Piggybank

The Real Solution to the Energy Problem

Conservation will help, but will only get you a bit further. The USA cannot solve it's energy problems with mere conservation alone. We European's conserve a lot more than Americans, but were also pumping more money in renewable energy than the USA and have more installed MW of renewable energy and will continue to evolve at this pace if not faster.

Our traditional energy producing sources are runnig out and they need to be replaced, Peak oil looks real already, there is still enough coal in principle but look at it's price jumping, it's getting less cheaper by the day and thus is loosing it advantage to more costly energy forms bit by bit, while its also poluting. Uranium has also seen a enourmous price surge in recent years, and it's also not a infinite resource. And building Nuclear plants is very costly and time consuming.

Wind energy and Solar technoligy might still be somewhat expensive atm, they have proven to increase in effeciancy over past years, and will do so in the future. Grid parity was already expected fairly soon, conservative models were aiming for 2015, but at the rising costs of other energy forms it looks like wind and solar will hit parity even faster, and after that will even simply become way more effeciant than other energy forms over time.

But once we hit grid parity with renewable energy, and it's getting soon to, then the market will surge. There won't be much reason anymore to not use solar or wind for any new installed MW.

And we need this, not just for nature, our to renew our energy supply, but because we can produce this energy ourself's, independantly, and becuase wind and solar have the potential to become the cheapest forms of energy ever over time, making our economy's that more effeciant and strong, because cheap energy leave's a lot of margin for other thing's. And were on the good way to, the current top solar and Wind company's have all the ace's down their sleeve's to survive and evolve up to this grid parity circumstance, and then they'll become some of the most prominent company's in the world.

An Energy Policy that Makes Cents (and Sense)

Seems like they are finaly realizing in the USA that it's 5 seconds before 12.

I thank my european leaders for having been foreseeing in this regard. Our economy is seemingly still in much better chape due to several good policy's, and were more established in alternative energy, in fact ahead of shedule even. Were already much more energy effeciant, but that can only alleviate a small part of the issue. We have more windmils than we had envisioned before 2010 now already, but we have also set the target high for wind energy until 2020 and 2030.

Even then, there is no limit to thinking what possible energy needs well have in the 21'st century. I spit on the people here talking poppulation control regulations and the like's, what an inhumane and unethical thought, borders facism IMO. Humanity needs to be able to evolve and therefore it will need increasingly more energy.

Try to have vision, vision even beyond mere peak oil issue resolvement. Im in my twenty's, i should envision 50 years ahead. I see the premature robotic dreams they had in the late 20th century come to fruitation in my lifetime, automatization is already a fast growing bussiness, rudimentary robots exist and get better. Computers evolve and decent robotic AI's are not that far in the future at this speed. Think of how much labour we could do in the future if we mobilized our potential to create an near-automated economy. Such progress would even allow us to take space economicly serious. But in the end, to enable us to evolve in this path, well need energy, lots of it, hughe amounts. Energy will be the power by wich humanity will be able to advance further. And the cheaper you can make the energy, the more effeciant the base of the economy will be in a near-automated economy.

The ultimate power of Wind and Solar is that there be virtually no limit to how much output you can get out of it. And their effeciancy can be improved for decade's to come. The cost to wind and solar power now is just a temporarily concern, and even this it's very fastly becoming a moot point. In the future wind and solar will become much more effeciant than any other energy source, to the point that it will virtually cost nothing. The world will get covered by solar panels and wind mills in the decade's to come. Theyll supply the robot's that will work for a fraction of the cost of a human trough advanced technoligy.

In the end, it won't be the country with the cheapest human labour in mass that will become the most powerfull. there is a whole new economy to create with robotics, and it will be up to the first country that takes this vision really serious that will come the fruit of being the most advanced and productionaly potent.