An excellent overview of this concept that has been floating out there since the 1970's, and why it still doesn’t (as yet anyway) make as much sense as the market.
An excerpt.
New Manhattan Project? Waste of energy
By Max Schulz
The Manhattan Institute Jul. 30, 2006 12:00 AM
An idea gaining currency these days is that the United States needs a new Manhattan Project to solve our nation's energy problems. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is just the latest to propose a massive federal government effort to develop alternatives to petroleum and cut U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. He suggested it pursue these goals with the urgency of the World War II era project that rushed to develop the atomic bomb.
A number of other prominent voices claim the Manhattan Project provides a good template for dealing with our energy problems. The New York Times' Thomas Friedman routinely cites the need for a Manhattan Project on energy. So have Bill Clinton's political strategist, Dick Morris, and Frank Gaffney of the Set America Free coalition. Various editorial pages around the country have made similar calls for a concerted federal effort to deliver energy independence.
They might as well be calling for a new federal Department of Alchemy to turn lead into gold. The idea of a Manhattan Project for energy is a bad one and provides the wrong way of looking at our energy supply challenges and their attendant geopolitical concerns.
This modern Manhattan Project mind-set says that if only we were to get serious and devote enough resources, we could invent an alternative to oil and solve the 21st-century energy problems our country faces. By "we," proponents actually mean the federal government. And by "resources," they mean your tax dollars.
It won't work. The chief reason is that the type of challenges we face today are so wholly different from the type faced during World War II. The original Manhattan Project brought together the Free World's most brilliant minds to invent the atomic bomb. They were in a race against time; the Nazis were working toward the same goal. Money was no object. With the fate of civilization at stake, the cost to develop the Bomb was of minimal concern. Simply, the Manhattan Project's challenge was technological, not economic.
Our present energy challenges have it the other way around. This problem is not technological. We already have all sorts of alternatives to crude oil, gasoline and the internal-combustion engine. These include (but are not limited to) synthetic fuels, hydrogen and ethanol. The problem with these alternative technologies and fuels is that they aren't economical.
