jack kreg

Sorry Greens, Fossil Fuels Are Here to Stay

JL Shaefer, excellent and very forward looking article.
Another important factor in your article is that building dozens even hundreds of nuclear and coal to liquid fuel plants will employ Americans to build American assets. In 20 years, we could marginalize the Middle East oil.
The Greens solution continues the flow of our power dollars to the Middle East. The fantasy of re-newable energy is what keeps us chained to the Middle East. I, for one, would employ Americans to build American energy assets.

Do Biofuels Harm More than They Help?

While you did mention the low efficiency of producing ethanol, you might have actually said how bad this efficiency really is. I think that I have read that it takes the energy equivalent of 4 or 5 gallons of ethanol to produce 6 gallons, in other words, one is working very hard to refine even 1 gallon of ethanol. However, gasoline, which has a much higher energy per gallon, is refined with much higher efficiency, taking only a gallon of fuel to produce 6. I think that this description is correct.
You might have also covered the issue from the stand point of becoming less dependent on oil from miserable places like Venz and the Middle East. In which case, you should have included electric power generation by nuclear and liquid coal fuels.
thanks for the article, this is a complex subject, badly in need of attention.