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Help support AmericanEnergyIndependence.com Welcome to the American Energy Independence website My name is Ron Bengtson. I am a concerned citizen writing about America's need for energy independence. I believe energy independence is urgent; a matter of national security. I have talked with political leaders and scientists, and I am convinced that energy independence can be achieved now. The many pages of this web site describe new technology that can free America from dependence on foreign oil. The American Energy Independence web site has received tremendous support. The web site has been featured in the popular JimPinto.com eNews, a widely distributed Internet newsletter, and has been the topic of discussion on the radio talk show Walking a Thin Line with Mike Gault, aired on WTAN-AM 1340 Clearwater, WZHR-AM 1400 Zephyrhills, and DCF-AM 1450 Dade City, Florida. The response has been very positive. Many people have sent e-mails of encouragement, offering great suggestions and valuable information. Positive feedback continues to pour in from across the country. My investigation has found promising new technology for the development of emission-free hydrocarbon energy, synthetic fuels, and safe nuclear power. I believe these new technologies, combined with renewable energy technology, can free America from oil dependence if the public is willing to support it. The American Energy Independence web site divides energy into four general categories.
Each category can be accessed directly from the navigation bar located at the top every page. Hydrogen is given its own page. Hydrogen is not a source of energy; it is a carrier of energy like electricity, or a store for energy like a battery. The production of hydrogen gas requires energy to be expended. The Hydrogen Economy and energy independence are separate but related issues. National Security is also given its own page. The National Security web page, titled Energy Independence and National Security, is an in-depth presentation of the political and economic reasons for advocating American Energy Independence. I believe the present global conditions could have been prevented if the American people had demanded 30 years ago, or even 15 years ago, a sustained aggressive national program to develop alternatives to oil dependence. The United States and Europe were warned in 1973 with the first oil embargo, and then again in 1980 and yet again in 1991 with the Gulf war. The United States was then attacked on September 11, 2001 which led to the present war against Al-Qaeda (Takfiri ideology) and global Islamic Terrorism. I believe the American people's acceptance of, or indifference to, U.S. oil dependence is at the heart of the problem. It should be obvious that foreign oil flowing into the U.S. causes U.S. dollars to flow out of the U.S. and into the Middle-East. And, it is an established fact that Middle-East oil wealth has provided the financial support behind the worldwide expansion of militant Islam. Unfortunately, too many Americans refuse to acknowledge the connection between U.S. oil dependence, Middle-East oil wealth and the rise of global Islamic Terrorism. The Safe Nuclear Energy category provides educational information and describes existing and future technology that needs public support. Nuclear energy is the only proven technology that can deliver baseload electricity on a large scale, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless-of-the-weather, without producing carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear power plants emit no carbon pollution—no carbon monoxide, no sulfur oxides and no nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere. And, nuclear power plants will not contaminate streams and rivers with mercury. Burning millions of tons of coal in conventional coal power plants will release more radioactive material into the environment than a hypothetical melt-down of a nuclear reactor, because a small percentage of uranium and other radioactive metals exist naturally in coal. Although trace quantities of radioactive heavy metals are not nearly as likely to produce adverse health effects as the vast array of chemical by-products from coal combustion, the accumulated quantities of these isotopes over 150 or 250 years could pose a significant future ecological burden and potentially produce adverse health effects. The United States now burns 400 million more tons of coal per year than was burned in 1980, because the U.S. stopped building nuclear power plants after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor melt-down in 1979, even though no one was hurt, and the radiation was contained. There was no physical harm to public health; although anti-nuclear groups continue to inflict psychological harm on the public. New advanced nuclear reactors known as Generation III+ employ passive safety technology, and future Generation IV Reactors will employ reprocessing of the spent fuel, which will help solve the problem of nuclear waste. However, a small amount of nuclear waste would need to be stored for several centuries, or until technology is developed that would neutralize the radioactivity. By all practical definitions, nuclear fission is a sustainable source of energy. Enough uranium exists in the earth's crust and oceans to last thousands of years. With reprocessing of spent-fuel, advanced fast reactors will be able to get 60 to 100 times more energy out of uranium, extending the reserves to tens of thousands of years. Enough time to develop fusion technology, and inexpensive highly efficient solar cells and battery technology. In the future, when an estimated ten billion people are living on this planet and each person consumes as much energy as the average American, nuclear power will be the only sustainable source of energy that can meet the demand for electricity. America needs to invest in SAFE nuclear energy now! The Hydrocarbon category begins with a web page titled Clean Hydrocarbons. While investigating the subject of emission-free (clean) hydrocarbon energy, I talked with a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His name is Dr. Hans Ziock. He is the technical director of the Zero-Emission Coal Technology project at Los Alamos. I have written about his work on the Clean Hydrocarbons web page. Yes, some people would say clean hydrocarbon is an oxymoron like safe cigarette, but Dr. Ziock has convinced me that he and his colleagues have developed a real emission-free hydrocarbon energy technology that can be applied to all sources of hydrocarbon, including biomass. The emission-free hydrocarbon energy technology makes possible the production of both hydrogen gas and syngas (synthetic gas) from America's vast solid hydrocarbon reserves without releasing waste-gases into the atmosphere. Syngas can be used to make synthetic petroleum. Experts agree that at $40 per barrel for oil and $2.00 per gallon for gasoline, synthetic fuels will be profitable. The United States has over 270 billion tons of proven coal reserves, having the energy equivalent of four times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and equal to all of the proven oil reserves in the world. If the United States could use its coal reserves without destroying the environment, foreign oil would not be needed. (And, the money spent for synthetic fuels production would remain in America creating a multi-billion dollar industry.) Synthetic petroleum can be made using synthesis gas derived from coal, oil sands, oil shale, biomass, or even recycled CO2 in combination with hydrogen extracted from water. America has an abundance of natural resources that can be used to make synthetic petroleum. Synthetic gasoline and synthetic diesel made from synthetic petroleum can power existing cars and trucks without needing to modify the engines or national fuel distribution infrastructure. A large-scale public investment in Gas-To-Liquids (GTL) technology would bring the cost of the technology down so that the manufacture of synthetic petroleum would be competitive with fossil oil production. The current interest in Gas-To-Liquids technology is focused on monetizing stranded natural gas deposits. However, variations on the same technology can produce synthetic petroleum using synthesis gas derived from a wide variety of hydrocarbon sources. Clean hydrocarbons include synthetic hydrocarbon fuels made from recycled CO2. The CO2 Recycling web page includes information about research in Artificial Photosynthesis using solar energy. Artificial Photosynthesis causes the carbon dioxide molecule to be reduced to carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide can then be recombined with hydrogen derived from water electrolysis and recycled back into hydrocarbon fuels. Picture this: Carbon Dioxide can be extracted from the air by artificial trees and recycled back into synthetic gasoline or synthetic diesel fuel. In this picture synthetic fuel made from recycled CO2 would be renewable because the CO2 tailpipe emissions from hydrocarbon burning engines would be drawn out of the atmosphere by artificial trees and chemically recycled back into synthetic petroleum production. The economics for a renewable hydrocarbon economy are reasonable. However, private companies will not take the financial risk required to develop the technology. Public funding is needed. America needs to declare energy independence and politically force this technology to center stage by way of legislation, direct funding, and tax incentives. The payoff is twofold:
A growing number of scientists have come to the conclusion that the Hydrogen Economy, if it ever comes, will take many decades to reach maturity. A clean hydrocarbon economy can be created now, and will allow the hydrogen transition to occur in its own time. The Renewable category includes a web page titled: America's Solar Energy Potential. Every hour, the sun radiates more energy onto the earth than the entire human population uses in one whole year. Solar energy alone could produce all of America's energy. The technology for capturing the sun's energy is developing rapidly, but still needs public support. A break-through discovery in Solar Cell research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has recently been reported: Multi-Band Semiconductors Synthesized for High Efficiency Solar Cells. The new semiconductor material could form the basis for the commercial development of inexpensive solar cells that will yield greater than 50% efficiency in converting the sun's light into electricity. This means that more than half of the available energy in sunlight would be converted directly into usable electric power. In my opinion, the issue of a hydrogen economy vs. a clean hydrocarbon economy turns on storage technology and energy density. Hydrogen storage (and transport) remains an unsolved problem. The energy density (amount of energy for a given volume) of liquid hydrocarbon fuel such as gasoline or diesel is much greater than the energy density of either compressed or liquid hydrogen. Commercial trucking cannot economically justify the extra space required for the larger volume hydrogen fuel tank that would be needed in order to travel the same number of miles on a tank of hydrogen as would be possible with a much smaller volume (size) tank of diesel. Synthetic diesel or synthetic gasoline, including biodiesel and ethanol, powering new low-emission highly efficient internal combustion engines, combined with CO2 sequestration is an intriguing alternative to hydrogen. The infrastructure for distributing synthetic hydrocarbon fuel is already in place and accepted. You have a choice: do nothing or take political action. One course of action is to send a letter or email to your elected representatives telling them that you want the United States to be energy independent. In addition to writing to The White House and your Congressional Representatives, write to the editor of your local newspaper. Write your state Governor, and state representatives. Call the Mayor of your City. Inform your local chamber of commerce, your church leaders, e-mail your friends and anyone else you can think of. I welcome your feedback. If you have found an error or inaccuracy on any of the web pages please let me know so that I can correct it. I value your comments and invite you to make suggestions or contribute new information for the web site. American Energy Independence requires the participation and support of all Americans. You will find my e-mail address located at the bottom of each web page; click on the link and send me an e-mail. If you would like to sponsor the website or make a donation, please contact me. Thank you, Ron Bengtson More about me: I am a Vietnam veteran (68-69 U.S. Army). After my tour of duty in Vietnam, I had believed that if only the U.S. Military had unleashed its full force in Vietnam, we would have won. Well, that is exactly what we saw in Baghdad on March 20, 2003. The U.S. Military called it “Shock and Awe” — it was spectacular and we did win. I was proud of the U.S. Military. But, the war did not end... just like Vietnam, we can win the battles but we cannot successfully “occupy” a country that does not want us. (Not without using brutal suppression that would violate our own values.) If the Iraq war had ended within 18 months, as the supporters of the war believed it would, then the Bush Presidency would have been honored as visionary. But, that did not happen. Perhaps if the Vietnam War had ended successfully within a year or two, then President Johnson would be considered a hero and a visionary today, but that did not happen either. The Middle East is not Vietnam. There is a big difference between the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. The difference is the oil in the region and the importance of oil in the world economy; specifically the importance of oil as a source of energy (transportation fuels). Our dependence on oil to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel makes us vulnerable to shortages. An interruption of the supply of oil anywhere in the world affects everyone because oil is a global commodity. The Middle East has about 60% of the world's known oil reserves; if the U.S. Military pulls out of Iraq allowing civil war and sectarian violence to escalate, causing the region to fall into the hands of Islamic militants who hate the United States and western values, then Middle East oil would become a weapon of political extortion subjecting the United States and Europe to economic terrorism by threatening the global economy with oil supply interruptions. The United States walked away from Vietnam with only a loss of national pride and nothing to show for the deaths of fifty-eight thousand U.S. soldiers (and 300,000 wounded), but otherwise the loss of Vietnam had no influence on the U.S. or world economy. The situation in the Middle East is different. If we walk away from the Middle East, we need to have a plan that will end the global economic influence of Middle East oil. And, that can only be accomplished by a full substitution (replacement) of oil in the global economy. For this reason, I believe, the development of alternative energy is the most important challenge facing this generation of Americans.
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Copyright © 2003-2008 Ron Bengtson. Boise, Idaho USA |
