Editor’s Note: Our political leaders routinely take a “so let it be written, so let it be done” approach to green energy, erecting impediments to carbon (and nuclear) energy in a simplistic attempt to coerce the private sector into making wind and solar work.
I've encountered this same problem dozens of times over the years. As a science and technology analyst, senior leaders would always want the picture drawn that connects basic research investments into production outcomes in a "pipeline". As in, "show me how funding for applied physics in nanotechnology delivers me better body armor in X years." Well, I couldn't do that. Nanotechnology has a LOT of challenges that need to be first understood, then maybe applied and tested, and then maybe we get an engineering capability (maybe) and THEN we still have to solve for "production". That last part is REALLY hard as nano-sized bots, well, you need many billions of them to produce a substantive thing. And how do you produce many billions of atomic-scale bots in a limited time? Self-replication. Uh-oh. How do we control that? Well, there are theories...perhaps we'll have a breakthrough at some point.
This is the nature of science and technology. It's not just money and labor and outcomes.
I've encountered this same problem dozens of times over the years. As a science and technology analyst, senior leaders would always want the picture drawn that connects basic research investments into production outcomes in a "pipeline". As in, "show me how funding for applied physics in nanotechnology delivers me better body armor in X years." Well, I couldn't do that. Nanotechnology has a LOT of challenges that need to be first understood, then maybe applied and tested, and then maybe we get an engineering capability (maybe) and THEN we still have to solve for "production". That last part is REALLY hard as nano-sized bots, well, you need many billions of them to produce a substantive thing. And how do you produce many billions of atomic-scale bots in a limited time? Self-replication. Uh-oh. How do we control that? Well, there are theories...perhaps we'll have a breakthrough at some point.
This is the nature of science and technology. It's not just money and labor and outcomes.
Reminds me of: “Cheap, Fast and Good Quality: Pick two.”
True.
I'd suggest you can't even get two of those three in green energy.