Energy and Environment

IDEAS TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE
NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY

PREMISE: The Buckminster Fuller Challenge as MISSION: “How do we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone?”

LOGIC: It is important to embrace all forms of potential clean energy applications.
The forms vary in breadth of real solutions:

• Electric power Waste in all aspects
• Bio-mass and all its variations of energy conversion
• Solar in all its configurations Water power

Developing a complete energy balanced system is one requisite for success. A system that achieves comprehensive full energy, social and ecological balance is requisite for selection for the National Energy Policy and must cover all aspects of human and animal activities.

• Ancient wind power re-born in its new considerations
• Extracting pollutants from the atmosphere to create methanol and fuels for advanced systems

SELECTION CRITERIA:

• The most desirable clean energy form must carry within it the characteristics of achieving the greatest comprehensive solution that meets the Mission Premise.
  Although singular forms of energy production are useful and valuable, they may also be considered in parallel as adjunct. Electrical power production is not alone the necessary goal.
• Applications should meet the principles and policies of the Odum Model of “The Prosperous Way Down.” Clean energy applications must utilize systems principles to holistically grasp what is happening ecologically and use those principles to recommend policies that work.
• Recycling and use of waste in all its forms and energy conversions should be an absolute requirement for a Comprehensive National Energy Policy (CNEP) solution. To meet the Fuller Challenge energy conversion must include the conversion of the atmospheric pollutants into clean methanol per the Olah2 formula in order to save ourselves from global warming and to preserve the earth.
• The comprehensive energy policy must provide environmentally pure by­products in the conversion of biomass from the land and the seas in order to preserve the health of the seas and the necessary life-support it provides for all man, plant, and animal kind.
• A very important Odum requirement is the conversion and recycling of minerals and metals. Development of nanotech Thermal Composite Materials (TCMs) is directed toward spawning the new steel conversion industry (structures) based on reinvention and transformation of all forms of waste.
• The successful national energy policy must provide jobs and wealth for all people in reconstructed societal organizations built to end poverty by sharing ownership of the means of energy production and its valuable life-support by­products.
• The advanced technology base and societal organizations must provide for world expansion, production, and distribution through export of advanced renewable energy systems (ARES) components and coordination with people organizations for utilization the world over.
• The selected system should integrally embrace the information and society construct that would combine:

1) the power of public opinion using a systems basis and information centers,
2) a convergence of energy transformations to move away from using up available energy, and
3) the return feedback of useful reinforcements to the center for an increase in transformity.

The continual support of diverse ecosystems should be part of the successful system selection. A central International Humanitarian Education Data and Display Center (IHEDDC) should be part of the selected system connected to a worldwide telecommunications network of centers. Pervasive educational efficiencies are important.

These selected systems must pass a successful “Emergy Analysis” in all its components. For those who have not read Odum’s work “emergy” may be considered an expanded environmental assessment system that looks beyond a development site to the broader ecological implications such as global warming.

• The selected system must be capable of decentralization of central power production with distributed, stand-alone, sustainable, modularly integrated, rapidly-deployed economic devices serving clusters of social, institutional, residential, business, and industrial applications.
• The only sources of energy should be waste and the sun so as to not be dependent on fossil, mineral, fresh water, seawater, or other earth’s natural resources.The CNEP must begin the process of “democratization of energy” for energy sources to be available to everyone.
  The power and by-products produced from an ARES should feed the existing power grid and work with existing infrastructures.
  The modular devices utilized should have their own low cost, rapidly deployed mini-infrastructures. These devices should not be dependent upon previously implemented standard infrastructures other than to be available for feeding from them by the new devices as an aid to the existing world system. The various distributed renewable energy units should feed power to existing power grids and by-products-compatible systems when available (water systems, sewers, medical methanol tanks, etc.).
• The selected system should be able to assist the other adjunct necessary ecological activities such as re-forestation, re-seeding of lost natural resources, etc.
• The selected system must increase the U.S. national energy efficiency from ever accumulating wastes and improve the solar clearing of the atmosphere by 32% to 75% +.
• It must produce pure water in abundance as well as premium power and other valuable life support products …. i.e. the next resource problem scarcity solved ahead of time.
• Aesthetics must be accounted for – humankind’s emotional and cultural feelings expressed for expression’s sake provides a key ingredient for our civilization’s understanding and growth. The selected system must be a contributor to higher presentations of our aspiring cultures in the arts, much like the Greek philosophers and artists valued. What we do is written forever to match our aspirations for those who follow, and the important pages of remembrance.

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By Leslie Dean Price, Architect AlA AUA, Emeritus Chairman EI, LLC & ARES, LLC