Rob: While biofuels may be green gold for our state's Ag producers, it's an
issue that goes well beyond our economy.
Simply put, there are significant national security reasons to be
concerned about our dependence on foreign oil, and no one knows this
better than the former director of the central
intelligence agency, James Woolsey.
James Woolsey: They can understand, as Bin Laden clearly does, that one of
our great vulnerabilities stems from the fact that two-thirds of the world's
proven reserves, of conventional oil, lie under the Persian Gulf.
And therefore, much of our future oil supplies will come from there, because
its production costs are low, and also much of the infrastructure is there.
Fatwas from Ilams in Saudi Arabia, friendly to Al Qaida, announce the
importance of attacking the oil infrastructure.
Al Qaida has tried twice now, once in February of '06, and once about six
months ago, to attack the oil infrastructure.
Had they succeeded in the attack that they tried in February of '06, and they
really failed more due to their own clumsiness in assembling their truck
bomb than anything else, they could have taken some five or six million
barrels a day of oil offline from this one attack in Saudi Arabia for
well over a year.
It certainly would have driven oil up to around $200 a barrel.
So, any morning that you wake up, and oil is not at $200 a barrel because of a
terrorist attack in the Middle East, it's a pretty good day.
But then you have to go to sleep that night, thinking that during that night,
you might wake up the next morning and it might be different.
Rob: Woolsey spoke to those attending this year's Grow Conference,
and I had the opportunity to sit down with him, one-on-one.
When did biofuels change from an economic issue to
a security issue for our country?
Woolsey: I think they've been a security issue since at least October of
1973 when the Saudis cut off our oil because we were trying to keep Israel
from being overrun in the Yom Kippur war.
And, I think they've been a security, and, an economic issue.
And increasingly in recent years to a lot of people, they've also been part of
the global warming debate; because they help, some a little, some a lot, with
reducing the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere.
So, they're all three.
Rob: I had a commissioner from the E U tell me that the United States was
really missing the boat by not looking at nuclear.
How do you feel about that?
Woolsey: Well, the United States has looked at nuclear for a long time.
We haven't built nuclear power plants in some years.
We've got about a quarter of the world's nuclear power plants.
But, we haven't built them in some years because Wall Street wouldn't invest in
them because of Three Mile Island and the need for insurance.
The debate, now, in Congress, is how much of the insurance costs should
the federal government pick up.
But, I think this moving toward plug-in hybrids, and toward biofuels, does
not necessitate more power plants.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has done a very good study that says you
could have three quarters of the cars on the road be plug-in hybrids before you
need a single new power plant.
So, I think that with energy efficiency, with moving toward renewables,
and perhaps building some nuclear power plants as well, we can do a much
better job than we're doing now, with respect
to generating electrical power.
We may, in time, be able to sequester the carbon from coal fired plants,
enough, underground, that may prove to work; but it's going to take some
years and billions of dollars to check out, that a form of coal fired power
plants with carbon sequestration could also be in the future.
Rob: And that does seem to make sense here, because we do have a tremendous
amount of coal, in this country.
Woolsey: We have a lot of coal, but, you know, we and everybody else, also,
has a fair amount of sun, and the cost of generating from your roof is going
down, a bit every year.
For example, it's about 25 cents a kilowatt hour now from the most advanced
photovoltaics on your roof.
And that's lower than the price for peak electricity in California.
California's rates are about double the rest of the country.
Some California rates are up at 37 cents a kilowatt hour.
So, already in part of the country, we're where sun on your roof can replace
some of your peak power electricity, and that trend is going to continue
as photovoltaics get cheaper and more efficient.
Rob: But again, a very competitive industry, because Europe has several
mandates trying to move to complete solar.
Woolsey: Right.
The Europeans, even though they don't have as much sun as most of the United
States are pressing very hard, as is Japan, on solar.
And, one of the things that says is that some of the new solar panel
efficiencies are getting better and better, so they're useful even in
cloudy climates such as northern Germany or Japan.