Opinion : Energy

George Bush claimed in his state of the Union address that The US is addicted to oil. Now, the surprising part of this is that a former oilman would admit this, yet thee fact itself has been clear for decades now. A more interesting comment however was made a few days later when he claimed that technology would be the answer, and that we were on the verge of amazing breakthroughs, yet as a good politician, he did not actually mention any. Many people quickly dismissed this as conservative rhetoric and a way to admit the addiction thing without actually turning to conservation, which I will admit, may be exactly what Bush was thinking. Yet, I actually think Bush is right, albeit for the wrong reasons. The fact is that there does not need to be a breakthrough in technology to break our addiction to oil, there needs to be a breakthrough in economics. I would argue that the technology to move away from oil is already widely available (and has been for a while); we just need an economic shift to bring these solutions into the mainstream.
First, let me purpose the solution to the Oil problem. The key uses for oil in this country are electricity generation, transportation (mostly cars) and as an industrial input (mainly chemical synthesis). The latter need is an unavoidable reality, but I believe that the US produces enough oil domestically to cover industrial uses. The plastics industry in particular could also hedge its volume through recycling programs. This brings us to electricity, a problem that should have been taken care of in the 70's. The fact is that a bunch of nuclear power plants built across the country would cleanly and cheaply generate all the power that oil burning plants do. Unfortunately, the public has an irrational fear of nuke plants and they are expensive up front. Of course, we could just burn more coal, which we have a lot of domestically (even if it is more dangerous than uranium to mine). Recent innovations have reduced the pollution from these plants quite a bit and increased their efficiency, and they have always been cheap. A more progressive solution would be to put windmills all over the place. I have never understood why more people do not do this, as wind generators are the cleanest and easiest way to generate more power. Why not simply put them on the tops of most large buildings? On an average day, they would take the building completely off the grid. Putting them in yards and along highways would generate lots of cheap, clean electricity. Also, I think they look cool...
This would bring us to the most pressing problem of oil usage: transportation. We need to either stop using gas and diesel or substitute something in their place. Simply driving cars that are more efficient and driving less is downright un-American, so conservation is probably out of the question. Even if electric cars were practical, their use would just shift the problem back to the power companies. This means that alternative fuels are the best option. Luckily, these fuels already exist, and they include ethanol and Biodiesel. These fuels are petrochemicals that can be synthesized in large volumes from plant materials. This is great for the oil situation because the substrate (usually corn) is renewable and available domestically. Most gas is already thinned with around 10% of ethanol, but this can shorten the life of conventional engines. We simply need to re-engineer these engines to run with higher mixes of ethanol, and this is where the economic problem comes in. The companies that make the cars are not gaining anything by making automobiles that run on fuels that are not widely available. The most obvious solution in my opinion is for the government to simply require it to be sold in a 5 yr. period (see unleaded gas, R2 refrigerant). The only people that this would hurt would be OPEC. Anyway, I do not expect to e seeing that kind of leadership from either party in Washington, so invest in oil futures, and spend your windfall on a ethanol hybrid when gas hits $4 a gallon.