RIPPING OFF THE SUN

...And bureaucratic inertia, political timidity, and conflicting corporate designs will work against a rapid transformation...

...Indeed, when it comes to solar projects, some firms are trying to convince the Government that "large is beautiful...

...Harry Thomason is a good example of a pioneer neglected by the Government...

...Many of the largest aerospace firms (including Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, General Electric, Westinghouse, and Martin Marietta) are actively lobbying for Federal money to cover the initial investments in Sunsat...

...Government officials also fear that oligopolies or monopolies within the solar industry will raise the costs of solar equipment...

...Corporate executives want to work more closely with Tony...

...solar energy can be harnessed by individual home owners with simple devices built of local materials...

...Despite these public criticisms of solar's potential, the giant energy firms seem to be hedging their bets...

...But the photovoltaic cell is not the only solar technology being absorbed by giant energy firms...

...Through these procurements, the Government can help shape the growth of the solar industry...

...Some energy sources involve technologies that baffle all but a few specialists...

...The next few years offer our best opportunity to mold the growing solar industry to serve the public interest...

...Governor Jerry Brown projects that solar "will be a $4 billion to $7 billion Richard Munson is the coordinator of Solar Lobby in Washington, D.C...

...Between them, Exxon and ARCO will soon control more than half the industry...

...industry by the 1980s" in California alone...

...energy by the year 2000...

...The trend toward large firms continues in DOE's solar programs, despite the feasibility of turning over much development work to small businesses...

...Some energy sources will tend to reduce the size of the workforce...

...The $130 million project is being constructed by McDonnell-Douglas and will produce electricity for Southern California Edison...

...Its critics contend that the microwaves are harmful, that the S60 billion price tag is too high, that the satellite would be difficult to protect from sabotage or enemy attack, and that the energy required to build and launch the satellite would exceed the amount it could produce for many years...

...In fact, only 2.6 per cent of the agency's prime contracts in 1977 went to small businesses...

...Ripping off the sun Big oil, with a boost from the Government, is sinking its hooks into solar power Richard Munson Not a month goes by without one large corporation or another offering Tony Clifford a lot of money...

...This demand alone equals 33 per cent of all U.S...

...And later this year, they will lobby the Congressional Small Business Committees to draft legislation to ensure that small firms receive a larger portion of DOE's research grants and procurement contracts...

...The solar community is divided on the issue of large corporate involvement...

...According to Roger Little of the small Spire Corporation, "It just might be that the DOE procurement program forces us to sell out to some oil company...

...will not be smooth or painless...

...In 1978, Congress approved $75 million in direct and guaranteed loans for small businesses wishing to enter some aspect of the solar market...

...Alfred Dougherty, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition, is concerned that the oil firms would suppress the development of solar energy...

...Of the nine major photovoltaics firms, eight have been purchased by large corporations, five of those by major oil companies...

...Instead, they usually claim that solar technology should not be supported above conventional energy sources because it cannot make any significant energy contribution in this century...

...Schumacher's contention that solar energy is a "technology with a human face, conducive to decentralization...

...Pacific Gas and Electric, a large California investor-owned utility, recently spent $900,000 to present the same anti-solar message...

...Regrettably, Federal support of the solar work of large corporations is pervasive...

...Of course, the Department has long been known to prefer large corporations to small...

...On the one hand, these companies play a subtle political game...

...Last year Business Week published a special report on "The Coming Boom in Solar Energy...

...The arguments favoring a turn toward solar energy are well known...

...Later this year, citizen groups will work with committees headed by Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative Morris Udall to investigate legislation that would divest oil companies of their solar energy holdings...

...solar sources are best used at dispersed locations...

...If [oil] companies control substantial amounts of substitute fuels, and they act in their rational self-interest, they may slow the pace of production of alternative fuels in order to protect the value of their oil and gas reserves," Dougherty says...

...Although solar energy is not a social and environmental panacea, it does provide us with an important opportunity: We can mold the growing solar industry to serve the public interest...

...They have remained independent...

...If President Carter's modest goal of 2.5 million solar home collectors is to be met by 1985 (with an average collector size of 250 square feet), between 256,000 and 512,000 short tons of copper will be required...

...Some solar advocates contend the Department of Energy is, in effect, ., giving the solar industry to the large energy firms...

...But the most significant argument against the oil companies' involvement in solar technology development was presented by the Federal Trade Commission: "The trend toward diversified energy companies, if allowed to continue, threatens to limit decision-making in the crucial energy market to a few powerful firms...

...They also share E.F...

...Citizen groups are also working on a variety of other measures to promote small solar firms...

...front entrenched oligopolies or monopolies in lengthy and costly legal battles...

...Some energy sources invite profiteering cartels...

...The other firms producing solar cells have not...

...To make the solar transition, the Federal Government must give renewable energy technologies a fair shake in the energy marketplace...

...But the movement for solar energy and for local control of our energy future grows stronger after each OPEC price increase, each nuclear accident, and each shortage of some petroleum-based fuel...

...This attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy has been promoted by several major oil firms...

...Tony produces solar cells, technically called photovoltaics...

...The Justice Department already has a program that effectively stops the major oil companies from acquiring more Federal coal lands...

...The Barstow "power tower" consists of 2,200 giant mirrors that focus sunlight on a boiler atop a 500-foot concrete tower...

...Even Government programs for demonstrating solar collectors at homes throughout the country have been steered to the larger firms...

...But others in the solar community believe that the solar transition should amount to more than a simple substitution of windmills for coal-fired plants, of photovoltaic cells for nuclear reactors, and of solar collectors for oil derricks...

...Any decision an oil company makes concerning the production or development of substitute fuels would logically take into account its effect on the value of the company's existing oil and gas reserves and related capital assets...

...According to Jo Graves, senior vice president of Exxon's Ventures Corporation, "The management skills, financial resources, and research and development capabilities of companies such as Exxon can be effectively brought to bear on bringing solar energy to fruition...

...The intensity of this concern about such concentration of power reflects the oil firms' past practices...

...Another outsized project is being constructed in California's Mojave Desert...

...The next few years will probably determine the direction of our energy transition from the use of petroleum-based fuels...

...All but two were solar subsidiaries of large American corporations, including Exxon, Asarco, and Grumman...

...has apparently been abused in a variety of ways, ranging from bribery to political intervention in the internal affairs of foreign nations...

...Sunsat's supporters pointedly say that there is no night in space and that a single space station could produce almost twice the output of the Grand Coulee Dam...

...But Congressional investigators believe that even if the oil firms do not actually suppress development, large firms would retard innovation...

...Solar sources already contribute 5 per cent and, according to a Federal interdepartmental task force, the United States could obtain 25 to 30 per cent of its energy from solar sources by the year 2000...

...That interest is perhaps best expressed by the FTC's Alfred Dougherty: "The goal is to limit or diffuse centralized economic power and to increase the number of decision-making units in the market...

...After years of prodding, the Department of Energy spent $198,000 to test Thomason's system, finding it just as efficient as higher-priced collectors...

...Since the technology enjoys such widespread popular support, they do not publicly oppose a solar vision...

...Solar advocates are lobbying DOE to expand its Massachusetts test program that provides venture capital to small solar firms through a separate financing corporation...

...The effort to prevent the formation of centralized power in a new industry has never been made before...

...But the size and nature of the investments indicate that controlling a major portion of the solar industry is the goal...

...Such giants as Westinghouse, Bechtel, and Lockheed are not far behind...

...The transition to an economy based on decentralized solar technologies will not be smooth or painless — for Tony Clifford or for the rest of us...

...Denis Hayes of the Solar Lobby points out: "Tapping some energy sources demands ever-increasing centralization...

...In fact, they want to own his company...

...According to William Winpisinger, president of the International Association of Machinists (AFL-CIO), "If we don't get a handle on private industry profiteering we should nationalize all forms of energy...

...The large oil companies' approach to solar technology development reflects apparent contradictions...

...But Tony is rare among his kind...

...A recent report of the House Small Business Antitrust Subcommittee states that "smaller business is not only a prolific producer of innovation, but a more efficient producer than larger business as well...

...In 1958, Thomason built his first solar home, and he now installs the same collector at approximately one-third to one-sixth the cost of other solar heating systems...

...According to the Federal Trade Commission, "the availability of copper at stable prices will be essential to the orderly growth of the American solar heating and cooling industry over the next decade...

...Either the huge subsidies ($14 billion in 1979 alone) the Government now gives to conventional energy sources must be eliminated — unlikely, given the strength of the vested interests promoting coal, oil, and nuclear power — or equivalent incentives must be granted solar energy...

...Although many opportunities for helping small business will occur on the state and local level, the Federal Government must wield its unique power to direct needed capital to small firms...

...But those advantages are most clear when compared with our other energy choices...

...Despite the White House Office of Science and Technology's comment that the project is "economically unpromising," the Department of Energy continues to spend approximately 15 per cent of its total solar budget for the "power tower...

...solar sources promise large numbers of new jobs...

...Solar Lobby, for example, recently released its 1980 Counter Budget, calling for a doubling of the Carter Administration's proposed solar effort and directing more of the funding toward commercialization projects managed by small businesses...

...According to John Shenefield, Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division, the practice is not unusual...

...Through recent acquisitions, the oil industry has increased its control to 63 per cent of all domestic copper production...

...Solar technologies are becoming big business...

...Besides absorbing other companies, the oil firms have made less conspicuous moves to gain control of the solar industry's growth...

...Sunsat," as the" seventy-two square-mile (larger than Manahattan) satellite is called, would beam microwave radiation down to huge reception-and-relay stations on Earth...

...solar energy can lead to nothing more dangerous than a leaky roof...

...Almost 70 per cent of the $6 million available through the Department of Housing and Urban Development's solar demonstration program for 1977 went to seven major corporate solar manufacturers...

...On one side are solar advocates who believe that only large companies, especially large oil firms, can offer the investment capital needed to develop solar energy equipment...

...Despite the revolutionary conclusions, the Federal Government withheld the report for several years and refused to give Thomason any contracts...

...Last year, the groups successfully blocked a budget increase in the Senate Energy Committee on the very day the large aerospace firms were holding a party across town to celebrate their earlier victory in the House...

...The large corporations have also misguided the Government, luring Federal and public financing away from the development of the decentralized applications that Schumacher endorsed...

...Citizen groups are now lobbying Congress to appropriate more money and to have the Small Business Administration aggressively promote the program...

...Most rankling are the proprietary claims on the resources necessary for the solar transition, especially copper...

...Prevention of centralized power requires promoting small businesses while preventing Government from aiding large corporations to control new industries...

...An industry without competition, or a firm or groups of firms with an ability to force up the price of a product by restricting its supply — an ability we call 'market power' — will usually do so...

...solar sources would tend to narrow the gap between rich and poor — both within and among countries...

...At the same time, citizen groups will lobby to kill additional appropriations for such centralized solar applications as the solar/microwave satellite...

...But small businesses are suspicious of the unrealistically low bids some large corporations are making for Government contracts, and fear that the oil companies will take on development work at a loss to gain control of the industry...

...Public interest advocates and the Government's antitrust attorneys usually con'The transition...

...But more important, the solar/microwave satellite is yet another centralized technology whose power is controlled by a few elite manufacturers and technicians...

...According to the Critical Mass Energy Project, 88.7 per cent of DOE's funds for solar research and development during 1978 went to big businesses...

...Some dangerous sources can be permitted widespread growth only under authoritarian regimes...

...On the other 1 hand, the top ten firms accounted for approximately 47 per cent of the con- ' tract money...

...The giant oil companies already control a dangerously high percentage of this country's energy resources...

...One of the strongest protections against big business domination of the solar industry is to have the Government restrict the giant energy firms from participating in the solar markets...

...Some of the oil companies see their roles as more than those of financiers...

...In a world of rising energy prices, Tony's ability to convert abundant sunlight into electricity is admired, even relished...

...The Mid-Peninsula Conversion Project goes so far as to assert that "control of solar energy by large corporations would reduce itsjob-creation potential, keep costs higher than would otherwise be possible, retain low public accountability, provide environmentally destructive energy, tie up massive amounts of capital, and suppress innovative programs capable of responding to community needs...

...Twelve of the top twenty-five solar companies are controlled by firms with annual sales greater than $1 billion, including Exxon, General Electric, General Motors, Alcoa, and Grumman...

...The investments Exxon, ARCO, Shell, and Chevron have made in photovoltaic firms are relatively minor items in their portfolios...

...Competing energy sources will be vigorously championed by powerful vested interests...

...A full 70 per cent of the expenditures were received by such well-known firms as Rockwell International, Martin Marietta, General Electric, McDonnell-Douglas, and Westinghouse Electric...

...Many of the Government's antitrust experts are also skeptical of oil company involvement...

...According to recent Congressional studies, the eight largest oil companies control 64 per cent of all proven oil reserves, 60 per cent of all natural gas, and 45 per cent of all known uranium reserves...

...In addition to funding research, DOE has been charged by Congress with purchasing solar equipment for Federal buildings and Government installations...

...So far, he and his colleagues at Solarex have resisted the large sums the big oil companies tempt them with...

...Perhaps the largest of these yellow elephants is the solar or microwave satellite...

...In 1978, the Shell Oil Company projected that solar sources could contribute only 6 per cent of U.S...

...Some solar advocates believe even more dramatic actions should be taken to prevent big corporations from casting a shadow over the sun...

...Mobil Oil, for example, launched an expensive media campaign shortly after Sun Day to convince Americans that "a solar powered economy is a lovely idea and a worthy goal, but still a long, long way off...

...That history is most succinctly stated by the FTC's Dougherty: "The oil companies' substanial political and economical power...

...Some of the long-time solar pioneers were excluded from the program because, ironically, their systems were too cheap...

...copper production in 1974, and the oil companies are determined not to let such an opportunity slip through their hands...