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Posted by 48pw [72.152.58.243] on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 18:45:26 :
In Reply to: Nope, that's wrong, too. posted by Don in Missouri [71.54.209.154] on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 16:49:28 :
The USDA has a bias in promoting ethanol (due to their constituency and the control over their budgets from Senators from Mid-Western states). Reports derived from their research need to be viewed skeptically.
David Pimental, from Cornell University and the leading authority on ethanol production issued a report several years ago examining the energy inputs need to produce a ethanol.
The net loss is approximately 54,000 BTU over input requirements.
The estimated natural gas supplies with the United States are estimated to meet current consumption levels for several hundred years.
You mention solar, solar is not feasible for several reasons. One is conversion efficiency, the other is storage (sun doesn't shine at night). Energy derived from solar are estimated in excess of $.35 per kWh. The other is that current production methods for solar cells produce copious quantitites of toxic by-products that are costly to store or dispose.
Wind also is confined to very small segments of the country and also suffers from greatly varying output requireing that supplemental/back-up generation be constructed to smooth out the Flow. It's akin to having two motors in your car, one just to have on hand in case the other fails.
Geothermal is likewise confined to geographically isolated sections of the U.S.
Another problem that plagues all three (solar, wind, geothermal) is scalability. Enen if major breakthoughs were made in solar efficiency it would take the better part of three decades to develop the manufacturing capacity to make it a practical solution. The same with wind, there just aren't enough sites for it to be more tha a niche contributor. T. Boone Pickens had planned a large wind generation farm in Texas, but backed out when he could get the U.S. Government to guarantee his subsidies for a 40 year term.
I'm all for energy independency, but it must be made on sound science and economics. Currently only natural gas and nuclear meet that criteria.