McCain's great battery bakeoff

posted by Dustin

John McCain today said that he plans to offer $300 million dollars for a new auto battery that is more efficient than today's technology for electric and hybrid cars. While I like the idea of a competition toward some common technological goal (it really does sound like a fun science fair-like event), this is a very shallow response to the energy challenge.

In a remarkable fate of chance, it happens that Exxon Mobil recently made a technological breakthrough with Lithium Ion batteries. So rather then a bakeoff, where I can bring my best brownies, this energy policy is a selloff and a further subsidy Exxon Mobil, a firm that has posted records profits almost every quarter for several years now, and posted a record setting $11.7 billion dollar profit last quarter alone (about $1,300 per second).

EXXON DOES NOT NEED GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES. It would be better if its profits were invested in CLEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY. Or, profits should be subject to a windfall profits tax that fund more competition for renewable technologies. This is a perspective that even many Rockefeller trustees are putting forward in internal discussions of the board at Exxon Mobil.

A meaningful energy policy needs to hold multiple technological contests, heavy investment at the national renewable energy laboratories and a more "Apollo-like" response, policies that stabilize renewable energy prices and incentives, conservation, and full cost accounting of fossil fuels. The dividends will be far greater the more we put upfront.

Of course, John McCain will not be able to raise the government revenues to pay for anything greater than this trifling battery bakeoff. McCain would rather spend greater than $400 billion dollars on military excursions in distant oil fields, and making the world a more dangerous place by breaking ground on 45 new nuclear power plants and "drive-by nation-building."

It sounds like they are also cynical over at Climate Progress...