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Russ,

Do you believe that this energy crisis is real? Obviously with India's and China's need for more oil there will be more competition for resources, just as with Japan before WWII. But I've heard that there's more than enough oil in Alaska alone to meet US needs for the next couple of centuries. Even if this is true, however, I believe that we should nonetheless take the necessary measures to develope cleaner more cost effective alternative energy sources and reduce our need for oil.

I remember the gas lines of the seventies. At first when I heard that the oil wells were about to go dry, like many people, I believed that there might be some credence assumming oil was a finite resource. But, one day, I watched some big oil executive being interviewed and you could see that he was all but laughing as he explained the "crisis." After that and in the intervening years, I believed that it was just a contrived "crisis" to jack up the price. I believe $100/barrel oil will result from a similar contrived "crisis."

Joe

pondering_it_all,

These low cost solar panels are a necessary step in the right direction. Our nation should immediately begin a modern day Manhattan project to develope a safe low cost alternative energy source to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, but I guess war is better for the economy.

Joe

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There is a big difference between a manufactured "crisis" like insufficient refinary capacity creating gas shortages and high gas prices, versus the inevitable decline in oil production from operating fields. The problem that requires long-range planning and a shift to other sources is that every field starts with "easy oil" that gushes out of new wells, goes through a long period of gradual depletion, and then all that is left is "hard oil" that costs more to extract than it is worth. Each well may have a sharp decline but over a whole field or a whole region the decline is more gradual.

Since all of the major American oil fields have been in production for quite some time, we have passed the peak level of production from domestic sources. That is why it looks like more and more of our oil will have to come from sources outside the US, or be displaced by alternative energy sources. Some of those potential sources are not so different from petroleum (other than being more expensive): Canada has enormous tar sand fields that can be processed to make something very like petroleum. Likewise, America has vast coal deposits that could be used. (But that would put so much radiation in the air that a fast breeder reactor program would actually be safer!)

Compared to coal or tar sand, the use of solar energy seems ideal: No additional carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, once the system has been constructed. No enormously expensive entangling foreign relationships to obtain and protect our energy supply. No rivers dammed and farm land flooded to build hydroelectric systems. No giant windmills spoiling the view, generating noise pollution, and killing vast flocks of birds. No need for more transmission lines, since solar PV systems can be on-site. What's not to like?

Well, for one thing we don't have very good batteries yet so we will still need some sort of easy-to-use vehicle fuel. A good possibility for that is ethanol from cellulose materials like switchgrass, city green waste, crop waste, used paper, cardboard, and wood. All of those contain carbon that was taken from the atmosphere, so burning the resulting ethanol simply releases that same amount of carbon back into the atmosphere with no net gain. The processing and transportation of ethanol will require some energy, but that can come from the ethanol itself (IE. for tanker trucks) and from large solar thermal generating farms (like the ones we already have in the Southern California desert).

Pilot plants that can produce cellulosic ethanol for less than $0.75/gallon are coming on line now. We already have desert solar-thermal farms and more are being built. PhotoVoltiac panels cheaper than the current $4/Watt is one of the last remaining barriers to this plan. Nice to see that somebody has worked that out.