We’ll Step Aside and Let Others Lead the OTEC Cheering

Thomas Fuller, for example. He measures progress in fighting global warming by counting up the new patents that have been granted for innovative green-energy processes.

Fuller says 46 ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) patents have been filed in the past five years – 10 this year, which he says is disappointingly low. “I’m a big fan of OTEC…,” he says.

OTEC’s the reason we started this blog in the first place, so we’re obviously among the fans, too. So how about letting loose some big-time Department of Energy funds to kick start an OTEC plant right here in Hawaii?!

OTEC’s the long-tern answer to getting off oil. We know it, they know it – heck, Hawaii's Favorite Son Barack Obama knows it!

So let’s go with more of that OTEC funding. $100 million dropped on one of the major OTEC proponent companies could be enough to actually launch a plant here within just a few years. Lockheed Martin says a pilot plant could be operating by 2013.

There's no reason to wait.