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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (10527)	3/20/2004 9:01:20 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Haim, I can't speak to whether or not there is feverish R&D to exploit methane hydrates. To be honest, I'm a bit ignorant on the subject. What's the energy density like in these "deposits??" To me there are two, maybe three keys -- energy density is one. 2) Energy cost to recover the hydrates physically -- then 3) the energy cost to recover the methane chemically. Obviously, the energy released has to be greater than 1 and 2 put together -- and this depends a great deal on the energy density. I will check out the article you posted. I recently was offered a free subscription to an IEEE Power and Energy mag. 2nd issue devoted to the "hydrogen economy." What shocked me was that the 3 articles were written by engineers in the energy industry ... amazing the ignorance contained in those articles. One article talked about how mass production could reduce the cost of fuel cells and glowed about "decentralized" power -- as if it was a laudible goal, no matter what the economics were -- completely glossed over the issues of: 1) Only affordable hydrogen sources right now are fossil fuels 2) Fuel diversity available in central station power generation and 3) the large sunk cost in T&D vs 4) added distribution infrastructure that would be needed for hydrogen (or natural gas) and capital costs, reliability of "decentralized" power. Another article was about how government could meddle in the energy area to make it a reality -- i.e. over-ride real economics. There is so much ignorant carp written on energy right now -- that folks who don't know basic physics and economics really need to beware. In most of the stuff that is written -- even in supposed journals of technology and science you get more propaganda and marketing than you do science or real economics.