The Vet

Get Out of Commodities - Barron's

What a lot of wooly logic... Hydrogen to solve all of our problems? And just how do you get free hydrogen?

Answer.. There are lots of ways but they all require energy in some form or another and as no process is 100% efficient. The energy required to make extract the hydrogen is always going to be greater than the energy utilized when it is burnt for fuel. Innovation may give us better processes to generate and store hydrogen but there is no perpetual motion machine and no free lunch.

Wind power as the saviour? Give us a break! Sure up to 20% of the total electric power consumed could come from wind power, but to depend on any more puts the whole grid at risk. The wind doesn't blow all the time anywhere. So you need another back up for those windless days, and nights... Days, maybe some solar would cover some of the deficit but on those cold windless nights when you are sitting freezing in the dark you will get to realise that depending on too much "alternative" energy which by definition is erratic in supply might not be such a great idea. You might find yourself wishing for a nice big nuclear plant churning out hundreds of megaWatts of baseload power which would keep the wheels of industry and the home "fires" toasty warm.

Besides, all of the alternatives are very "dilute" sources of power. Wind farms have to cover thousands of acres in order to capture a reasonable amount of energy as does solar. Speading these around helps to cover for local weather variations in wind, cload cover etc. but just how do you think this dispersed energy gets to where it is needed.. The electricity gid has be be much larger, cover longer distances and have a large amount of redundency built in in order to use this alternative power effectively. Funny thing, but that needs metals; lots of metal especially copper (form windings, wires and transformers), steel (for transmission towers), silver (for switch gear) etc.

This rosy future where all our energy comes from everlasting 24 hour sunshine and the perennially cloudless sky, with steady breezes that never vary and which blow everywhere power is consumed at a rate to cover the load regardless of time of day or the curent weather, and where no metals, oil, gas, uranium or any other "commodity" is ever needed or used, is a fairy tale straight from the pollyannas of the "green revolution". THINK!