747 BUY ✩ United States ✩ DEFENSE SAVINGS BONDS and STAMPS He Stands for SAFETY and Every time you see the Minute Man Think, too, how YOU can help. Let the Minute Man remind you to do your part. Save and buy Defense Savings Bonds. They will help protect your homes and your families today. They will help make the future secure. BUY A BOND OR STAMP EVERY DAY From Your Local POST OFFICE or BANK This Message Is Published by Us in the Interest of National Defense URGENTLY WANTED--MORE ELECTRIC ENERGY An Account of What We Have and What We Might Have By Leland Olds, Chairman Power has come to be a prime essential in modern industry. It is more important to industrial mobilization today than in the World War. It will become more important as our $36,000,000,000 annual defense effort gets still further into its stride. Already as our estimates of power needs for defense have moved steadily upward we have come to recognize the absolute dependence of industry and the nation upon electric power for total industrial mobilization. For in modern war the country or group of countries which can mobilize most completely will gain victory. Power is essential to this mobilization. Today it is estimated that the Axis combination by 1943 will command electric power resources totaling 200,000,000,000 kilowatthours a year. This total is 33 percent greater than the United States output in 1940. 100 Billion KW-Hours Per Year When our defense program reaches the $36,000,000,000 annual rate it will require 100,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy of which 55,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours will come from displacement of normal peacetime production. That is the additional amount needed by the defense program and we cannot add it to our present productive capacity in a month, a year or even two years. But the magnitude of the need is more readily apprehended when it is realized that this year the aluminum and magnesium program alone, calls for more power than the total estimated peacetime load for 1941 for the entire group of electrochemical and electrometallurgical industries. Five years ago these industries used 13,324,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy annually. In a 1938 report entitled "Power Requirements in Electrochemical, Electrometallurgical, and Allied Industries," the Federal Power Commission estimated requirements in 1941 would be 17,781,000,000 kilowatt-hours. Needs of Aluminum Production Today as part of the defense program, aluminum production alone calls for in the neighborhood of 16,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy annually. The combined aluminum and magnesium program will absorb a total of approximately 21,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy a year. Even before the defense program was projected, however, the Commission forecast that the electrochemical and electrometallurgical industry would expand considerably. It pointed to areas now under consideration by this committee, where metallurgical ores are close to regions in which comparatively low-cost power could be developed. It is in these exact regions that new metallurgical industries and new power resources are being developed. Potentialities "In the north Pacific coast with its large The foregoing article is edited from a statement by Mr. Olds, before the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys during hearings on Senate Resolution 53, 77th Congress, 1st Session, on July 29. Energy Used by Various Domestic Electric Appliances, 1924-39 (Edison Electric Institute). "Widespread deposits of manganese, chromium, and other ores suggest the possibility of ferro-alloy production. Extensive resources of phosphate rock in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana are available for the manufacture of phosphoric acid and phosphates... More immediate prospects for the development of sodium chlorate and of calcium carbide are also to be noted. "In the Southwestern States, ferro-alloys and especially ferromanganese offer distinct possibilities. Zinc deposits in the region of Pioche, Nev., are favorable for either electrolytic or electrothermal production of zinc and zinc oxides. Magnesites in California and alunites in Utah may be used for the production of electrolytic magnesium and electric furnace potash. "The ability to make potassium nitrate from potassium chloride and nitrogen peroxide (derived from ammonia), together with the potential need for additional ammonia for fertilizer use, indicate that new capacity for synthetic ammonia may be expected; perhaps utilizing power from Boulder Dam." Cost Relationship The cost relationship between use of electric power and production of these materials is apparent from the fact, as shown in the report, that one mill power, i.e., 0.1 cent per kilowatt-hour, represented only 6 percent of the price of aluminum, but 5 mill power represented 30 percent of the price while at one cent power would have absorbed 60 percent of the price. One mill power represented only 3.3 percent of the price of magnesium, but 5 mill power absorbed 16.7 percent of the price and ore cent power, 33.3 percent of the price. Similarly one mill power absorbed only 3.2 percent of the price of calcium carbide, while 5 mill power absorbed 15.8 percent and one cent power is 31.5 percent of the price charged for the product. Similar relationships exist in the production of ferrosilicon, fused alumina, silicon carbide and anhydrous ammonia. Aluminum and Electric Energy "The vital relationship of aluminum to the defense program is known to all of us. However, the place of power in the defense effort is brought home again by the fact that there are between three and five tons of aluminum on the average in every plane. It takes 24,000 kilowatt-hours to produce one ton of aluminum. Think of the relationship between the cost of power for aluminum in the planes we are building. Remember also that every time the number of tons of aluminum rises the number of kilowatt-hours needed rises tenfold. Thus, when an additional 100,000,000 pounds of aluminum is ordered, 1,000,000,000 extra kilowatt-hours must be used in its production. |