Old Wizard

Natural Gas: America's Energy Salvation

Right on! All of us would love to see clean fuel that we produce here with American technology and American workers. Most of all, however, we would like the US be economically solvent. Using our own natural resources, especially natural gas for transportation, is the only resource that we have in plentiful domestic supply, that reduces air pollution and has anywhere near an infra-structure that can make a significant near term impact on the country's negative operating cash flow. Your numbers are more generous for wind and solar than the latest numbers I've seen for electric power generation from the Energy Dep't, which were about .2%. The president's goal is to triple the current capacity from these two sources in 3 years. If the capacity were to double every 3 years, it will take us almost to 2030 to get to a number less than 20%. Meanwhile to replace 25% of our cars and buses with plug-ins will take between 100 and 200 trillion dollars,depending on the average price of these vehicles and the cost of infrastructue and batteries and battery disposal. At a replacement rate of say 5million a year this is at least a 10 year time frame. Further, the likely suppliers of batteries are the chinese and japanese and even Warren Buffet believes that the chinese company that now makes lithium batteries and has announced their intent to build plug-in electic vehicles is a good invrstment. He has taken a 250m stake. Those who believe that wind is the answer should check the Cape Wind project, where liberal politicians have stalled the project for years in spite of the support of a majority of the local citizenry. Global warming may be a headache in 2050, but economic waterloo is much closer. We are fighting wars now and trading our county's energy dependence on foreign undesireables for absolute economic dependence on China shouldn't be our chosen option.