Every
industry is subject to fads, and energy is no exception. In recent years, it
has become very popular to build windmills and solar farms, and the government
is helping to subsidize the fad. Congress approved $80 billion for various
renewable energy subsidies last year, and that’s in addition to the tens
of billions already spent.
But
the best minds in the energy business still don’t see wind and solar accounting
for any more than 8 percent of the nation’s energy supply within the next
quarter-century. And there are problems with geothermal as well, as was
demonstrated by the shutdown of a project in California after an investment of
$30 million in venture capital and $6 million from the Department of Energy
failed to produce results. Similarly, The New York Times1 reported that Switzerland shut down a
geothermal project because it was causing damaging earthquakes.
So,
as we have pointed out before, barring a totally unexpected breakthrough, those
technologies are not going to meet a large part of U.S. or global energy needs
anytime soon. Obviously, they will play a supporting role, but we are still
going to be using fossil fuels of one sort or another for a very long time to
come.
Does
that mean that we’ll always be reliant on foreign energy supplies? The answer
is no, but only if we make the right decisions today.
Fortunately,
we have other options for providing energy that go beyond solar, wind, and
foreign oil. The three most promising energy sources are:
- Newly discovered sources of natural gas
- Newly accessible sources of oil
- To a much lesser extent, synthetic liquid
fuels made from coal
Let’s
discuss natural gas first. MIT Technology Review2 recently published an article about the
game-changing nature of new natural gas discoveries in the Appalachian Basin.
The so-called Marcellus Shale deposit extends below millions of acres of land
in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky.
Calculations by geologists predict that these black rocks hold some 500
trillion cubic feet of natural gas — in other words, enough fuel to power the
United States and meet all of its energy needs...
