editorial

Teaming Up

by John G. Falcioni, Editor-In-Chief

In past years, Mechanical Engineering magazine and ASME's International Gas Turbine Institute have collaborated on areas of mutual interest. With this issue, Power & Energy magazine becomes the official publication of the 50th Turbo Expo, which is scheduled for June 6–9 in Reno, Nev.

Besides the designation, Power & Energy will now include IGTI's Global Gas Turbine News, a newsletter with information on the Institute, its members, and the technology of gas turbines.

We believe that the inclusion of Global Gas Turbine News enhances the value of Power & Energy to our readers, while also providing great value to IGTI. The mission of the Institute is to support the international exchange and development of information to improve the design, applications, manufacture, operation and maintenance, and environmental impact of all types of gas turbines and related equipment.

We are honored to be working with IGTI and to help support and enhance its impact on the gas turbine industry.

Dismantling the Barriers by Jeffrey Winters, Supplement Editor

One of my favorite calculations computes the land area that must be covered with photovoltaic cells to provide all the electricity consumed in the United States. The answer—some 10,000 square miles—is both inconceivably large and surprisingly insignificant. The total surface area in the United States covered by roads, sidewalks, rooftops, and other hard, man-made material is more than 43,000 square miles, or about the area of Ohio. Just by appending PV cells to suburban rooftops and erecting solar collecting roofs over shopping mall parking lots, we could supplant every generating station in the country. In theory. But, in fact, it won't happen like that, even if you agree with all the assumptions built into the calculation. It isn't that solar energy is too diffuse or that PV panels are prohibitively expensive. Our society, for better or worse, can't do such things. What state, county, or suburban shopping mall is going to volunteer to be glassed over for the greater good of the nation? There are barriers to other energy alternatives, as well. Galen J. Suppes and Truman S. Storvick have studied the barriers to developing synthetic fuel in the United States and have found that it isn't the state of the technology standing in the way. In fact, given a reasonable set of economic assumptions, oil made from Wyoming coal could be profitable today. What keeps such businesses from flourishing are modern business practices and a tax structure that punishes manufacturing and rewards imports. Suppes and Storvick lay out their case in their article, "No Way Out?" (in this issue). But unlike the roadblocks to an all-photovoltaic future, these barriers could be surmounted quite easily. Congress and the president have already put tax reform on the agenda. Removing the disincentives to develop a domestic synthetic fuel industry—and, more generally, to the manufacturing sector—would be a welcome outcome.

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© 2005 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers