A Modest Energy Policy Proposal

I am just a veterinarian with very little economic or political experience outside of running a successful business for six years, however I have thought long and hard about an energy bill for the US to solve the current crisis. So, please bear with me a let me know who would support this.

First, we must solve the gasoline and diesel crisis. The best ways to do this would be by opening older capped wells in the United States, begin drilling in ANWAR, North Dakota, and increase drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Carolinas. I know everyone is convinced that this will not help with the price of oil on the open market, but please bare with me. This increased drilling would have to be coupled with a 10% increase in the size and capacity of our current refineries without having to build new ones. Next we would have to unfortunately put price controls on oil or not put our domestic oil on the open market. As much as I hate any government interference in private industry, this would be necessary in the short term. While adding this extra oil won’t completely solve the problem, we can fill in the gaps with liquefied coal. This can be done very safely and according to new research after the refining process the liquefied coal actually has less carbon emissions then oil based gasoline. The U.S. Air Force recently announced that they are going to begin using this technology for jet and diesel fuel and not rely on oil based products. If the government can do this, then why can’t this be used for civilian use? By using these two products we can lessen our use of ethanol and begin bringing back down the price of feed corn which will lower the price of meat and corn based products. I have to admit I used to be on the ethanol band wagon, but now I see the error of my ways. I still believe in using bio-diesel which is recycled materials. I believe by doing these three simple ideas, we could quickly bring down gas and diesel prices, which then in turn would bring down food and other retail prices and begin bringing us out of the recession. Now I realize that doesn’t break us of our oil dependency, but we should put a time limit on using these resources. I recommend putting a ten to twenty year limit on drilling and then only use the coal if needed afterwards. This gives us time to develop alternative sources such as hydrogen powered cars. I understand that the major car makers say they need ten years to perfect hydrogen fuel cells for cars. This would also give us time to put the hydrogen infrastructure in place. We need time to build refineries and put pipelines and pumps at fuel stations throughout the nation. Also in these ten years we can give a large government prize for developing safer hydrogen fuel cells or other alternative energy. I don’t mean government research grants which have proven to be inefficient and unproductive or tax credits which don’t give incentive to make new discoveries, but a cash prize to inventors who make big breakthroughs in new energy sources. Newt Gingrich really deserves credit for this idea in his new book he chronicles why cash prizes are better then grants.

As far a producing electricity, I would suggest shutting down all oil fueled electric plants and begin replacing them with nuclear, solar and cleaner coal facilities. The cleaner coal plants that pump the sulfur and carbon emissions into the ground where they are filtered by the earth before coming into the atmosphere is a great idea and would help with green house gas problems. Windmill farms on federal grazing areas in the Midwest could help as well. With new highly efficient solar panels for houses, people could produce a large amount of their own electricity and lower the need for bigger plants.

I believe these common sense ideas could go a long way to solving a lot of our national problems while not endangering the environment. Please give me feed back and lets start a debate. We the people have to lead this charge because congress and our government as a whole are completely inept and too dependent on special interest groups and their money.