When all the plants in a region are running at full steam, there is simply no way to get more power.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The more energy-efficient we become as a nation, the less we need to develop additional energy sources.
Mode of providing steam power to locomotives.
I am very focused on large-scale deployments of renewable power and how we're going to get this done. Imagine our military bases covered with solar thermal collectors that could generate steam and electricity.
The source of all the energy is the sun. The big challenge is, how do you use all of that energy? Solar power has to fascinate you. There have been strides to get the costs down, and if this will work, you have to get costs down so it is competitive with fossil fuels.
You all know how powerful and varied are the effects of which steam engines are capable; with them has really begun the great development of industry which has characterised our century before all others.
You don't build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.
This entrepreneurial energy that we have in the Midwest doesn't have to go out to the coasts to get fed and watered.
Why? Because we're very well down this process as it is - flawed as it is - and we're counting on getting more power plants on line by the end of 2003 so we have a surplus of power.
The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn't always where you want to use it, and it isn't always when you want to use it.
We started focusing on this in earnest late summer and early fall. I can build more power plants. In the 12 years before us, not a single plant of major consequence was built.