Fortune's latest article states any serious attempt to become energy independent will require lots of conservation. This is politically unpopular, but perhaps reality is starting to sink in just a little bit. Also adds that a serious attempt to conserve will scare OPEC and lower oil prices.

 

That was a good article. As far as scaring OPEC by conserving more here in the states, I don't think it will happen. They will just not pump the stuff out of the ground. That will be OPEC's idea of conservation, which will either keep prices constant or drive them higher. Let's face it, if they want to put the squeeze on us economically, they have the power.

 

Ralph says:
As far as scaring OPEC by conserving more here in the states, I don't think it will happen. They will just not pump the stuff out of the ground. That will be OPEC's idea of conservation, which will either keep prices constant or drive them higher. Let's face it, if they want to put the squeeze on us economically, they have the power.


Me:
Even that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. You can't *make* more oil, and America will need that oil for plastics and industrial lubricants long after the American fleet of cars have switched to ethanol, vegetable oil, electricity, solar, or hydrogen.

 

well, to quote the article, the author sounds like a moron...

"The only way we're ever going to be able to boost oil supplies here at home is through conservation, and that's something the government is going to have push aggressively, at least until technological advances like cellulosic ethanol, hydrogen and other alternative energy forms become available."

duh? conservation reduces consumption; it does not "boost supplies."

what he might MEAN is that if there's a lot of conservation, the demand for oil will drop below supply, which will make oil readily available (i.e, eliminate any and all shortages), and, incidentally, drive prices down.

imnsho, the best thing that can happen in the USA is for a really cheap way to convert plants to ethanol to be developed, and for most cars to be converted to burning more and more ethanol... i understand some chemists and plant engineers are getting some great new results in this direction. if we cut our requirements for using oil-based products for transportation, there would be a glut on the market of oil, and all plastic-based products would drop in cost.

all these are good things.

but the only way to boost supplies is to explore for more and drill for more.

 

Oil will run out - only question is when and how much more it will cost.

Conserving is importamt. If today's vehicles were as efficent as in the 1970's, the average vehicle would not be getting 21-22mpg. It would probably be more like 15mpg.

 

not exactly, but a nice emotional response...

if we converted all of our cars to ethanol [is it Argentina that now has about a 75-80% conversion already?], the use of petrochemicals by the US would drop off a cliff. if the technology were expanded world-wide, the total use of oil, world-wide, would be a small fraction of what it is today.

prices would plummet, oil by-products like plastics and other chemicals would be cheaper, and the current in-ground supply would last for dozens of decades, not just the currently-expected "decades" that Peak Oil is currently predicting.

every time human beings "ran out of" their primary source of fuel, we figured out how to burn something else to replace it.

take biomass, convert it to ethanol; convert most of the electrical generation to nuclear from natural gas; the results would devastate OPEC; it would render them powerless; neuter them in one generation.

conservation alone really means, in the final sum, one thing: using less energy per person, and that means a lower standard of living.

if you want everyone to have smaller pieces of pie, that's your choice. my choice is to figure out how to create new, bigger, cheaper, less-damaging pies, so that everyone can have more on their plate.

ps.
a friend of mine recently emailed me that some researchers in South Africa have come up with a new non-silicon-based photoelectric cell that's about 1/3 the cost of today's silicon cells and puts out about 20% more power per square.

what do you think effect that's going to have on the viability and penetration of solar electric in the next five years or so?

another bigger piece of pie for everyone.

 

I just read a story saying if we converted 90% of the country's corn production in to Ethanol, we'd be making enough ethanold to replace about 25% of our gasoline consumption. So... either we would need 4 times as many corn fields, or we'd need something way more efficient than corn, kind of like how Brazil uses cane, since it's yeild per acre is way higher than corn's. Sounds, um, almost vaguely feasible. I guess in the end, we'll get off of oil one way or another, like it or not, it's still going to run out.

 

AZC, don't fall into the trap that so many people do: the future will not be like the present, so don't use today's yardsticks and today's limitations in the equation.

it won't take four times the cornfields because scientists today are developing genetically modified bugs that will be much more efficient in converting cellulose to sugar and sugar to alcohol.

it won't all be corn. what's the other thing? sawgrass? corn stalks, wood chips.... lots of things have cellulose in them and are burned or wasted today. tomorrow they'll be recycled into alcohol at higher efficiencies than today, and there'll be plenty of corn left for your breakfast flakes and and for Omaha Steaks' beef cattle to munch on....

Malthus was a moron.

coal mining was vastly developed and improved when england and europe logged out all of the forests they'd been burning for fuel.
oil became cheaper than coal for lots of things, as did natural gas.
nuclear could have put a big dent in oil and gas consumption, if it had been given a chance. current technologies for nuclear plants are FAR safer than when Three Mile Island didn't melt down.
today, the best technologies are being used in nuclear reactors in China, and if we're lucky, may be allowed to be used here in the USA. glass pellets containing the reactive material can't melt down because the melting point of the material holding the fuel is higher than the temperatures that the fuel can generate, even in the event of a coolant failure!

it ain't your father's reactor, either...

 

Very well put.

It's pretty much the old adage, work smart, not hard.

 

I think there's a big opportunity for electrical generation with over-unity systems.

A really crude one has been constructed, and it's not magic, anyone can understand how they work, but the basic principle is you get more energy out than you put in. A heat pump is over-unity because you get more (heat) energy out than electric energy put in, somewhere in the range of 300-400%... Generate electric power from that heat, and you've got yourself a closed loop system. That's been done, it's old news... The new advances are coming in the field of electric over-unity systems that don't rely on turning heat into electricity. I think it's possible (and apparently it is, some Japanese labs have shown) but there's no money going into R&D, it's mostly just backyard engineers doing what they do best...