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Now's The Time To Switch to Alternative Energy
As Robert Redford writes
this week:
Thursday, May 20, 2010, marks one month
since BP's oil rig exploded in the Gulf Coast ....
This is the
clearest picture we could have of our failed national energy policy --
which extends over many decades and administrations.
It's not just the one BP oil rig. For example, since the Deepwater
Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20th, the Obama
administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27
exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil
exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. Then there are the
12 new oil and gas drilling rigs launched in the U.S. this
week.
And a whistleblower who survived the Gulf oil
explosion claims
in a lawsuit that BP's operations at another oil platform risk
another catastrophic accident that could "dwarf" the Gulf oil spill,
partly because BP never even reviewed critical engineering designs for
the operation. And see this.
Indeed,
if Alan
Greenspan, John
McCain, George
W. Bush, Sarah
Palin and others
are right, the costs of our failed energy policy might be much
higher, as it would include
various military costs as well.
And the Department of Defense also apparently has some issues with
extensive off-shore drilling for security
reasons.
Many still believe that alternative energy is an expensive,
unrealistic pipe dream.
But that is no longer necessarily true, especially when the externalities of
environmental and military costs are taken into account.
Technological
Breakthroughs
As
I have previously pointed out:
One of the world's leading experts on
trend forecasting says that producing our own energy for our homes and
cars (called "micro generation") will become a huge trend in the next couple of decades.
What's he
talking about?
Well, energy and food prices will keep going up.
Every dollar we don't have to pay to the energy utility or food
producers is a dollar we get to keep. And the technology for
producing it ourselves is getting better and better.
So
increasingly over the next couple of decades, we will generate our own
energy and food.
***
Due
to high oil prices, major breakthroughs in energy production are
happening every day.
For
example:
- A scientist has figured out how to make and store energy by splitting
water with sunlight. He says:
"You've made your house into a fuel station [and we can get] rid of all
the ... grids" [he's recently discovered an even
cheaper way to do this]
- A new generation of highly-efficient
wind turbines (and see this) is being
introduced which can produce much more energy
- And
new approaches to solar energy [see below] are making residential solar
very cost-competitive
- It has been discovered that
alcohol made from donuts, grass and other abundant materials can run
cars and all other engines [see below]With recent
breakthroughs, individuals can now generate enough energy to get off
the grid and power their own homes. Indeed, some companies will even provide the equipment for you
(and see this).
Indeed,
an new government study shows that North Sea wind and wave power could
make Britain the "Saudi
Arabia of renewable energy". For more on microgeneration and solar
energy breakthroughs, see this,
this,
this
and this.
Moreover,
Japan and other countries are funding large-scale projects to place
solar collectors in orbit, and then send clean energy to Earth.
And
as I've written before, alcohol has more alternative energy
applications than you might know:
There's a
secret history regarding alcohol that you won't hear on the six
o'clock news:
- Cars and everything else running on
internal combustion engines can run on alcohol at least as well as they
can run on gasoline. Indeed, engines were built back in 1870
that could run using either alcohol or gasoline"Autoists
Discuss Alcohol As Fuel; Great Future Ahead For Use In Commercial
Wagons, Says Prof. Lucke. Tests With Motor Truck E.R. Hewitt Tells
Engineers Of His Results With Gasoline And Alcohol In Same Engine"
- Henry Ford said that alcohol was "a cleaner, nicer, better
fuel for automobiles than gasoline" (James Brough, The Ford Dynasty: An
American Story, p. 118, and cited in "Ford - The Men and the
Machine", p. 365). The Model T Ford had a knob right on the dashboard
to adjust the fuel-air mixture for either alcohol or gas
- Alcohol does not corrode or shorten the lifespan of modern
cars, and an inexpensive adjustment to regular cars will make them run
smoothly and inexpensively on alcohol***
Moreover,
those in the know actually are
using alcohol as a fuel today. For example, there are many
millions of cars being driven in Brazil that run on alcohol.And
many government and car fleets are actually required to be able to
run on either alcohol or gas. The car companies simply forgot to tell
the American consumer that these kind of cars are available. See this and this.
Indeed,
as I've previously noted, running equipment using alcohol should not
increase food prices:
The leading proponents of alcohol
as fuel are not talking about corn. Corn is a lousy crop for making
alcohol, and there
are many other crops that are much more efficient. Indeed, the
leaders in this field promote growing a wide variety of crops
(appropriate for whatever specific climate you live in) , and many of
the crops they suggest are also valuable food crops.And you
don't even need to use plants . . . you can make alcohol fuel out of rotten fruit, stale soft drinks or donuts.
And as I pointed
out last year:
Heat
can be used to generate electricity. This is true not only on the
industrial scale, but even on the level of your home faucet. Indeed,
inventors have already built home faucet kits which turn the unused heat
from your hot water into electricity.In hot climates, black
thermal-electric mats could be installed on roofs to generate
electricity.Heat is a byproduct of other processes, and so
nothing special needs to be done to create it. Just about every human
activity and many natural processes create heat, so we just have to
utilize it.***
Another use of a free, wasted byproduct
to generate electricity is piezo-electric
energy. "Piezo" means pressure. Anything that produces pressure
can produce energy.
For example, a train station in Japan
installed piezo-electric equipment in the ground, so that the foot
traffic of those walking through the train station generates electricity
(turnstiles at train, subway and ferry stations, ballparks and
amusement parks can also generate electricity).
Similarly, all
exercise machines at the gym or at home can be hooked up to produce
electricity.
But perhaps the greatest untapped sources of
piezo-electric energy are freeways and busy roads. If piezo-electric
mats were installed under the busiest sections, the thousands of tons of
vehicles passing over each day would generate massive amounts of
electricity for the city's use.
***
Scientists have figured
out that solar
collection is much more efficient if you focus the sunlight:
And see this.***
One
day, virtually every surface will be turned into an energy-production
medium. Instead of having discreet energy-producing machines, roofs,
exterior walls, sidewalks, roads and many other surfaces will be
coated with "smart materials" which convert light, heat, pressure and
other inputs into useful energy, which are then collected, stored and
distributed as needed.Hundreds or thousands of years in the
future, mankind might even learn how to collect the virtual particles
which are constantly popping into and out of existence.Harvesting The Ocean of Energy
Perhaps
the biggest evolution needed in people's thinking - in any area of
life - is how we think about energy.
The current paradigm is that
energy is produced expensively by governments or large corporations
through gigantic projects using enormous amounts of money, materials and
manpower. Because energy can only be produced by the big boys, we
the people must bow our heads to the powers-that-be. We must pay a
lot of our hard-earned money to buy electricity from them, and we can't
question the methods or results of their energy production.Our
life will become much better when we begin to understand that energy
is all around us - as an ocean of electromagnetic forces and as a
byproduct of other processes in the form of heat, pressure, etc. - and
all we need do is learn how to harvest it.The Gulf oil
spill disaster must not be in vain.We must use it to finally
find the vision and the will to make the switch to alternative energy.
Note: While energy conservation is not as sexy as
generation, it is worth noting that power usage in American buildings could be reduced by 50%,
largely by programming
unused appliances to be shut off.
Moreover, approximately 6.5% of all power transmitted in the U.S. is
lost through transmission line losses and other inefficiencies every year. By improving
the efficiency of transmission lines, energy conservation can be greatly
improved. There is alot of money to be made by those who can invent more efficient electricity transmission systems.
- advertisements -
Cold Fusion anyone?
Oh, or did Coors already do this?
And bio-composites. Until then...
Energy conservation is JOB 1.
Prices are not going UP.
This is what MOST in alt. energy research do not seem to understand.
THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND ENERGY MARKETS. Without that understanding you are DEAD IN THE WATER. YOU WILL FAIL.
Prices are going DOWN.
it is deflation. DEFLATION.
It's called supply and demand. The over capacity is in CHINA. CHINA. CHINA.
You don't have year after year, after year, of growth without producing over capacity in eveything. When the markets dry up, party over. Prices CRASH as inventory is slammed. To much supply, not enough demand.
The rest is just speculation. To be sure there is plenty of that and most of it owned by the BANKSTERS. When they were allowed to get into energy, SCAM ON.
NOW The SCAM EXPOSED!!!!!! By another investment bank, no less.
http://bit.ly/aLy6rH
Alternatives are all well and good, if you can develop some, but how do we solve the "petroleum based products" problem?
We will still need the stuff- anything plastic or made with synthetic rubber is made with it; walking down a grocery store aisle (or Walmart aisle) will reveal that damn near everything is made with plastic or rubber now. Every road is paved with asphalt, etc. How long would it take to retool every factory to make a substitute for plastic? What would the substitute be, wood? Metal? A whole new set of problems arise.
The way I understand it, over half of each barrel of oil is used for "stuff" other than gasoline.
I don't know the answer, I'm just asking...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastics
"The reality is that anyone who tells you we're going to make this bioplastic for 30 cents per pound based on fermentation technology or cellular sugars is, basically, completely conning you. We're not betting that petroleum will be $200 barrel."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/12/15/eco.bioplastics/index.html
"...Hence before the very birth of EE, the model and subject were already deliberately mutilated and crippled to prevent free energy from the vacuum systems -- i.e., such systems as now have been rigorously developed and demonstrated by Klimov et al. and validated by both the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Recoverable Energy Laboratory. The work of Klimov et al. is rigorously published in leading physics and nanocrystalline journals, and it is now accepted in both fields -- and INDEPENDENTLY verified by those two great national labs."
http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/030110.htm
I have been off-grid for the past 20 years.... Anyone can do it... don't be afraid, take the leap...
You need to look at the numbers. It is true, we need alternatives, but developing them will take some time. As someone else mentioned, we really should have started decades ago. High oil prices will drive it, and we are basically there.
Once it gets to the point that everyone is generating there own electricity at home, we will be living in a chaotic society, and it will be an act of desperation. Some local production can help the transition (i.e., photovoltaics and newer innovative approaches), but it cannot replace all needed energy.
www.energysolution.us
With shale gas now in the picture do we or don't we (The US) have enough natural gas in the ground to last a long long time? I know it's not "green" or free but it's domestic, pretty clean (no I'm not going to call CO2 pollution) and there's already a lot of infrastructure to support it.
If there isn't abundant natural gas that's one thing but if there is I don't think any of this other stuff is ever going to get off the ground. I get pretty nervous watching watching Joe Six-Pack deep frying a turkey in his driveway so I don't want him operating a mini-nuke reactor or even a windmill or some Gilligan's Island contraption, thank you. That's crazy talk.
Heck natural gas may even be "renewable" in that it is now unlikely that most of it is a "fossil" fuel. It may be generated inside the earth somehow on an ongoing basis. You certainly don't need fossils to make gas. Neptune's moon Titan is mostly methane and there weren't any dinosaurs there.
If you want household energy production buy a diesel generator and maybe rig it up to burn vegetable oil or something. That's probably your best bet for now.
As a general rule I'd short any technology that attempts or claims to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics. And here's a great article on the physical impossibility of hydrogen fuel-cell technology ever being viable... if there are any believers in that:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax
Natural gas as long as the price is low could be a part of a sustainable future & you can bet there is more than enough for a very long time. $4 is not low.
This is the very reason why all current alternative energy source plays are way over blown. Prices for oil and gas, could and should come way down, when and if speculators are taken out of energy.
Problem is natural gas can be played just like oil, remember ENRON.
When dealing with any feedstock, you had better know what the price is going to be not for 1 year but for 20 because when/if it changes, & you don't have that factored in, then your operating costs just shut you down.
Operating costs today are not in the same planet as they were in 1920.
You don't get anything built without FED loan protection. NOTHING.
Not in this CREDIT MARKET & if you do, it had better come in under budget and on time. Then it better produce or your SCREWED.
Guess what. Everything being built is going to cost more, not be on time, and produce far less that projected. The reason. Never should have been built in the first place.
Could have been proven to be far to expensive if anyone had taken the time to look at all the production and operating costs ahead of the project.
If a small scale model is built, what will it produce, what is the operating costs for 1 or 2 years, then come talk about it. But you see, everyone wants a paycheck. So they rush out with the first thing that comes along and then pitch it like there is no tomorrow. It's B.S.
No one to do the really hard work. That demands driving the cost down. You can see it in non-profits in 3rd world countries if you know where to look. You can see it with non-profit leaders who understand permaculture and how to work with the land, not against it. It is possible to produce energy for less with things like solar cookers, solar laterns, irrigation via solar water pumps, there is good work, affordable work being done now in alternative energy.
But if money matters and your in a major country you had better be able to produce power and fuel for LESS or GUESS WHAT, You get run out of Business and they SHUT YOUR DOORS DOWN. Now you can screw over a bunch of investors if you want, the FED, whoever, but in the end it is your butt that is going to be on the line.
Or you can get it right. Might take you 20 or 30 F#*ing years but such is life. Just think small scale until you can get there. You better know...
http://bit.ly/bh3NoM
Because if you don't, you will never be able to run any scale up model without major risk. When you get there and you have it, I am a buyer. But first you have got to prove it to me. Hell I will look at anything once.
George, you are a fine apologist for the scum in Washington. I lived there for many years. I know the breed, but this is just one more front in the war between producers and parasites.
If Commie-Bama and his flying monkeys would get out of the way, natural gas/methane will solve this problem for the next couple of hundred years. After that I will defer to the genius of you bloodsucking piss ants.
We haven't come close to running short of oil. Not even close. Peak oilers are scientific obstructionists.
... flame away oh ye of scant evidence.
You misunderstand the concept. Peak oil is not about running "out," It's the energy return on the investment. Research the amount of oil it takes to get a barrel out 100 years ago vs today
I would be interested to see the evidence you have for your position on the peak oil question. I'll say this much, there certainly is a lot of oil floating around down here in southeast Louisiana right at the moment.
Solar and wind are subsidized in Europe, to a large extend by price fixing. You get a rate above that of the market, if you feed alternative energy into the grid.
Money printing will make it appear as though the energy of oil and coal etc is getting more expensive. People, like the contributor of above article, deduce from this that alternative energy has become competitive and will install solar panels on their roofs.
Oil will rise even further in prices. But so will the maintenance costs of the panels on the roof, whilst the government rate for solar energy, when translated into groceries, buys less.
Rising prices will erode the profit margin provided by the fixed government rate, just at a time when alternative energy will seem to be cheaper than and superior to its conventional alternative.
This will make renegotiation with the government difficult.
Oil is subsidized in the US and nice price fixing too. For whatever price fixing recovers exactly by the way. Just like market manipulation, it is a fuzzy concept...
Never understood the difference between GOP and DEM, other than physical look which includes hairstyle.
On both sides a totally opportunistic bunch of losers, in the pocket of big money.
Sorry, this is BS.
With 7 billion people on this planet, the only answer is a paradime shift in energy useage (eg - not use!). Manufacturing things including photo cells takes massive energy to make and maintain. The simple fact is that our modern lifestyle is doomed. The best sustainable energy policy is not to keep procreating! I've done my bit!
The current paradigm is that energy is produced expensively by governments or large corporations through gigantic projects using enormous amounts of money, materials and manpower. Because energy can only be produced by the big boys, we the people must bow our heads to the powers-that-be. We must pay a lot of our hard-earned money to buy electricity from them, and we can't question the methods or results of their energy production.
For fucks sake! Gasoline is cheap when you take away the taxes... Same with electricity.. Its not rocket science. People in the 1920s were able to afford electricity created by inefficient diesel generators. ITS NOT A MATTER OF COST TO PRODUCE. Its all about government interference in the free market via the endless regulations, permits, taxes, etc.
$65 cents for tax per gal. How do you think the roads get built? Everyone wants to bitch about the taxes as if they can go live in Mexico or some other place with no taxes and NO....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure
B.S.
20s prices have nothing to do with todays costs to do a damn thing.
Alternative energy will become a percentage of energy production in the future, be it electric, fuel, home, commercial, whatever the demand.
That will demand the prices to both produce and operate come down over time and they will. No one is building anything right now without support from the FED and that isn't going to happen unless they say so. If you don't have loan protection, you can forget it. If you buy the Nuclear Power B.S. I have a $20B piece of land I want to sell you. As if there is anything cheap about that crap, regardless the feedstock. Feedstocks are but one part of the production, operations and potential liability cost equation.
When it comes to alternative energy a great deal of time and money has been wasted, when models could have proven that fact.
For now...
Energy conservation is Job 1. This is why SMART Electric is gaining and will gain ground. It is also why Car companies with half a brain are making cars and trucks that will get better mileage. speaking of which. VW, which is now owned by Porsche, as I recall, has a car that will get 98 miles a gal.
Cut domestic U.S. Gasoline demand by 1/3 and what will happen?
No imports from the M.E. NONE. Not 1 Barrel.
You are delusional. A consumption game is going on. First, you confuse conservation with consumption allocated to a human activity widly labelled conservation.
Second, any new room freed by technological advancement is one used to expand and consume more. Look at the ramp in energy of PC users. The introduction of less greedy hardware has just opened room for more hardware. Look at the PSUs history to get a quick overlook of the situation.
Hundreds or thousands of years in the future, mankind might even learn how to collect the virtual particles which are constantly popping into and out of existence.
Seriously, why even post shit like this? Can we deal with some fucking reality here?
.
The real solution to the energy crisis (and to environmental destruction) is to reduce the number of human beings on the planet. In 1650 there were 0.5 billion people on earth. Now there are 7 billion. Are we really better off with so many people? What purpose do all those extra people serve?
You might say, "Well some people are farmers and farmers produce food and that's necessary." True, but if there were fewer people we would need fewer farmers. Then you might say, "Well, some people work in factories building stuff, and that's necessary." True, but if there were fewer people then less stuff would need to be manufactured, right? You see where this is going?
Fewer people means more space for everyone to live in, more available energy per person, more resources (like water) per person, and more room for the natural environment to exist in. So why don't we bring population growth under control? (Hint #1: big corporations grow their profits by having more people to sell things to.) (Hint #2: big religions understand that children tend to follow their parent's religion and more followers means a greater likelihood that the "one true faith" will survive. Also, people make excellent cannon fodder/suicide bombers.) (Hint #3: people in the Third World will have as many children as there is available food; stop feeding them, they stop having children.)
actually populations stabalize when you raise the standard of living and education.
Your solution has us, let see if I understand this, starving 6.5 billion people to death so you have more elbow room and gas.
Did I miss something?
It might be interesting in this corresponded with something in reality.
The fact is that through its expansion, the western world has already put billions out of their resources, making them irrelevant in the resources game.
Every time I read this kind of opinions, it amuses me how irrationnality kicks in this discussion, how people like to hide behind the strength of their group, moaning for the delightful past of the good old days of expansion.
A bark is sinking. Bystanders on the banks. A guy on the bark is tearing off his hears, screaming"too many bystanders on the banks. That's why the bark is sinking"
"axial vorticity (sp?) like an archimedes scoop for air"
sign me up
Crab Cake,
OK, now you have struck a cord with me . . . aquaponics! My summer project is to look into this. From my preliminary research, it is a very efficient means of producing lots of food with minimum feedstocks and energy. I am hoping to set up one of these systems.
You can buy canned foods in bulk at wholesale prices and there are often good deals to be had at discount stores like Costco and Sam's Club.
Buy a freezer, and buy mega-big cuts of meat, etc., and store them in the freezer.
Here are some other tips:
You can raise cows, sheep, or other large animals.
For further information, see this resource for raising animals and this one for growing plants.
Excellent suggestions all, which I hope people will seriously consider. I have ordered a hydroponic greenhouse, which will go in this summer. I have 25 chickens, which are producing nicely. I have not bought those emergency food rations, but we do keep large quantities of basics like rice, pinto beans, and other long shelf life items in garage.
I live in a rural area, and have started an ad-hoc food coop. Rather than everyone trying to be individually self sufficient, we are working together and trying to specialize. One person has a tractor and 25 acre field for field crops, another raises cows, and another goats. We are sort of working our way into an experiment where we proof out a system where we collectively grow/produce our own food.
aquaponics rocks rebel. doing a very small scale ghetto version right now with a neighbor. he takes care of the fish (which he's good at and enjoys), i take care of the plants (which i'm good at and enjoy). best fertilizer money can't buy. my suggestion is to start small, perfect the technique and scale up.
and try tilapia. they breed & grow like locusts. soon you'll have enough fish to feed your whole crew and then some.
p.s. here's another link to add to GW's list for those who don't have earth to play with:
http://www.echonet.org/content/urbanGardening
Martin is a master of the art of rooftop gardening.
Mini Nuclear Plants
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reac...
Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a kilowatt hour anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£16m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $2,500 per home.'
Agreed. These reactors are the shizzle. Buried deep, deep below the water table of course.
Crab Cake,
Space does not permit me to fully explain my secret decoder ring for reading LA press releases, but let me briefly summarize . . . 5 years is always the magic number. Close enough that it gets the media and the masses excited, and far enough away that people will forget the prediction/promises made. Also, 5 years puts you into a new political era. Press release was in 2008, and we are now in 2010. I bet if you look up the project/company or whatever, you will find nothing but cartoon figures and big promises. Have any been deployed? Have any been built? Do they show any real data from real prototypes.
Again, not trying to be contrarian here, but have had long experience dealing with promises from such labs.
You can be contrarian if you wish.
I was just tossing fuel on the conversation. The idea and company do seem to be extant though...
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/index.html
It's not really part of my personal plan, but it is a good idea IMO. It seems a better way to do nuclear, basically atomic community batteries.
All I really care about is getting as far off the grid as much as possible, and I can and will achieve that.
Here is another cog in my design, FWIW...
http://www.portablefarms.com/index.php
Thorium is the only real solution available now. This is what we should be focused on.
All hurdles now are political, not technological....
I was reading a Canuck blog Small Dead Animals. Many of the prairie folk who had fans claimed the same as this article. Wind don't blow in the freezing cold.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6957501/Wind-farm...
Wind farms produced 'practically no electricity' during Britain's cold snap Wind farms produced "practically no electricity" during the cold snap which manufacturers' groups say could lead to severe winter energy shortages.Spmeone here posted the energy requirements for making the Copper wire necessary to produce Alternate energy on a massive scale. I think the claim was it would eat every drop of oil on the planet.
Can anyone repost that? Whoever it was was a fan of the Chris Martenson site.
Alternative energy, you mean like converting coal to liquid petroleum fuels? This technology has a break-even point that is around the present world price for crude.
We could free up a lot of particulate and CO2 emissions by building more nuclear power plants. We don't even have to use uranium. Reactors based on thorium need to be developed as we have over 1,000 years of thorium fuel available.
We could develop a lot of domestic sources of energy if we wanted to, but for some strange reason every President and Congress seems to be hell-bent on allowing unlmited amounts of foreign crude to be imported while restricting development of domestic sources. It was almost like having a chaotic energy situation was a deliberate policy. It also seems that the left (er, "progressives") really want to shut the country down. If this was not true, then why do those who agitate for solar power decide to agitate against solar power projects in the barren south western desert or the power lines that such project require?
Left-versus-right is a false dichotomy.
Are people who want to stop the bee die-off "liberals"?
Are people who want energy security, so that the Arab countries can't blackmail us "conservatives"?
Are people who don't want to drink life-shortening, virility-neutering toxic shit in their water "liberals"?
Are people who don't want to rely on rubbing two sticks together to obtain all of their energy needs "conservatives" or "liberals"?
How about people who don't want their livelihood as a fisherman trashed by the Gulf oil spill? Must be "liberals"?
We've got to find something that works for everybody.
George, its painfully obvious that everything you post is liberal. Why are you ashamed to admit your liberalism? Left / Right can't go away as long as there are two sides to the Government Control vs Freedom.
In this article you are basically advocating some kind of scheme to collect tax money from everyone and funnel it into these centrally planned power projects which always end up like every other stimulus program - political graft for pie-in-the-sky ideas that are not ready for prime time in the real world of business.
A centrally planned power project like the US army?
BTW, due to the desert tortoise, large scale solar deployments in the SW have been placed on hold....which imho, is a good thing.
Alternative energy, you mean like converting coal to liquid petroleum fuels? This technology has a break-even point that is around the present world price for crude.
We could free up a lot of particulate and CO2 emissions by building more nuclear power plants. We don't even have to use uranium. Reactors based on thorium need to be developed as we have over 1,000 years of thorium fuel available.
We could develop a lot of domestic sources of energy if we wanted to, but for some strange reason every President and Congress seems to be hell-bent on allowing unlmited amounts of foreign crude to be imported while restricting development of domestic sources. It was almost like having a chaotic energy situation was a deliberate policy. It also seems that the left (er, "progressives") really want to shut the country down. If this was not true, then why do those who agitate for solar power decide to agitate against solar power projects in the barren south western desert or the power lines that such project require?
The politicians are not pragmatic. This is going to result in disaster. I had many face to face conversations with our present energy secretary, Dr Chu. I would implore Dr Chu to take a good hard look at NG powered vehicles and nuclear. He didn't like either and instead was focused completely on carbon neutral fuels, which IMHO, can't scale.Not even close..
His concern (as well as the president's) remains global warming, thus the focus on carbon neutrality.NG vehicles, even though they have half the emissions of gas powered vehicles, create too many so called green house gases for the good Dr
I just can't see any practical energy solutions coming out of the present administration.Talk is all we are going to get...
That's very sad. I've been convinced that Obama is a pretentious cipher for some time now but I had hope that Chu might lead him to sensible choices. I think I'll go and pop in an Ingmar Bergman DVD as a pick me up.
"Cries and Whispers" is always good for a few chuckles.
Chu goes with the politics. Nuclear is a very bad word, despite Obama having used it once. Netflix instant queue is my drug of choice. Watched half of Ken Burns series on Thomas Jefferson today. Lots of very interesting foreign films too
Nanotechnology is 99.9% all hype. Back in the day, you had things like solid state physics, molecular biology, analytic chemistry, etc. When Pres. Clinton earmarked $1B for nanotechnology, suddenly all these fields morphed themselves into "nanotechnology". Other than hydrophobic coatings for stain free pants, air bag sensors, pressure sensors, and DMD projectors, the field has not had much real success, despite 2-3 decades of large R&D $$.