Energy Transmission re: Remote Sites Key to Economic Development for the Arctic and Developing Regions GLENN A. OLDS+ Most students of economic development agree that low-cost, sustainable energy is a vital requirement for a viable, sustainable economy. Sources of energy (coal, oil, hydro, etc.) have become a major factor in anchoring the international monetary system since thepetro-dollar of the early seventies. While basic research, technology and applications have concentrated on energy sources and resources, renewed attention has been given to conserving and transmitting energy to contain the cost, in dollars and environmental stress, of energy production and consumption. Ironically, energy sources abound in the Arctic: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, wind, tide, forest and biomass, but the cost of transportation, transformation and transmission place them generally, financially, or physically beyond reach of the user needs around the world. The strategy of Alaska’s second-time Governor, Walter J. Hickel, has been to develop a comprehensive energy plan for the state, identifying and maximizing its world-class resources, and enlisting innovative science and technology in both development and transmission. One of the early frontiers in transmission technology first highlighted and demonstrated in 1903 by Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was in wireless energy beaming. Successive developments by Steinmetz and Marconi, William Brown of Raytheon (1959), Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little (1968), and James F. Triner of NASA (1982) have moved consideration of microwave power transmission to center-stage. More recent development of laser technology in energy beaming has converged to suggest the possibility of controlled experimentation in testing the viability, environmental soundness and economic feasibility of wireless energy transmission in Alaska. Alaska was thought to be an ideal setting for such experimental development: 1. It currently enjoys a visionary and courageous Governor interested in adaptation of the frontiers of science and technology to the solution of urgent human problems. 2. It has a Commissioner of Commerce and Economic Development who has served as Ambassador to the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council; President of “Bucky” Fuller’s International Design Science Institute concerned with GENI (Global Energy Network International)-, and former Chairman of the International f Commissioner, Department of Commerce and Development, Juneau, Alaska, U.S.A.
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