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| Unfortunately, as far as we can see these are all political problems and what's real is of no consequence. One source gets demonized and another lifted up as perfect while they all have issues. As always the solution is development. Everyone is looking for a home run and that's rare. I'm not totally against our tax dollars (or whatever they are) going towards priming the pump for some new power generation and fuel technologies to speed the process up but it's not like were getting behind visionary's. We are not funding Edison, we are funding guys more like the folks that ran Enron and Edison. Hence the green energy bankruptcy's and general lack of a viable product. If you consider early ethanol and the types of folks making decisions, these were clearly not long term thinkers (sure speculate your money away and go bankrupt - that's the ticket!)
It's not to say that folks with vision are not out there, though, currently, those visionary folks are outgunned by ideas that are 'politically designed'. We do need a change of leadership to back off the government pressure so we can uncork some of this vision. Or, we can just do it like the USSR which developed stuff at gunpoint, but it was really slow.
Where better batteries can make a huge difference is windmills. These monstrosities can do great things but need back up when they don't spin. Being able to store energy when it's not required on the grid would be a game changer. I have a hard time thinking the purely electric car gets much traction in our society, though, perhaps cabs, city buses could make this work (trains are electric in towns). Instead it will be a hybrid to allow longer trips without having to own another car or deal with 'fast battery swaps' unless the battery pack can be made pretty small (not beyond the realm of possibility though).
I'm not sure who in the coal industry ticked off Obama, but the feud needs to end and we need to use our most abundant energy sources. Frankly emissions are much easier to deal with when it's all coming from one place. Besides CO2 isn't a pollutant.
As Don pointed it out it's all about energy density and liquid fuel is really hard to beat. | |
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Fuel ethanol's next (big) challenge?
