Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is a way of producing electricity by using the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water in the ocean.

Ocean water, the solar heated fuel, is free, and the environmental effect is mostly benign.

There are two types: the open cycle and the closed cycle. In both types a vapor is produced.

The vapor drives a turbine to produce electricity, and the spent vapor is then condensed.

With the open cycle the warm surface water is made to boil by bringing it into a vacuum. Fresh water can be the main product or the by—product of the production of electricity with this process.

The closed cycle mechanism resembles the workings of a refrigerator. There is an enclosed working fluid which vaporizes when exposed to the warm surface water and condenses when exposed to the colder deeper water.

The problem associated with the closed cycle is the accumulation of algae, called biofouling, on the heat-exchangers, the devices which hold the working fluid.

The problems associated with the open cycle are the size of the turbine required and the removal of non—condensable materials from the vacuum chamber.

For both, the cold water pipe is an interesting challenge.

OTEC History

By Bryn Beorse and Mansur Johnson

Ocean thermal differences, the temperature difference between surface water and deeper layers in the ocean, has been recognized for more than a century as a source of power.

In 1881 an American engineer, Campbell, two Italians, Dornig and Boggia, and a French physicist, D’Arsonval, proposed a closed cycle ocean thermal device.

The warm surface water would heat and cause evaporation of a working fluid (alternative fluids were suggested) which would pass through a turbine. After spinning the turbine to generate the electricity, the vapor was condensed by cold water pumped up from deep layers and again fed into the evaporator.

The first to build practical plants was a pupil of D’Arsonval, another Frenchman named George Claude, in 1929.

Claude chose the open cycle system in which the ocean surface water itself is evaporated and drives the turbine, and rejected the closed cycle because, “Such a solution is burdened by a number of inconveniences,” he told the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, after receiving their 50th anniversary medal, “one of them being the extra equipment and cost for the working fluid, and another, the necessity of transmitting enormous quantities of heat through the inevitably dirty walls of immense boilers.”

Claude realized that if he could boil seawater itself, he could get around the “inevitably dirty walls of immense boilers,” called biofouling today.

The open cycle is based on the principle that water boils at a lower temperature if you reduce the pressure on it. For example, atmospheric pressure is over a ton per square foot on water in a boiler. In order to produce boiling, the water molecules must be made to run around fast enough to exceed the heavy weight of the atmosphere and produce that ebullience that is the sign of boiling water.

Under normal conditions, heating the water to 212 degrees F. will produce that effect. But if the pressure is lowered by pumping the air out of the boiler, the water molecules no longer require as much heat to boil.

“With a sufficient vacuum,” Claude writes, “it is possible to boil ice itself, or at least a mixture of ice and water, and if one happened to fall into such boiling water, instead of being scalded to death, he might only catch a severe cold. And it is a much simpler matter to boil in a vacuum the comparatively very warm water from the surface of a tropical sea.”

The verbal description of a principle is one thing. Its demonstration is another. Claude first ran a small experimental device before fellow members of L’Academie des Sciences in Paris.

Then Claude built a larger plant at Ougree, Belgium. His turbine, with a wheel 1 meter in diameter, ran at 5000 rpm and generated 60 kilowatts with a temperature difference of 20 degrees C.

This demonstration silenced all those who said it couldn’t be done. It proved the thermodynamic viability, so to speak, that electricity could be generated from temperature differences.

What remained were the problems associated with the operations of a plant actually using sea water to boil, and bringing cold water up from the depths.

Some people declared, for example, that it would be impossible to prevent the deep sea water from warming up too much during its ascent. To test this, Claude moved his Belgium plant to Cuba. He only had a small turbine——large turbines to operate under such low pressures had not been built yet—-and even though he had a small turbine, a large pipe was necessary. A 2 foot pipe would have been sufficient to supply his small turbine, but it wouldn’t have kept the water cold, due to loss of heat during the ascent. Thus he fabricated a pipe better than 6 feet in diameter.

Claude’s primary problem was in the installation of the pipeline. Two pipelines were lost in storms at Mantanzas Bay, Cuba.

His entire pipeline 2 kilometers long and weighing more than 400 tons, fully painted and insulated, went down twice, and each time he had to start over again. He succeeded the third time and tells how: “The very day that the pipe connection was made, the powerful Rateau pump of the pit was set working at the rate of 4000 cubic meters per hour; soon after, the water discharged became colder and colder, until finally it reached 13 degrees centigrade--a good result, assuming that the temperature at the lower end of the tube was probably around 11 degrees.”

Another unanswered question was whether sea water, owing to its greater viscosity, would produce an abundance of foam when boiled, and break the turbine. He tells us, “Finally, the turbine, that I had hesitated to mount at first for fear of its blowing to pieces because of excessive foam, was installed, and its output progressively increased to 22 kilowatts, a very satisfactory result indeed considering the very small difference of temperature available because of the small depth of the bay.”

The plant ran for 11 days and produced 22 kilowatts with a turbine much too small for the other components of the plant, with less than ideal temperature differences; nonetheless, the basic function was proven and, in the opinion of these resourceful pioneers, should have been followed by prototypes and commercial plants.

After Claude

The French government didn’t completely overlook Claude’s work. In 1941 the French government became involved and created L’Office de L’Energie Thermique des Mers, or Energie des Mers, for short. Andre Nizery, who was Deputy Director of Electricite de France, the huge semi-public corporation which supplies France with electricity and other forms of power, was the first head of Energie des Mers.

Research was conducted for fifteen years in French laboratories and at a site at Abidjan (the Ivory Coast) in west Africa, under the direction of Nizery, and later, after his death, by M. Christian Beau, formerly the head of France’s public works.

They considered, for example, the effect on surface layers when huge amounts of cold water were moved from below by pumping. Only the closest layers were found to be involved, when discharges from below were monitored.

Mindful that Claude had lost two pipelines, the manufacturing and laying of the cold water pipeline were carefully planned and carried out.

The pipeline was considered the only new and unproved component in the plant and therefore given major attention. It was 2.5 meters in diameter and was composed of metal pipes with flexible joints of rubber. It was left in place for six months for study of corrosion and biofouling. The area between low and high tide was found particularly vulnerable, but for current proposed OTEC ships, where the cold water pipe is entirely under water, this would be irrelevant.

Detailed studies in France and at Dakar, Senegal, of a specially designed turbine and condensers were performed, including air-and-gas removal from sea water under evaporation.

A full-scale plant was designed to be built at Abidjan in 1956. It was never built, because it couldn’t compete with a conventional plant powered by inexpensive fossil fuel.

When the French research came to the United States

The University of California built and tested three OTEC plants, guided by Bryn Beorse, who in 1947 and 1948 had studied what the French were doing.

Beorse became involved with the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory, under the direction of Professor Howe, and helped them secure federal funds for OTEC research. State funds were augmented by federal funds when Dr. James Hoffman of the Bureau of Standards, advised by Beorse, demonstrated in Congress two small thermal machines on the pattern of the French.

The University of California’s OTEC plants were primarily open cycle, since they were interested in desalination and desalination is obtained at no extra cost with the open cycle.

To put it another way, fresh water is a waste product in an OTEC plant of this type.

A laboratory sized plant was built and tested in the Hesse Hall of the Berkeley campus.

At the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory of the Richmond Field Station was simultaneously built the so—called “first low—temperature difference plant”, consisting of an available 4½ foot long by 30 inch diameter cylindrical evaporator plus condenser.

After this plant had been tested for a variety of possible conditions, the “second low—temperature difference plant” was designed and built.

Funds had now been made available for suitable hardware. This plant was scheduled to produce 10,000 gallons of desalted water per day, compared to 2,000 for the first.

Tables showing cost, estimated or confirmed, of various desalting methods indicate that the desalting cost for an OTEC plant at that time was lower than for all other methods. At $85, it was lower than the then goal for municipal water--which was $125 per acre foot--but higher than the irrigation goal of $40 per acre foot.

On the basis of testing three plants, The University of California designed a commercial plant which was never built. It lost out to the California Aquaduct project, a $1.5 billion dollar, 600 mile conduit, constructed to bring water from northern California down south.

The University of California plant’s cost was 6 million dollars.

It was designed for the canyon near La Jolla and the Scripps Oceanographic Institution.

It was scheduled to produce five million gallons of fresh water per day.

Firm bids were obtained for all components, including two million dollars for manufacture and installation of the cold water pipeline, later upped to three million to keep the estimates conservative.

People not familiar with the University of California research and estimates chose to spend a billion and a half dollars.

This was fine when the water in northern California was sufficient. It isn’t anymore, and the plants can still be built all over southern California.

Interest in OTEC broadens

The University of California research continued from the late 40s up to the present: specific research on heat transfer, heat exchangers, de-aeration, evaporator characteristics——preventing carry-over of water droplets into the steam flow--corrosion, and biofouling.

In June, 1957, Professor Everett D. Howe, founder and first director of the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory, reported to ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), just as George Claude had done 27 years before.

OTEC has been ready to build since 1957.

In the 60s a father-son engineering team, J. Hubert and James Anderson, started work on the concept again. They designed a closed cycle plant and demonstrated a small device before Congress in 1977.

In the 70s oil prices soared and the National Science Foundation asked for studies. The government spent $1.2 million in 1974 and $2.8 million in 1975.

They received voluminous reports, thousands upon thousands of pages, proposing a multitude of types, beginning with the University of Massachusetts team under the direction of Professor William E. Heronemus, and followed by the Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, Carnegie-Mellon University, the Universities of Texas, Hawaii, New Orleans and Florida.

Substantial industrial firms also jumped in with supporting reports: Lockheed, Bechtel, TRW, Hydronautics, Batelle, Reynolds Aluminium, as well as Anderson’s Sea Solar Power Inc., thousands of pages emphasizing the readiness of the technology and the wholly benign ecological effects.

Chapter 1 – The Infamous “Address on Energy” in Canada

You can’t imagine the ecstasy I felt when I heard Shamcher speak about OTEC. It was June, 1977. There were lines at the gas pumps. Jimmy Carter was President. Oil was in short supply. The nation had its first sense of dependence on foreigners for their industrial life blood and felt their personal freedom threatened when the use of their cars was restricted. The energy that powered their ponies could be denied them if a world crisis or some other freakish scenario developed. It’s only now, in 1991, that the oil companies are being fined for artificially creating the oil shortage and driving up prices.

If you were alive then, you remember. Like most at the time, I didn’t know what to think. My business was dancing. The airplanes I used to fly from city to city began to charge more for tickets, reflecting the increased fuel costs. Nevertheless, I flew to Canada and went to a farm north of Toronto to lead some dances at a camp for Sufis.

Shamcher [Bryn Beorse] was there. He hadn’t been present in my life since the late 6Os. I met him in San Francisco. He was a friend of my Sufi teacher Murshid Samuel L. Lewis. Lewis created——during the Haight-Ashbury hippy period--the dances that I was busy teaching people around the U.S. I had no idea Shamcher was into energy.

I don’t mean chi. I mean kilowatts. He wrote in a letter December 31, 1978,

Mansur, your testimonies to various Massachusetts councils were received along with your letter to Congressman [Gerry] Studds. Very good, all of it, and useful. When you use the sophisticated term “GIGAWATTS”, not one in a hundred understands you, but all pretend, they think they must. I once made a list of all these terms, and now I cannot find it. Reduce all to KILOWATTS which every one understands. And always quote what the US uses today--how much energy in kilowatts, how much as electricity, how much as heating, as cooling, and so on, and send on a copy to me so I can file it. I assume your figures are right-—at least as right as the doubtful figures the Energy Department issues.

He began his talk that evening in Toronto without notes. Just stood and spoke in his heavy Norwegian accent. He was a little over 5 feet tall and, if you looked at him closely, you might say he looked slightly Chinese, round-faced, with flashing eyes, befitting his Sufi name Shamcher, which means “tongues of fire”.

You may not get it from the language, the added ingredient in that talk——it was love. The feeling which accompanied the words is part of what contributed to my ecstasy that evening. There was no aggression or anger in the realities he presented. Nor was there any arrogance or superiority implied. The man had lived and worked in 67 countries as an engineer, spoke innumerable languages, yet met you, and presented himself, as an equal, a humble, self—effacing equal. I already knew his heart. I was totally unprepared for the information he presented.

I was so impressed I transcribed a tape of his talk and distributed a transcript of his words from that talk. In deference to Shamcher’s reaction to my distribution of his talk, I don’t dare present here the beginning of his talk.

Here’s how he scolded me in a letter dated July 19, 1977:

Since you are in the letter writing mood you might now write the following letter to all to whom you sent my talk, including Governor Brown of California to whom Wali Ali personally gave the talk: “Shaken to my foundation by the true facts about energy given to me in a talk to a closed society in Canada, I rushed my typewritten summary to you un-edited, not showing it to the lecturer.

He tells me the beginning remarks about our world’s creation was a special view appreciated by researchers in the field, but not agreed on or proven and not suitable for public exposure.

Furthermore, he tells me my summary of this particular part is somewhat jumbled.

I am revising the story and sending you the corrected version. However, if you haven’t been shaken by my first version, like I was, I doubt your value as a public servant...”

You revise the story by letting a physicist or engineer look through it and apply your own sharp eye as to language. You may still boast that the author hasn’t seen it. It is best so. And no public servant ever looks at a thing until he has at least two letters about it....

In my naïveté, I hadn’t realized that Shamcher might speak differently to the Governor of California than to a collection of mystics, i.e. “a closed society in Canada”. Wali Ali was a Sufi from San Francisco to whom I had sent the “unedited” transcript of his talk. As fellow students of Samuel L. Lewis in San Francisco, Wali Ali and I had each been immersed in new age views since the late 60s.

The new age was cooperation, not competition, so when Shamcher presented the present energy situation in terms of monopoly, I was in accord with that. I now quote from Shamcher’s talk, leaving off the objectionable “not agreed on or proven”, “jumbled” bit about creation. After that lyrical beginning, he said,

The earth produced something that we call energy, and man is so strange that he showed a great interest in the oil that was formed in the interior of the earth as a result of the energy conferred from the sun. Every bit of energy we have today and will have in the future is from the sun and the earth together.

Oil was very attractive to the Americans and others, especially because it can be monopolized. You could take this out and say, This is what we have, and we own it, and we will sell it to you.

Another energy form is coal which can also be monopolized. It can be burned and so produce energy.

Both are rather artificial forms of energy and not the first discovered.

One of the first discovered sources of energy was the ocean, but that was forgotten by aggressive people in power, because you can’t monopolize the ocean. It is simply too big. In the ocean you have various kinds of energy [waves, tides, etc.].

Another form of ocean energy is the temperature difference that the sun has created between surface water and deeper water especially in the semi-tropical and tropical areas.

The difference may be about 40 degrees. This was investigated long ago and was found viable. They began to work on it in 1881 and in 1929, they built the first machine in Cuba, and later in Belgium in 1948.

This unhumble person became associated with it and studied what the government in France was doing about it, and I brought it here to the U.S.

The ocean thermal temperature difference plant is simply an ordinary steam engine. A steam engine is an engine which makes use of two different temperatures. In most of the cases that you know of, they heat water on one side and put the steam through a turbine, and condense it on the other side, the temperature difference being from about 150 to 300 degrees and more.

In the ocean, you have temperature differences of about 40 degrees and people said, O that is too little, you cannot get a steam engine from that. Well, we did, and it has a very good effect. It has been designed and estimated in detail. To build such an ocean thermal difference plant costs less per kilowatt than it costs to build a nuclear plant and then, the fuel is free. It is from the ocean. Nobody can take payment for that, and the ecological effect is wholly benign. There is no bad environmental effect....

When I came from France to this country to introduce the ocean thermal difference--now abbreviated as OTEC, which stands for ocean thermal energy conversion--I went into a Navy Research facility in Washington, D.C. I had to phone up, and they listened to me and said, oh yes, we will send a man down to talk to you.

And here came a sort of moon-faced man with a little well-organized beard. He asked strange questions so that I finally asked, what kind of engineer are you? He answered, “You are talking to a psychiatrist.”

And I ran away fast enough, so that the little men in the white coats couldn’t catch me, and went to the Bureau of Standards.

And there were all of these young engineers there, and they said, it won’t work, you know, at these low pressures. It won’t work, and while they talked, the Head of the Chemical Division was down working and had built something, and soon he had two beautiful little gadgets, one producing energy running a turbine and one producing fresh water from salt water. This thermal difference concept can do both. We hauled him into Congress, which was just discussing establishing a salt water office to help California get fresh water from the sea, and the thing was voted in.

So I was lucky enough to be brought to the University of California in Berkeley [the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory] where I found Professor Everett Howe completely in agreement. He said, oh yes, this sounds wonderful, and they built plants in three different sizes and took tests, and so on.

And there was like in Washington an Austrian physicist who said, oh, this can’t work at all. So I said to Professor Howe, Shouldn’t we answer this man? No, no, he said, don’t answer him. Just show him. And so we built this machine, and we didn’t have much money.

We had to have a turbine. So Professor Howe said, I think we buried a turbine down here. We had to dig down into the earth and brought forth an old aircraft turbine and polished it up and put it in our plant.

To protect everyone, we built a barrier of 3 inch planks, and it worked so fast, that one bearing got loose and shot out through the planks, right past the ear of this physicist who said it would never work. He turned around furious and said, you did that on purpose, and he walked home.

And so we hoped that now we had the world by the tail. We had all the energy we wanted--but nothing happened. Professor Howe wrote about it in the Journal of Mechanical Engineers. And in California, they had the big project of pushing water from the north to the south, [which shows up on the map today as the California aqueduct], over hill and dale in the old fashioned way, and they simply decided to use up 1½ billion dollars and forget about us [forget about using OTEC to produce the needed fresh water].

Then, in the 7Os came rising oil prices, and the National Science Foundation took up OTEC and asked for more studies, and 7 major universities, among which are Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the University of California, and others. Together they came up with thousands of pages of reports and agreed: Yes, this is the energy of the future.

What does the Administration do? Practically nothing. They have a little research program going. Since people are talking so much about it, they have to do something, so they put in a few million to do research. Meanwhile, the government pays 7 billion a year for atomic energy development which, of course, is entirely unnecessary.

So some of us, Dr. David Mayer, for instance, at the University of New Orleans, have hammered out a proposal and tried to influence everyone to immediately put in ½ billion dollars to design 7 plants and build 3 now, today, and Professor Heronemus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst goes much further. Build 12 plants now, he says. Build windmills all across North America and, for the rest of the country and the world, build 12 plants, 6 for various countries like Iran, India, the Ivory Coast, etc. and 6 here in the U.S. to start the whole ball rolling. That will cost a few billion, less than ½ of what they spend on nuclear plants. All this could be ready to go into the electric grid in 8 years.

I have a friend, no, an acquaintance, Dr. Edward Teller, who they say is the inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Of course he is a nuclear physicist, and he talks all the time about the necessity for nuclear, so I wrote to him-—I had arranged for him to talk in Geneva some years ago, and I thought he would remember me. So I wrote to him and said, you know, we have this ocean thermal difference plant that can do in 8 years what everyone wants. We don’t need nuclear power plants anymore. Well, he goes back to Congress and probably says, maybe they have something and maybe they don’t, and that is the way communication goes with this.

I was myself in Washington recently, and I talked to a few Congressmen who were really interested, and they said, Maybe we will have our energy experts look into it. I said an “energy expert!”. No such thing exists. There may be an expert in a certain type of oil refinery,or an expert on certain types of coal machinery, or an expert on certain types of nuclear plants. If you know anything about OTEC, you have to hire a man who has worked with it for at least 5 years.

We are supposedly living in a very technological nation, but it is the same everywhere. Understanding is at a very low level, and we are children in the way we do things, especially at the government level.

You always used to hear about this or that gadget, that would make autos run more efficiently, that General Motors had bought up so as not to interfere with their plans, like they did with public transportation. The movie Tucker, which was made in 1988, tells such a story. Here in 1977, I was hearing how a challenge to the energy status quo had been similarly frustrated. It was time.

I was excited. I was propelled by the knowledge of a solution to a great many problems that confronted the nation. I heard it from one who had worked already 29 years on it. It was time now for a solution to gas lines, nuclear waste, greenhouse gasses. I resolved that when I got back to Boston, I would tell my Congressman.

I didn’t wait until I got back to start to tell people about this thing I thought was so extraordinary. On the airplane flying home I penned a note which I would distribute to around 60 Sufi centers in the U.S.

From that day on, my travels to teach dancing included advocating for OTEC. It was one day at a time, and one day stretched into almost 3 years that I was obsessed with letting others know about this solution to energy, employment, economics and global warming.

What follows is how I was guided and directed by Shamcher, who took me underhis wing and worked with me and hundreds of others, to bring OTEC to the attention of the nation.

Chapter 2 – Idiot Boy

James Anderson is delighted to put on his little show with the big message: A huge energy potential in the world’s oceans can be tapped.

Using a garden hose, he runs hot water into a tank in an eight-foot-tall contraption next to the desk in his office. The contraption consists of two water tanks, one above the other; they’re linked by tubes, and a turbine sits between them. Soon the heat from the water in the hose warms up a liquid refrigerant running through tubes in one of the tanks. Since the liquid boils at relatively low temperatures—78 degrees in this case—it quickly turns into a vapor.

The vapor shooshes through a turbine, turning its blades, and the turbine drives a generator that produces more than 120 watts of electricity. Instantly, four automobile spotlights hooked up to the generator throw out a glaring light. Office workers applaud “I get a kick out of this every time I see it,” a secretary says. [Les Gapay, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, November 22, 1976]

In his “Address on Energy”, Shamcher said that Dr. David Mayer of the University of New Orleans had “hammered out a proposal and tried to influence everyone to immediately put in half a billion dollars to design 7 plants and build 3 now, today”. Mayer, 32 in 1977, saw what the government was doing [nothing], and called for a crash program. I talked to Dr. Mayer on the telephone, and he told me that Mr. J. Hilbert Anderson, in his view, had the best design.

In my letter to Mr. Anderson on July 12, 1977, I told him I was interested in seeing some OTECS get built; that I had spoken recently to Dr. Mayer who referred me to him, because he had the most “viable design”. I told him I too, like Mayer, was going to Israel soon, [the Sufis were having a camp there in August], and that if he could send me some information, I might be able to be of some assistance. I also inquired, “What sort of commission would you be prepared to offer should my humble effort somehow produce some contracts for Sea Solar Power, Inc.” And, I requested his “immediate response”.

Mr. Anderson in his letter of July 18, 1977, said he appreciated my effort, but added,

Unfortunately, we are not in a position to offer anyone commissions for such efforts. We have had so many people ask this of us that our attorneys insist that we stay away from making any specific promises, since it is very likely, that should large investment funds be forthcoming, that there may be numerous people claiming commissions for their efforts on our behalf.

I hope you understand our position on this, and I’m sure that we will make every effort to treat you fairly, should you be able to develop funds for Sea Solar Power.

I am glad to forward to you one of our brochures; a copy of our paper entitled “Sea Solar Power and the Chemical Industry”; also, an article from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

That WALL STREET JOURNAL article of November 22, 1976, which Mr. Anderson sent me, featured a description of an OTEC demonstration device [see inscription above] that Mr. Anderson and his son Jim had developed. I found that the article was a detailed corroboration of what Shamcher had said in Canada: The technology is proven and there is lot of interest. The following are some select passages from the long article.

· The Andersons are not alone in pushing this technology, known as ocean thermal energy conversion, or OTEC for short. Growing numbers of scientists, corporate researchers, members of Congress and officials of the government’s Energy Research and Development Administration agree that the process works and might be applied on a large scale to ease the nation’s energy pinch.

They are talking of putting the process to work in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of giant floating power plants. These facilities would be spotted in ocean areas where surface and deep water temperature differences are great enough—-30 to 40 degrees-—to make the operation efficient and economic. The most likely sites, proponents say, are in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Stream off Florida, the Caribbean, and equatorial waters in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

With such prospects in mind, the Andersons’ company, giants like Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and TRW Inc., and experts at top universities have already begun designing supertanker—size power plants that would employ the same process. These plants would suck in vast amounts of warm surface water, perhaps 80 degrees in temperature, to heat a liquid that would boil at relatively low temperatures and turn into a vapor to drive a turbine generator. (Conventional power plants, of course, burn a fuel to heat water to make steam that drives turbine generators.) Then cold water, perhaps 40 degrees in temperature, would be pumped up from thousands of feet below to cool the vapor and condense it into a liquid, so that the process would keep repeating itself. Electricity would be transmitted to shore by underwater cables....

· Robert Douglass, manager of TRW’s ocean thermal program, says his company figures that the oceangoing electric plants could compete economically with nuclear and coal-fired power plants by the mid—1980s. (Some scientists claim the process could be competitive right now.) It is rather dramatic, almost revolutionary, Mr. Douglass says, for a new technology to become economically competitive so fast.

William Heronemus, an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts who has been leading a team of 12 professors studying the concept, emphasizes a big point in its favor: It uses “the largest solar resource”-—seas that are warmed by the sun and can be tapped for energy 24 hours a day. Other solar power projects, by contrast, use sunlight only during daytime hours and on clear days.

Mr. Heronemus says his studies show it would be feasible to build 4,500 floating electric power plants of commercial size in a 400 by l5 mile swath of the warm Gulf Stream off Florida and Georgia. He calculates that enough energy could be tapped from the temperature differences between surface and deep waters there to produce continuously at least twice the amount of electricity the U.S. currently needs....”

· Lockheed has designed an OTEC plant referred to as a spar-buoy, with its tip above water and the rest underneath. A concrete pipe would telescope down 1,500 feet to bring up cold water.

TRW’S proposal calls for a huge doughnut-like vessel that would float on the surface and send a 50-foot-diameter pipe to a depth of 4,000 feet.

In contrast, the University of Massachusetts design is a ship-like plant about one-third the size of the TRW and Lockheed designs. Such a project would be much cheaper to build and could be immediately competitive with Power plants on land, Mr. Heronemus claims....”

· Still another OTEC plant has been designed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University’sApplied Physics Laboratory, but with a special purpose uppermost in mind. These researchers figure the earliest, most realistic use of the power generated will be at the sea site for manufacture of ammonia as an ingredient for fertilizer. Ammonia is a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen; hydrogen would be extracted from seawater by an electrolytic process, and air would be liquefied to get at its nitrogen.

Twenty-one such plants in tropical waters, each making 586,000 tons of ammonia a year, could be operating within a decade, says William Avery, who directs the research. He adds that reliance on sea and air for raw materials would significantly relieve the drain on supplies of natural gas, from which ammonia is ordinarily made….

My quick response to this article was a letter to Anderson dated July 20, 1967, which never got acknowledged. It’s a wonder that Mr. Anderson ever spoke to me again after that letter. First off I’m unprofessional. I don’t refer to Shamcher as the engineer, Bryn Beorse, but by his Sufi name, Shamcher.

Then, and this is the worst, when speaking about THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’s article calling the Andersons “recent pioneers of the process” and which has them constructing the “world’s only OTEC model”, I mention Shamcher’s three models he built at Berkeley. I rub it in and say, “I hope this information doesn’t ruin your reputation as ‘recent pioneers of the process’. There’s more that causes me to characterize myself as “idiot boy”, but I’ll spare the reader.

Before J. Hubert Anderson of Sea Solar Power, Inc. had even responded to my request to represent his company and try to generate funds to build some OTEC plants, I had already falsely asserted in a letter to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington that I represented “an American firm”. (“I represent an American firm which can provide the technology to generate electric power, for which your government now proposes to pay West Germany 5 billion dollars to develop nuclear power.”) The same day, I wrote the Israelis in Washington, “I would like an appointment with the Prime Minister when he comes to Washington next week, to discuss the development of sea solar power in Israel.”

In my letter to Anderson I enclosed copies of 1) my letter to the Brazilian Embassy; 2) my letter to the Israeli Embassy; 3) the letter from President Carter’s Office of Energy and Planning, signed by Frank R. Pagnotta, and my response; and 4) Shamcher’s so-called “Address on Energy”, the talk given in Canada.

During this period, Shamcher was reeling from the damage he feared I had done to his efforts by distributing far and wide his “Address on Energy”. He wrote July 28, 1977, “You send me a proposal and I shall review and correct it. At once. Or I have to write Governor Brown and tell him you sent a bum steer. For he promised to come here and see and hear, but hasn’t, and Professor Howe (Chairman Emeritus of the Sea Water Conversion Lab) believes it is because of this awful ‘Address’. I had to tell him about it. Governor Brown now seems an only hope. He has the public ear, and is not dumb, like Nixon.”

Earlier in the same letter, he said,

Mansur, your letter to the Earl of Rutland was beautiful, both in concept and execution. On the other hand, your approach to Schlesinger [President’s Carter’s Secretary of Energy], President Carter, any administration official, is a waste of time. And worse. You couldn’t know that, and may even think differently and act differently.

Of great importance is Governor Brown of California, not as governor but as competitor of Carter and company and pusher of Carter and company. But you may unwittingly have blown that. For one of your reports on my energy talk may have reached him and turned him away in disgust.

It is always wrong to send off uncritically a mess of words produced for a specific audience. I am of course flattered that you did, but our friendship would be ridiculous if we couldn’t be frank.

Such a talk has to be minusculely considered for each recipient. It is true that Governor Brown might be the only type who might appreciate such a talk if properly presented. It wasn’t properly presented. The beginning is an awful jumble--this is your fault. The rest is good enough to get a feel of reality, but awkwardly presented. You would know it immediately, if you read through it carefully. I have not had time to re—write it, expected you to do it. Start with....

It was true. The exuberance I felt about OTEC overrode all tact. All the worse considering the guidance Shamcher gave in 1972 when I sent him some letters I had written to some California politicians on the subject of air pollution, which was my interest at the time. He wrote back on October 3, 1972.

Mansur, thank you for two letter copies. Sending me these means a gentle pronouncement that an answer, while not requested, would be accepted. The answer is: Today most people in positions you are interested in receive such a flood of mail there is little chance he will have a chance to take a look at yours, except if you were his buddy from five on and your name flashes in red on the envelop.

There is of course a statistical possibility, one in a million, that he will see your letter. What then? It must be clear and distinct, physically, a good ribbon. The first sentence must be captivating-—for the reader, that is, he must find something inspiring--about himself.

Seven big lawyers had tried in vain to sell our dynamic machine to Gisholt of Madison, Wisconsin. I wrote one letter to the President. In it I quoted his recent crack; then talked for several paragraphs about the splendid products of his company; then in the last paragraph outlined how our balance machine humbly could increase the value of one of his products. He took the next plane for New York and me.

Furthermore: Just talk about one thing in each letter, not three or a million. Have a beginning, tension mounting middle, and happy ending. “Without all these characteristics you are wasting your time and--what is worse—-his. “Forget your own petty thoughts, frustrations, idiosyncrasies. They aren’t worth a dust mote anyway.

Chapter 3 – Guidance for idiot boy

On July 17, 1977, Shamcher wrote: “Mansur, while I am flattered by your activity and understand your drive, correct your mistakes before it is too late: First, Anderson’s plant does not produce fresh water as a by—product. Only the University of California’s (mine) and Hydronautics’ produce fresh water as a by-product.

Anderson’s price, 154 million dollars for a 100 MW (megawatt) plant compares to $1 billion 350 million for the twelfth or 25th plant Lockheed builds for 160MW, now lowered to $1 billion 100 million for a 260 MW plant, and the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Massachusetts are cheaper than Lockheed, but far above Anderson’s.

The three most reliable builders: Lockheed, the University of Massachusetts and Johns Hopkins believe Anderson’s estimate is completely immature. Anderson took over from the University of California when no more funds became available at our University, but now told me he had never heard of the Cal research, and constantly talks of himself as the pioneer. Fine, keep yourself as Anderson’s boy, but remember what I just told you and make no hint to the Andersons about it. I haven’t yet had the heart to tell Mayer, whose paper is excellent…. Now for once be wise like a snake, not just a roaring lion.

Great advice this last, received too late for idiot boy to be wise.

On July 26, 1977, Shamcher wrote:

Mansur, yes, send me all the Anderson material you can spare and any other. OTEC is so big I have so far been nourished amply on what people sent me without my asking. Anderson never sent me anything. Gordon Dugger, Johns Hopkins University’s excellent man, sent me summaries of Anderson’s things.

True, this university publishes little. So what? The published things don’t reach policy makers anyway. The University of California was the only university who in 1949 accepted my 0TEC work and went ahead researching. I tried Westinghouse, Harvard, MIT-—everything. The National Bureau of Standards, though, did build two plants.

I have no slightest objection to you joining Anderson, nor to Anderson himself. He may need to feel like a pioneer in order to function. It does not matter at all.

David Mayer is a peach. I am glad to hear he likes Anderson’s plan. I will look at it. Actually at this point nobody can say what is the most viable. It will have to be proven.

Lockheed has the most buildable project. Heronemus is more wide-ranging, in a sense the top man. He should be energy czar instead of Schlesinger. We may still make him so. Dugger is the most excellent summary man, and we shall look at Anderson.

This university used the open cycle (along with Hydronautics) meaning water was the driving fluid, not any ammonia or propane or refrigerant (as in Anderson’s) and that is the only way we can obtain fresh water from the plant.

The problem is the turbine. With water as the working fluid, large turbines are supposed to be required. I have proposed that the University of California investigates this in hardware. I found in the fifties that most of the engineering formulas were exaggerated. They didn’t show what they were supposed to show.

Meanwhile, I encourage building any and all plants for which funds are available. That’s a way almost topping the excellent Heronemus. I said at the last OTEC conference, “Let’s try Anderson’s. 154 million dollars means 70 cents per U.S. citizen. Just a cup of coffee. And if we find we need more? Another cup of coffee to complete it, is that so bad?”

Anderson does seem to be a bit afraid of me. He doesn’t need to be. Now don’t scare him, you bogeyman! I’ve talked to him once, at the Third OTEC Workshop, in Houston, May, 1975. I said, “Mr. Anderson, did you ever see the University of California plants?” “No.” That was all. Just fun.

You understand: You are a free agent, all rights to do what you want. Not even I have any idea or say as to what you should do. Someone is working on this behind the scene, having more ample knowledge than any of us. You are welcome to do whatever you think. Also, I have a right to say whatever I want. It may not be the final truth. Nobody here on earth knows the final truth at this time.

On August 4, 1977, Shamcher wrote:

Mansur, thank you very much for papers on Anderson’s device. I see from them that he produces fresh water as a by-product even with his closed cycle by simply adding another complete plant to his power plant. Feasible, of course, but much more cumbersome and costly than combining the two in one water working—fluid plant as the University of California did.

Against that, some few engineers (like possibly Anderson) say our turbines (with water vapor) will be too big. Engineers and others are so afraid of saying, “We do not know,” or believe in accepted “formula”. I spent much time at the University of California when younger [He is 81 now] writing papers proving how completely inaccurate many of the accepted formulas were.

Anderson’s general cost estimates are interesting and just as guessing as any other cost estimate for new machinery. His 4 cents for 1,000 gallons to produce fresh water is no worse than MIT claiming 3 cents for the ionics process in 1954. It actually came to four dollars. Apart from that, in Anderson’s way of adding all these various side products, one may give any or no value to the part of the machinery devoted to water production (or whatever) and come up with any cost one wants.

As to the truth of pressure equalization by building the condenser high and evaporator low, this depends on the type of working fluid used. The Anderson idea in this respect may indeed be good for the fluids he uses.

Lockheed, the University of Massachusetts, the Johns Hopkins University have not found this worth considering. I, the father of it all, say, “Don’t fight too hard at this point, dear boys.

Try it out. Let each one build and prove his own-—in all detail, and don’t let some bureaucrat who really doesn’t care a whit try to dictate which type of plant you shall build and which not.”

Do you see, Mansur, how our best and most hardworking men and institutions are frustrated, handicapped, killed and tortured by the impossible system through which good ideas become known to the “decision makers” (ha, what a bunch) and really built?

The Government’s idea about deciding what to research, how much, and what then to do is so outrageously and fantastically wasteful that one wonders if, rather, we should have no government at all.

When one single university or large firm advances a good idea, that’s enough to build it, and more than enough. When seven major Universities and six large firms agree on a certain thing, only complete fools hesitate and ask for “more studies”. (Studies by whom for goodness sakes.)

And if Anderson wants to call himself a pioneer, good show. The “pioneers” of OTEC are all dead: A French, an American and an Italian engineer in the 188Os; George Claude, Andre Nizeri, Nisolle, Christian Beau—-all French engineers, the latest died in 1973.

These and only these are the pioneers. In these United States, I, Shamcher, Bryn Beorse, was the only one who brought hardware research to the University of California.

Anderson was a smart and wide awake fellow to take it up, and to his funny claim, I can only roar with laughter and pat his back: Good old fellow!

And I shall do my best to keep him happy and not to frustrate his ambitions. And so must you, Mansur. Not a peep out of you. (You have already peeped a bit you know.) Don’t any more! We need Anderson to win. Along with the others. Your letters were fine.

Then, there was the post script in the margin at the top of his July 26, 1977, letter praising my letter of July 12^th (“very good letter”) and cautioning me against sending letters to the University addressed to “Shamcher”. “This was addressed to Shamcher and the office girls had no idea who that was, so opened the letter, or might have returned it.”

Chapter 4 – Fail to Sell OTECs to Israel and (without trying) make peace with Egypt

The 1977 Jerusalem Camp, to be held in the Judean Hills west of Jerusalem, will host a multi-national, multi-cultural convocation of students, seekers, and lovers of God, who wish to come together in the attitude of brotherhood.

Our purpose in this gathering is to attune to the Divine Will as communicated through the many prophets, known and unknown, of all the worlds traditions, and learn to become channels of mercy, compassion, friendship, and joy, and thus realize our potential for human cooperation and brotherhood.

Together we will experience the land upon which the prophets walked, and become acquainted with the cultures of the present day inhabitants.

We hope that this camp can truly be a shared experience among pilgrims and natives——Arab and Jew-—of this holy land.

THEY ARE THE TRUE BENI ISRAEL whose hearts are alive,/ Who respond to Mercy, Compassion and Love,/ Who know how to dance and laugh and have no complaint,/ Which things come neither by blood or inheritance./ Where SHOLOM ALEICHEM and SALAAM ALEIKHUM are united. [from SALADIN by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis]

The above is from the Jerusalem camp brochure for the Americans.

From the brochure for the Arabs and Jews distributed in Israel [Palestine] in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, the brochure reads,

The Jerusalem camp is a brotherhood camp whose ideal is to provide a space for friends of different paths to come together in celebration.

We hope all those involved in the camp will grow together and draw closer to realizing the unity of God on earth in which cooperation and true peace within may become a living reality.

The camp is under the directorship of Banefsha Gest, Leader of the Jerusalem Sufi Center and coordinator of Hallelujah! The Three Rings activities in Israel. Hallelujah! The Three Rings was formed under the inspiration of the late Samuel L. Lewis, Sufi teacher, Zen master and Rabbi.

This work continues in Jerusalem and San Francisco at the present time through scientific programs for providing adequate food, housing and clothing; through cultural and economic exchange; and through spiritual drama under the auspices of Pageants of Universal Peace.

Three members of the teaching staff were unable to make the trip, so I filled in, and had to pay my own expenses, which amounted to an airline ticket totaling $770, plus an additional $240. The camp ran from August 18 to August 30, 1977.

On August 31, Shamcher wrote to me at my home near Boston,

Mansur, you are now back from your demanding trip to Israel and I congratulate you on your achievements. Banefsha and you do and did wonders there. I wrote a long letter to Pir Vilayat (the head of the Sufi Order) about it, but now, speaking of letters: You asked me in several communications what I thought about your letters to the Israel embassy, the Brazilians and so on. Well, you know, you have to go through the mill like we all do, and you will find letters hardly ever do much.

Why then do I continue to write them? Partly because they might accidentally hit somebody, and important: They are cheap. Like Bernard Baruch, when he had made his first million: “Dad, I made my first million.” “Hum.” “Dad, would you like to see it?” “No son. But when you do something important, do come and tell me.”

A telegram neither means anything any more. A telephone conversation is in an entirely different league, may create wonders. But far ahead of any telephone conversation, again, is the personal touch and talk. If you have a person. Your lovely Ayesha-Geneve [my wife] wrote me while you were away. See what happens when you leave your love behind?

Flying into Tel Aviv a few short years after the Lod Airport massacre was an unnerving experience. Young, stern-faced, plain-clothed Israeli security agents were everywhere. One had the feeling of being on the front page. Here I am in Israel. And I didn’t realize how small it was. In the time I drove from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I could drive from Boston to my seaside home in Hull, Massachusetts. And in practically half the time it took to get from the airport to Jerusalem, heading east, I could be out of Israel.

My sympathies were with the Israelis regarding settlements, and buffer zones. They are a small island among hostile Arabs, and to this day [1990], I cannot understand the U.S. government’s insistence they stop settling land they grabbed in a war they didn’t start and won. [Now in 2005, I want the apartheid state of Israel to integrate, stop building the wall, and give back the land they grabbed in the war. How one changes!]

But politics was not my purpose, nor the purpose of the camp. And OTEC was apolitical. Mr. Anderson and Dr. Mayer were united in their strategy of building an OTEC plant outside the U.S. in order to prod the Americans to get going. I asked Shamcher if it were unpatriotic of me to join them in this.

Mansur, no, no, it is not at all “unpatriotic” to try to make the Israelis build an OTEC plant first, but you will have no success with the highly developed and brilliantly informed Israelis if you don’t know what has gone on before. OTEC is nothing new to the Israelis. Christian Beau, the great French pioneer, visited them repeatedly and discussed among other things OTEC plants in the Red Sea, which has peculiar thermal phenomenae. You can learn from the Israelis more than you can teach them.

Uncertain that I received his letter written August 18, 1977, and mailed to Jerusalem, Shamcher had my wife cable me,

Shamcher says remind Israelis about French Christian Beau’s previous visits with them on using the Red Sea. There is a pool of over 200 degrees Fahrenheit water in the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Egypt which may be utilized for efficient OTEC plants. Israelis may build them and be forever helping Arabs, or U.S. can build them and have eternal friendship with both Arabs and Israelis.

I made a trip to Tel Aviv to see Mr. Ofri. His office was supposed to be in Jerusalem; but when I went there, they said he was in Tel Aviv. Our camp was in between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on the outskirts of a religious commune called Moshav Modi’in. We were camped in a forest.

It was a strange forest we camped in. You could sift the earth next to your tent and find mosaics in among the pine needles, or come upon a deep cistern in the natural forest, or climb out of the forest onto a hill and watch maneuvers by the Israeli tanks.

The Maccabees had been there before us, in the 2nd century B.C. From this place grew a resistance movement. Author Moshe Pearlman in THE MACCABEES (Jerusalem, 1973) says the Maccabees ”brought low a powerful empire which sought to crush the Jewish people, restored their desecrated Temple in Jerusalem, and went on to regain sovereignty in their ravaged land, thereby preserving the Jewish faith and the national will for independence.”

From Modi’in where Judah the Maccabee organized the resistance movement, I left to find Mr. S. Ofri, the minister of Commerce and Industry, on the 5th floor of the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv.

Dr. Mayer had been there 3 days before me. Mr. Ofri told me what he told him: Go talk to the big turbine—making company called Ormat, located near the nuclear power installation near Yavne. That meant more bus rides.

All the Ormat executives were in the United States, they told me, but their chief, Mr. Boronitski, was available when I called Ormat again. Mr. Boronitski said he had phoned Anderson in the States. We made an appointment. I was so eager to be on time that I got off the bus in Ramla instead of Rehovet and was late.

Mr. Boronitski shook hands with me on his way out and introduced me to Haim Hershman. Mr. Hershman was mostly closed-mouth and courteous, telling me, in fact, nothing. He said they were just waiting to see what would happen somewhere else, that something might happen here in 15 or 20 years. End of meeting.

I called again unannounced on Mr. Ofri in Jerusalem. He was there. He revealed that, in fact, Mr. Boronitski was involved in “pre-feasibility studies”, that when they build something, it would be “big”, and that it would not be on the American model of temperature differences of only 30 degrees. (How about Christian Beau’s 200 degree Fahrenheit solar ponds? He didn’t say.)

I was very humble this time. I said I just wanted to know what was happening right now in Israel, since I had realized that Israel had a lot to teach me. “What do you mean what’s happening? I’m playing bridge this afternoon and making love tonight,” he said. I told him I was eager to help him, and he said there were technical men who couldn’t help him, and since I wasn’t a technical man, I would be less help than that. After this conversation, I knew where I stood with Mr. Ofri.

On September 15, 1977, Shamcher wrote:

Mansur, Mr. O. in Israel is wrong that you cannot help because you are not a technical man, but was right in seeing you at all.

The people who killed OTEC (temporarily) when the University of California had completed research were technical, engineers, scientists, who either were afraid of their jobs, since they hadn’t followed (this damned new thing), or just ranted away according to their wonderful technical misinformation.

On the whole, from your report and the paper you sent, I am disappointed about the Israelis, whom I thought so much of before.

All that is of interest is the temperature conditions in the Mediterranean west of Israel. There are rumors there is no large gradient, not sufficiently cold underneath. I understand they may fix that by solar basins, but huge flows can hardly be promoted that way.

It seems that in spite of Christian Beau from France, Mayer and Mansur from the U.S., they haven’t yet caught on to OTEC. So, no use worrying with them until they come begging.

I may go to India, where I was in 1959, creating deep interest from the Prime Minister Nehru and on down. They do have excellent temperature differences on their West coast.

And then months later, after Anwar Sadat made his historic peace—making trip from Cairo to Jerusalem in November, 1977, and after the Camp David Peace Conference, I read in THE BATTLE FOR PEACE by Ezer Weizman that Sadat got the idea to go to Jerusalem while flying back to Cairo from Romania, sometime during the latter half of August.

I wrote Ezer Weizman, who was in on all the peace talks on the Israeli side: “You know, at that time, there were a number of people gathered in Israel, with the intention of bringing Arabs and Jews together.

“And ever since I heard when and where Sadat got the idea to go to Jerusalam, it occurred to me that maybe our gathering had something to do with it. Maybe Mr. Sadat passed through that big thought-form of cooperation and brotherhood in his airplane and took it for his own. And, more importantly, did something about it.”

Weizman answered my fan letter.

It was well-known that Anwar Sadat smoked hashish, ganja, grass--marijuana in some form.

Can’t you imagine him getting high on the way home from Romania and, some time before he landed in Cairo, getting the inspiration to make peace?

Ezer Weizman said the idea came to Sadat at exactly the time when the Sufis were in Israel doing their camp.

Chapter 5 – OTEC, Inc.

Idiot boy needs a job.

What about something with OTEC, Incorporated?

On September 13, 1977, I wrote to Shamcher,

I went to apply for a job substitute teaching (which I didn’t carry through with, because I thought the low pay was beneath my dignity), but got a grand inspiration.

Shamcher didn’t call me on it. He didn’t do the therapist’s work. He heard me out. I went on:

As I reported to you, both Gronich [Sigmund Gronich, Chief of the Ocean System Branch, Division of Solar Energy, United States Energy Research and Development Administration] and my congressman, Gerry Studds ( D-MA), sent me the document which lists all the OTEC contracts.

I jokingly suggested to you that you apply for a few million.

Now I wonder, seriously, whether we shouldn’t form OTEC, Inc.

And I listed a few ideas I had driving away from my job interview:

1) To promote the utilization of alternate energy forms,

2) To research specific locations in all parts of the world and recommend the ideal form,

3) To raise money to build commercial power plants in cooperation with existing governments and local utility companies,

4) To develop industries related to the generation of power, such as chemical production, mareculture and fresh water,

5) To act as a go-between in negotiations between localities, governments, utility companies and the producers of hardware,

6) To provide consulting services for nations and individuals who are interested in developing alternate energy forms.

There was more, but you get the idea. I continued on selling Shamcher on the make-work project he would have to be the crown jewels for.

Of course, I don’t know how these things work, but I’m ready to go through the mill. I was ½ hour on the radio last Friday, and 50 seconds on TV yesterday for OTEC.

Do you have the energy and/or see the need to start OTEC, Inc. to further OTEC and give this person and others a place to work?

Shamcher answered September 16, 1977,

Mansur, your proposal for OTEC INC is excellent, but nothing is achieved by just proposing it. It is always the proposer himself who must have the guts and patience to do, to realize it.

I have noted an enormous amount of energy in you, whether you are hungry or not (I have often been hungry and none the worse for it, often better). So, go ahead.

Among your confederates: Anderson will be all for it, if you can convince him that you can do it and that nevertheless he, Anderson, will be the king-pin, but shave him down, too; he needs both, both to be raised and lowered, and don’t ever consider yourself smaller, because you haven’t this or that distinction, such as a PhD or Master of Engineering degree. (And David Mayer, certainly.)

Anderson’s design looks good, and that is all that can be said for it at this point. His insistence that he can build it and it can be efficient for the price he quotes is understandable, but entirely in the blue, which every good engineer knows.

But how many are good engineers? A mechanic here at the University of California asked my advice whether he should study to become an engineer. “But you know, I am now a crack mechanic, and perhaps I would be only an average engineer?” Well, says I, if you become just an average engineer, you’ll be the best of all of us.

Engineers, like others, are very average, even more so. But with the whole world as your field for “membership”, you would quickly collect 166 million (about seventy cents per citizen in the United States alone), and you could actually build an OTEC and stretch out your tongue to the Government and Schlesinger and Carter. Just a nice morning exercise for a less than average Sufi. Yes, I support you fully but can probably do nothing....

Yes, wind energy is also fine, OTEC and wind, a good combination. Even waves, in the British fashion. And tides, a few places.

Maybe you need a job as low-paid teacher while doing and building your OTEC INC. It isn’t done in one day. But by attracting the right helpers you might succeed.

Maybe try Pat Caddell, Director, Cambridge Reports Inc., I2—14 Mifflin Place, Cambridge, MA 02138. He is President Carter’s pollster; was united with the nuclear interests. I wrote him a clarion

call to arms, saying his glance shows he can perceive the future and change in time. Pester him. He needs it. He can be changed; would be a good promoter and creator of a worldwide organization that eventually can laugh at presidents and cabinets.

More advice came October 3, 1977, in a letter from Shamcher, which suggested he was taking my scheme seriously:

Mansur, have a bank collect the money for building OTEC plants. Have a group of OTEC and other people “govern” the fund, supplying you with monthly stipend or salary, not a full-time job (no one will give that much quite yet).

The group could be, alphabetically, not in sequence of importance: Anderson, Dugger (Johns Hopkins), Heronemus, David Mayer, Lloyd Trimble (Lockheed), Bryn Beorse, and the Vice President of the bank involved.

These people decide when money seems sufficient to start building what. There should at least be three, perhaps ten plants built more or less simultaneously.

In the paper encouraging inputs it should be stressed this is risk capital, but actually very little risk (except the risk of not collecting enough) for building a new (but really proven, in 1930 already) energy system, which is eternally renewable, cheap, ecologically benign, perhaps the first real move to make the people build what the People want.

My latest history [see the preface] along with Heronemus’ lecture of April 21, 1977 [see the Chapter on Heronemus] would do for a come-on, a pamphlet. And with David Mayer’s three page piece added. Perhaps. If Pat Caddell wants to help do it, he has good precedents. Also, he may try to destroy it, which I think he cannot.

Pat Caddell I never pestered. OTEC, Inc. never got off the ground. I couldn’t get a handle on how to pester Pat Caddell. It wasn’t his exalted status as the President’s pollster. I wasn’t afraid of approaching exalted individuals in the government. It was really the first thing that Shamcher pointed out in his letter of September l6th: It is the proposer of an idea who has to realize it. From the place where I was, feeling deeply the need to do it, to setting up a formal business structure: that was not my cup of tea.

Nevertheless, I put together a pamphlet of quotations from Lockheed’s Lloyd Trimble, Heronemus, and Anderson and, of course, Shamcher, and sent it to Shamcher.

Then, only 30 days after I had first proposed the idea that “we” do this thing, Shamcher wrote something that blew me out of the water--for one day.

On October 13, 1977, Shamcher wrote in his telegraph style,

Mansur, OTEC, Inc. pamphlet proposal is fine. You know not to keep me connected with it at this present time. Being at the University of California as “Research Associate” would conflict with it and make me useless in both capacities. But if you have Heronemus’ or Anderson’s consent, you could use that in relation to the others.

I was too crushed to write anything to Shamcher except a postscript in an October 19, 1977, letter, which stated, “Shamcher, your disassociation crushed me for a day. Did you feel it? By the way, what is your work at the University of California?”

Responding October 25, 1977, Shamcher said,

Mansur, your one-day shock, because I couldn’t be inside OTEC, Inc., was contrasted by the personnel inside ALTERNATIVE DIRECTIONS IN ENERGY AND ECONOMICS just formed here.

The purpose of this organization is simply to disseminate information about OTEC [The organization came into being and I became the east coast representative.] and promote John H.G. Pierson’s INSURING FULL EMPLOYMENT (Viking, 1964), as the future economic policy of the United States.

To this end 50,000 dollars [it never happened] will be had from a foundation for a start. In this organization sit Jelaluddin Boru (you recall from Toronto), Sabira Scott, Tim Axelrod, an astrophysicist now working at Livermore Laboratory, who will be PhD in June, and Saadi, a level-headed publicist at the Khankah [the name for the Sufi communal house].

Jelaluddin is President. Sabira is Secretary—Treasurer. And they are all delighted that I showed the sense of having to stay outside.

A “Research Associate” (as I am) at a special university working on OTECS would show conflict of interest by belonging to such an organization. Even more by belonging to OTEC, Inc. But you can bet I will really be involved.

Apropos the astrophysicist, a physics PhD who is as eager for OTEC as you or I: You should also as soon as possible achieve a “neutral” scientist on your board; one who is hell-bent on OTECS and also has a PhD in physics or electrical, electronic, mechanical, or general engineering. Close to you. So you completely trust him. That’s an easy requirement, isn’t it?

Now, my trek here may not last beyond December 31st. After that I may have a tremendous job in Navy research, which would make my membership in OTEC, Inc. even more devastating, or enclosed job [with EPRI] equally unnecessary.

Then again, I may be with the Arab Petro-dollar gang, and then I could very well be a member of OTEC, Inc. So don’t fret. We’ll get there somehow, and the more careful you are, the better. (This is said to you. To Sabira I would say the opposite: The more careless you are able to become, the better for all of us.)

Attached to his letter was a copy of a job application letter to EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, a group associated with the status quo in electrical power generation.

When this copy of his job application came I saw Shamcher was just as much a loose cannon as I was, only he did it with humor and wisdom.

The fact that his appointment at the University of California expired in December and that he might be out of work was news to me.

He’d said earlier he might be building OTECS in Egypt or India.

I knew he was a free spirit.

I wasn’t aware of the details of his life, yet I felt he was capable of anything, and I expected nothing, except, perhaps, his support of whatever I was doing.

This EPRI was, basically, a proponent of the nuclear power industry.

One didn’t look to them for wisdom or vision concerning renewable energy. In 1977, they were disgustingly conventional. I often wondered how Ms. Larkin Platt responded when she read Bryn Beorse’s application for “Project Manager, Thermo-Mechanical Energy Storage.” I present below the October 24, 1977, letter to Ms. Larkin Platt, EPRI, in Palo Alto, California:

Ms. Larkin Platt, our largest energy storage facility, apart from the globe itself, is the Ocean. Direct and economically competitive utilization of this ocean-stored energy can now, today, be achieved by Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plants.

I know this from my work for the past 29 years on this system. The cost of such utilization varies with the companies and institutions offering it. The Applied Physics Lab of the Johns Hopkins University offers plants built for $700 per KW built, and the fuel (sea water) is free, abundant and pollution free. I have gone through their design and estimate.

All critics are ignorant in this field, whether Government men or outsiders. The University of Massachusetts offers plants at $8OO per KW built. Lockheed/Bechtel in 1975 offered plants at $1300 per KW built but are now revising this design and estimate. (Their higher price is partly due to titanium rather than aluminum in their heat exchangers, to combat corrosion.) Sea Solar Power, the Anderson father-son engineering team, offers a 100 megawatt plant for 166 million dollars. This kind of plant must be big to be economical.

Our general technical community, let alone the political elite, hasn’t yet caught up with the above fact. That is why I apply for this position, to save you from an elaborate research effort that may become unnecessary.

I would still support and guide research in other areas, but with the knowledge that the problem has already a fully usable solution.

The above prospects were known from 1881, when an American, two Italians and a Frenchman developed the idea. The first practical solution happened in 1929, when a Frenchman built a plant in Cuba, producing 22 Kilowatts throughout eleven consecutive days.

In the forties, the French government designed a plant in Abidjan, West Africa, built and laid the cold water pipeline, a critical component, tested it for corrosion and biofouling for six months; then these enthusiastic engineers had the shock of their lives: A nuclear touched government decided to throw all their funds into the nuclear basket. It promised superior weapons.

In the fifties, the University of California (with me in it as research engineer and later consultant) built plants in three sizes. All this before the oil boom, before the nuclear boom--and crash.

Now ERDA, [Energy Research and Development Administration] on the basis of 5% of another 5% of ERDA’s budget, is finally going to build a feeble prototype—-instead of, as Heronemus of the University of Massachusetts proposes: Build and give away to interested countries twelve plants, plus additional plants here at home, a gesture that would repay us many fold and restore the world to some sanity.

My vitae: I graduated as a “diplomingenieur” at Norway’s Institute of Technology in 1919, the thesis being a sea port with protective breakwaters and gadgets. Grade: “Outstanding”.

I am registered as a professional engineer in New York State. After toiling in 65 countries in all branches of engineering and in financing and economics, I became involved in World War II; proposed with defected German officers to kidnap Hitler and shorten the war by 14 months.

The German civil service knew of our plans, worked feverishly to prepare for the change. The British cabinet jubilated--Roosevelt turned us down saying, “The Germans must be beaten so they know it.”

The OTEC work at the University of California was sporadically funded.

During the “unfunded” periods, I worked on the cooling system of the X-15 space crafts, on the Boeing 707, and Bomarc missile, on rockets and launchers at the Hispano—Suiza factories in Geneva, Switzerland, on air pollution and sewer treatment.

I left the University for good in 1961, reaching the age limit 65. The University did its best to keep me, [saying] “This is one man who can keep a research project off the ground and keep it running.” The State did not submit to the pleading.

The Keyport Naval Station near Seattle in Washington took me over then, possibly somewhat ignorant about my age. I worked there for fifteen years when a new assignment with the University of California became possible, again with OTEC research.

I enclose a nice letter from Larry Justason, showing that I was acceptable to the Navy. The “evaluation sheet” following Larry’s letter contained three “outstandings”, twenty-one “highly satisfactory”, and two “meets normal demands” out of twenty-six points.

I got a boost from Commanding Officer Captain Garrett, when I managed to put the station’s first “Value Engineering” proposal through the Navy accountants.

This was caused by my previous experience as a bank Managing Director and advisor to Sarajouglu Shukri Bey, the Turkish Finance Minister under Kemal Attaturk, who was building up a new nation’s financial pattern.

You need, of course, a person of at least 81 years of age for this demanding position. He has ten more years of very active service at your disposition, barring accidents.

I am a “fellow” of CENTRE INTERNATIONAL DE RECHERCHE BIOLOGIQUE in Paris and Geneva.

Dr. Henri Coanda, physics professor at the Sorbonne, is one of the members. When he had invented the jet and crashed against a barn door in his first effort to show it, the superstitious Americans went to their high ideal, Van Evaar Bush, who said, “Jet propulsion will have no significance, neither in military nor in civilian aviation.” He was known lovingly as “our greatest scientist”. Today our “greatest scientists” say the same kind of thing about another system they know nothing about: OTEC.

Since the “we” in my OTEC, Inc. proposal involved me and Shamcher, and since he was obligated to bow out for the reasons outlined above, OTEC, Inc. was doomed to failure. I was interested, however, when almost two years later the idea re-appeared. Someone came to Shamcher with a grander idea than mine, and he got me involved.

A packet of letters arrived from Shamcher in April, 1979. At the top of one from Shamcher to Mr. James Smith, President of Innovation Associates, Inc., were Shamcher’s instructions, “Mansur: Please furnish James Smith with a list of 20 US shipyards eager to build OTECS, and include the New Orleans shipyards (by name) and Scottish shipyards——and send me a copy.”

Shipyards were dear to my