From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 23:13:37 MST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node
contentId=A42399-2003Mar17 ¬Found=true
Washington Post
<<Report Generates Negative Energy
By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page A27
If you're ever tempted to think that the city's messiest politics are found
only on Capitol Hill, have a chat with energy expert Robert L. Hirsch, whose
termination from the Rand Corp. last fall still rankles him. His
behind-the-scenes tale of a policy report gone awry is awash in policy
disagreements and charges and countercharges.
Rand hired Hirsch in January 2001, and he began work on the report "Energy
Technologies for 2050," a $200,000 study commissioned by the Department of
Energy's Fossil Energy Program. His mission was to develop a methodology that
could be used to evaluate the viability of energy technologies over the next
50 years. Then in October, Hirsch was fired.
On that much, Hirsch and Rand agree. It's what happened in between that's
controversial.
Hirsch, now head of the National Research Council's Board on Energy and
Environmental Systems, said Rand was trying to squash his report because its
preliminary conclusions were unpalatable to DOE, Rand's client.
"When management plays around with you for a couple of weeks and then takes
[your report] away to give it to somebody else and tells you that the report
will go out without the two sections that offended people in DOE -- to me,
that's prima facie evidence of a cover-up," Hirsch said. "If that's not the
case, I don't know what is."
That wasn't the case to Rand. "The problems were with the methodology, not
the results," said James Dewar, a senior Rand official and methodology expert
who shored up the report. "If the methodology was sound and that's how the
results came out, we'd have no problem. Rand certainly doesn't shy away from
saying something uncomfortable to its clients."
In the report, Hirsch, an engineer who has worked at DOE and Arco Oil and Gas
Co., developed a preliminary methodology and tried it on three technologies:
solar cells, fusion and coal gasification. His early conclusions were that
coal gasification is close to being practical, fusion research is on the
wrong track and solar cells are impractical for large-scale use.
He said that rubbed DOE the wrong way, contending the agency is heavily
invested in fusion and loath to be seen as being against renewable energy.
A DOE spokesman said the agency did advise Rand of its concerns, but that
these regarded the work's quality and "a misapplication of the study's
parameters."
"Out-of-date data and inappropriate market assumptions led the analyst to
reach strongly negative judgments for both photovoltaic and fusion," said a
DOE summary of the study and controversy. "While the study reached positive
conclusions for the coal-based technology, its serious shortcomings in
analyzing the other two technologies led [Fossil Energy] -- and subsequently
other DOE offices -- to question the study's overall technical and analytical
quality."
Hirsch said he was abruptly fired for sharing a draft of the report, which he
admits doing as a last resort, saying he feared the conclusions would not get
out otherwise. Rand officials said they cannot comment on the reasons for the
firing.
"Hirsch is an honorable guy and intellectually honest, and I think he was
badly treated," said John McCaughey, a contributor to Electricity Daily
newsletter and a friend of Hirsch's. "The more important point is that a
fantastic amount of taxpayers' money is being spent on things like this. . .
. Hirsch's problem, in my opinion, was that he said the emperor has no
clothes."
Rand officials said there was never any discussion of deleting sections of
the report. They said the problems arose because Hirsch's draft report did
not meet Rand's quality standards and that Hirsch himself was unresponsive to
constructive criticism from colleagues and reviewers. They also said Hirsch's
findings were neither new nor politically sensitive.
"You know we're particularly sensitive to using the platform of what's
supposed to be an analytical report as a soapbox for basically an op-ed piece
or an opinion that's not grounded in analysis. And this was a concern in this
case," said Rand's Debra Knopman.
Hirsch now works as a senior energy program adviser for SAIC, a research and
engineering company.
"The record shows I'm not an extremist," he said. "I have an established
record of credibility. . . . I found a flaw in Rand which was extremely
disappointing, and I still don't understand how [they] could allow such a
thing to happen."
The report is still in rewrite. DOE expects to receive a new draft in the
next several weeks.>>
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