In the world of technology innovation, 86 days is the blink of an eye. Most companies are looking months or years down the road when they invest in research and development. But when barrels of oil began pouring into the Gulf from BP’s Deepwater Horizon, the equation changed. Suddenly, research and development wasn’t optional, it was essential.
BP is the perfect model of what the United States should not do. The American citizen has paid the price for fossil fuel dependence for decades now and we can’t wait for another disaster to strike the US. Eighty-six days is almost nothing when you talk about technology innovation, but when you are trying to plug an oil spill, rescue workers from a collapsed coal mine, or end an OPEC embargo, 86 days is an eternity. We need to jump-start the clean energy R&D process now. We need to invest like we mean it.
It must be the goal of the United States to invest in a broad range of clean energy technologies. This is necessary not only to replace aging fossil fuel plants and the inefficient vehicle fleet, but also to allow American companies to export clean technologies, systems, and products overseas to the growing international energy market. In a few years, instead of importing Japanese hybrids, we could be exporting American plug-ins or fuel cell vehicles.
When threatened with safety and environmental regulations, the energy industry usually claims economic hardship, and that regulation will make them uncompetitive. It is clear now that bad press and lawsuits will kill BP, not regulation. We see this as a result because BP was unprepared for such a disaster and because it had failed to invest in drilling safety technologies used around the world.
And yet it only took 86 days for BP to design, construct, and put in place a cap that is, as of now, capturing all of the oil spilling from the Deepwater Horizon drill hole. This serves as proof that despite the grumbling, all it took was the proper resources and the proper motivation to force a stubborn energy giant like BP into innovating the solution to the oil spill.
Today we’re facing a hidden but much more menacing problem. Our continued reliance on foreign oil drives up global oil prices and props up countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela. Their collusion with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gives them enormous political and economic power over the United States, the 1973 oil embargo proved that, and since then our oil imports have tripled. Meanwhile, the US energy industry is only investing 0.3% of revenues in R&D of new technologies. Most industries invest ten times that percentage!
For years, our energy industry has been asleep at the wheel. There has been no motivation and resources have not been well spent. We need give our physicists, chemists, engineers, and biologists the resources that they need to develop and deploy clean energy innovations such as fuel cells, advanced nuclear, wind power, next generation batteries, energy-efficient products, carbon capture and storage, among many others.
Global energy demand is going to skyrocket in the coming decades, but the US is not prepared to compete in the global market or achieve energy independence in the world of tomorrow. Our reliance on fossil fuels not only gives strength to our enemies but it literally kills American citizens at home and overseas. In 2007 alone there were 170 casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan from fuel convoy missions carrying diesel between bases. Improving vehicle efficiency and developing self-sustainable technologies could help reduce the amount of convoys needed in war zones. In the US, coal plants emit sulfur-dioxide, mercury, nitrous-oxide, and particulate emissions that cause asthma, pulmonary disease, birth defects, and cardiovascular diseases. Meanwhile, coal miners continue to pay the heaviest price.
While we still wait for the results of the oil cap pressure tests deep below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico we must ask ourselves: what if BP had taken 86 days 10 years ago and developed an effective cap back then? If, instead of waiting for an explosion, BP had anticipated and preempted disaster. This whole incident would’ve been over before it had hardly started. Television crews in the Gulf would have packed up and left on day 5, not day 86, as we all hope they are able to do now.
That is why America needs to act now to rid ourselves of the economic dead-weight of Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia. By pursuing clean technologies we can introduce competition into a market dominated by energy giants. We can stabilize energy prices, promote public health, and we can break free of the reigns of OPEC. We need to seize this opportunity and take our economic and energy future into our own hands. Right now, America has the same mentality as BP: wait for the worst, then act. If we give our researchers and universities the tools now, then we can prevent the worst and establish a powerful American industry in clean energy technology.
