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Mark Simms:
>>I absolutely agree. Question is: what's the next best alternative ?
Jack Zaner:
>I don't know- - -but I do know this. There's a scientific answer and
>there's a political answer. Mutually exclusive? Politicians think they
>have special knowlege about how to solve the problem. Sure.
Scientifically:
For non-renewables, the most abundant source of energy in the United
States is coal, with the U.S. having over a quarter of the word's
reserves.
For renewables, solar is the most abundant form of energy, followed
by wind and geothermal. The sun provides over 1300 watts per
square meter incident on a sunlit surface, after accounting for
all atmospheric absorption and reflection. Averaged over the lit
and unlit surfaces, that comes out to 170 watts per square meter.
Photovoltaic cells have been historically inefficient (10% or so),
but new advances are pushing their efficiency beyond 40%, and
pushing costs down.
The first company to market an efficient cheap solar cell on a large
scale would be a good buy. Problem is, currently the photovoltaic
companies with the manufacturing capacity aren't the ones with the
cool R&D products (at least in my understanding).
Wind power becomes cost effective during periods of high energy
costs, as happened in 2001 in California, and seems to be happening
now.
Politically:
Political decisions and opinions almost never take the long
view. Politically, ethanol is the big thing now, and probably will
be for a couple of years.
I also hear talk of developing "clean burn" processes for coal.
Dick Cheney was making noises about that a couple weeks ago. There
may be companies poised to take advantage of government subsidies in
that area.
In the U.S. nuclear power is a political non-starter. Since Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl, and American films such as Erin Brokovich
and the China Syndrome, the populace has developed a deep mistrust
of not just the technology, but of the integrity of the people
in charge of the plants and regulatory agencies. There's also a
distrust of ROI projections because proponents never factor in the
present-value cost of safely storing nuclear waste for 40K years.
-Alex
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