David Gordon Wilson: A Bold -- and Painless -- Way to Unleash Energy Innovation and Create Jobs
[David Gordon Wilson is emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. He wrote about the first version of this policy in the The Christian Science Monitor of March 15, 1974.]
The energy crisis from 1973 to 1981 was not a happy period for Americans, but it was also a time when entrepreneurs and engineers formed a huge number of new businesses aimed at producing low-cost solar cells, high-efficiency engines for automobiles, better insulation for our houses, and so on.
I worked in the energy field then, consulting for many of these small – and large – companies. One was Sanders Associates of Nashua, N.H., with which I worked on a 100-megawatt solar turbine plant that came close to becoming reality. It was an exciting time for thousands of businesses that were close to major solutions to different aspects of the energy shortage and the extraordinarily high price of oil.
And then around 1981 the price of oil collapsed. Most of the companies working on solutions to the energy problems were either closed down or severely cut back....
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The energy crisis from 1973 to 1981 was not a happy period for Americans, but it was also a time when entrepreneurs and engineers formed a huge number of new businesses aimed at producing low-cost solar cells, high-efficiency engines for automobiles, better insulation for our houses, and so on.
I worked in the energy field then, consulting for many of these small – and large – companies. One was Sanders Associates of Nashua, N.H., with which I worked on a 100-megawatt solar turbine plant that came close to becoming reality. It was an exciting time for thousands of businesses that were close to major solutions to different aspects of the energy shortage and the extraordinarily high price of oil.
And then around 1981 the price of oil collapsed. Most of the companies working on solutions to the energy problems were either closed down or severely cut back....