackmail
I propose that the United States launch a new Manhattan
project: a five-year project to put America firmly on the
path to clean energy independence.
Instead of ending a war, the goal will be clean energy
independence — so that we can deal with rising gasoline
prices, electricity prices, clean air, climate change, and
national security — for our country first, and, because
other countries have the same urgent needs and therefore
will adopt our ideas, for the rest of the world.
 
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The overwhelming challenge
today . . . is to discover
ways to satisfy the human
demand for and use of
energy in an
environmentally satisfactory
and affordable way so that
we are not overly dependent
on overseas sources.
 
 6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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By independence I do not mean that the United States
would never buy oil from Mexico or Canada or Saudi
Arabia. By independence I mean that the United States
could never be held hostage by any country for our energy
needs.
In 1942, many were afraid that the first country to build
an atomic bomb could blackmail the rest of the world.
Today, countries that supply oil and natural gas can
blackmail the rest of the world.
Not a New Idea
A new Manhattan Project is not a new idea, but it is a
good idea and fits the goal of clean energy independence.
The Apollo Program to send men to the moon in the 1960s
was a kind of Manhattan Project. Presidential candidates
John McCain and Barack Obama have called for a
Manhattan Project for new energy sources. So have former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Democratic National
Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and Senators Susan
Collins of Maine and Kit Bond of Missouri, among others.
And, throughout the two years of discussion that led to
the passage in 2007 of the America COMPETES Act, several
participants suggested that focusing on energy
independence would force the kind of investments in the
physical sciences and research that the United States
needs to maintain its competitiveness.
A New Overwhelming Challenge
The overwhelming challenge in 1942 was the prospect that
Germany would build the bomb and win the war before
America did.
The overwhelming challenge today, according to National
Academy of Sciences president Ralph Cicerone in his
address last week to the academy’s annual meeting, is to
discover ways to satisfy the human demand for and use of
energy in an environmentally satisfactory and affordable
way so that we are not overly dependent on overseas
sources.
Cicerone estimates that this year Americans will pay $500
billion overseas for oil — that’s $1,600 for each one of us
— some of it to nations that are hostile or even trying to
kill us by bankrolling terrorists. Sending $500 billion
abroad weakens our dollar. It is half our trade deficit. It is
forcing gasoline prices toward $4 a gallon and crushing
family budgets.
Then there are the environmental consequences. If
worldwide energy usage continues to grow as it has,
humans will inject as much CO2 into the air from fossil fuel
burning between 2000 and 2030 as they did between 1850
and 2000. There is plenty of coal to help achieve our
energy independence, but there is no commercial way6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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(yet) to capture and store the carbon from so much coal
burning — and we have not finished the job of controlling
sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury emissions.
The Manhattan Project Model Today
In addition to the need to meet an overwhelming
challenge, other characteristics of the original Manhattan
Project are suited to this new challenge:
It needs to proceed as fast as possible along
several tracks to reach the goal. According to Don
Gillespie, a young engineer at Los Alamos during
World War II, the “entire project was being
conducted using a shotgun approach, trying all
possible approaches simultaneously, without regard
to cost, to speed toward a conclusion.”
It needs presidential focus and bipartisan support in
Congress.
It needs the kind of centralized, gruff leadership
that General Leslie R. Groves of the Army Corps of
Engineers gave the first Manhattan Project.
It needs to “break the mold.” To borrow the words
of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer in a speech to Los
Alamos scientists in November of 1945, the
challenge of clean energy independence is “too
revolutionary to consider in the framework of old
ideas.”
Most important, in the words of George Cowan as
reported in the excellent book Remembering the
Manhattan Project edited by Cynthia C. Kelly, “â
The Manhattan Project model starts with a small,
diverse group of great minds.”
I said to the National Academies when we first asked for
their help on the America COMPETES Act in 2005, “In
Washington, D.C., most ideas fail for lack of the idea.”
The America COMPETES Model, Too
There are some lessons, too, from America COMPETES.
Remember how it happened. Just three years ago, in May
2005, a bipartisan group of us asked the National
Academies to tell Congress in order of priority the 10 most
important steps we could take to help America keep its
brainpower advantage.
By October, the Academies had assembled a “small diverse
group of great minds” chaired by Norm Augustine that
presented to Congress and to the President 20 specific
recommendations in a report called “Rising Above the
Gathering Storm.” We considered proposals by other
competitiveness commissions.
Then, in January 2006, President Bush outlined his
American Competitiveness Initiative to double over 10
years basic research budgets for the physical sciences and
engineering. The Republican and Democratic Senate6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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leaders and 68 other senators sponsored the legislation. It
became law by August 2007, with strong support from
Speaker Pelosi and the President.
Not Elected to Take a Vacation This Year
Combining the model of the Manhattan Project with the
process of the America COMPETES Act has already begun.
The National Academies have underway an “America’s
Energy Future” project that will be completed in 2010.
Ralph Cicerone has welcomed sitting down with a
bipartisan group to discuss what concrete proposals we
might offer earlier than that to the new president and the
new Congress. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and Ray
Orbach, the Energy Department’s Under Secretary for
Science, have said the same.
The presidential candidates seem ready. There is
bipartisan interest in Congress. Congressman Bart Gordon,
Democratic Chairman of the Science Committee in the
House of Representatives — one of the original four
signers of the 2005 request to the National Academies that
led to the America COMPETES Act — is here today to offer
his ideas. Congressman Zach Wamp, a senior member of
the House Appropriations Committee who played a key role
in the America COMPETES Act, is co-host for this meeting.
I have talked with Senators Jeff Bingaman and Pete
Domenici, the chair and senior Republican on the Energy
Committee who played such a critical role in America
COMPETES, and to Senator Lisa Murkowski, who likely will
succeed Senator Domenici as the senior Republican on the
Energy Committee.
Some say a presidential election year is no time for
bipartisan action. I can’t think of a better time. Voters
expect presidential candidates and candidates for Congress
to come up with solutions for $4 gasoline, clean air and
climate change, and the national security implications of
our dependence on foreign oil. The people didn’t elect us
to take a vacation this year just because there is a
presidential election.
So, How to Proceed?
A few grand challenges: Senator Bingaman’s first reaction
to the idea of a new Manhattan Project was that instead
we need several mini-Manhattan Projects. He suggested as
an example the “14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in
the 21st Century” laid out by former MIT President Chuck
Vest, the president of the National Institute of Engineering
— three of which involve energy. I agree with Senator
Bingaman and Chuck Vest.
Congress doesn’t do “comprehensive” well, as was
demonstrated by the collapse of the comprehensive
immigration bill. Step-by-step solutions or different tracks
toward one goal are easier to digest and have fewer6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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surprises. And, of course, the original Manhattan Project
itself proceeded along several tracks toward one goal.
Here are my criteria for choosing several grand challenges:
Grand consequences, too. The United States uses
25 percent of all the energy in the world.
Interesting solutions for small problems producing
small results should be a part of some other
project.
Real scientific breakthroughs. This is not about
drilling offshore for oil or natural gas in an
environmentally clean way or building a new
generation of nuclear power plants, both of which
we already know how to do — and, in my opinion,
should be doing.
Five years. Grand challenges should put the United
States within five years firmly on a path to clean
energy independence so that goal can be achieved
within a generation.
Family budget. Solutions need to fit the family
budget, and costs of different solutions need to be
compared.
Consensus. The Augustine panel that drafted the
“Gathering Storm” report wisely avoided some
germane topics, such as excessive litigation, upon
which they could not agree, figuring that Congress
might not be able to agree either.
Seven Grand Challenges
Here is where I invite your help. Rather than having
members of Congress proclaim these challenges, or asking
scientists alone to suggest them, I believe there needs to
be preliminary discussion — including about whether the
criteria are correct. Then Congress can pose to scientists
questions about the steps to take to achieve the grand
challenges.
To begin the discussion, I suggest asking what steps
Congress and the federal government should take during
the next five years toward these seven grand challenges
so that the United States would be firmly on the path
toward clean energy independence within a generation:
Make plug-in electric cars and trucks commonplace.
In the 1960s, H. Ross Perot noticed that when
banks in Texas locked their doors at 5 p.m., they
also turned off their new computers. Perot bought
the idle nighttime bank computer capacity and
made a deal with states to manage Medicare and
Medicaid data. Banks made money, states saved
money, and Perot made a billion dollars. Idle
nighttime bank computer capacity in the 1960s
reminds me of idle nighttime power plant capacity
in 2008. This is why: 
The Tennessee Valley Authority has 7,000 –
8,000 megawatts — the equivalent of seven6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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or eight nuclear power plants or 15 coal
plants — of unused electric capacity most
nights.
Beginning in 2010, Nissan, Toyota, General
Motors, and Ford will sell electric cars that
can be plugged into wall sockets. FedEx is
already using hybrid delivery trucks.
TVA could offer “smart meters” that would
allow its 8.7 million customers to plug in
their vehicles to “fill up” at night for only a
few dollars, in exchange for the customer
paying more for electricity between 4 p.m.
and 10 pm. when the grid is busy.
Sixty percent of Americans drive less than
30 miles each day. Those Americans could
drive a plug-in electric car or truck without
using a drop of gasoline. By some estimates,
there is so much idle electric capacity in
power plants at night that over time we
could replace three-fourths of our light
vehicles with plug-ins. That could reduce our
overseas oil bill from $500 billion to $250
billion — without building one new power
plant.
In other words, we have the plug. The cars
are coming. All we need is the cord.
Too good to be true? Haven’t U.S. presidents back
to Nixon promised revolutionary vehicles? Yes, but
times have changed. Batteries are better. Gas is $4.
We are angry about sending so many dollars
overseas, worried about climate change and clean
air. And, consumers have already bought one
million hybrid vehicles and are waiting in line to buy
more — even without the plug-in. Down the road is
the prospect of a hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid vehicle,
with two engines — neither of which uses a drop of
gasoline. Oak Ridge is evaluating these
opportunities.
Still, there are obstacles. Expensive batteries make
the additional cost per electric car $8,000 –
$11,000. Smart metering is not widespread. There
will be increased pollution from the operation of
coal plants at night. We know how to get rid of
those sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury pollutants (and
should do it), but haven’t yet found a way to get
rid of the carbon produced by widespread use in
coal burning power plants. Which brings us to the
second grand challenge:
Make carbon capture and storage a reality for coal-
burning power plants. This was one of the National
Institute of Engineering’s grand challenges. And
there may be solutions other than underground
storage, such as using algae to capture carbon. The
Natural Resources Defense Council argues that,
after conservation, coal with carbon capture is the
best option for clean energy independence because
it provides for the growing power needs of the U.S.6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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 p      g g p        
and will be easily adopted by other countries.
Make solar power cost competitive with power from
fossil fuels. This is a second of the National
Institute’s grand challenges. Solar power, despite 50
years of trying, produces one one-hundredth of one
percent of America’s electricity. The cost of putting
solar panels on homes averages $25,000 –
$30,000, and the electricity produced, for the most
part, can’t be stored. There are new photovoltaic
research results as well as promising solar thermal
power plants, which capture the sunlight using
mirrors, turn heat into steam, and store it
underground until the customer needs it.
Safely reprocess and store nuclear waste. Nuclear
plants produce 20 percent of America’s electricity,
but 70 percent of America’s clean electricity — that
is, electricity that does not pollute the air with
mercury, nitrogen, sulfur, or carbon. The most
important breakthrough needed during the next five
years to build more nuclear power plants is solving
the problem of what to do with nuclear waste. A
political stalemate has stopped nuclear waste from
going to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and $15 billion
collected from ratepayers for that purpose is sitting
in a bank. Recycling waste could reduce its mass by
90 percent, creating less stuff to store temporarily
while long-term storage is resolved.
Make advanced biofuels cost-competitive with
gasoline. The backlash toward ethanol made from
corn because of its effect on food prices is a
reminder to beware of the great law of unintended
consequences when issuing grand challenges.
Ethanol from cellulosic materials shows great
promise, but there are a limited number of cars
capable of using alternative fuels and of places for
drivers to buy it. Turning coal into liquid fuel is an
established technology but expensive and a
producer of much carbon.
Make new buildings green buildings. Japan believes
it may miss its 2012 Kyoto goals for greenhouse
gas reductions primarily because of energy wasted
by inefficient buildings. Many of the technologies
needed to do this are known. Figuring out how to
accelerate their use in a decentralized society is
most of this grand challenge.
Provide energy from fusion. The idea of recreating
on earth the way the sun creates energy and using
it for commercial power is the third grand challenge
suggested by the National Institute of Engineering.
The promise of sustaining a controlled fusion
reaction for commercial power generation is so
fantastic that the five-year goal should be to do
everything possible to reach the long-term goal.
The failure of Congress to approve the President’s
budget request for U.S. participation in the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
— the ITER Project — is embarrassing.6/27/08 3:34 PM Alexander
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Anything Is Possible
This country of ours is a remarkable place.
Even during an economic slowdown, we will produce this
year about 30 percent of all the wealth in the world for the
5 percent of us who live in the United States.
Despite “the gathering storm” of concern about American
competitiveness, no other country approaches our
brainpower advantage — our collection of research
universities, national laboratories, and private-sector
companies.
And this is still the only country where people say with a
straight face that anything is possible — and really believe
it.
These are precisely the ingredients that America needs
during the next five years to place ourselves firmly on a
path to clean energy independence within a generation —
and in doing so, to make our jobs more secure, to help
balance the family budget, to make our air cleaner and
our planet safer and healthier — and to lead the world to
do the same.
Lamar Alexander is the senior U.S. senator from Tennessee
and chair of the Senate Republican Conference. He served
as Tennessee’s governor from 1979 to 1987 and as U.S.
Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993.
Tennessee’s Business | BERC

A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy Independence

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A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy Independence

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