Oil, Coal, Corn, Solar or Hydrogen?
Question:
To gain energy independence, what path (alternative energy sources) do you think would be the best for long term liberation from the petroleum hegemony that is draining the economy?
Answer:
Nuclear, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
The US has appreciable Uranium reserves itself, and major Uranium producing nations such as Australia are already favored trading partners and stable western democracies.
Forget corn. It takes more oil to produce ethanol than the ethanol replaces. I. other words using corn for energy means we have to use MORE oil. We currently produce corn ethanol as an economic subsidy for corn growers. If we didn't make ethanol we would have to dump that corn in the ocean. But Corn ethanol is NOT a fuel source. See the first article below.
Hydrogen is iffy. We can only obtain hydrogen by splitting water using massive amounts of electricity. That electricity has to be obtained using normal power stations, usually coal. As a result hydrogen is like ethanol: it takes far more fossil fuel to produce than it actually replaces. That makes it a possible oil substitute but very unwise WRT greenhouse gas emissions unless coupled with lots of nuclear power stations.
Solar and wind are never going to be major players. There simply isn't enough land available to make more than a minor contribution and because the supplies are erratic we would still need other power stations to make up the regular shortfalls. See the second article below.
Nucelar is the only real solution.
Corn we could finally become an exporter of fuel if we switched to corn. It would solve our problems and could easily fix trade issues by giving us a huge export.
All of the above. Also we should reopen our nuclear program.
Corn (E85) instead of gas
Solar instead of gas used to heat houses
Ice instead of gas used to cool houses (some new buildings have a system that freezes ice at night when it's cheaper and then blows air past it to cool the air)
Hydrogen for more alternatives instead of gas
The geographic location of most of the avialable reserves is within the borders of the United States.
Bet you didn't know that.
This, of course, begs the question as to why we do business with the middle east and south america. Domestic oil is far, FAR cheaper and we have about a 500 year supply. We'll be pumping it out of the ground long after the middle east is exhausted.
Well, it has to be done step by step!
1. Utilize existing technology and fuels (oil, coal, etc.)
2. Prepare for bioenergy
3. parallel to all, work on improving solar, wind, etc.
4. parallel work on Hydrogen, it might be the solution for some 100 years!
Oil is ok, pollutes too much though and has too limited of a supply.
Coal is not so good, pollutes a lot.
Corn is ok, not a lot of energy in it though. Although it reduces our problem of a limited resource. It also is supposed to pollute less.
Solar is pretty good. We just need to be able to make more efficient solar cells. So much solar energy hits the earth however we have not yet made a very efficient system for collecting it.
Hydrogen is good. It is the most plentiful element in the universe so we don't have to fear it running out. It also has a lot of energy in it. One drawback to it though is that we don't have a good way of using it, fuel cells are pretty much the best way we have of using it.
Solar is the best way to go. Oil, Coal, Corn, and Hydrogen will need energy input to get energy out. Oil is presently the most efficient of these. Coal is too dirty, and corn to energy intensive (you don't get that much energy out of corn, and the farming of corn is very energy intensive), and hydrogen separation from water molecules is extremely energy intensive. Solar power comes to us all day long, and it is relatively easily converted into electricity. Wind power is also a good way to go.
What we will likely see will be a combination of all of the above. Plus, I think that list is too short. Corn is good, but it doesn't convert to fuel as efficiently as sugar cane. (A crop which my current boss [formerly with the Florida DEP] tells me the state of Florida has paid farmers not to grow, because they were flooding the market!) There are actually many suitable crops. And wind isn't on that list either. (Not my personal favorite choice, but it will likely have a large impact.)
In the short term, I'm certain oil and coal will continue to be important. Hopefully they will be supplanted, due to the problems (both health and environmental) created by their by-products.
Hate to start a side conversation, but I have to comment on Panacea's comment - according to one source (Dr. Russ Schnell, NOAA Climate Diagnostic Laboratory) the largest reserve of oil is actually under Canada. If I'm correct, much of the amount of oil cited as being under US soil and coasts has the same problem as the oil in Canada - much of it is locked in oil shale. The effort required to process it would make what you are paying at the pump now look cheap.
Biomass is just too inefficent to be a major player (photosynthesis is about 1% efficient compared to >20% for our best PV cells) so from a land usage point of view you don't really want to use Corn.
For large scale replacement of Oil you'd need either hydrogen or batteries and both of those will require you to massively increase electricity production. In the short term electrolysis of Water using nucelar generated electricity would be the way to get hydrogen with the longer term option being a more efficient thermochemical system using future reactors that can reach higher temperatures. If batteries are used in vehicles then electricity will need to be supplied to charge them and a massive nuclear expansion will probably be the only way to meet the demand in a short time period without screwing up the environment (non nuclear sources either produce too much pollution or can't be installed fast enough).
Aircraft could probably be converted to burn hydrogen or they might have to stay on fossil fuels but even if we continue using fossil fuels for aircraft the cost of the fuel will go down and the stability will go up so it'll be good.
Large ships could probably be converted over to run on nuclear power. Nuclear has a hard time competing when oil is cheap so it has been pretty much only used for ships that can't use fossil fuels (mostly military ships and icebreakers) but with high oil prices nuclear might be able to compete.
Solar and Wind might be useful for some purposes but seem unlikely to be able to supply the amount of power needed, especially if converting transportation away from fossil fuels is required.
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