Greed Is the Power Behind Energy Firms

“Keeping It Clean” (July 10) tells a secret story hidden behind its words and graphics. By focusing on the pathetic amount of electrical energy produced by non-hydrocarbon generation since 1989, it clearly shows how the blind greed and political clout of our utility and petroleum companies has denied this country the path to clean power that we so desperately need.

For more than 25 years, the potential for nonpolluting, endlessly renewable electric power offered by photovoltaic solar conversion has been known by our politicians, the oil interests and our utility people. So what have these leaders done with that knowledge? As little as possible.

Rather than focus the brains and financial resources needed to bring the solar application to maturity, our bottom-liners have done the exact reverse. They have pumped billions of dollars into failed atomic generation, the costs of which they now want to dump back onto the public. They have encouraged the development of ugly, noisy, naturally limited wind generators by initially getting our politicians to provide investment tax shelters so that their campaign contributors could obtain quick write-offs. The examples are many, the rationalizations almost endless.

Our energy needs, as well as those in the rest of the world, are constantly growing. Even if every government on Earth should magically decide tomorrow to join in a global effort to convert to solar energy, there would still be a minimum 25-to-35-year conversion period during which such a massive changeover could take place. At the end of that effort, direct solar production, coupled with supporting hydrogen-powered generation, would do it all. Consider there are hundreds of thousands of square miles of uninhabitable Earth surface on which solar farms could be placed. That, in conjunction with an endless supply of seawater--which can be broken down electrically into its oxygen-hydrogen components--can produce a truly nonpolluting power-generation system for all of mankind. The only thing that’s currently missing is public understanding and the farsighted political will to do what we must eventually do if our species is to survive.

S.J. BAER

Woodland Hills