by Sterling D. Allan
Copyright © 2006

(Edited by Steve Kaplan and Mary-Sue Haliburton. The full version can be found here.)

Co-sponsored by Integrity Research Institute and the New Energy Movement, the second Conference on Future Energy (COFE) was held on the weekend of Sept. 22-24 in Washington, DC. Highly-respected leaders in the fields of cutting-edge energy research, also prominent in government, universities and publicly-traded companies, offered practical solutions to the grave problems that face our planet due to our dependence on fossil fuels.

Electric Vehicles
The conference opened on Friday night with a screening of the new movie, "Who Killed the Electric Car?", which documents the crushing and shredding by GM of their EV-1 model. It was precisely because the cars needed little service and no fuel input that drivers loved them, and the U.S. Government joined with the Oil and Automobile industries to eliminate them. Even the California energy commission sold out, endorsing the fuel-cell concept instead, which is years - if not decades - away from being practical.

Following the screening, the key activist featured in the movie, Chelsea Sexton, addressed the conference in a lively question-and-answer session. She continues to promote electric vehicles through PlugInAmerica.com, which recommends converting fuel-driven vehicles into electric, and hybrids into plug-in.

The opening speaker on Saturday morning was Dennis Bushnell, a leading scientist at NASA, who gave a brilliant overview of the need for clean energy solutions, a time-line for implementation, and remedial actions including extreme measures that might be taken if CO2 emissions are not curbed. He also gave a presentation on a biomass technology that doesn't need scarce fresh water: halophylic (salt-tolerant) plants grown using sea water, then converted into fuel.

Fusion
That evening the "Integrity in Research Award" for unique contributions to Energy Research was given to Dr. George Miley, Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois. Miley is also Director of the Fusion Studies Laboratory. He spoke about dense plasma focus technology, which is one of the original approaches to fusion power.

At the Saturday night banquet, the keynote speaker was Dr. Fabrizio Pinto. In addition to serving on numerous academic posts over the years, Pinto holds multiple intellectual properties and has written several award-winning articles in the field. As founder of the Interstellar Technologies Corporation to commercialize "Zero Point Energy", Pinto gave an entertaining and educational PowerPoint presentation on the subject. He considers ZPE the most exciting and promising business adventure on the planet today.

Cold Fusion
Russ George, of D2Fusion, built a strong case with solid scientific evidence for cold fusion as real, repeatable, and feasible as an energy source. His publicly-traded company (SLRE.ob) has received significant funding. With the collaboration of Dr.Martin Fleischman, who conducted the original cold fusion experiments with Dr. Pons, the company expects to have a cold-fusion heater ready for market as soon as 2007.

George also described another passion of his, the planting of 100,000,000 trees. He compared the CO2 levels on the planet to "shock treatment" of a swimming pool with a high dose of chlorine. Ocean productivity is down 80%. To correct this, his company, Planktos Inc, deposits iron into the ocean, restoring the bottom of the feeding pyramid by providing nutrients necessary for plankton growth.

Tidal Power
Martin Burger presented {a talk about} his company, Blue Energy, which is harnessing tidal power. After many years of designing turbines and building prototypes to test, the company is now beginning commercial installations. Scotland, an area with high tidal flow and with a need for inter-island transportation, is likely to install the first bridge that doubles as a tidal dam. This will produce energy at a cost as low as two cents per kilowatt-hour, well below that of conventional methods.

His company also has a 250 kW stand-alone generator that can produce at around four to six cents per kilowatt-hour. No fish mortality has yet been discovered with any of the Blue Energy prototypes. Patrick Bailey, president of the Institute for New Energy (INE), noted that INE had listed Blue Energy several years ago as being the most commercially ready of all the promising clean energy technologies. "And it still is," he said.

Hydrogen and Solar
James Dunn, Chief Technology Officer of the Center for Technological Commercialization, gave an overview of all aspects of hydrogen, its advantages and disadvantages. He has tracked the fuel cell industry very closely, and has installed a fuel cell in an airplane himself. However, his assessment is that fuel cells are not feasible in the near term due to high cost. Honda's FCX concept fuel-cell vehicle, for example, has a sticker price of Yen $100 Million (US $859,000).

In his second presentation Dunn outlined a new solar technology that provides a silicon substitute at greater efficiencies and lower costs than silicon.

Spiral Electromagnet Motor
Dr. Ted Loder spoke about various spiral magnet motor designs, including some experiments he has pursued. The objective of the spiral design, patterned after the Wankel engine, is to use an electromagnet to provide the kick needed at the end of the spiral to then repeat the cycle again. No over-unity systems have ever been achieved using this principle.

Other Energy Technologies
On Saturday afternoon, Dr.TomValone, conference organizer and head of the Integrity Research Institute, covered current inefficent energy practices, such as the waste of two thirds of the electricity transferred via the present grid. Wireless transmission, originally introduced by Nikola Tesla, is a feasible and much more efficient feasible alternative that should be pursued. He also provided an overview of other new energy technologies he believes deserve recognition and support.

Pal Asija spoke about intellectual-property strategy for emerging technologies. John Thomas, Jr. gave insights into the operation of Professor Searl's and other "inverse gravity vehicle" technologies. Prof. Daniel Fraser spoke about near-surface geothermal energy.

On Sunday, each of the groups with tables in the exhibit hall were given five minutes to present. Patrick Bailey of INE said that he is now focusing his attention on matching significant funding with worthy technologies.

Eddie Sines of Potomac Energy LLC gave a very brief overview of his patented and patent-pending technology that proposes to use superconductors and photons to extract kinetic electrical energy from static magnetic energy. Sines needs around $100,000 to complete a proof-of-concept prototype and thinks he could bring it to market within a year of that milestone. The device's high-energy density could make this the most affordable and clean energy technology yet proposed.

Stoyan Sargoytchev, PhD, introduced the theoretical zero-point work he is doing in conjunction with the Space Instrumentation Laboratory Centre for Research in Earth & Space Science in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has authored a book titled Basic Structures of Matter: Supergravitational Unified Theory.

Sterling Allan gave a brief overview of the New Energy Congress, whose purpose is to review various energy technology claims and weigh them against a set of fixed criteria to find and showcase those that are renewable, clean, affordable, reliable, and safe, and not least, scientifically credible.

Joel Garbon, President of the New Energy Movement (NEM), gave a quick overview of this non-profit 501c3 organization's efforts to provide support for cutting-edge energy technology and raise public awareness of new energy R&D in order to expedite its implementation. NEM co-sponsored this Conference on Future Energy. In 2004, NEM's kick-off conference provided non-technical information and insight to citizens and begin to rally public support for creating a new energy economy. For more information, contact Steve Kaplan, Executive Director, at 503-297-7348 or Stephenkap@gmail.com.