SeekerBlog

is pure pork + picking winners. Geothermal has long term potential, but has no contact with 3-year output doubling. More money into old fashioned solar is not quite as bad as setting fire to bales of money. Cost-efficient solar is not yet ready at scale (Nanosolar can’t make enough to satisfy Germany). Wind is logistically impossible. There’s no practical storage solution for either solar or wind.

We need to unleash nuclear — but not a whisper from Mr. Change on what will actually make a difference. Just the same old, same old:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s pledge to double alternative-energy production over the next three years drew a skeptical response Thursday from the chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp., Rex Tillerson, who told reporters during an appearance in Washington that rapid increases in alternative energy would be “very challenging.”

“Let’s be realistic about time frames, let’s don’t fool ourselves,” Mr. Tillerson said. “If you include biofuels, which are already at [federal] mandate levels … doubling that would require you to have available cellulosic conversion technology, which does not exist today. In terms of wind, there simply is not the manufacturing capacity today to build wind turbines…they’re already backordered.”

Despite billions of dollars in federal spending on various clean-energy technologies in recent decades, the U.S. energy portfolio has not dramatically changed since the administration of Richard Nixon. In 2006, fossil fuels accounted for 85% of the nation’s energy supply compared with 93% in 1973, according to a report last year by the Government Accountability Office.