Olds Aims High

Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds bounced out of a one-hour confab with President Roosevelt and Secretary Ickes one noon last week to announce the biggest expansion of U.S. power capacity ever heard of. Dimensions: five years, $2,350,000,000, 13,440,000 kw.

The 13,440,000 kw. were in addition to 6,371,000 kw. already agreed on with utilitymen (more than two-thirds private, the rest Government) and scheduled for completion by Christmas 1942. If both programs are completed, the U.S. in 1946 will have 61,450,000 kw. of installed capacity, double 1929, 47% above the 41,638,956 kw. available on Jan. 1, 1941.

Olds's scheme was detailed in some spots, vague in others. Bidding for hinterland support, he listed 173 U.S. communities which would get new plants by 1946,* described exactly how many kw. they would get. To estimate the capacity needed five years hence, he assumed defense spending of $36,000,000.000 annually between 1943 and 1946. On this colossal base, FPC estimated 1945 total power consumption at 287 billion kw-h (the record up to now: 1940's 145 billion kw-h).

But even with the vast new program the 1945 power supply will be only 246 billion kwh. Thus defense plants can only be adequately supplied if "nondefense" power consumption is cut to, and held at, about the 1937 rate (122 billion kw-h).

Olds's announcement of this ambitious scheme was his own idea, not the Administration's. The meeting had agreed to keep it confidential. Furthermore, he announced that if private utilities did not care "to undertake the commitment," an unnamed RFC subsidiary would pay the bills. The meeting had not so decided, since both Ickes and the White House think Jesse Jones has too much patronage already. In undertaking to embellish the Administration program. Olds seemed to be undertaking something else: a race with his ex-sponsor Ickes for the job of U.S. energy tsar.

* Including 900,000 kw. for the St. Lawrence Seaway (TIME, July 7), which Congress has yet to approve.

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