Advertisement
Harry Foust just didn’t know at the time how slowly that would be.
When Foust wrote that sentence in 1980 to open a paper about extracting clean, renewable energy from the ocean, the news headlines didn’t look all that different than today.
Political conflict in the Middle East had sent the price of oil to crisis levels.
The Department of Energy supported research into energy sources other than fossil fuels.
And engineers such as Foust, who worked at Trane Co. on alternative energy concepts at the time, had plenty of work.
But things changed.
Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president Jan. 20, 1981.
American hostages in Iran were released the same day.
The price of oil went down.
The federal government cut funds for alternative energy.
And Foust, then 55, lost his job.
Reagan “cancelled them all,” Foust said. “He said, ‘We have plenty of coal. We have plenty of oil. We don’t have to spend our good money on these alternate energy things.’”
But as the saying goes, the only constant is change.
And with the price of gas nearing $4 a gallon locally and the U.S. fighting two wars in the Middle East, Foust has found his efforts to develop renewable energy sources again in demand.
About a year ago, Foust got a call from Makai Ocean Engineering Inc., a Hawaii company interested in his almost three-decades-old patent on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.
The system uses the difference between the heat of the ocean’s surface water, about 80 degrees in the tropics, and the colder water deeper down to force ammonia through a turbine that turns a generator to produce electricity.
The electricity then can be converted into various sources of power, such as hydrogen, and then used to operate something like a hydrogen-cell car.
Foust’s original patent has expired, but he recently filed for a patent that improves on his original design.
The proposal describes the energy system as free of pollutants and, like the wind, cost-free as well.
“This can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, because of the enormity of this source,” Foust said. “It goes all the way around the earth, deep and wide.”
After leaving Trane, Foust eventually founded INOV8, a La Crosse-based company that, among other things, has built systems that use waste petroleum from garages to heat those same buildings, and others that use waste vegetable oil from restaurants to heat the water at those establishments.
Now 80, Foust has about 15 patents to his name. He’ll travel to Hawaii next week for his first consultation with Makai Ocean Engineering.
He says the way environmental issues are used as a “political ball” today irritates him, and everybody should be working together to reduce America’s need on energy from other countries.
“These alternate energy programs are only viable when the cost of energy is high,” Foust said. “If the cost of oil came down on a worldwide basis back to what it was five years ago, this would probably dry up again. That’s just the way we are. We always look for the current low-priced item and not to investing in a potential future.”
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
