There has been much talk about getting new alternative energy policies going in the United States, but so far I have not seen an effective solution put into action. Using money earmarked for improving the economy, the government is suppose to give a certain amount of money towards developing alternative fuel sources to oil. I would imagine that this would mean giving amounts of money to solar, wind, fuel cell, electric, hydrogen, and what ever other alternative energy ideas there are out there. I think we are essentially putting the cart before the horse on this plan unless the government takes prudent steps first.
Before we get to talking about the solutions, let's think about why we need alternatives to oil in the first place, just in case you have been living under a rock since the 70s. The world is running out of oil. As things stand now, at this point in time, everything we need, want, produce, and/or use is dependent on foreign oil. Our food industry needs foreign oil to power the tractors to work the land, plant the crops, cultivate and harvest the crops. In order for that food to get to us, the consumer, fuel made from oil is needed for the trucks, trains, and ships. Not only is the oil used to make the fuel to power our cars, but it lubricates almost every moving part in all of them.
When oil was first discovered it was practically bubbling out of the ground in some parts of the country, it was cheap and abundant. It was the stuff that made the industrial age possible. Then a way was figured out how to also use this oil to power the engines to run the machines in the industrial age and life was good. Since then though there are a lot more of us, using even greater amounts of oil to power our cars, oil also makes plastics that have made our way into every aspect of our lives, and everything else from medicines to paints. At one point someone figured out that we only had a limited supply in the United States. It was decided to save much of the oil that was within the US boarders for national security matters so we started getting the majority of the oil we used from other countries. At first we had a good time, many of the places we were getting the oil from were countries that didn't have the tech to use the new found oil so it wasn't worth much to them so we got it cheap.
Now, the places we have left to supply our oil habit are a bunch of countries that don't really like us a whole lot so we pay a lot more for our oil and we face the possibility of someday one or more of these countries will cut us off for differences in opinions, or as a retribution to issues we don't agree on. This makes us nervous, makes the other countries wealthy, and it gives the countries where we drill for oil power over us. What's worse is that even with getting oil from other countries there is only so much oil and it will eventually run out.
Our country is now starting to think about alternative energy, but we really need to stop and think before just throwing money to the wind. We already have numerous alternative plans out there, electric, hydrogen, propane, ethanol, but what we really need is standards and infrastructure. There isn't any alternative that stands a chance if there isn't an infrastructure to support it. If I take my electric, fuel cell, or hydrogen car out on a trip and I get 300 mile out and I need to charge up or refuel and there isn't places where I can do that, or there are only a limited few places I can refuel that I have to search for and I have to plan my route around them, it isn't going to fly. I don't care how environmentally friendly or efficient the alternative is, if people can't travel as we do now with gasoline, it isn't going to go over with the public.
Where does this leave us? We have alternatives to gasoline, but right now, because they are not convenient, and/or their cost is too high, there are not many people who can use any of them. What we need is for smart people who know the facts to sit down and come up with a strategy of how to go ahead. One of the first things they have to figure out would be which alternative energy option would be the best. They have to take into consideration the affect on the environment, costs, leaving room for future technologies, and how abundant the alternative energy source is. I have read of many different ideas, fuel cells, electric, hydrogen, ethanol... What we need though is to have government incentives and support for the winning option. We don't need an approach which is going to put the country's energy needs in the position where it is going to be a battle like VHS vs. Bata, or Blue Ray vs. DVDs. This approach would waste too much time and resources battling for a winning technology where the losers would end up being obsolete and having the cost of having to change over to the winning technology. This is where we need government to step in and say, this is the direction we are going to go, the standard we are going to adopt, and then step in to support the infrastructer for that alternative energy.
I read an article that made sense for supporting the idea of electric cars. Most any of the alternative energy ideas out there can be used to make electricity, if we have the resources to make enough of it, the cost should be low. The problem with electric is with our existing technologies we can only drive so far before needing to recharge the batteries, which is a long process requiring quite a bit of time before you are ready to continue your drive again. I read about an inventor, I think from Iraq, who has what I think is a really great idea. Instead of having to charge up the batteries in your car when your batteries are low, you just swap your battery pack for a charged up battery pack and you are back on your way. This inventor wants to standardize battery packs so that you pull into a charging station and within 10 minutes your low battery pack is swapped out for a charged battery pack. The battery pack is hung in the car the same way missiles are hung on plane wings being able to be swapped easily and quickly. As battery technology improves it can be swapped out over time with the lesser technology batteries, but keep the same standards so that any changes won't interfere or make hardships for the consumer, they would just drive in and get their battery pack swapped out as usual. When battery packs get older and fail they would just be swapped out with new ones at the distrabution centers and not cause the consumer great expence by having to replace all the battery packs in their cars, also it would make recycling of the old batteries easy as everything would be done at the battery distrabution centers after swapping the batteries out instead of having to disasemble the vehicle to take batteries out of here and there all over within the vehicle. We could still support a maze of various alternative energy ideas, but they would be used to make electricity instead of trying to cram the different technologies into the vehicles.
When we were involves in the great world wars, there was a shift in our production plants to support the building of all the planes, tanks, ships, bombs and ammunition. It didn't happen all by acident, the government stepped in and directed everyone to who was making what. The government stepped in and said this is what we need, money was spent retooling factories to make what was needed and it was made. It was an amazing feat that we achived in little time. We need to be weaning ourselves off of oil and into using a form of alternative energy that is clean and non-poluting, we need to strenthen our national security of not having to depend on our energy needs from other countries that don't like us, we need to stop supporting these countries with our oil money. We need to put as much effort into finding alternative energy sources as we put into war.
