The Blue State

Underwater windmills might provide energy alternative

We can complain all we want to about soaring prices at the pump.  But until we find some other alternative besides drilling our way out of this real energy crisis, like what many Congressional Republicans want to do in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, our military will continuously be needed to defend our strategic oil interests.

What we need is a revolution of new ideas about energy.  Some companies, such as Verdant Power, are rising to the occasion.  Verdant is investing money on an experiment that will be conducted in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, NY.  The energy experiment will involve underwater windmills.

David Ho of Cox Communications' Washington Bureau wrote about the experiment, and how Verdant believes underwater windmills will be even more effective than dams:

As consumers worry over an uncertain energyfuture, a Virginia company is eyeing an unusual untapped power source:the rivers of the Big Apple.

Within weeks, Verdant Power plans to submerge experimental turbinesin the East River off the coast of Roosevelt Island, a slice of landsqueezed between Manhattan and Queens.

Resembling and working much like stout underwater windmills, the six15-foot-tall turbines will draw energy from tidal currents to power anearby supermarket and parking garage.

The company calls the project the first to use multiple underwaterturbines to create usable power. Backers say the technology couldultimately provide a reliable, environmentally friendly and largelyinvisible solution to many global energy needs.

"It's very, very green energy," said Dean Corren, the company'sdirector of technology development. "There's a lot of energy in thatflowing water. Our goal is to capture a small amount of that."

Traditional hydropower from dams, where water is trapped at a highlevel and released, provides about 7 percent of the nation'selectricity, but worries over damaging river environments and harmingmigrating fish have hindered new development.

The "hydro-kinetic" or "in-stream" technology works by submergingturbines into the natural path of moving water, such as a river, canalor deep ocean current.

"Fish and marine mammals can easily swim around," said GeorgeHagerman, a Virginia Tech researcher who co-authored a study onin-stream energy issued this month. "It doesn't have anywhere near theimpact of a dam."

So not only would these underground windmills provide energy, but they don't harm the wildlife.  This is just one example of how valuable various kinds of water-based technology are to unlocking the solution to our growing energy need. 

Certainly, for many reasons, oil companies have an invested interest in preventing this sort of technology from taking hold.  That is why pro-oil advocates like Michael Crichton are being propped up by industry strategists, as was the case after he wrote the anti-environmental book "State of Fear" , to calm recent reactions to both the energy crisis and global warming.  That is why progressives need to give kudos to green companies, such as Verdant, who are trying to give America a clean way out of this current energy predicament.

Learning a lesson from Brazil's flex car makoever

The average price of gasoline per gallon nationwide is continuously on the rise, at some places even above $3.25.  Contrary to the oil shock in the 1970s, today's issue centers around demand.  With China and India using more oil ever than ever, U.S. consumers are feeling the squeeze.

But it does not have to be this way.  Over in Brazil, the sugar industry is creating a cleaner, cheaper form of energy used to make ethanol-powered "flex cars".  Jim Avila of ABC News filed a report on how Brazil got it right:

When Brazilians say fill it up, they're not getting the oily mixAmericans see at the pump, which is 90 percent gasoline and 10 percentethanol.

They get pure ethanol, as Brazil now produces 5 billion gallons of thesugar-cane distilled fuel annually. That's enough to powerthree-quarters of the nearly 2 million cars South America's largestcountry makes every year.

The production advantages are obvious — with sugar cane the energysource is above ground and can be produced for $30 dollars a barrel.Today a barrel of oil is priced at more than double that.

At the Brazilian pump, ethanol is nearly half the cost of gasoline. Italso burns cleaner and is the leading reason this country is nowentirely energy independent, no longer buying any oil on the foreignmarket.

...Gas dealers were forced to offer ethanol at their pumps, and carbuyers who purchased flex cars that are built with the technology torun on ethanol, gasoline or a mix of both received tax incentives.Today ethanol outsells gasoline, and three out of every four new carssold is a flex car.

Once drivers start driving these vehicles, the economics take over.

It would cost $529 in gas to make a cross-country trip from Californiato New York in a Chevy pickup. To make the same trip in the samevehicle powered by ethanol would cost $218.

And some Brazilians even say their cars have more power when ethanol is pumped into the tank.

Even more ironically, the same car companies such as Ford that have failed in the U.S. to make more fuel efficient cars are supplying Brazil with just that.  The technology is there.  But the energy lobbyists at Exxon on Capitol Hill are preventing that from happening.  So politically speaking, it would be smart for a lawmaker to stand up and say, "Hey everyone, look at Brazil."

Monday Editorial: A recommended alternative to the National Intelligence Director position

As consistent followers of the daily political news cycle, we all know that most politicians are a distant stranger to the phrase, "I was wrong."  There is little convenience in taking responsibility when you can just divert blame onto other people and continue Washington's traditionally divisive game of "gotcha!"  In guessing that you are probably tired of this continuing trend, let me spare you a few minutes from your daily supply of power politics and entertain you with a matter that many political minds, including myself, were wrong about -- and that is the position of the National Intelligence Director.

Two years ago, during my political science studies at the University of Washington, I argued with just about everyone I could, both progressives and conservatives, about the importance of creating a cabinet level position that oversees all intelligence with the goal of increasing dialogue between federal agencies in effort to prevent the next terrorist attack.  For obvious reasons, pretty much no one would object to the idea of increasing chatter between agencies for the sake of national security.  But what myself and other advocates of such a new position did not realize were the implications of such a decision.  Putting it simply, we rushed to judgment.  The President rushed to judgment.  Congress rushed to judgment.  Even more personally, I rushed to judgment in breaking ranks with other progressive bloggers and writing strongly in support of the President's measure.

I failed to realize the significance of allowing one person, the National Intelligence Director, to have complete power over all the intelligence agencies.  This country's largest problem today, as we learned during hurricane Katrina, is not bureaucracy, it is micromanaging ideologues that serve their own interests rather than the long-term betterment of the American people.  When you lessen the number of groups bargaining the President, you get a government built around people's passions, not checks and balances.  Five minds should always better than one, not the other way around.  This cabinet position resulted in the latter.

In this situation, the National Intelligence Director can order every intelligence agency around.  But what happens if that National Intelligence Director is being corrupted by outside interests?  Who will be there to keep him in check?  The President?  Other agencies should.  But now with all this centralized power, no one can. 

The recent news about the departure of CIA Director Porter Goss shows just how the CIA agency is being dismantled from the very top by the National Intelligence Director, the very cabinet level position that was supposed to make things better for national security.  But instead of making things better, that National Intelligence Director is purging the CIA and every other intelligence agency of any possible dissent -- or in other words, purging the government of anyone that will stand in the way of any recommendation the National Intelligence Director has for the President.  In a nutshell, the National Intelligence Director position is becoming almost as powerful as the President himself.  This all has happened over the course of a two-year period.

What tit all comes down to is the realization that the President, Congress and bloggers like myself were completely wrong about the National Intelligence Director position.  To correct the problem, I would favor an alternative. 

For national security reasons, we all agree about the importance of different intelligence agencies being able to coordinate with one another.  The CIA, FBI and NSA ought to share intelligence regularly.  The best way to ensure that is not by centralizing power around one authoritative Intelligence Director, but instead to empower the existing agencies.  So I suggest the following:

1. Create a wing inside each of the intelligence agencies with the specific task of communicating directly with one another.
2. Create an investigative office inside the Legislative Branch, somewhat comparable to The Congressional Budget Office, that keeps tabs on both the use of funding and the coordination between agencies, and reports monthly to both the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence.

The whole point of creating an investigative wing within the Legislative Branch that monitors these agencies is that it would act as a much-needed check on the Executive Branch during a time of war.  Empowering existing intelligence agencies by forcing them to act efficiently and aggressively, as opposed to redirecting their power towards one individual that can report to the President whatever he so chooses, will get our intelligence agencies on the same page during this important post-9/11 era.

I know that only the President has the power to dissolve the cabinet position of the National Intelligence Director -- and I know it will not happen under the Bush Administration.  But on a personal note, this is just an alternative.  It is an alternative to a rush to judgment that happened during 2004, a politicized election year.  When it comes to increasing or decreasing the power of certain branches or agencies within the federal government, we need to proceed with caution next time.