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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doren who wrote (7696)	3/29/2010 2:45:26 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16955

Crude futures are having a nice day today... Although oil is not in short supply theoretically... summer is coming...

To: Doren who wrote (7696)	4/1/2010 11:44:46 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16955

Hi Doren. Thanks for your musings. <I have a feeling we may be headed to a repeat* of the 2008 oil price scare this summer> The most developed alt-energy industry is wind, followed by solar, and they make electricity. Oil isn't used to make electricity, except in a few special places, like Hawaii and rural Alaska. Oil is used for transportation and materials feedstocks. So high oil prices will cause more deep-water drilling, more Alberta tar sands development, more ethanol production, and more hybrid cars, but not necessarily more wind or solar development. Eventually, electric vehicles will merge the oil and electricity markets, but that's a long way off. Cars get used for 8-10 years, to a total turnover of the world's vehicles will take a long, long time, and the process isn't even started. This would also need a total re-tooling of the auto industry (who'se going to pay for that?). The Prius has been around for about a decade, and still has only a small global market share. Just as solar and wind technology is developing, so is fossil fuel technology. New methods of extracting natural gas (shale bed fracturing, coal gassification), and a build-out of LNG transportation, means that natural gas and oil prices have de-coupled. Natural gas supplies are abundant, and prices haven't rebounded from their recession lows, the way oil has. Most new electricity generating capacity in the U.S. is either wind or natural gas, and the wind stocks probably aren't going to take off as long as natural gas prices remain low. Compare 3Y chart of nat gas stockcharts.com and oil stockcharts.com