Off-shore Wind Farm Turbine, originally uploaded by phault.

From the Department of Energy’s EERE Network News:

I’d like to see a lot more of this. In fact, I have a fantasy policy proposal: the National Energy Security Initiative, or NESI. Overall, the idea here is that energy security is national security. So NESI would be a program run by the Department of Defense.

Here’s how it would work. Each year, perhaps for a period of 10 years, $100-$200 billion of the U.S. defense budget (at $534 billion, not including wars, for FY 2010) would be re-purposed to go to building out America’s renewable energy capabilities. The defense budget would not get cut, in other words. It would change. The program would be designed to preserve defense industry jobs and counteract the propensity of politicians and industry to protect their turf.

So NESI would identify weapons systems or other programs that are arguably unnecessary. NESI would propose that those programs be replaced by new programs in renewable energy. The new programs would be located in the the locality (city, state) where the work previously got done. The previous contractors would be eligible to run the new programs.

Take, example, the alternate engine for the F-35, a program that costs $2.9 billion. The Defense Department doesn’t want it, but politicians (and contractors) fight furiously to keep it alive. Under NESI, something like the alternate engine for the F-35 fighter jet would replaced by a renewable energy program, located in the same state and perhaps involving the same contractor (GE/Rolls Royce).

As I see it, the aim would be to distribute NESI money as evenly distributed as possible geographically. Each region of the country would build out its respective strengths in renewable energy. The Southwest would primarily do solar, the upper Midwest wind and biofuels, the Northeast and wind and tidal, and so on. Nonrenewable energy would not qualify. So no “clean coal” or nuclear.

I guess I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.