Daniel Weintraub: S. David Freeman has vision for oil-free energy

If you could capture and reuse half the energy that 81-year-old S. David Freeman generates every day, America might not be facing the grim future he lays out in his new book.

Freeman has advised presidents and governors, run huge public power authorities and managed Sacramento's relatively tiny municipal utility district. Now, as president of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, he is trying to relieve the congestion and pollution that economic growth has brought to Southern California's ports, a huge problem with global implications.

In his spare time, though, Freeman has crafted "Winning our Energy Independence," (Gibbs Smith, 2007) which is part memoir, part lecture, part recipe for an oil-free economy.

Freeman knows energy. He has run (and shut down) nuclear power plants, bought electricity created from coal and natural gas, and promoted alternatives. He served in the federal energy bureaucracy under Presidents Johnson and Nixon and was present, as a U.S. Senate aide, at the birth of the nation's automobile mileage standards. He ran the Tennessee Valley Authority for Jimmy Carter, the New York Power Authority for Mario Cuomo, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power under former Mayor Richard Riordan. He also tried to help former Gov. Gray Davis manage his way out of an electricity crisis prompted by a flawed attempt to restructure the industry into a more competitive marketplace.

"I've been on both sides of almost all these issues," he told me in an interview last week.

Indeed, while Freeman railed at private energy profiteers during California's electricity crisis, it turned out that the public L.A. power agency he ran was also taking advantage of market rules to maximize its revenue from the sale of electricity to the state's other consumers. He does know the power of incentives.

Freeman, though, is firmly on one side now, advocating a new era of government controls, regulation and subsidies to phase out fossil fuels and nukes and usher in an age of solar, wind and hydrogen power.

Freeman calls oil, coal and nuclear power the "three poisons," and says America's quest for more and more oil is the "greatest danger to humanity and the planet." If the pollution and greenhouse gases don't get us first, he says, the regimes we support with our petrodollars will.

"The impact of our dependence on imported oil is a huge anchor on the U.S. ship of state that influences our foreign policy and our domestic economy," Freeman writes. "In many ways our oil dependence has actually become our foreign policy."

With his Tennessee drawl and ever-present Stetson hat, Freeman projects the image of a good ol' boy. He has a friendly smile and a teacher's disposition. But his proposals are drop-dead serious.

His vision, essentially, is for a federalization of the energy industry. He wants the federal government to ban the construction of new coal-fired and nuclear power plants and begin a massive effort to subsidize research and use of alternative fuels while requiring automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of their cars by 1 mile per gallon per year for 20 years. He dreams of a nation of plug-in hybrid cars powered by electricity created from clean, renewable sources.

"We've got to put the sun in the gas tank," he says in a classic Freeman turn of phrase.

Here is another: "For every dollar's worth of petroleum, we've got a nickel's worth of solutions."

The government could balance those scales, he says, with a crash plan to develop large-scale solar power plants in the desert to complement the steady growth of solar power on urban rooftops. He wants to give big tax credits to motorists to make plug-in hybrid cars economical. And he's pushing for more tax-supported research of hydrogen power so that, eventually, we might see wide distribution of hydrogen fuel cells to store the electricity that solar and wind power can produce.

Freeman's ideas are nothing if not provocative. But throughout his book, he demonstrates one contradiction that many modern liberals possess: He is a bitter critic of government while at the same time being willing to put his life, and all of our lives, in its hands. He blasts the federal government for supporting nuclear power, which he says is a failed technology, but he has an almost blind faith in the government's ability to manage the electricity needs of 300 million people.

Freeman does acknowledge that his plan would take some time to roll out. Under his time line, it wouldn't be complete until, in all likelihood, he was long gone. But he says that's no reason not to start immediately.

"Unless we get started in earnest, we will always be 30 years out," he told me. "We just need to get over the hump of getting started."

The jacket of Freeman's book includes a quote from oilman T. Boone Pickens describing the author as an "environmental zealot." That's true. But he is an experienced, articulate and sometimes entertaining zealot.

Whether you are likely to buy what he's selling or the very thought of it sends chills up your spine, Freeman's book is worth reading.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Daniel Weintraub can be reached at (916) 321-1914 or at dweintraub@sacbee.com. Readers can see his blog about health care at www.sacbee.com/healthcare.