Solar power is clean. The air and water pollution associated with burning fossil fuels and the radiation dangers associated with nuclear energy are absent in the various solar energy technologies. One solar technology-bioconversion of waste matter to methane-even helps solve another pollution problem, municipal waste disposal.

Solar power is everywhere. While not all sections of the country and the world have equal amounts of energy intake from the sun, or insolation, sunlight is far more equally and universally available than any other energy source. Even in Maine, it is possible to make significant reductions in home heating bills through the use of solar heating technology. In Florida and the Southwest, the Sun has been powering domestic hot water systems since early in the century. Before long it will be powering home cooling systems as well.

Solar power is inexhaustible. Unlike oil and coal and uranium, it will last as long as our stars and our planet.

Solar power cannot be cornered by anyone. No OPEC or other cartel can cut off the supply of sunlight. No giant corporation can raise the price of "raw" insolation. And small business, through innovation and competition, can reduce the prices of the products we shall need to convert sunshine into the various forms of energy that power our society.

PALEY COMMISSION REPORT

Way back in 1952, the President's Materials' Policy Commission— the Paley Commission-pointed out that in 1950 this country consumed, every day, 540,000 more barrels of oil than it produced, resulting in net imports of 540,000 barrels a day. By 1975, the Commission predicted, our net imports of oil would reach 221⁄2 million barrels a day. The Commission's prophecy was in fact rather low. Our current net imports of oil are 6 million barrels a day.

The Commission, of course, had hedged its forecast by warning that its estimate of U.S. domestic production of 11.2 million barrels a day in 1975 might be high, and that warning has come true. Currently, U.S. production is under 9 million barrels a day.

In its celebrated and still-frequently-consulted final report, Resources for Freedom, the Paley Commission discussed two possible alternative energy sources: Nuclear electric power and solar energy development. More space was devoted in the report to the solar option than the nuclear option. Great promise as well as great problems were mentioned in connection with each of these alternative energy sources, but as I read the report, it seems fair to say that the Paley Commission expressed more hope for a significant solar contribution than a significant nuclear contribution to the Nation's energy system by 1975. I will put the excerpts in the record of this hearing, and you can draw your own conclusion.1

Somehow, the country took a different approach. After the Paley Commission closed up shop, development of nuclear electric power proceeded apace. But work on solar power was almost totally neglected. By 1973, our cumulative expenditures of Federal funds for "the peaceful atom"-nuclear electric research, development, and demonstration were over $5 billion, with private investment by big business in still larger amounts. But Federal spending for solar R.D. & D.

by that year was only about $1 million or less, and private investment was in small amounts, mostly by small businesses and individual inventors.

Since 1973, the country has been waking up rather rapidly to the great promise of the solar option. A recent Federal Energy Administration (FEA) press release-numbered E-75-1000 and dated March 29, 1975-tells us that in the 19-month period from July 1973 through January 1975, "to push solar energy development, 14 Federal agencies have sponsored 171 solar projects at a cost of $25.2 million." "

Right now, in the light of hindsight, it is sad-indeed tragic-to compare that $25.2 million, 19-month expenditure by 14 Federal agencies, in the mid-1970's, with the $38.5 million in Federal spending for nuclear electric power research in fiscal year 1954 alone. But that is water over the dam-or unconverted sunlight into the sunset, to use a more apt metaphor.

In these hearings, we are more interested in looking ahead than to the past. But some analysis of past Federal spending patterns and priorities, the results they produced, and the mistakes or omissions they included, will help us in planning better courses for the future.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

To provide a focus for discussion at the sessions today and tomorrow, the committee has circulated to witnesses and published in the Congressional Record (May 8, 1975, p. S7732) some 16 questions for which we shall be seeking answers.' But the thrust of all 16 may be restated more briefly in just 5 short questions:

Solar energy: How much can be converted to human use?

How much can be provided by small business?

How soon?

Why not more?

Why not sooner?

It is necessary to ask the last two questions because the answers we have been getting to the first three are so varied, so low, and so stretched out into the future.

In a summary form, the answers most of the experts and officials have been giving us to the first three questions are:

Not much.

Not much.

Not soon.

But lately the estimates have started to go up, rapidly and dramatically.

For example, a joint solar energy panel of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in late 1972 estimated that wind energy conversion-one of the oldest, simplest, and most promising solar energy technologies would provide 1 percent of our electricity by 2000.3 In early 1975, the NSF was reported to believe that 25 percent of our electricity could be wind-generated by 2000.*

1 See app. II-C, p. 859.

2 See exhibit 2, p. 10.

See exhibit 3, p. 12. A revised and expanded form of this table can be found in app. II-A,

p. 815.

The NSF-NASA solar panel report of 1972 estimated that photovoltaic electricity-generated by solar cells of the same general type long used on spacecraft would account for under 3 percent of our electricity needs in 2000.' But now the New York Times Magazine reports a new NSF estimate that photovoltaic generation will provide over 9 percent of our electricity in 2000.2

The estimated time of arrival at significant solar contributions to our national energy system is also being pushed forward.

In 1974, the General Electric Co., after making a half-million-dollar study financed with public funds through the NSF, estimated that only 1.6 percent of all national energy requirements for building heating and cooling could be met by solar systems by 2000. Westinghouse Corp. and TRW, Inc., makers of similar studies on identical grants, thought it might be 3.04 and 3.56 percent, respectively. TRW thought the solar contribution could reach 5.77 percent of all building heating and cooling energy by 2000, if a 25-percent tax credit incentive were provided.3

But NSF, early this year, estimated that we could be approaching 4 percent by 1985-some 15 years earlier than the year Westinghouse thought we could top 3 percent and GE thought we would still be under 2 percent.*

It is interesting to compare the country's actual past accomplishment in nuclear energy-accomplishment to which the high technology and industrial strengths of General Electric and Westinghouse made significant contributions-with the forecasts those two companies have made for future accomplishment in solar heating and cooling of buildings.

The "peaceful atom" as a source of electricity jumped from 0 to 6 percent in 20 years or less. Why, then, are GE and Westinghouse now predicting that in 25 years, starting now, solar energy will provide only 2 to 4 percent of total energy used for building heating and cooling, a far simpler technology than nuclear electric power generation?

The suspicion is almost unavoidable that these and other absurdly low estimates of the solar contribution during the next 25 years are projections not of what the estimators think this country could do, if it put forward anything like the money and effort that went into nuclear development or moonshots, but rather what they hope is the most the country will do. Not because doing so little is in the best interests of the great majority of Americans and other peoples of the world, but because doing more could possibly threaten existing investment in older technologies.

Such a threat may in fact be present in any rapid development of solar technologies; but the task of policymakers in the Government and private sector alike should be to find ways to make the transition as painless as possible, not to arrest or unduly delay a transition that is already long overdue.

THE SOLAR POTENTIAL

To assist me in comparing the estimates that have been made by various experts and agencies of our national potential for solar energy

1 Ibid.

2 See app. XI-F-1-k, p. 3466.

See exhibit 3 and app. II-A, op. cit.

development, the committee staff, aided by my own staff, has prepared a table. It was also inserted in the Congressional Record of May 8 and will be included in this record.' If one adds up the more optimistic estimates of the contribution that solar energy might be making in the year 2000, through various technologies and in various energy functions, and then reduces the total by one-third, the solar input to our energy system would still be close to three times our current annual oil imports from all the OPEC countries.

Because that achievement would mean so much to the preservation of our standard of living and our growth expectations, tempered by the new conservation ethic, we should strive to do no less. In fact, it should be our national goal to do more.

SMALL BUSINESS ROLE

While solar power development is worth pursuing solely in the interests of avoiding energy crises and to provide a safer basis for economic growth, it has another and special interest to this committee. Some of the solar technologies-heating and cooling of buildings especially are extremely well suited to small business at every level from manufacturing systems and systems components to installing and maintaining them.

Unfortunately, what this committee has been hearing from the small business pioneers of solar energy development is that, until very recently, solar energy has been tragically ignored and underrated by the American people and their Government. Now that, at long last, solar energy is "in," and destined to become very big, it is the small business pioneers that are being ignored and underrated.

In the hearings today and tomorrow, those concerns will be at the center of our attention.

SUBCOMMITTEE INTEREST

These hearings could reasonably be conducted by any of our subcommittees. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Monopoly, for example, I find myself especially interested in the economic aspects of the subject, and the great promise that solar energy holds for reducing economic and industrial concentration.

But the topic is also of particular interest to the Subcommittee on Government Regulation, chaired by the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. McIntyre, and to the Subcommittee on Government Procurement, chaired by the Senator from Maine, Mr. Hathaway.

Accordingly, these hearings on energy research and development and small business will be full committee hearings, and Senators McIntyre and Hathaway will alternate with me in chairing them.

At today's session, we shall hear three witnesses from the private sector, each of whom is the president of a small business concern and each of whom has an interest in solar energy development. We have invited several Federal agencies to have representatives present today, and at the end of the testimony of our three small business witnesses, any of those representatives who wishes to have a word included in the public record of today's session will be recognized for brief oral

comment. Tomorrow we shall receive prepared testimony from representatives of the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Federal Energy Administration. Other agencies have been invited to submit written statements at that time and may present oral testimony at some subsequent session.

Senator McIntyre will be conducting the hearing today, and Senator Hathaway will conduct tomorrow's hearing. I regret I cannot remain here for the hearing, since I have to make an appearance before another committee on some pending legislation very shortly.

I appreciate the witnesses taking time to come here today, and I turn the hearing over to Senator McIntyre.

[Testimony resumes at page 24. The exhibits referred to follow:]

1. EXCERPT FROM REMARKS IN THE SENATE BY SENATOR NELSON, "WITNESS LIST AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS ANNOUNCED FOR HEARINGS ON SOLAR ENERGY: HOW MUCH? HOW MUCH FROM SMALL BUSINESS? How Soon? WHY NOT MORE? WHY NOT SOONER?" THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, MAY 8, 1975

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, as I announced on April 25-RECORD, page S6792— the Senate Small Business Committee will open hearings on May 13 and 14 on energy research and development and small business.

These first 2 days in what we expect to be a series of hearings continuing intermittently over the next several months will be concerned with solar energy and small business.

The May 13 session will be in room 318 and the May 14 session in room 457 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The May 13 session will begin at 9:30 a.m. and the May 14 session at 10 a.m.

Senator McIntyre, chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Regulation, and Senator Hathaway, chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Procurement, will alternate with me in chairing these full committee hearings.

On May 13 our witnesses will be Dr. Jerry D. Plunkett, president, Materials Consultants, Inc., 2150 South Josephine Street, Denver, Colo. 80210; James R. Piper, president, Piper Hydro, Inc., 2895 East La Palma, Anaheim, Calif. 92806; and Barney Menditch, president, General Heating Engineering Co., 5919 Central Ave., Capitol Heights, Md. 20027 accompanied by James Norris, executive director, National Environmental Systems Contractors Association.

On May 14, our witnesses will be from the Energy Research and Development Administration, ERDA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, and the Federal Energy Administration, FEA. ERDA's testimony will be presented by Dr. John M. Teem, Assistant Administrator for Solar, Geothermal, and Advanced Energy Systems. The witness from HUD is still to be designated. The FEA will be represented by Donald B. Craven, Acting Assistant Administrator for Energy Resources and Development.

On both days, the committee has invited the Small Business Administration and the National Science Foundation-as well as ERDA, FEA, and HUD-to have well-informed representatives in attendance. They will also be afforded an opportunity to comment orally or in writing, or both, on the testimony of the witnesses from the private sector, and on the list of questions which we have circulated as a focus for discussion at these hearings.1

THE QUESTIONS PRESENTED

Our questions, among other things, seek to elicit testimony from the small business community on any deficiencies in Federal programs for solar research, development and demonstration, and in efforts to assure small business participation therein. Our private sector witnesses have indicated that they will offer some constructive criticism.