The most important green investment

Earlier this week, in the second U.S. Presidential Debate, moderator Tom Brokaw asked the candidates whether they favored a "Manhattan Project"-like approach to funding research and development into alternative power, or "letting a thousand flowers bloom" with smaller investments by many different companies and organizations. As usual, neither candidate really answered the question. Tom didn't ask me, but here's my opinion:

In general, I think that having many organizations taking many different approaches to the problem is the best way to go. However, there is one area in which a massive, coordinated R&D project could make an enormous difference, and that is battery technology. Batteries are essential for storing energy from solar cells and wind turbines, as well as powering automobiles and leveling out demands on power plants, yet battery chemistry has advanced very little in the last 20 years. Improvements are needed in:

• Power density--the amount of power that a battery can store in a given mass.
• Recharging time--it needs to take minutes, rather than hours, to recharge the batteries before all-electric cars will be truly practical.
• Safety/toxicity--batteries must be safe to use in a wide range of environmental conditions, and they must be easily recyclable.
• Cost--the cost to get the above three improvements must not be so high as to make the resulting batteries economically impractical for consumer applications.

Batteries are an area where individual groups doing R&D aren't making the progress needed by not just the U.S., but the entire world. That's why I think that this is one area where a coordinated effort, on a national or international level, is needed. The value of bringing the next generation of battery technology to market is greater than any single country's interests.