Government Grants for Battery Research

E-mail to Congress:


EIN News says, "U.S. House Clears $3 Billion for Auto Technology Research. The House of Representatives approved a $3 billion proposal on Wednesday to further spur research into advanced batteries and other technologies to power electric cars and other vehicles. The bill, proposed by Michigan Representative Gary Peters, would also establish a technology program for commercial trucks, transit vehicles and heavy duty machinery. (reuters.com)".
As I have said repeatedly, I am normally opposed to government grants. However, there can be exceptions. I am somewhat ambivalent on this one.
OPEC has for many years had a world monopoly on petroleum production to control price and availability. More recently other major petroleum producers have appeared and do not operate within the OPEC framework. However, collectively they arbitrarily control petroleum price and availability. Therefore, they are part of the world wide petroleum monopoly. This monopoly has a stranglehold on all of our US consumed automotive fuel.
We have allowed that monopoly to control our automotive fuel supply, even though we have had an opportunity to minimize its importance through our own accelerated petroleum production. We have arbitrarily decided not to pursue that route, through unreasonable pressure by extreme environmentalists. One could say these extreme environmentalists have been working for OPEC and its associates.
Conversion of automotive energy requirements from petroleum to electricity, would be another way to minimize the effect of the worldwide petroleum monopoly, and would also improve our balance of payments. An effective means to do this may be conversion to electric vehicles. It appears that the technology is not yet competitive to petroleum usage in an internal combustion engine, but there is reasonable anticipation that could be made so.
Although we still have an opportunity to improve our internal petroleum production, I give lukewarm support to government grants to industry for improved battery research. It really should take a combination of both these actions, to break the back of the worldwide petroleum monopoly.
We need to also anticipate subsequent requirements, if electric cars can become reasonably competitive with petroleum using automotive vehicles. In effect, we would be shifting energy requirements from petroleum to electricity. That would require expansion of current electricity capacity. Most electricity is produced now from coal-fired power plants. Atomic energy power plants now contribute a small portion, but new designs and applications have been applied for and government has seen fit to expedite approval. Wind and solar production of electricity will still remain a relatively small portion of the total requirement, in spite of major construction in these areas.
However, expansion of existing coal-fired power plants will likely be necessary. This creates a problem with the present governmental attitude on carbon dioxide, which is always an emission of a coal-fired power plant. I have said repeatedly that there is no significant evidence that carbon dioxide has any effect on global warming and any attempts to control its concentration in the atmosphere are unnecessary. Capturing carbon dioxide from power plants costs significant money both in capital equipment and operating costs. Continued consideration of capturing carbon dioxide increases costs of electricity production, such as to minimize the possibility of effectively combating the worldwide petroleum monopoly.
I ask Congress to continually resist Administration attempts to control climate through control of carbon dioxide emissions, such as Cap and Trade.