Eric,
The only viable, large scale, alternative technology today is nuclear power to replace the oil we use. Do you think the country has the balls for that? Eventually we could turn to solar, but all indications are that's it's just not ready and has several undesirable attributes like large areas of land required and distances from consumer to collection and transmission. Co-locating solar arrays near growing cities and you eventually run into land use conflicts.
France is already running largely on nuclear energy, and there is no reason why the US can't. The problem is that it will take decades to get there (decades that we have lost since the environmentalists killed US nuclear power).
If you believe in the Peak Oil claims, we only have 20+ years of oil remaining so this problem of CO2 from burning oil will (without our choice) come to a fairly rapid end.
Nuclear power will be displacing primarily coal, and secondarily natural gas, as far as electricity generation, but as cost of oil goes up, electricity can start to displace oil in areas where oil dominates today (transportation, home heating). So the need for electricity is going to grow.
Just a ballpark figure, electricity covers roughly half of all energy use. So use of electricity will grow in absolute terms and percentage-wise.
IMO, electricity is the most important "commodity" there is today, and large percentage of our wealth, well-being and comfort depends on it, but also on its price. So it is important that the cost of electricity goes down, rather than going up, as it has been lately. That can only be achieved by nuclear and solar, where the fuel + maintenance are virtually free, after the initial capital expense. That is unlike oil, coal and natural gas, where the fuel is inherently expensive.
While the the fashions come and go the bottom line (for the sake of bottom line itself, but also from the point of survival and prosperity of human race) is ever cheaper and ever more plentiful availability of electricity.
US is only now waking up from its anti-nuclear folly. It took a generous guarantees and protections of investors from the enviro-nuts to get at least the permit process started. But it will be almost a decade for the new nuclear plants to start to make a dent. The boom will not start until the first couple of new reactors are up and running, which will be 5 to 7 years from now. And that boom will take another 5 to 7 years before the actual power generation. So I would say it will be at least 15 years for the nuclear to break through 50% of total output in the US.
So in 15 years, we will still be behind where France is today.
And that is the Inconvenient Truth for the enviro nuts in the US.
Joe |
