GOALS FOR IMPACT OF SOLAR ENERGY APPLICATIONS 35% OF TOTAL BUILDING HEATING AND COOLING 30% OF NATION'S GAS FUEL ⚫ 10% OF NATION'S LIQUID FUEL ⚫ 20% OF NATION'S ELECTRIC FUEL AD/RA 73-2329 5-73 Figure 11. Mr. UDALL. Thank you, Dr. Eggers, for the very interesting presentation. You provide some important goals in the conclusion of your statement, including one of furnishing 20 percent of the Nation's electrical energy by solar source. When, on your chart, are we going to get that 20 percent of the Nation's electrical energy from the solar source? What is your projection? Dr. EGGERS. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the projection for the electrical energy supply would be much like the projection we made for heating and cooling of buildings, with the big impacts we see beginning in the 1980's, and increasing as we move into the end of the century. My projections were for the end of the century. Mr. UDALL. Well, I gathered from your chart that this goal of 35 percent of the building heating and cooling was not really going to begin to be reached until the year 2010, nearly 40 years from now. Is that right? Dr. EGGERS. This would be the kind of projection we would make with the current program plans. It is possible to accelerate these plans, and this is a determination that Congress and the administration will have to make. Mr. UDALL. Well, that is the point I want to get to. Here in the middle of an energy crisis with brown-outs and black-outs, the lights out all over this building yesterday, the total budget for solar energy, a ́ gather from your testimony, in this year, the fiscal year 1974, is $12 million. Is that right? Dr. EGGERS. Yes, sir. Mr. UDALL. To me that is a bad joke. Could the people in solar energy research not use 10 times that much money effectively? Dr. EGGERS. Well, the program has been growing quite rapidly, Mr. Chairman. As you noted, last year-or this fiscal year that we are completing now, we have a budget of about $4 million, so we are projecting a threefold increase for fiscal year 1974. Mr. UDALL. Well, if you start with virtually nothing and increase it 1,000 percent, you still have virtually nothing. I just share the feeling that Mr. Haley expressed here earlier. We have been heating and cooling homes for 30 years, you say. Australia has been doing it. We know all of these facts. The man from Honeywell on your film says that we are down mainly to problems of engineering design, and fabrication, and yet we seem to be proceeding-and I do not mean for this to be critical of you, I do not blame you for the size of the budget that we have, but it seems to me that we are going on-in a very leisurely fashion, saying that we have got 20, 30, 40 years until we will have a respectable impact on solving the Nation's energy problem. Dr. EGGERS. As I pointed out, Mr. Chairman, the program can be accelerated. This is a determination that the Congress and the administration will have to make. Mr. UDALL. If we told you that we were running out of gas and coal in 5 years from now and we had to have a crash program and put solar energy to work, surely you could take a NASA type program and expend a few hundred million dollars a year in this kind of research and development, could you not? Dr. EGGERS. Well, we certinly can accelerate it, yes, sir. Mr. UDALL. Is the problem one more of design and technology now, of applying what we already know, or are there breakthroughs to be made, scientific research breakthroughs still to be made in the solar energy research field? I got the impression from your testimony that there is nothing new. We know that wind will turn a windmill. We know that when sun comes down on your roof you can trap that heat, and heat water and cool the home and do other things. Are there basic scientific breakthroughs in this area that we are anticipating it would take 30 or 40 years to get to? Dr. EGGERS. Well, I believe, Mr. Chairman, if you categorize the challenge in just a few words, it would probably boil down to the economic challenge. For example, let's take the central power plant application. I do not think any of us would question that at this point in time we could go build a solar central thermal plant. The initial costs compared to a nuclear plant or fossil fuel plant vary from three to six times the current costs for those plants at the present time. Now, there are many assumptions in those costs. Among these are the lifetimes of the systems. |