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I have my doubts about the feasibility of doing it all in ten years because of the materials and labor requirements and also the funding.

Although it is not pursued in the article, improving insulation levels could cut down the energy required for heating and cooling significantly and make the goals easier to reach.

With regard to small-scale alternative vis-a-vis centralized generation, there is little point in individual dwellings installing all the infrastructure required for processing PV/wind generation of electricity or for solar heating. Far better to do it on a neighborhood or community scale.

www.hockertonhousingproject.org.uk
www.dlsc.ca

Unfortunately, unless the unstainable increase in population is addressed, whatever we try to do will simply be catch up until life-sustaining resources are exhausted. I would like to hope that the worldwide relief that has greeted the election of Barack Obama would give him the opportunity to start a discussion to address this subject with all due urgency.

However, as cool as PVs are, their manufacture is anything but 'clean' or 'green'. While silicon is abundant, materials such as Gallium Arsinide are far more efficient, yet the manufacture of these is very energy intensive, and the byproducts are highly toxic. Solar Concentrators, such as multiple independently focus-able parabolic mirrors concentrating their intense energy on a single spot and either heating a liquid to generate steam and turn a turbine for the generation of electricity or fucused on hitting a single 'specialized' PV might be 'greener' overall, but this brings us back to a large centralized infrastructure.

Realistically, I think both methodologies are required to some degree. As in the DP argument, a DM (distributed methodology) makes sense.

The question might be is Energy Independence a National or a Personal idea?

--
tEtra

Al Gore, the real president.

Lets keep everyone happy, what ever we spend on defence, we spend on new energy investments.

High tech jobs that pay well for Americans.

And when we don't need oil any more, we can cut back on defense spending.
Hopefully 10 years.

I know thats crazy, because if you give our military that much fire power, some one will get us in a war.

Well, we are in a war, and they have to be appeased, so we can advance the new energy agenda.

WIN-WIN

BornFreeMen

I work in the trenches of the residential/commercial solar industry in Southern CA designing and selling PV and thermal solar systems. There are a LOT of interested parties of all kinds and sizes constantly pulling our market this way and that. We have to keep up on developments to stay competitive and in my opinion there is both fact and fable in the comments below. The one idea that is of the most importance however is "DG". The philosophy of Distributed Generation. We must remove the present, artificial limitations on the ability of individual homeowners, business owners and property owners of all kinds to build, connect to the grid and get fully credited for, their own power generation-- be it from solar, wind or whatever (um, ok, not nuclear). The real fight is between the present centralized production we now have and DG. It is the difference between the centralized controlled network media and the decentralized free Internet. When we free up the production of power into the grid (present or future enhanced) and allow all comers to contribute, the true potential of the various technologies will be unleashed and cleaner, cheaper, more independent energy will come crashing forward.

Nukes below 30 degrees North, bad idea as well:

* Those proposed are light water reactors.
* Water reactors must run water by the nuclear core in metal tubes to transfer heat away from the core.
* Water rusts pipes.
* What goes in comes out.

One of Sarah Palin's "strengths" was her willingness to reign in Big Energy. Maybe, "God" willing, she could be the next Climate Czar.

Sorry, I realize sarcasm isn't all that useful in a serious discussion, but after the "Brownie" comment, I couldn't resist.

My top recommendation is to follow California's lead and eliminate "cost-plus" electricity pricing for all utilities. If a monopoly utility earns 114% of every dollar it spends and then gets 14% profit, it will find any possible way to spend more money and to sell more electricity. It it can put up solid gold utility poles, all the better because it's their profit and it's never their cost.

Since California eliminated cost-plus pricing, California electricity use has sunk by 1/3 compared to national electricity use.

As for turning the utility grid into one national monopoly instead of having a patchwork of three or so private monopolies (huge multinationals like London's "National Grid" now own most American utilities), sure, why not? The question is, who is going to run this grid for the people? What if a stupid Republican like Brownie becomes the energy czar someday? We have to think these things out so that we can get the national monopoly away from partisan politics.

The proposed national energy grid is overplanned and overpriced. It presupposes first that local power generation/use won't happen, that electricity will always be needed for hot water instead of solar on the homeowner's roof.

Okay I'd love to hear something from Gore about the need to crack down on the excesses and destructive ways of animal agrobusiness. I've been waiting for years in fact. Nothing. How can you solve problems when the problems themselves continue to expand and exist? Ever heard of preventive medicine? We could use that for the planet. Until the biggest polluters of the planet are reined in, everything else is just a fixer-upper, a temporary band-aid. Eliminate the source of the biggest contributers to global warming I say and then we can do some serious good work to expand in other realms. How is that complicated? Just ignoring the worst problem won't make it go away, won't make it stop polluting our waters, destroying our land, emitting more methane into the atmosphere, destroying native wildlife habitats, etc..

Too good to be true.

The grid needs work, but we need to identify clean renewable sources near energy consumers to minimize transmission losses and build stability in the system.

Too bad Al Whore, I mean Gore, didn't have the balls to say one progressive thing in the eight years he had a real mouthpiece as vice president. Now better than never, I guess...
p.s. You'll be wondering in a year or two where in hell Joe Biden is, too. Squelched by the corporate controllers of the white house--Wall St.

It's all about thinking long term and being willing to invest, while giving up something in the present. That is what makes real growth possible. It also creates jobs, but the problem with our leaders is that they are more concerned about jobs per se than what the people in those jobs should be doing. Gore has a good idea. Eisenhower had a good idea with the interstate highway system. The politicians who guaranteed the financing of the railroads, whatever the excesses excesses, had vision and a good idea. The last three decades have been all about individualism and the market place. We always need both, but we also need collective energy and national leadership and to claim otherwise is a scam for which we have paid a very high price.

snydly
Just a note. Climate change might involve some ice storms and geo-tectonic activity. Perhaps construct grid above 30N accordingly, and stay off the coasts a bit...
What Would Noah Do?

A new national grid sounds good. If renewables don't pan out, we can run big connectors into Ontario and New Brunswick to soak up some of that Canadian nuclear power coming on line over the next 20 years. Candu!

Wind energy can be produced across the high plains from Texas to the Dakotas. I see new props moving up I-35 all the time. We don't have the power grid to move that energy away from the plains to our cities. Nobody ever fixed the grid in the northeastern US after the last big blackout either. The grid is a good place to start.

We can generate electricity almost anywhere, right where it is needed, or not too far away with all the wonderful innovations presently being designed, tested and utilized. Next generation solar technology is far superior in every way to the current widely available old school solar panels (see nanosolar.com). Wind generation technology is also making huge improvements.

I would like to see power lines put underground (so I don't have to see them), and a public transportation revolution: High-speed solar-electric, super-quiet, smooth-riding mag-lev rail transport (with solar panels covering the top and sides of the trains), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and a massive nation-wide system of bike trails; and more recumbent bicycles (say what?). And, for good measure, a comprehensive nation-wide recycling program.

Al, help us out here!

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete"

-R. Buckminster Fuller

Go for it Al. Please find way to initiate your ideas through the gov't of Obama. This is the time we've all been waiting for and we're blessing, appreciating and counting on you.

It's an exciting beginning to the reshaping of America's energy infrastructure and it will bring benefits we can't even conceive of right now just as a small investment back in the 60's for this decentralized communication network led to the Internet.

The electrical grid is an artifact from the turn of the 20th century with some value added improvements put in. Energy production and consumption is about to catch up with the computer age. It’s going to be a struggle. Anything worth trying usually is but the end result will be something we and the rest of the world can marvel at.

This is a great jobs strategy as well. Win-Win.

We will learn a lot about Obama with how he handles this opportunity.

Gore for Energy Czar.
Kucinich for Dept. of Peace

Decentralization of power, I wish I thought of that. The next 10 years are going to be fun, and I really mean that.

Don't for one moment believe that Obama will abandon coal for power generation, albeit trying for "clean coal"

THANK YOU!!!

Big energy corruption and control is the major source of most of America's problems. We need to CHANGE that now. Don't just "hope" for it... get active.

CD... the link to Dr. Pachauri's blog that you provided is incorrect... it has a common dreams prefix.

Gore is right on target. We need a new ecologically sound publicly owned national power grid. We also need a national rail system for transporting goods and people in a more efficient and less polluting way. Building these things are vital to our adaptation and ability to survive climate change and will also create the jobs to rebuild our economy.
The Jaded Prole

I am merely reposting what someone else posted on this site several months ago, I'm afraid I don't remember who it was to give them due credit. But I think it is excellent; so much so that all of my right-wing co-workers, the ones that have been put into management because they fail as design engineers, poopoo it, and basically that is all I need to know that I am correct in believing it could work.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=F304542B-E7F2-70F7-E6CAEF1C8B401080

Right now about the worst thing the government can do is follow McCain's economic plan and cut spending. The problem with spending under Bush is that there has been no return on it, or a negative return on it. The war in Iraq was a huge money pit, and all we got back on it was $4 per gallon gas. But an investment in infra-structure like this would be a win-win return; it would put people to work, thus providing a ground-up economic multiplier effect which is strongly positive (something the lassaize-faire capitalists hate, so I think it's win-win-win), and it would pay back in cheap renewable energy for years to come, or at least until the republicans scratch their way back and privatize it so that some future Ken Lay can pocket billions off of our investment.

This is a step in the right direction. If you read Buckminster Fuller's "Critical Path" he advocates a global power grid with solar input at both the centralized and decentralized levels. Since half of the planet is always in sunlight, that would mean solar electricity would always be collected and distributed. It would eliminate the "need" for more power plants and would even result in closing some existing plants because they would not be needed.