Energy independence

“ Our demand for electricity is expected to rise by 45 percent. America is already using more energy than our domestic resources can provide, and unless we act to increase our energy independence, our reliance on foreign sources of energy will only increase. ”

“ The most powerful and wealthy nation on earth, teeming with brilliant minds and cutting-edge technology, surely does. The genius of the American people has already shown us the path towards energy independence, now they're just waiting for their government to take them there. ”

“ Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment. I have sent you a comprehensive energy plan to promote energy efficiency and conservation, to develop cleaner technology, and to produce more energy at home. ”

“ There's a reason that some have compared the quest for energy independence to the Manhattan Project or the Apollo moon landing. Like those historic efforts, moving away from an oil economy is a major challenge that will require a sustained national commitment. ”

“ My proposals, as all of you know, would reduce domestic natural gas shortages; allow production from Federal petroleum reserves; stimulate effective conservation, including revitalization of our railroads and the expansion of our urban transportation systems; develop more and cleaner energy from our vast coal resources; expedite clean and safe nuclear power production; create a new national energy independence authority to stimulate vital energy investment; and accelerate development of technology to capture energy from the Sun and the Earth for this and future generations. ”

“ You’d think by now we’d get the point on energy dependence. Never has the failure to take on a single challenge so detrimentally affected nearly every aspect of our well-being as a nation. And never have the possible solutions had the potential to do so much good for so many generations to come. ”

“ ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY- The term `energy sustainability' includes using a renewable energy source, thermal energy source, or a highly efficient technology for transportation, electricity generation, heating, cooling, lighting, or other energy services in fixed installations. ”

“ After all, in generating electricity in this manner, we should be destroying material, and this would be a barbarous process. We ought to be able to obtain the energy we need without consumption of material. ”

“ Various kinds of oil succeeded it as illuminants, until the discovery of petroleum set them all aside, and gave the world one of its most useful natural products. Then came the illuminating gas, and finally the wonderful electric light, whose brilliant glow lighted up the threshold of the twentieth century. Petroleum, gas and electricity are also beginning to replace coal for heating and cooking purposes,—as coal replaced wood,—and an outlook into the future seems to reveal to us the marvelous electric energy performing these and a thousand other services ”

“ Our comprehensive National Energy Strategy calls for the wise and effective development of all of our Nation's energy resources, including coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, as well as hydroelectric power and other forms of renewable energy. ”

“ It's time to leave behind rancorous old arguments and build a positive new consensus. With new technology, sound regulation, and plain good sense, we can expand our energy production while protecting the environment. And that is exactly what my energy approach is designed to do. ”

“ All the energy which has reached the earth from the sun and which, stored for ages in our coal-fields, is now used to propel our trains and steamships, to heat and light our cities, to perform all the multifarious tasks of modern life, was conveyed by the ether. Without that universal carrier of energy we should have nothing but a stagnant, lifeless world. ”

“ The man who should stop this senseless waste would be a great benefactor of humanity, though the solution he would offer could not be a permanent one, since it would ultimately lead to the exhaustion of the store of material. Efforts toward obtaining more energy from coal are now being made chiefly in two directions—by generating electricity and by producing gas for motive-power purposes. ”

“ All this modernization of our electricity grid is contained in the electricity title in the energy bill I submitted to the United States Congress.
To power our growing economy, we also need to generate more electricity. Electricity comes from three principal sources — coal and natural gas and nuclear power. To ensure that electricity is affordable and reliable, America must improve our use of all three. Coal is our nation's most abundant energy resource, and it provides about half of your electricity here in Virginia. ”

“ Instead of transporting the coal to distant places of consumption, we burn it near the mine, develop electricity in the dynamos, and transmit the current to remote localities, thus effecting a considerable saving. ”

“ This week, I traveled across the country to talk about my all-of-the-above energy strategy for America – a strategy where we produce more oil and gas here at home, but also more biofuels and fuel-efficient cars; more solar power and wind power and other sources of clean, renewable energy. ”

“ It's estimated that 85 percent of the fuel we need to keep the wheels of industry turning is on Federal-owned property, including the Outer Continental Shelf. Efforts to increase the supply of energy have been carried out in full compliance with environmental stipulations. We can and will have an increased energy supply with an enhanced environment. ”

“ Now, regarded as a source of energy, such supplies, if far down, will be less effective, for we have to deduct the amount of energy requisite in order to bring them to the surface. The result is that we must contemplate a time, however far distant, when our supplies of coal will be exhausted, and we shall be compelled to resort to other sources of energy. ”

“ All this, along with the increased demand for energy that has accompanied unparalleled economic growth, is putting enormous pressure on the energy supplies Americans need to heat their homes and businesses. ”

“ We may, therefore, expect to see hydrogen and oxygen take an important place in ordinary usages. From the standpoint alone of preservation of fuel, that is to say, of potential energy upon the earth, this new conquest of electricity is very pleasing. Waterfalls furnish utilizable energy in every locality, and, in the future, will perhaps console our great-grandchildren for the unsparing waste that we are making of coal.—La Nature. ”

“ America's utility companies and other energy providers supply the light, heat, and power that are needed to operate our factories and farms, our schools and defense installations, and other places of work.
Continuing instability and conflict in some regions of the world underscore the need to use energy efficiently; to reduce our dependence on insecure sources of energy; and to develop more energy resources. Of course, we must skillfully balance efforts in these areas with our determination to maintain a growing economy. ”

“ My energy strategy will lessen our dependence on foreign oil by encouraging conservation, promoting domestic production in environmentally friendly ways, and funding promising new sources of energy such as hydrogen, ethanol, and biodiesel. It will also modernize our aging electricity grid. ”

“ Thus in some degree is allayed the fear, never well grounded, that when the coal fields of the globe are spent civilization must collapse. As the electrician hears this foreboding he recalls how much fuel is wasted in converting heat into electricity. He looks beyond either turbine or shaft turned by wind or tide, and, remembering that the metal dissolved in his battery yields at his will its full content of energy, either as heat or electricity, he asks, Why may not coal or forest tree, which are but other kinds of fuel, be made to do the same? ”

“ As we approach the 1990's, America must be prepared to formulate energy policy with boldness and vision. Virtually every sector of our highly complex, technological, and interdependent society requires a reliable energy source to keep it functioning smoothly and efficiently. ”

“ It would be comforting to predict the development of new, clean, infinite sources of energy. After all, the United States did not become a great Nation by saving energy, but by using huge quantities of it. ”

“ The first is the man who is to show how, by the consumption of coal, we may directly produce electricity, and thus, perhaps, evade that now inevitable and enormous loss that comes of the utilization of energy in all heat-engines driven by substances of variable volume. ”

“ And there are a variety of factors which go into keeping America's energy free and flowing, and it involves supply, it involves infrastructure, it involves conservation, it involves protecting the environment. ”

“ Experience seemed to show that a period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns. ”

“ If the public understood that electricity is Energy and that it is transmutable at will {258} into Power or Light or Heat, they would better realize the possibilities of the future in town and country, and all that the proper organization and control of Energy means to them. They would at once resolve that the power of government must not be divorced from the Power which will run in the electrical mains of the future, and by the aid of which we can transform the face of our land. ”

“ But as the history of energy in the United States has shown, these trends don't stay in one direction very long. And America still has an aging infrastructure in terms of the electric grid. It still has an aging infrastructure in terms of the ability to get natural gas from one part of the country to the next. ”

“ We are a nation that is principally reliant for every flip of the switch, for every use of an air- conditioner, for every drive of a car -- almost every drive of a car -- on fossil fuels. That does represent the largest amount of energy use in America. ”

“ In other words, one out of every five homes is powered -- receives its electricity from nuclear power. And the President is concerned, as he looks at the energy situation broadly, that we need to have a comprehensive policy that uses natural gas, that uses clean coal, that stresses conservation, that uses nuclear power, as well. ”

“ We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. (Applause.) We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. ”

“ The rushing riotous waters of the Stanislaus wasted for so many centuries have been saved by the steel paddles of gigantic turbine water wheels and converted into electricity which carries with the swiftness of thought thousands of horse power energy to the far away cities and towns to be transformed into light and heat and power to run street cars and trains and set in motion the mechanism of mills and factories and make the looms of industry hum with the bustle and activity of life. ”

“ How vast and yet easily controlled a power this would be in the hands of those who were able to wield it, may be guessed from the fact that, in the present day, less than ten per cent. of the latent energy of coal is developed as electrical power even in the most perfect systems of conversion. ”

“ Secondly, we've got to reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels, and replace them with alternative energy sources to power our homes and our work places. Look, you can't have a vibrant economy unless you've got reliable electricity. For those of you in the developing world, you know what I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, the issue is not reliable electricity; the issue is getting electricity to people in the first place. Well, here in the United States, we've overcome those issues. ”

“ It exists, and is merely gathered, in a measure and to a certain extent confined and controlled, and sent out as a concentrated form of energy on its various errands. Should a means for the concentration of this universally diffused energy be found whereby it could be made to gather, by the new arrangement of some natural law such as places it in enormous quantities in the thundercloud, a revolution that would permeate and visibly change all the affairs of men would take place, since the industrial world is not a thing apart, but affects all men, and all institutions, and all thought. ”

“ It is estimated that we are now using 26,000,000 horse-power of energy derived from steam, 3,000,000 horse-power derived from water, and 800,000 from gas or oil, a total of 29,800,000 horse-power. It is also estimated that there is now running idly over dams, falls, and rapids 30,000,000 horse-power of energy. In other words, we are wasting every day enough water to run every factory and mill, and to turn every wheel, to move every electric car and to supply every electric light or power-station in the country. ”

“ He then adds: "You will therefore be surprised to hear that until very recently the universal opinion has been that living force could be absolutely and irrevocably destroyed at any one's option." Let us add that to-day, after forty-seven years, the law of the conservation of energy, wherever civilisation exists, is accepted as a fully established truth and receives the widest applications in all domains of natural science. ”