Americans Say Alternative Energy Sources Are The Answer

These charts give me a little hope for the future. While many politicians are still bowing down to the oil and gas companies (having been bought off), it seems the American people are smarter than that. A record high percentage (73%) of the public now thinks we should be trying to solve our energy problems by emphasizing alternative sources of energy, while only 21% think the answer is more drilling for fossil fuels.

The real surprise for me was that this is also the opinion of 51% of Republicans. This is the first time since Gallup has been asking this that the GOP has a majority agreeing with the rest of America.

These charts are from a new Gallup Poll -- done between March 2nd and 6th of a random national sample of 504 adults, with a 6 point margin of error.

Most Americans Prefer Alternative Energy Development

The recent budget bill that passed and was signed into law cut money for the development of alternative energy sources. It wasn't as big a cut as the House had wanted last summer, but it shows where the Republican Congress would like to move on energy. The oil, coal, and gas companies funneled a ton of money toward Republican candidates in the last election, and they want those Republicans to now strangle the development of alternative energy sources so they can squeeze money money out of consumers -- and the Republicans are ready to give them what they want.

This energy policy makes no sense. These fossil fuels are not unending, and will be tapped out soon (except for coal, which is the dirtiest fossil fuel of all). And there is no doubt that the current fairly low prices will not last. Oil and gas prices always go up and down according to the season and supply -- and as the supply dwindles (as it surely will) the prices will climb to record levels. And this doesn't even consider the harmful effects our dependence on fossil fuels is having on our environment.

This is not what the public wants, and if the Republicans continue down the fossil fuel road, without developing alternative and renewable energy sources, they are going to find themselves at odds with public opinion on yet another issue.

Note in the charts above that 60% of Americans think it is more important to develop alternative energy sources than to continue to depend on fossil fuels. And that includes almost every demographic group. Only two groups seniors and Republicans don't show a significant majority preferring the development of alternative energies -- and the seniors prefer alternative energies by a 7 point margin. Only the Republicans have a majority preferring fossil fuels.

These charts were made from information in a new Pew Research Center survey. That survey was done between December 3rd and 7th of a random national sample of 1,507 adults, and has a margin of error of 2.9 points.

And the public doesn't consider nuclear energy to be one of those acceptable alternative energy sources. About 53% oppose increasing the use of nuclear energy, while only 41% supports it.

Solar Power Generation Has Doubled For 7 Straight Years

(The image above is by S-kei and was found at Wikipedia.)

The fossil fuel producers, and the power plants generating electricity from those fossil fuels, have to be hating this. Solar power is still in its infancy in this country, but it is growing fast -- and with the price of solar panels dropping each year, that growth is likely to continue unabated. Consider this short article by Zack Colman in the Washington Examiner.

The amount of U.S. electricity generated from solar power is slated to more than double for the seventh consecutive year.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said that solar has provided 7.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity through June, enough to power about 685,000 homes per year. Aided by a mishmash of federal and state incentives, coupled with plummeting solar panel prices, installations are increasing all over the country — generation this year is more than double the 3.5 million megawatt-hours over the same period last year.

While solar's slice of the U.S. electricity pie is still small — it accounted for just 0.2 percent of total generation in 2013 — the electric utility industry is viewing it as a disruptive force. That's because once residents turn to solar, utility revenues take a hit because they lose a customer.

Some utilities and conservative groups have taken to fighting one of the most pervasive incentives, which is known as net metering. The mechanism allows solar customers to sell excess power back into the grid while remaining connected to it for backup purposes.

Opponents say net metering passes the cost of maintaining the electric grid for solar customers onto non-solar customers.

But its backers say utilities receive benefits because solar suppresses electricity demand during periods of high use, helping utilities avoid running costly "peaker" plants used to head off supply shortages.

Green Party Says No New Nuclear Plants

The nuclear disaster in Japan is still posing a danger to the people there (and possibly in many other places as radioactive water keeps pouring into the Pacific Ocean). They just upgraded the disaster once again (from a level one to a level three continuing danger), after finding that contaminated water continues to leak from the plant -- water that is radioactive enough to give a worker five years worth of radiation in just one hour.

And in spite of this continuing disaster, some people in the United States continue to think the answer to our energy problems is to build more nuclear power plants -- plants that could easily cause this same kind of disaster in this country. Personally, I find it amazing that after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, anyone could still want to build more nuclear plants. How many disasters must happen before people realize that nuclear energy is just too dangerous?

There is at least one political party that sees the truth -- the Green Party. They know that building more nuclear plants is sheer insanity, when we have so much potential for clean and renewable energy sources -- sources that we have barely begun to tap. Here is what Harvey Wasserman (a member of the Green Party Shadow Cabinet) has to say on this matter:

As the horror show at Fukushima worsens by the day, our opposition to atomic energy becomes ever more vital. Now more than ever, we advocate a total "solartopian" shift to renewables for our planet's energy supply.

That transition has become even more essential as the nightmare at Fukushima deepens.

For decades the nuclear power industry has vehemently denied that a commercial reactor could explode.  When Chernobyl exploded, the industry said this could happen only to a Soviet reactor. But three reactors have now exploded at Fukushima. There are some two dozen reactors in the U.S. virtually identical to Fukushima Unit One. The three melted/exploded cores are missing. Steam emissions indicate there might still be fissioning going on at the site.

Meanwhile the spent fuel pool at Unit Four is perched 100 feet in the air.  If it loses coolant, or comes crashing to the ground, thousands of times more radiation will be released than was at Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Already Fukushima has emitted at least 20 times more radiation than those two bombings, most of it into the Pacific Ocean. Contaminated tuna have been caught as far away as California.  

Today we also know that at least 300,000 tons of highly radioactive liquid has leaked from at least one of the 1,000 or more storage tanks hastily constructed at the Fukushima site. We know that hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated groundwater has been pouring steadily through the site and into the ocean.  

It has been shown for many years that wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels, increased efficiency and conservation and much more in terms of green energy can power this planet cheaply, cleanly and safely while creating millions of jobs and taking root far more quickly than any "new generation" of reactors.

We therefore urge that the nations of the world immediately focus their best energies on containing the horrifying contamination radiating from Fukushima while devoting all the technical, scientific and economic resources necessary to transition our global economy onto a Solartopia green-powered basis as rapidly as possible.

Energy And Environment - A Poll

Perhaps the most important issue facing Americans (and people all over the world) is the issue of energy -- where we're going to get what we need and how is it going to affect our environment (which is already reeling from the overuse of carbon-based fuels). There are currently two points of view about what needs to be done.

One group wants nothing but more drilling fir carbon-based fuels like oil and gas. At best, this is a short-term solution only (since even our own military believes the world is at or will soon reach the point of "peak oil" -- after which production will drop no matter how much drilling is done). Relying solely on increased drilling will also further damage the environment (including global climate change).

The other point of view is to abandon carbon-based fuels as quickly as possible and rely on renewable and non-polluting forms of energy. The problem with this is that these forms of energy are not fully-developed enough to immediately fill all of our energy needs. Much more research and construction are needed (which means more government funding is needed).

This brings up the question -- what do the majority of Americans want? That may be the most important question because what a significant majority of Americans want is probably what will be done (since most politicians are not nearly brave enough to go against public opinion -- whether that public opinion makes sense or not).

The Gallup Poll has made an attempt to find out how Americans feel about energy/environment issues. They asked eight questions, and here is what they found (with the percentage shown being the affirmative answers to the question asked):

SHOULD HIGHER EMISSIONS AND POLLUTION STANDARDS SHOULD BE SET FOR BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY?
Everyone...............70%
Republicans...............54%
Democrats...............85%

SHOULD MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY SHOULD BE SPENT ON DEVELOPING SOLAR AND WIND POWER?
Everyone...............69%
Republicans...............51%
Democrats...............84%

SHOULD MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY SHOULD BE SPENT TO DEVELOP ALTERNATE SOURCES OF FUEL FOR AUTOMOBILES?
Everyone...............66%
Republicans...............51%
Democrats...............81%

SHOULD MANDATORY CONTROLS BE IMPOSED ON CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS AND OTHER GREENHOUSE GASES?
Everyone...............65%
Republicans...............50%
Democrats...............82%

SHOULD MORE LAND OWNED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BE OPENED UP FOR OIL EXPLORATION?
Everyone...............65%
Republicans...............84%
Democrats...............49%

SHOULD FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS BE MORE STRONGLY ENFORCED?
Everyone...............54%
Republicans...............47%
Democrats...............80%

SHOULD HIGHER AUTO EMISSIONS STANDARDS BE SET FOR AUTOMOBILES?
Everyone...............62%
Republicans...............49%
Democrats...............76%

SHOULD THE USE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY BE EXPANDED?
Everyone...............52%
Republicans...............64%
Democrats...............41%

I would agree with all but two of these questions. I wouldn't like to see more federal lands opened for oil exploration. That would just result in destroying a precious heritage for only a short-term and dubious gain. Also, I think we still have questions that need to be answered before we invest in more nuclear energy plants -- especially in light of the Japanese nuclear plant disaster. Couldn't something equally as devastating happen here?

Only A Partial Solution

(Cartoon above is done by Michael Ramirez in the Investor's Business Daily.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to electric cars. I think they're probably a good idea whose time has come. If we put enough of them on the road, we probably can reduce our dependence somewhat on crude oil. But we need to stop thinking that electric cars are the way to end pollution in the United States.

I'm not saying that the use of electric cars will make no difference in pollution levels -- only that the difference they would make is much smaller than most people think. The truth is that the electric cars have a carbon footprint also, and currently that carbon footprint is not a whole lot smaller than that of a gasoline-powered auto.

How can that be? Two reasons. First, gasoline-powered autos are much cleaner than they used to be (and at least the newer ones don't pollute nearly as much as autos used to do). Second, the electric cars must get their electric power from somewhere, and that is usually from a dirty coal-powered energy plant.

If a proliferation of electric cars simply results in the building of more dirty coal-powered energy plants (and there is no such thing as a "clean" coal-powered plant), then little or nothing would have been accomplished toward cleaning up air pollution. The EPA has already told us that nearly 70% of the pollution produced in this country now comes from energy plants -- and the worst violators are the coal-fired plants.

Electric cars are a start, but they are only a small part of the solution we need to combat pollution. Far more important is cleaning up energy-producing plants -- and that must be done by finding new clean and renewable sources for energy production. Coal producers like to brag that they have hundreds of years of supply and their product is cheap. That might be true. But isn't planetary survival more important than a cheap dirty fuel? Can we really afford to continue building coal-powered plants? I think not.

Hot Air As An Energy Source

There are a lot of different kinds of renewable sources be researched and built (solar, wind, wave, etc.). Now an Australian entrepreneur wants to build a new kind of energy plant in the Arizona desert -- a hot air tower. Roger Davey, owner of EnviroMission, originally wanted to build the energy-producing tower in his home country, but believes the political climate is better for it in the United States.

His hot air tower makes use of the fact that hot air naturally rises, and the taller the tower the faster the air will rise inside it. He plans to use the rising air to turn multiple turbines which will generate the electricity. His tower, which would be the second tallest man-made structure in the world, would produce about 200 megawatts of electricity (enough for the needs of about 100,000 homes).

This is not a totally new idea. A smaller hot air tower was built in Spain, and produced about 50 kilowatts of electricity a day before being toppled in 1989. China is currently building a much larger one that will produce hundreds of megawatts. Davey wants to build his giant structure of concrete to keep it protected from falling. Here is how the BBC describes the hot towe concept:

The technology works like this: Unlike normal solar photovoltaic panels that convert the sun's light into energy, the EnviroMission tower would create solar-thermal power, from both the sun and the wind.
Like a greenhouse, the sun heats up the air underneath a huge translucent, sloping canopy around the tower that is about as wide as a football field.
The air is heated to about 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius) and then it flows into the tower, spins the turbines and rises.
The higher the tower, the stronger the flow of air. The faster the turbines spin, the more electricity possible.
After sundown, the ground continues to release heat and more electricity would be generated.


This type of renewable energy would not solve all our energy problems, or be appropriate in all locations. But it sounds like a good idea for the states where a lot of heat is normal. I hope he can get it built because we need to be trying all of the current ideas out. The coal won't last forever (and is destroying the environment), and it make take a variety of solutions to replace it. Water, geo-thermal, wind, wave-motion, solar, and hot air towers may all be a part of the future energy production for the U.S. and the world (and probably some other things that haven't yet been thought of).

The only thing keeping the Arizona project from being built right now is money. Davey thinks it will take a little more than $700 million to build the tower and make it operational. That may sound like a lot of money, but as power plants go it is not outrageous. A new coal-powered plant to produce 400 megawatts of electricity in North Carolina is projected to cost $1.83 billion to build (and that doesn't count the cost of all the coal they'll have to purchase). The hot air tower will have no fuel costs at all -- since air is free, as is the solar power used to heat it.

It's just another interesting idea. And it's the kind of thing we need to be investing in these days.

The First "Zero Energy" Public School

The picture above is of the Center for Energy Efficient Design (CEED) in Franklin County, Virginia. This remarkable building is the first zero-energy public school in the United States -- a school building that produces more energy than it uses. It does this by using "technologies that include passive design, earth berming, south facing orientation, thermal mass, geothermal energy, photovoltaics, solar water heaters, electricity-producing wind turbines, rainwater harvesting, energy-efficient appliances, and daylight harvesting."

If we were a smart country we would already be using much of this technology in the homes and businesses we are building. The passive design technologies alone could save 80-90% of a building's energy needs (and has already been embraced by the government of Germany). While it would slightly increase building costs, that cost could fairly quickly be recouped through much lower energy bills.

It is time for Americans to start getting serious about energy conservation. We waste far too much energy in the homes we build and the cars we drive. We also use far too high a percentage of the world's energy -- which is both immoral and unnecessary. We need to change this -- sooner rather than later.

If you'd like to read more about this remarkable school you can go to this website.

(A tip of my hat to blogger Adam Cohen of Zero Energy Construction for pointing out this story.)

Amazing New Process For Biofuels

Wayne Simmons, the CEO of Sundrop Fuels Inc., said, "We want to use the sun to make renewable fuel. We're going to convert the sun's energy into liquid fuel using concentrated solar power to gasify biomass, then convert the biomass into gasoline or diesel." Now it looks like he has made good on that promise. The company has developed a method that converts biomass (like wood chips, straw or corn stalks -- not food like corn) that produces gasoline from renewable resources and does it cheaper and in greater quantities than any other biofuel process (at a cost of about $2 a gallon).

Simmons (pictured) is now looking for venture capital to build a demonstration plant that will produce 7 to 8 million gallons of gas each year. He predicts that a full-scale plant could produce around 100 million gallons a year. This is some pretty exciting news since other biofuel processes are expensive and produce only limited quantities of fuel from food products. Fellow blogger Adam Cohen over at Zero Energy Construction has the full story. Here is some of what he writes:

The new technology has the potential to revolutionize the biofuels industry, experts say, because it removes one of the long-term cost hurdles to creating fuel from organic waste.

The company blasts organic materials, such as wood chips and straw, with superhigh temperatures gathered from sunshine. The heat tears the material apart on a molecular level, adds the sun’s heat energy in the thermo-chemical reaction, and creates a synthetic gas that can be formed into gasoline or diesel fuel.

Sundrop’s solar reactor, near the top of the tower, operates at temperatures of 1,200 to 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,200 to 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit) using the heat reflected from the mirrors.

By comparison, concentrated solar-power plants, which use the sun’s reflected heat to generate steam for electricity, typically operate at around 500 degrees Celsius (more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit), Simmons said.

When vehicles burn biofuels made from plants, they’re relatively carbon-neutral. That means there’s little or no net gain in carbon-dioxide emissions from cars using the synthetic fuel, because the CO2 comes from the biomass grown in the last year or so, rather than from fossil fuels formed millions of years ago.

Sundrop’s reactor can use any kind of biomass, including plants grown specifically for their energy content. The organic biomass material is dropped into the reactor; the high temperatures vaporize it in seconds. The molecules are torn apart and recombined to form a synthetic gas (syngas), made up of hydrogen and carbon—which can be turned into gasoline, diesel, plastics, or chemicals.

"Gasification of organic material to make synthetic gas has been done. But traditional gasifiers burn a large percentage of the biomass, or a fossil fuel such as natural gas, to reach operating temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit). Sundrop’s process uses the free sunshine as its fuel source, and—as a plus—picks up some of the sun’s heat energy in the chemical process. As a result, Sundrop can produce 100 to 125 gallons of fuel per ton of dry biomass, about twice what conventional gasification plants are getting. It also needs just a half gallon of water—and its hydrogen molecules—to produce a gallon of fuel, compared to six gallons or more needed by traditional gasification technology," Simmons said.

"The high temperatures also mean not producing tar as a waste byproduct, which happens with traditional gasification processes. The fuel is identical to petroleum on a molecular level and can be shipped in existing pipelines, pumped in existing fuel pumps, and burned in existing vehicle engines—no new infrastructure is needed," he said.

This is exactly the type of forward-thinking that this country really needs. Our idiot politicians are thinking of nothing but further destroying our environment (and soon our economy) with more and more drilling for carbon-based fuels like oil, with little thought about the fact that we are nearing or at the point of "peak oil" (the point at which production drops no matter how much drilling is done). Like it or not, oil is a finite resource and will have to be replaced sooner than later -- hopefully with a renewable and cleaner energy.

I urge you to go on over to Zero Energy Construction and read the whole story.

It's Time To Jump Off The Oil Bandwagon

If you still don't think we need to be moving toward alternatives to oil, world oil markets are doing their best to change your mind. Yesterday, oil prices set a new record high of over $86 a barrel. The price jumped even though the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided last month to boost their production by 500,000 barrels a day.

This happened because it is expected that in the next year, non-OPEC nations will produce 110,000 barrels a day less than they currently produce. At the same time, demand for oil is expected to increase by 100,000 barrels a day. Oil inventories held by the largest industrialized nations have fallen below their five-year average.

Oil is a finite resource. Whether we like it or not, the supply of oil is going to run out someday -- maybe much sooner than we expect. Estimates of the amount of oil remaining are at best just an educated guess. No one really knows how much is left.

Even if we were to ruin our wilderness and ocean areas by drilling for oil there, with the expanding demand for oil we would only delay the inevitable for a few years. That makes the search for alternate energy sources more important than ever.

Exploring new technologies like electric and hydrogen powered cars are not just a pie-in-the-sky solution to global climactic change. With the rising price and dwindling sources of the world's oil supply, it is an absolute necessity.

We need to stop thinking of alternate energy sources as future technologies. We need to treat this problem like we did our effort to get to the moon. We need to spend whatever is necessary to fund a massive effort to solve the problem of alternate energy sources -- not in the future, but in our own time.

For our own good, it is time to jump off the oil bandwagon.