U.S. energy research is declining

Given the decades-long warnings about a looming world energy crisis - punctuated by the recent spike in crude oil prices - you'd assume the U.S. has been ramping up its research and development spending on energy.

Think again.

Since 1980, energy research has fallen from 10 percent to 2 percent of total R&D spending. And while the Bush administration lists energy research as a "high priority national need" and points to its recent energy bill as evidence, the 2005 federal budget cuts another 11 percent from energy programs. This comes as other nations, such as France and Finland, have made startling advances in nuclear energy and dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions - the pollution from burning oil, gasoline, coal or other fossil fuels and the major cause of global warming. Meanwhile, the U.S. with 5 percent of the world's population continues to consume a quarter of the world's finite supply of fossil fuels with no plan on how it will face the dramatic lifestyle changes that will come with the end of cheap oil. "The technology is there ... but the investment has been lacking," said Jane Davidson, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota during an energy conference Tuesday at Monona Terrace. How lacking?

Consider the U.S. is spending $67 billion annually on the war on terror vs. $3.4 billion on energy research, according to the National Science Foundation. Private sector pharmaceutical companies are investing 10 times as much in R&D as energy firms like Exxon Mobil or Chevron. Need more numbers? The U.S spent $58 billion annually (inflation-adjusted) during Reagan's run-up on defense spending from 1981-89. It spent $23 billion in 1963-72 on Kennedy's Apollo project to put a man on the moon. "We could kick the fossil fuel habit in 10 years if we had the same kind of visionary leadership as JFK," says David Goodstein, author of "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil." Whether that will happen remains up for debate following the two-day international conference. Hosted by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the UW-Madison, the event brought in some of the top energy experts in the world for a frank discussion of energy issues. "Right now we're conducting a giant science experiment on the only planet we've got," warned Goodstein. "Civilization as we know it could well end by the end of the century when our fossil fuels run out."

But the conference wasn't all doom and gloom.
One enlightening presentation came from Jean-Pierre Perves, a leading French atomic scientist and adviser to its Nuclear Energy Commission. France - which has no reserves of coal, oil or natural gas to speak of - made a heavy investment into nuclear electric generation beginning in 1985. Today, the country of 60 million people gets 78 percent of its electricity from modern nuclear power plants. By comparison, the U.S. gets about 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Wisconsin is about 18 percent nuclear. Shifting away from fossil fuel has also allowed France to reduce its total carbon dioxide emissions by 35 percent, a dramatic reduction considering the increase in electric consumption across Europe.
"Going nuclear was the only way we could move forward so quickly on reducing emissions," Perves said,
Advances in nuclear technology, including reprocessing uranium-based fuel, has helped French significantly reduce the amount of radioactive waste. Much of the dangerous material can now be stored in glass canisters secured in clay soils.
Finland is even a step further ahead, Perves said, opening a pressurized nuclear reactor in 2005 that is the most efficient plant developed to date.

Meanwhile, the U.S. nuclear industry has been on hold, with no new plants opened since the early 1970s. Wisconsin remains under a moratorium on construction of any new nuclear plants, a law that dates to 1984. The lack of investment in nuclear energy is an ongoing frustration for UW-Madison nuclear professor Michael Corradini. He said much of the technology being used successfully in Europe was actually developed in this country. Corradini said Wisconsin could build a state-of-the-art nuclear power plant for about the same cost of the proposed new coal-burning facility in Oak Creek. "It's a political question in this country," he said. "There is no leadership." In addition to new sources of clean energy from the sun, wind or biofuels such as ethanol, conference attendees said there are great strides to be made in conservation or small-scale renewable energy projects like low-temperature solar heating. "Conservation remains the cheapest of all the alternatives," said Bob Smith, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at the UW-Madison.