Change and Innovation: The Evolving Energy Industry

Abstract

Conventional resource limitations and social and economic andenvironmental requirements will probably necessitate the utilizationof new energy resources not now in widespread use, as well as inno-vative methods of delivery and utilization of those energ y resources.In the last third of the 20th cen tu ry, and p robably longer than thatin our count ry and in many othe r coun tries arou nd the wo rld, some ofthe most costly energy pol icy decisions made were based upon an un-der-estimation of the size and cost of ou r remaining conventional energ yres our ces. This led, in our country, to the establishment of the syn th eticfuels corpo ration in 1980, at that time the cornerstone of this countr y' sener gy policy. That resulted in costing our government and our taxpa y-ers approxima tely $90 billion, and of course, pri vate energy companiesbillion s of addi tional do llars and produced virtually no increm ental en-ergy.The same un der-estimation of conventional energy resources andtheir cos ts in our cou ntry and many other countries led to the prohibi-tion of the use of natural gas for power generation -b ased upon theconclus ion we were run ning ou t of n atur al gas an d it needed to behu sbanded and ra tioned. Instead, we now kno w we have ab u ndant sup -plie s of na tural gas in this coun try and around the wo rld