| Apollo Creed is a character from Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” movies. A sound-alike, Apollo/SEED, is a horse of a different color — organizations involved in the sustainable energy movement. But a common thread runs through them — the use of fiction to attract a paying audience.
Is the Kitsap SEED project a legitimate “investment” of taxpayer’s money as noted in a recent Kitsap Sun editorial, or is it just another full-employment program for people feeding at the government trough? Perhaps some facts will help you decide.
Prominent figures, including Rep. Jay Inslee, and Sen. Maria Cantwell have been touting a new program to “make us independent of foreign oil in ten years.” Last year, Rep. Inslee introduced the New Apollo Energy Act HR 2828 with this goal in mind. His bill was taken directly from initiatives sponsored by an organization called “The Apollo Alliance.” The people supporting this program say we need a massive national effort along the lines of the Manhattan atomic bomb project or the Apollo Space Program to identify and develop a radical new energy source to power the country.
Locally, a group of people has climbed aboard the Apollo bandwagon with an organization called the Kitsap SEED Project — Sustainable Economic & Energy Development. The organization behind this project is Sustainable Synergy; a local business formed by Mark Frost of MD Business Infrastructure Services, LLC, and a former county commissioner, Tim Botkin of Sustainable Solutions.
The Port of Bremerton has set aside a 72 acre park near the Bremerton National Airport for SEED, which intends to use government funding to attempt to attract high technology businesses to the park. The Washington State Legislature recently awarded the Port of Bremerton $800,000 for the SEED project and the Port received a $427,000 federal grant for planning and design of the park. The project is endorsed by the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council, the Puget Sound Regional Council, and the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance.
But just who is behind the Apollo Alliance? Is it composed of leading experts on energy and technology? Are energy companies involved? Are leading universities providing support? Well, not exactly.
The four founding board members of the Alliance are Sen. Maria Cantwell; Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.; Leo W. Garth, President of the United Steel Workers of America; and Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. The list of advisors and endorsers is a virtual whose-who of unions and environmental and social activists. Indeed, the Alliance does not seem to include any reputable scientific organizations or anyone else who is a leading energy expert.
And what about the technologies that the Alliance and SEED organizations are pursuing? Are they truly new approaches to energy production like the ITER, a joint international research and development project to demonstrate the feasibility of commercial nuclear fusion power? Well, again, not exactly. A look at the organization’s literature appears to indicate the focus is on traditional “renewable energy” programs such as wind, solar, biomass, etc. — all of which depend on heavy government subsidies and tax breaks to survive.
Robert Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research says that “Even improved new generation renewable (electric generation) capacity is, on average, twice as expensive as new capacity from the most economical fossil-fuel alternative and triple the cost of surplus electricity.” He further states that, “The uncompetitiveness of renewable generation explains the emphasis pro-renewable energy lobbyists on both the state and federal levels put on quota requirements, as well as continued or expanded subsidies.”
And even some environmentalists are quietly questioning renewables. Wind power kills birds, acres of solar panels destroy desert habitat, and hydropower kills fish (in fact, Peter Huber’s book Hard Green makes an eloquent case that the small footprint of extracting the already compacted energy of oil, coal and uranium leaves the smallest impact on the planet).
Perhaps the question you should consider is whether it is the government that knows best what energy development paths to purse, or is it the ingenuity and competitiveness of the free market that should determine what powers our country? That is not to say that people, through their government, should not establish some environmental guidelines. But maybe the details of how to achieve the results should be left to the people who do it best.
As for SEED and Apollo, draw your own conclusions.
Bob Benze
Silverdale | 