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Paths to a New Energy Future
for the United States

Peter Salter
NFP Member

We know that we must change our sources of energy, but few of us realize how exciting these changes can be. In the past year or two, new research has begun to develop an amazing number of energy solutions and major discoveries are being announced practically every day. Soon we won't need more foreign oil, and then we won't need oil at all. We can also replace the polluting fuels coal and natural gas.

Replacing Oil

"CLEAN COAL" This marketing ploy exists only in political speeches and advertisements produced by the coal industry. It won't exist in our lifetimes, if ever.

ETHANOL, NO SOLUTION AT ALL Ethanol made from corn does nothing to reduce our 'dependence on foreign oil' since it takes almost as much energy to produce the ethanol as we get back from it. Ethanol also distracts from our efforts to switch to truly useful renewable fuels, because we think we're doing something that will help even though we aren't. Ethanol made from cellulose like wood chips, switchgrass and sorghum gains some energy, but only enough to be a small contributor to the solution we need.

BIODIESEL, A MUCH BETTER ALTERNATIVE FUEL THAN ETHANOL Biodiesel is a safe fuel which biodegrades when spilled. You could even drink it. Unlike ethanol, biodiesel can be pumped through existing pipe lines. All current diesel engines can be made to run on on biodiesel and excellent new automotive engines are being manufactured now. Biodiesel can also be produced locally. A farmer could buy a refining rig for under $3000, and produce biodiesel in the back corner of the garage, but if standard farm crops like soybeans are used, it would take all the farm land in the U.S. to produce a small fraction of our fuel needs.

BIODIESEL FROM ALGAE, THE ENERGY HOLY GRAIL This is a new concept which could provide us with a total solution to our energy problems.

• Algae (pond scum) grows extremely fast and some varieties have bodies which are more than 50-percent oil.

• Algae needs only sunlight, water and carbon to grow, and the water can be sewage, farm run-off or even ocean water.

• Algae could be grown on poor-quality land which is unsuitable for other agriculture.

• Algae can produce 100 times as much energy per acre as soy, so an area the size of the Nebraska Sandhills could grow all the energy the country needs.

WHEN CAN WE HAVE IT? The first biodiesel to be made from algae in useful quantities happened only 18 months ago. There are still problems to be solved but quantity production should begin in 2009 and grow quickly as answers to production problems are found.

Our Other Best Oil Replacement

ELECTRICITY FROM RENEWABLE SOURCES The world's auto and battery makers are all working furiously to develop vehicles which run entirely or mostly on electricity. By converting most of our motor vehicles to run on electric power, we make great gains in energy efficiency. Gas and diesel engines waste most of their fuel's potential energy. Electric motors waste very little. Still, while 'going electric' will greatly increase our energy efficiency and dramatically reduce our use of oil, we will need to increase our supply of electricity. This can be done with NO new fossil-fuel plants, though people connected with the energy industry would like you to believe otherwise. All of the electrical energy we could possibly use is available from at least three or four sources, and all of these sources are endlessly renewable and non-polluting.

WHEN? AND HOW MUCH? Wind and solar power facilities usually take less than two years to build. Coal and nuclear take around ten. Costs of construction are now about the same for coal, wind and solar. Once built, renewables are much less expensive.

New Electricity

WIND: THERE'S ENOUGH TO POWER EVERYTHING, AND IT'S FREE A wind map of the world produced at Stanford in November 2007 showed that there is at least 4.5 times enough wind available at highenergy sites to provide all of the power we need.

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC (roof panels) Recent developments will make this far less expensive and more efficient. Germany gets much of its electricity this way, and it's not a very sunny country. Roof panels on private residences, government and commercial buildings could provide much electricity and vastly broaden the power grid.

SOLAR THERMAL There's enough heat from the sun available in our southwestern deserts to power the country many times over. Many companies have applied to lease land to build power generating facilities on over a million acres, but the Bush/Cheney Administration has not cooperated. Perhaps with Obama's election things will change.

GEOTHERMAL Iceland gets nearly all of its electricity using heat from beneath the Earth's surface. A recent MIT study showed that we could get most of our electricity from geothermal. Years of cheap energy, however, prevented much work from being done on this in the U.S. until recently.

WAVES AND OCEAN CURRENTS Aquatic energy can be harnessed to generate hundreds of times as much electricity as the world needs. The technology is just being developed, but Spain and China have both invested in new production facilities.

AND EVEN MORE Ocean temperature gradients can be converted to electricity. Tidal dams could provide considerable energy and many other potential sources of power are being explored even human-made tornados. All of this should give us far more power potential than we could ever need, and make construction of new fossil-fuel facilities unnecessary and unwise.

PLUS If rules are made universal to allow consumers to sell excess power produced by their own generation systems back to the power companies, this alone would likely mean that no new traditional power plants would be needed.

THE FASTEST WAY TO IMPROVE OUR ENERGY SITUATION IS TO ENCOURAGE POWER CONSERVATION. We could use much less power and still live happily. This needs to be integral to any plan.

IMPROVING OUR POWER GRID IS NEEDED To make use of our new alternative energy supplies, we'll need vast improvements in our nation's power grid. That was going to be necessary anyway, however, to avoid brownouts and blackouts around the country. New HVDC (high voltage direct current) power transmission lines like those used in Europe will probably need to be built, permitting large amounts of current to be sent longer distances with much less loss than occurs with alternating current. The expense of these improvements, though, pale beside the huge sums we pay for foreign oil every year. What could our government possibly do that would mean more to our economy and national security?

BUT WE WON'T NEED MORE NUKES! Nuclear plants are generally a safe and economical way to produce power which does not pollute the air or contribute to global warming. Fuel for these plants is abundant and inexpensive though its production often causes very serious pollution of ground water. New types of nuclear plants such as the CANDU produce power with much less nuclear waste. The Pebble Bed Reactor is also a new design with promise. Still, nuclear plants are expensive to build, take a full ten years to construct and no one wants one anywhere near their backyard.

Peter Salter is an NFP member who noticed last year that while everyone talked of renewable energy, almost no one had a clear picture of how it could be accomplished. He researched the subject and discovered that it really is possible to replace fossil fuels, but the big energy companies will do just about anything to keep it from happening. He hopes that the new Obama Administration will make it happen. Reach Peter at: p.salter@juno.com.