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Show Utah. This is a lot to contemplate contem-plate for sure, but it's something some-thing we must face squarely square-ly and deal with in terms of the future, not just today. The potential is there if we only treat it wisely. CONGRESSIONAL REPORT BY DAN MARRIOTT I ran across an unique concept the other day that put the energy problem in America in perspective for me. I'd like to share it with you. When we measure energy, recession in 40 years. All of that was due to the lack of 1 quad of energy. Last year we had a natural nat-ural gas shortage. Thousands Thou-sands of plants were closed down, and millions of people peo-ple were laid off of their jobs. There was great suffering suf-fering and even death because be-cause of it. All of that was due to the lack of 12 quad. So you see the magnitude of the problem. If we are to fill that 32-quad 32-quad gap, some changes in energy production will have to take place. Conservation is obviously not the complete com-plete answer. There are some increases we can plan on. If we complete the nuclear power plants now on the drawing draw-ing boards, we can knock that gap down to 26 quads a year, but that's still not enough. Here's what I think the solution is: (1) First, we need to develop the fast breeder nuclear reactor. If we don't, we will be the only country in the hemisphere without it. (2) Second, we need to take the shackles off private pri-vate industry and deregulate oil and natural gas. (3) Third, we need to dig 400 new coal mines and improve the coal transportation sys -tern, beefing up the railroad system and developing the coal slurry. We need to convert coal to synthetic fuels, making oil and natural nat-ural gas out of it. Then there is Utah's sleeping sleep-ing energy giant oil shale. There is enough shale in the U.S. to keep us warm for 2,000 years, and 13 of it is in Utah. It needs only to become economically feasible feas-ible to benefit our state and the naton. That is only part of the solution. The resources we are not using will some day run out. For the long run we need to start moving into geothermal energy (Utah is already a prime development area of geothermal research). re-search). And finally, there is the "energy source of the future," fu-ture," solar energy. Though is will only give us 3 quads annually at best by the year 2000, it's a good source because be-cause it's virtually inexhaustible. inexhaus-tible. And it may surprise you to know that there is evidence not that the great Salt Lake could become the greatest solar furnace in the history of the nation and potentially po-tentially provide all the electricity for the state of it can be thought of like yards on a football field, only instead of yards we use "quads." A quad is a quadrillion quad-rillion (that is 1 with 15 zeros behind it) BTU's (British (Brit-ish thermal units). It is the equivalent of 7 12 billion , gallons of gasoline, enough to run 10 million automobiles automo-biles for 1 year. Or it's 46 million tons of coal, enough to fill a string of railroad rail-road cars from New York City to Alaska. Or, put another way, a quad is the total energy that would be used by a city of 1 million people in 3 years. In 1977 we will have used 73 quads in this country. By the year 2000, if we keep up the same rate of increase in-crease we've had since 1930, we will need 170 quads per year. If we adopt Carters's "energy" "en-ergy" plan, we put the emphasis em-phasis on conservation rather ra-ther than production. I can accept the conservation concept, con-cept, but I'm afraid it won't be enough. By the year 2000 we could save 65 quads a year under Carter's conservation conser-vation plan. That means the energy needs in this country coun-try will be approximately 105 quads a year, a 45 increase over this year's 73 quads. If we continue to produce only 73 quads a year, we will be short 32 quads each year by the year 2000. To bring the problem even closer into focus, consider this: In 1973 we had the Arab oil embargo that threw this country into turmoil and helped bring about the biggest |