I have basically been saying what Boone Pickens told Congress yesterday for the last few years that I have been driving a car that will run on Natural Gas. The technology is available, the problem is just putting it into action. The unfortunate part is that Boone Pickens is right, we have to make changes and we better make them now. Personally, I see his plan as a good starting concept to utilizing alternative resources that we do have available to us. If you want more information on the pickens plan go here: http://www.pickensplan.com/
The problem with Picken's plan is that if many cars start using Natural gas, then the cost of Natural gas will go up, just like Crude oil. In 2006, price of Natural Gas was 50$ per thousand cubic meters. Today, its 150$ per thousand cubic meters, and is slated to go even higher, coz of dwindling supplies across the globe.
Actually, I think that is a misconception about his plan. We already use a lot of Natural Gas. We use it to produce electricity. His plan is to use wind and solar to hopefully help replace the vast majority of usage of natural gas. In turn, instead of using the existing usage of natural gas to produce electricity, we would use it as fuel in our cars. So essentially, there is an almost equal demand which means the price should not go up as much one would might think.
After scanning the plan, I agree with Gator. There are 2 parts to the plan. Generate more electricity via wind power. Use that to replace electricity generated by natural gas. Use the freed up natural gas to power transportation i.e. vehicles. I have questions though. My understandings of energy suggest 3 alternatives to oil (gasolene and diesel) for autos; natural gas, (the Pickens plan) electric, and bio fuels. So I ask. If we generate more electricity through wind power...why not orient it directly to electric powered vehicles. Then no need to use natural gas for vehicles. Another alternative is biofuels converted into alcohol or ethanol. The Brazilian experiment and rapid increase in biofuels autos and reduction in requirements for oil is impressive. It has occurred quickly.....far more quickly than delivering new oil from new discoveries of off shore oil fields (in Brazil itself). The Brazilians use sugar cane for developing ethanol rather than corn as do the Americans. While there is strong evidence that converting fields to corn production for producing ethanol has had a negative impact on food prices for other food commodities by decreasing their production, I'd like to look at that harder. We are frankly producing and using so little ethanol for autos currently is this idea stupid or what? Would massive crop growth for massive amts of ethanol totally screw up food production. I think this needs to be looked at with clearer eyes than only the interests of the food producers alone. Get us data that is un filtered by the interest groups and those with a political agenda. The population is ready to address these issues. Lets get clear information and set clear agendas.
There was an even more ambitious plan. by Al Gore. He wants to completely replace all coal & gas-fired power plants with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power plans. Completely green. But people working in his feld have pointed out many flaws in such projects, including Pickens Plan. You should check out http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4316 The discussion there is very interesting...
I would be in favor of this as well, but Pickens pointed out something that was interesting when a Senator asked him the same question. Electric cars can only drive so far, we still have trucks which are heavily used to transport goods. In places like Germany they are having to park their trucks because they can't afford to drive them. Moving to natural gas would allow trucks to be converted too and still drive the same amount of miles whereas going to electric would cause problems for the truck driving industry. I'm not oppossed to other solutions. In fact, I think the Senate just needs to get off their butts and give something a try because staying dependant on oil is not the answer. After briefly looking at Gore's plan, he has a very similar plan to Pickens. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but Gore would rather not use natural gas to fuel cars. Instead, he would rather reduce the usage of finite resources such as these and try to cover 20% of the needed sources using wind and solar energy. I think that is a good plan, but I think that using natural gas in vehicles is a good concept. Particularly because there is no current scare with that resource and with the plan, we wouldn't be increasing our usage by much, if any.
Corn is not the only crop you can use to produce vegetable oil, and thus bio-diesel. Soy beans and peanuts are two other examples. Much like corn, the oil can be extracted from soybeans and the leftovers used for feed, so if we just pressed the oil out of what we are already selling as feed, we can add bio-fuels to the energy mix without impacting anything except a farmers workload and paycheck perhaps.
I have read a lot of good information on bio fuels from MIT's Technology Review. I have a subscription, so I don't have a link to any specific articles, but I think I found a link to some of their materials on that topic: http://www.technologyreview.com/specialreports/specialreport.aspx?id=10
electric cars and nuclear power plants. in trucks they can have larger batteries with more amphour. thinking about having generators that use the water movements in the oceans to generate electricity is also a good idea. i think they are doing something like this in NY
I'm not sure about this, but from what I read about Brazil, their use of biofuels is limited to "light cars". I assume that large cars and trucks use gas or diesel. Still the current results are impressive in terms of cutting back on oil usage and the speed with which this has occurred and continues to occur. Within 1/2 the time it would take to deliver oil from one of their first oil finds offshore, they are delivering significant cuts on usage of oil for gasolene. Since the biofuel thing in the US is getting a lot of controversy now, due to increases in competitive food prices....I got this feeling it needs a closer more scientific analysis. My bet is the first time around Congress passed something that was deficient in analysis vis a vis its impact on food production.
although bio fuel might be used but the reality is the amount of agricultural land would be needed to grow this is not practical. nuclear would be cleaner and all technology is already here. a grid of charger is all that is needed and i guess they can use the current gas stations to add some charge stations. it can also be implemented in india and china. they do not have a lot of investment in gas fueled cars. nuclear is the only thing that can substitute oil as the source of energy in a global sense. other than nuclear we must look into oceans as they are also not used. i think a company in NY is already using electricity generated in water. i just have to get over my fear edit let the red states volunteer for reactor locations
Early i totally agree with you about using wind power to generate electricity. Not only is it a cheap source of power , its also enviromentally safe. Electric vehicles cant get into the american drivers hands fast enough.
I agree, but nuclear plants take time to build, and I wouldn't mind living within 100 miles of a properly constructed, secured, and maintained one. Biofuels can help take the load off. BP has a good commercial going right now, diversity in energy sources.