Al Gore Calls on U.S. to Produce All Energy from Renewables within 10 Years

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Former US vice-president Al Gore is calling on the nation to marshal its resources and divorce itself from the combustible fuels economy. Gore says the US can produce all its energy requirements from renewable resources within 10 years, if concerted action is taken. The bold initiative is designed to drive debate on the topic and move discussions about how to deal with high fuel prices toward the new opportunity they provide for funding renewable infrastructure development.

According to the Associated Press:

Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create “a new political environment” that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

When Pres. Bush announced he would lift the executive ban on offshore oil drilling and urged Congress to do the same, critics retorted that the science shows the potential energy output is too far off and too small to affect prices, but that new drilling would “enable” the nation’s “addiction” to carbon-based fuels. Pres. Bush himself used the word addiction in a State of the Union address, to describe what could be a crippling reliance on petroleum-based fuels.

Gore’s proposed initiative has been compared to Pres. John F. Kennedy’s promise that the United States could land a man on the moon within the decade of the 1960s. Ecological economist Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute, has long called for the US to treat the climate crisis as a major threat and to begin to overhaul its energy economy “at wartime speed”, referring specifically to how Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the industrial economy of the US to war production to fight and win World War II.

Gore has not shied away from the issue of cost, but points out that the cost is no longer higher than simply filling in gaps in current demand with new output from high-contamination fuel-sources like coal:

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

Gore says his goal is to drive public opinion toward an alternative fuels revolution, noting how this process seems to have begun already as a response to soaring gasoline prices. The fuel-source issue has come to dominate every aspect of current economic analysis, as transport costs are now being blamed for a rise in inflation across the US and for 9-figure losses for at least two major airlines.

No longer a politician, but keenly involved in the political sphere, Gore is now devoted to the complex project of informing and changing attitudes, hoping to “enlarge the political space” where government and the private sector can “deal with the climate challenge.” His words may help spur bolder action by politicians, which would help business make the investment commitments necessary to revolutionize their own infrastructure and/or industrial output.

Last year, consumption of renewable energy actually declined slightly in the US, the fall attributed largely to lower levels of precipitation affecting hydrological energy output. But solar and wind energy are now rapidly expanding their production capacity, and Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens’ personal wind-energy initiative —aimed at building a continent-wide wind-energy corridor to produce over 20% of power-generation needs— is the latest major sign of progress.

New solar technologies that make solar-power generation perhaps 10 times more efficient mean prices for producing renewable energy are coming down dramatically, just as prices for conventional fuel sources are skyrocketing. While both candidates’ energy plans include coal as a viable resource for expanding production, the major progress being made in renewable fuel sources may make such expansion unnecessary before new plants come online.

Critics have often said the renewable resources market is too costly to be implemented in a way that benefits most consumers economically, but this is no longer the case, and what Mr. Gore is pushing for is precisely the kind of national innovation initiative that brings the most efficient clean energy technologies within the economic range of all consumers. Sustaining these clean technologies would be far less costly than cleaning up after high-contamination combustibles, so the long-term gains, added to the economic boom from infrastructure development, will be part of a needed green technology boom. 

Joseph Eugene Robertson @ July 17, 2008