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http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/now-us-says-solar-pv-to-be-cheaperthan-fossil-fuels-by-2020-2020
And, like solar and the energy industry, the transport industry was driven not just by better and cheaper technology, but by environmental factors too. In New York in the 1890s, there were 160,000 horses dropping 3-4 million pounds of manure each day, he noted. It had reached its saturation point . pollution hastened the transition, he said. And, of course, there were naysayers. The president of the Michigan Savings Bank told Henry Fords lawyer, Horace Rackham, that the horse was here to stay and the automobile was just a fad. Rackham ignored him and turned a $5,000 investment in the Ford Motor Co into a stake worth $15 million. In 1909, the magazine Scientific American said that the automobile had reached the limit of its development. Little wonder that the vested interests, those with trillions of dollars invested in the current energy infrastructure and energy sources, and the prospect that their unearthed resources will continue to be exploited, are pushing back so fiercely. Any delay in funding programs for R&D and deployment is a win for the fossil fuel industry. And Congress and the popular media has become a bear-pit of abuse and criticism, where any government program for clean energy support is pilloried; from the loans to solar energy companies, to $14 million grants to algae fuels (which earned Obama the unwanted sobriquet of pond scum czar), and most recently, a vitriolic campaign against electric vehicles. In short, anything that threatens the primacy of oil, coal and gas is considered fair game. Sadly, and in a shocking blight against Australian conservative politics, that rhetoric is now making its way across the Pacific. Chu responded to this and the continuing witch-hunt over the failure of Solyndra solar company by drawing on the example of aviation. In 1903, Samuel Langley, with the support of a $50,000 government grant, and another $20,000 from the Smithsonian Institute, made two attempts to make the worlds first piloted flight, and failed. Nine days after Langley gave up, the Wright Brothers (another beneficiary of government grants) made their first flight about 50 years before their previous predictions. Members of Congress were outraged, Chu quipped. Government cant pick winners! What happened next was instructive. The US actually lost its lead in the aviation industry because 13 other countries, including Germany, France, the UK and Russia, but also the likes of Chile, Spain, Brazil and Bulgaria, invested more government funds into the industry. It wasnt until after the US passed the Kelly Air Act in the mid 1920s, and allowed private carriers to freight US mail, thus giving the industry a market, that the US regained its leadership. That is Chus inspiration today. The game-changers, he says, will come from both new technology and new manufacturing processes. In response to Scientific Americans conclusion that the car could not evolve, he pointed to Umpqua Energy, a recent winner of the Next Top Innovators Challenge, which has found a way of turning some fuel into hydrogen, cutting emissions by at least 85 per cent, and obtaining a staggering increase in performance of between 40 per cent 100 per cent. He points to new materials, such as carbon fibre, and titanium, that could revolutionise the environmental and operating performance of a whole host of transport options, mostly through developments in manufacturing. This would occur just as it had in the aluminium sector. What was regarded as a precious metal in the early 1980s, and was produced at $2 an ounce (when gold cost $20/oz), is now produced at 6c/oz, when gold costs nearly $1700/oz. This, says Chu, will surely be the experience of the energy sector too, particularly in solar. Henry Ford didnt invent the internal combustion engine, or the automobile, or even the assembly line. He improved the assembly line. His idea was that to build cars at the lowest cost and highest quality was the way to success. That, he says, is the goal of the sunshot ambition. New materials and manufacturing methods can change the landscape of energy solutions. We have the possibility to
create a second industrial revolution that will give us clean energy and a path to a sustainable world. Share this: