WASHINGTON — President Obama's plans to lead America out of recession rest in part on a task bigger than a moon shot and the Manhattan Project put together.
His goal, which past presidents have spent more than $100 billion chasing with limited success, is to replace imported oil and other fossil fuels with a "clean-energy economy" powered by the wind, the sun and biofuels.
The stakes are high. If Obama succeeds, he could spark a domestic jobs boom and lead an international fight against climate change. If he fails, he could cripple existing industries and squeeze cash-strapped Americans with higher energy prices.
"We essentially need a second Industrial Revolution that can generate lots of energy cleanly, cheaply, sustainably," Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, said in an interview last week.
"We have a lot of necessity," he added, and the Energy Department and the rest of the administration "have to start inventing right, left and center."
Success hinges on whether Obama can nurture alternative energy sources to the point where they cost no more than fossil fuels, an effort that most experts say will require heavy doses of brainpower, cash and market manipulation.
It also requires clearing most of the same hurdles that frustrated Obama's predecessors, including technology bottlenecks, a shortage of capital to finance innovation and, above all, daunting economic factors that have repeatedly trumped good intentions.
To help renewable energy compete on price, Chu and other officials say, the administration wants to revamp energy research and spend more on it, starting with billions of dollars in the pending economic stimulus bill; create demand for clean energy by forcing utilities to draw from renewable sources such as wind turbines and solar panels; string thousands of miles of transmission lines to bring wind and solar power to consumers; and levy a de facto tax on fossil fuels through a nationwide cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
"I'm not going to call it a once-in-a-generation challenge," said Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, a collaboration of business, labor and academic leaders. "It's even more rare than that."
By the end of this year, the Energy Department's spending on 35 years of clean-energy research will exceed the total inflation-adjusted cost of the Apollo program, which sent Americans to the moon, and the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear bomb -- an estimated $117 billion combined.
