Alternative Energy Solutions

[Reeve]

Solar? Yes.
Wind? Yes.
Those are the no-brainer, low-hanging fruit that we haven't agreed upon more simply because the fossil fuels industry has corrupted gov't so much. Other ones have more difficulty.

By fossil fuels industry, I presume you mean the coal industry? The Oil industry has little to nothing to do with us not using wind and solar more. Oil isn't a primary source of electricity generation (1%). Natural Gas is about 25%, but even with wind and solar, the need for natural gas plants won't go away.

Personally in my opinion, we should have more Nuclear power for electricity generation, and then we should go to Natural Gas for transportation energy in the short term, until we can figure out better methods. Possibly the long-term solution for vehicles could be Hydrogen, once we work out the issues with on-board fuel storage, cost, and hydrogen production.

[wxcopy]

The prolem is price, not global warmings, Al Gore, or technology. Cheap clean energy is the enemy of profit. And from previous posts, the units aren't megawatts per hour. A watt is the rate, the correct terms would be megajoules or more common kW-hrs like you see on your bills.

[Reeve]

The prolem is price, not global warmings, Al Gore, or technology. Cheap clean energy is the enemy of profit.

That's just sooooo wrong. Profit comes from margin x volume. If they can produce the energy cheaply and cleanly, they can maintain the same margins at lower prices, and because the consumers are less worried about how much it's costing them or the environmental impact, they'll use more, so the energy companies will do higher volume. That means MORE profits, not less. If anything, cheap clean energy is the best friend of profit.

[Trunksee]

I still dont get why this is such a big concern. If you cant find a way to do it extrrmrly cheap, an i mean extremely it doesnt matter what the US does the world wont embrace it. Our reduction isnt low enough to equal the increases by other countries. Concentrating on solar and wind is largely a big fat waste of money that could be put into researching a real solution. Fozsil fuels arr no where close to the running low levels the fuel industry uses to jack around with the prices. We need a real solution not a high school science project. Solar and wind are almost never able to make the overall money back it cost to put them in place.

For now i say nothing but research.

[Jackmoves]

Solar? Yes.
Wind? Yes.
Those are the no-brainer, low-hanging fruit that we haven't agreed upon more simply because the fossil fuels industry has corrupted gov't so much. Other ones have more difficulty.

Geothermal. Not easy. Research for the future, but currently impractical.

Quite a lot of new built houses here(as well as older ones putting it in) use geothermal heating, saves you money as a house owner and it's green. Been in practise since the 70s. 25k-30k heat pumps get installed each year.

The ability to produce Hydropower is also something that we have been fortunate enough to have been given, we got around 1000 hydropower plants that provides us with around 50% of our electricity.

I understand that the US is larger and demands more energy, but don't disregard these methods, they work well.

[Kivimetsan]

My suggestion is to get rid of patent laws that deal with anything regarding energy and innovation will boom. Most promising inventions get bought off by multimillionaire companies that would be hindered by their production. After being bought those inventions never see the light of day.

Get rid of patent laws altogether and innovation across the board will boom like its never boomed before.
But that would take a morally principled government and those don't exist anywhere. They're almost always owned by corporations and paid off by lobbyists.

The only reason we don't have clean and limitless energy is because we keep voting for the same 2 asshole parties every 4 years.

[Citizen T]

I guess you're not aware that they already have sustained fusion reactions. The only issue now is getting a net energy gain from the process. Right now you have to put in more energy than you get out. Thanks for being constructive though...

What a strange statement. It's like saying "I guess you're not aware that we can use a electric motor to drive a generator. The only problem is that it takes 10MW/Hr to run the motor while producing only 1MW/Hr."