I had the opportunity to read in the
Congressional Record, at the time they were going on, the debates regarding the Energy Security Act. The primary focus in the short term was going to be on coal liquefication and gassification, combined with conservation and fuel efficiency efforts to control demand. It was estimated at that time that there was, based on projections of future energy usage, enough energy locked up in the massive coal reserves of the United States to meet
ALL of our energy needs for at least 500, and possibly as much as 700 years, which would allow ample time for renewable energy technologies like solar, wind, geothermal, etc. to mature. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation would have overseen America's transition to coal-based fuels. The other parts of the act were research programs, not anything that they really thought would make a major contribution in the near term.
It was understood at the time the act was passed that, in the short term, the price of synthetic, coal-based oil production would be higher than the cost of importing oil. However, as more plants were brought on line, the technology gradually improved, and the supply of oil worldwide began to dwindle, it was expected that the cost would come down to a point where it would, in the long term, be more competitively priced than imported oil would be. And indeed, the cost of synthetic, coal-based crude oil today, using current technology (which did not benefit from the extra resources which would have been devoted to its development if the Energy Security Act had not been axed),
would be approximately 30% cheaper than petroleum-based crude oil, and if the Energy Security Act had not been axed, we'd have the production infrastructure in place today to produce it in mass quantities.
The Energy Security Act represented long-term thinking, which is exactly what we needed to do to solve our energy problems. Unfortunately, short-term thinking (and lots of bribes...excuse me, campaign contributions...from the oil industry, which hated the act) ultimately prevailed.