Another Committee – Alleluia

Hide the kids.  The DOE has spawned an energy and renewable advisory committee.   You know, a diversified products / technology manufacturer like 3M or DuPont should examine the Byzantine labyrinth of government agencies as a model to develop the next bullet, explosion, radiation, fire, water, and bio proof wonder material.  I have to believe that if they could weave sewing thread or maybe two pound monofilament fishing line into such a fabric it would stop a 40 caliber projectile at point blank and not even cause a contusion.

Why does the country need this?  Why does the country need a debt commission for that matter?  We have a full time congress for goodness sake.  Isn’t that what they are supposed to be doing?  I suppose this is this too much to ask of 535 FULL TIME bureaucrats?

As anyone who knows anything would guess, the committee is dominated by academics and government wonks, although at least there is one utility guy on there.  Therefore, I am sure we will have a cornucopia of far out recommendations from a distant galaxy.  Most likely it will be heavy on far out technology and more spectacular policies like 15% or is it 20% ethanol blends for gasoline.  Maybe they can mandate its use, block imports, subsidize it with our money, steal our watch and tell us what time it is too.

Do these people or anyone at the DOE realize there is an industry of private sector product and service providers that work on our home planet of Earth with end users (also home-based on Earth)?  We are constrained to pesky things such as the laws of nature and economics and consumer whims.  I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it a million more times, the savings potential from cost effective measures from current technologies and services is at least 30%.  See the McKinsey report from last year as backup for my hypothesis by people who know what they are talking about.

On the other hand, I read that this group is only going to meet twice a year and judging by the agenda of the first meeting it appears they won’t be inflicting too much damage on the citizenry.  If this is all they are going to do twice a year maybe this is simply a resume stuffer organization.  “Served on the Secretary of Energy’s Energy and Renewable Advisory Committee” would sound impressive for an introduction for a keynote address at Yale University’s spring graduation, especially for graduates with degrees in renewable energy management.

Tidbits

FIFA (Federation International de Football Association) chose Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup tournament.   Qatar, a tiny tumor of a country jutting into the Arabian Gulf is about the size of Connecticut, or about twice the size of Long Island (although saying it’s twice as big as anything is misleading).  Temperatures during the World Cup there will approach 426F, just below the point of spontaneous combustion of flammable items like paper but fortunately for most World Cup fans, above the melting point of the vuvuzela.  I rather like the vuvuzela, at least as comes across on the TV.  It’s hilarious like a cloud of June bugs or swarm of mosquitoes amplified a couple hundred fold.

In addition to building nine new stadiums and renovating a couple others, they will be supplying OUTDOOR air conditioning for these stadiums.  They will probably need to build a couple thousand MW power plants as well.

South Africa boasted that theirs was the greenest World Cup ever.  If Qatar says anything about green, they will have to use Venus as the baseline alternative for measuring the savings realized.  If I were them, I would just go with it and say this is the most ridiculous idea of all time.  We will proudly burn as much energy as half the countries with teams at the tournament.

I can almost guarantee they will build a photovoltaic plant the size of the country in the Saudi Arabian desert and that’s what we will be hearing about.

Too see how much money people in this region have, do a Google Earth or Maps of Dubai.  Apparently there isn’t enough moonscape barren coast on which to build opulent homes, so they make their own islands or “palms” where the strips of land take on the pattern of the veins in a palm leaf I guess.  And they have all the huge sky scrapers including the world’s tallest building.  What for?  By the looks of it, the only people who work there must be those that take care of the people who live there.  And why the tall buildings?  My impression has always been skyscrapers are needed for land-locked cities like New York and Hong Kong.  UAE makes Phoenix look like the Amazon basin.  There is nothing there.  Just pave it over and sprawl out so there is something to do with your time – like drive your 12 cylinder Italian sports car to the spa, bank, casino and back home.  The place is so un-natural it creeps me out.