Domestic Energy

Having watched as much of the second presidential debate as I could stomach, I decided it was time to put some thoughts on paper. Please do not make me out to be a political analyst, but I can sense bullshit better than most and considering the current economic situation of our fine country, I need to get this out.
One of the biggest issues of this presidential election is energy. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as I both work primarily for energy companies and also pay a premium for this energy. I will try my best to stay on topic and not venture into secondary costs of energy (the largest of which is the lives of American soldiers), because this just adds more opinions and more reason for you to stop reading. Below I will address both home/commercial use energy and automotive energy and the real topics and strategies our government should be taking, as compared to the piles of crap that get shoveled to us through the media. The point I wish to make is that we must look at viable options rather than pipe dreams. If someone shows you an alternative to fossil fuel in your vehicle you must ask if this is a viable solution to ALL vehicles; if not, perhaps it is unwise to spend billions of government dollars funding this non-solution while the money could be better spent researching and developing the real solution. Please do not misinterpret this as my argument against certain technologies, I believe that clean technologies should be first on our lists, but I believe that it is more important to focus our time and money on finding a true solution rather than a pretty solution.
That being said, I am sure at this point anyone who has listened to any political analysis recently has heard the term "Alternative Energy" in regards to domestic energy supplies. So I will start by discussing alternative energy sources as they pertain to our present and our future. What should I start with, Wind? Geothermal? Hydroelectric? Solar? As none of these meet my definition of an alternative energy source, perhaps I should start there. When I think of the term alternative, I think of a viable replacement, such as "substitute margarine for butter", in which you are replacing one fat source with one of similar if not equal value. The truth is that most of the aforementioned energy sources are not an approximate, much less, an equal substitute for the one energy source of which we are trying to rid ourselves, fossil fuels. The benefit of fossil fueled power plants are that they can be erected virtually anywhere. Wind, Geothermal, and Hydroelectric plants are very much dependent on specific geographic locations, which do not make them viable for a replacement for all fossil fueled plants. Solar plants, as well, are best suited for certain locations and also take up nearly 100 times more land acreage per megawatt of power than current fossil fueled plants.
Where do we go for our power then? We have to go nuclear. The US already contains many nuclear power plants, but we have not built a new one in some time. The problem being the disposal of the nuclear waste, the danger of a meltdown, and also the heat waste associated with cooling water. I am not a nuclear engineer, and I do not have the answers for the waste, and I apologize for that, as it is the biggest weakness of my argument. I will dispel it by saying that this is why we need more government funding and attention on nuclear, as I am sure we can figure something out. As far as danger and cooling water, the technology of nuclear power has grown quite a bit since the last plant was built (I do not have dates, please feel free to tell me, though I am quite certain it was a while ago, like before I was born). The fact I would like to make on nuclear is that it has the greatest power output per acre and can be built virtually anywhere in the country, and is, therefore, capable of replacing all domestic fossil fuel power plants.
Now we move on to our dependence on motor vehicles, which I despise. I despise the suburban sprawl of the modern US, but I will bite my tongue for now as I feel it is here to stay and important to move past idealism and find a solution to real problems. If the statistics used by the politicians on television are correct, and I kind of doubt it, but I will let it slide, we consume 25% of the world’s oil production yet produce only 6% ourselves. In order to eliminate our dependency on foreign oil we need only apply simple logic, increase domestic production or reduce consumption. The key here is to realize two things: first, all oil reserves are finite, meaning that increasing our production would not solve the problem forever (assuming we have the domestic oil to even reach our current needs); second, any plan we put into action to produce new vehicles with little or no dependence on petroleum will take time to develop and to replace the current cars on the road.
I move forward with those two assumptions in mind. We must both increase domestic production, as well as reduce current consumption trends. There are certain topics along the consumption front which I do not currently have the time or energy to include, such as public transportation, of which I am a huge proponent, but I simply do not have time. Again, let us start with alternative energy as far as cars are concerned. Ethanol and other biofuels are not a viable alternative to petroleum as I have defined it earlier. We must concentrate on energy sources which are renewable on a large scale, of which I currently see only electric as a current viable technology (assuming that the electricity will come from non-fossil fuel sources, of course). Electric cars are currently expensive and all of the technological funding is going towards hybrids, because that is the current buzzword. Hybrids are great, but the technology is already developed, and the current state of the petroleum market is already driving both manufacture and sales of hybrid vehicles. It is important for any government funding to stay ahead of the market, in order to keep technology a step ahead of energy needs and market prices. Car manufacturers should now be putting hybrid technology into all vehicles, and shifting their research budgets towards electric. It will take time to get that technology commercially viable, and in the meantime, we can reduce our current consumption.
In the meantime, we need to maximize our domestic oil production, but must do so only as a temporary fix. We must have the plans in place to reduce virtually all of our consumption, and not just increase production as a band-aid for the current crisis. Just remember that band-aid only work if you manage to get the blood to clot underneath, and right now we are suffering from hemophilia.
I want to address one more thing regarding this topic, and I left it to the end because it is political, and I wanted to leave it to last because this is where many of you will tune out. We also need to get our government to set real laws that will force automakers to produce the vehicles we need to gain our petroleum independence. EPA recently passed a law to increase to average gas mileage of all cars sold in the US; a great step until you see how sot they made it. Conditions were put into the law that allows for government subsidies for the automakers (for technology that is already widely used) and also allows for automakers to file for an extension if they feel that they cannot make the deadlines. US automakers have filed for both government funding and extensions, though they have nearly eight years to comply, and have vehicles that currently meet the standard.
I will say right now that I am not a fan of big government, but until they put a little spine in their laws concerning fossil fuels, we, as the public, will continue to be the ones who pay the most and pay the longest for fuel prices.