2) Tesla Book Release: New 340-page book, Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla's Science of Energy by Thomas Valone, builds a strong case for Nikola Tesla's earth-resonant longitudinal wave wireless transmission of energy.

3) NSF, NASA and EPRI announce funding for wireless transmission of energy. Higher frequency than Tesla's but similar idea supported by the Millenium Project of the American Council for the UN University.

4) Energy Ventures are poised to take off. "Many entrepreneurs see in alternative energy that rare and desirable condition — a disruptive technology that could transform entire industries." Exceptional resource article from NY Times, with active links added by IRI, for those who want to participate in energy futures.

1) Tesla Energy Conference & Expo

A new book by Thomas Valone, who edited it in time for the Wardenclyffe Tower Centennial (1903-2003) has just been published. This book presents for the first time, the scientific feasibility argument for Tesla’s most ambitious dream, the wireless transmission of power. Pictured on the book’s cover near his feet, the 187-foot Wardenclyffe Tower was Tesla’s means to deliver natural 8 Hz electricity anywhere in the world, by longitudinal waves.

Unknown to most electrical engineers, Nikola Tesla’s dream answers the energy crisis worldwide, saves electrical conversion losses, and provides a real alternative to transmission lines. In Dr. Corum’s contributed papers, he explains Tesla’s magnifying transmitter, which Tesla compared to a telescope. Corum points out that "the tuned circuit of his magnifying transmitter was the whole earth-ionosphere cavity resonator." This fact helps explain why Tesla stated, "When there is no receiver there is no energy consumption anywhere. When the receiver is put on, it draws power. That is the exact opposite of the Hertz-wave system...radiating all the time whether the energy is received or not." Thus, with Tesla’s futuristic transmission of power, source dissipation will only be experienced when a load is engaged in a tuned receiver somewhere on the earth. This fact alone represents a major leap forward in electrical transmission efficiency, even one hundred years later.

Dr. Rauscher indicates in her paper that the earth’s magnetosphere is the source of electrical energy, as Tesla emphasized. She points out that the relatively small longitudinal impulses that the Tesla Tower supplies triggers the earth-ionosphere oscillations to take place so the receivers can tap the earth’s atmospheric electrical energy. Tesla estimated the available energy of the earth-ionosphere cavity at 7.5 gigawatts whereas Dr. Rauscher today shows that it is closer to 3 terawatts (3 billion kW), while the US only consumes about 360 million kW today for electrical needs (at 27% of the world usage). Therefore, the earth has almost three times the capacity available for electrical consumption than the entire world presently utilizes everyday.

Why wasn’t the prototype of Wardenclyffe finished in 1903? Tesla offered this visionary conclusion: "The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success… Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to their work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine."

Up until now, there has been a general malaise regarding the lack of scientific comprehension of Tesla’s greatest dream. For example, the Serb National Federation notes, "With the exception of the first biography of Tesla by John J. O’Neill, science editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and published in 1944, unfortunately no biographer since has had the necessary scientific/engineering academic credentials to discuss Tesla’s work in the various fields." Contributors to Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature are primarily physicists and engineers who are experts in Tesla technology. Their wealth of knowledge demonstrates their mastery of this extraordinarily progressive and technical subject. Finally, the best academic credentials have been brought to bear on the world’s greatest electrical futurist.

This is a very readable and profusely illustrated reference volume on wireless transmission of power, besides being an excellent biographical gold mine of Tesla history. Nick Cook, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly and author of The Hunt for Zero Point says, "Tesla is one of the great overlooked geniuses of science and electricity. His full story deserves to be told. Tom Valone sheds important new light on his life and work."

Wireless energy transmission could be part of a clean, abundant energy future says The Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University. To meet the world's growing appetite for energy without environmental damage, electricity would be converted to microwaves, beamed over long distances by satellite, and then reconverted back to electricity.

ing up new energy sources such solar panels in Earth orbit," said Glenn.

New funding for wireless energy transmission research is being offered by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Electric Power Research Institute.

National Science Foundation Program Director Dr. Paul Werbos says the long-term goal would be to beam down solar energy from space to remote sites all over the world.

This technology would provide "an affordable source of baseload electricity without producing either carbon dioxide or nuclear proliferation," he said. "If research in carbon sequestration and wireless transmission of energy becomes serious, then one day oil producers could become electricity suppliers to the world without adding greenhouse gases, and a global energy grid could be in space orbit," said Glenn.

The National Science Foundation plans to cooperate with the United Nations University and others to sponsor a series of workshops on how to sequester carbon dioxide from the air where it traps the Sun's heat, warming the planet. "The field is a ripe for new, creative high risk approaches, based on new partnerships between different fields of science," said Werbos. To date, carbon sequestration attempts to remove carbon dioxide from power plants, at the point of production. But the world's greatest needs for carbon fuels occur in cars, trucks and buses, where that kind of carbon sequestration is impractical, the Millenium Solution said. Future strategies for carbon sequestration include injecting carbon dioxide into the earth or into the ocean, separating the gases from the air and storing them by planting trees, and using chemistry to produce new products from these gases, such as methanol to fuel hybrid cars, and as an energy source for fuel cell cars.

There is no comparative assessment of these approaches, nor is any state-of-the-art research completed, so the National Science Foundation is exploring research to address this gap.

"By 2020, the world faces serious challenges in the global electricity supply, especially in areas of massive urban concentrations. We strongly support research into these two areas, seeing in them vast potential for meeting these challenges," Glenn said.

World energy consumption is expected to increase 57 percent by 2020 and to double or triple by 2050. The U.S. Energy Department expects most of the increase in energy production to 2020 will come from oil, natural gas, and coal, fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases when burned. If so, carbon emissions are expected to rise to 9.9 billion metric tons by 2020, more than doubling emissions of the past 20 years. Developing countries are projected to pass the industrial countries in total carbon emissions by 2015.

Many of the world's aging nuclear power plants will reach the end of their life spans by 2020. Electricity loss from decommissioned nuclear reactors will need to be replaced, and the Millenium Project says that current renewable energy options will not keep up with demand.

Distribution of energy via orbiting satellites leads to a concept of energy management that views the planet as a whole - a world energy organization - a concept suggested Monday by the global think tank.

Meeting the world's energy needs "may require the creation of a world energy organization for the coordination of energy research, development, and assistance in implementing policies," the Millenium Project said. The Millennium Project is organized into nodes located in Argentina, Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, India, Iran, Italy, Japan the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, and Venezuela. Each node consists of a group of individuals and institutions that identify creative and advanced experts to participate in Millennium Project research, interconnecting global and local perspectives.

FOR Andrew Beebe, the light bulb went off almost two years ago at a computer technology conference in the Arizona desert. Mr. Beebe, who had just sold his profitable Internet start-up and was wondering what to do next, picked up a book on harnessing the sun's energy — or, as he saw it, "how to hack photosynthesis."

With the threat of war in Iraq refocusing public attention on the United States' dependence on oil from the Middle East, renewable energy is regaining some of the buzz it had when Mr. Beebe was in diapers. It is attracting the attention of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who not long ago were dreaming of riches on the Internet.

But advocates of alternative energy say things are different this time.

The market potential is certainly large. Electricity alone is the third-largest industry in the United States, worth about $300 billion annually. And of the two billion people in the world who the United Nations estimates are without electric power, some may be candidates for off-the-grid renewable sources of energy.

Governments are helping to drive demand, which could spur innovation. About 30 states encourage renewable energy; New York and California, for example, require that 20 percent or more of their energy supplies come from renewable sources in the next decade and a half. Mr. Reicher said, "It's a convergence of technology, policy and market forces that make clean energy such a terrific investment."

ENTREPRENEURS' and venture capitalists' enthusiasm for alternative energy stems partly from the continuing slump in the computer and telecom industries. "There's nothing much else to look at," said Ivor Frischknecht, a co-founder of Angara Database Systems of Palo Alto, Calif. He is investigating opportunities to invest in clean technology.

Venture capitalists are starting to follow the entrepreneurs into this unfamiliar terrain — with an estimated $90 billion in venture capital idle, they are looking for places to invest it. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Silicon Valley's top venture fund, is reviewing deals in energy and clean technology. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, another well known venture firm, in October led a $13.5 million investment in Konarka Technologies, a start-up in Lowell, Mass., that is working on less-costly thin-film solar panels.

Many entrepreneurs see in alternative energy that rare and desirable condition — a disruptive technology that could transform entire industries, from energy to transportation. "This is really the Internet 10 years ago," Mr. Beebe said. "We're on the verge."

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