Saturday, September 20, 2008

Do We Really Need Stop-Gap Fuels?

It’s becoming clear that energy and energy independence — you have to love that term — will be a major focus of the upcoming presidential election. While most of us are sick of the dog-and-pony shows and pundits of the past few weeks, we are also sick of the all too-easily dismissed ease of both parties’ energy policies.
Do we drill more? Do we import less? Do we use ethanol? Should all cars be flex-fuel?
There are two end goals, it seems: independence from foreign oil and eventually independence from non-renewable fuels.
I’m going to try and tackle just the first one today, and in doing so I think it might become clear that ethanol and natural gas are stopgap fuels that we just don’t need to become energy independent.
The reason I got to thinking about this was the upcoming Senate bill that would require every car to be flex-fuel... For Complete Article, Click On Thread Title Above....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

glad to see you are getting away from cut and paste and developing your own editorial.

i'm tired of the lip service both candidates present. i want the ten year plan. it's obvious renewables aren't going to happen over night but let's implement a plan with means with a schedule that provides an end result. soundbites like "let's reduce our carbon footprint by [date] is useless and both candidates are guilty of sound biting. how about appointing an "energy czar".

the tax breaks for installing your own renewable power, quite frankly, is still unaffordable. a basic solar system that will produce 70%+- of your power will set you back some $40k.

i'll vote for the candiated who's slogan is "a wind turbine in every yard and a solar array for every roof"

Patrick McGee said...

Any property owner fortunate enough to have the natural resources avaialable to them(running water, constant wind velocity) would be wise to buy the technology for one unit applications and I would bet there would be financial and insurance benefit help to make it happen.