Forget Oil! The Future is in Electricity

By Bob Difley
A lot of experts and theoretical think tanks are looking at ways to quickly and drastically reduce our oil requirements, rather than pursuing ways to increase supply to meet demand with unpopular options like increased drilling in places like ANWR and the continental shelf. They are suggesting that we instead put our efforts into producing most if not all of our energy needs from domestic sources.

• No to foreign oil.
• No to war with foreign nations to stabilize their shaky governments and whose oil we want.
• No deals with disruptive, threatening, unfriendly, and unstable governments and rulers just so we can buy their oil.
• No to competing with China and India for oil, whose exploding economies have them gobbling up all the oil they can buy from any source at any price.
• No more oil tanker spills.
• Reduction of CO2 emissions and air pollution.

A pipe dream?

According to these experts and researchers, the answer to our energy requirement is to convert quickly to domestically produced energy, namely electricity. Half the oil used in this country is absorbed by the transportation sector. If we gave incentives and tax breaks to car manufacturers to produce electric cars, to car buyers to buy electric cars, to energy suppliers (gas stations) to set up the infrastructure to recharge electric car batteries, and started to mass produce (read lower price) cutting-edge batteries, electric car sales would take off like an iPod give-away. And where would these incentives come from? From the subsidies now given to the oil companies, from farmers growing corn to make ethanol, and from the billions of dollars now flowing into Iraq. And I’m sure you can think of even more sources.

What about the 250 million gasoline-fueled cars now on the road? The technology now exists to add an electric motor and battery to standard cars creating an instant hybrid. Granted, the mileage on electric-only power might be just 50 miles (though this figure is increasing rapidly), but for most of us, that would cover a day’s driving of our tow or toad, and even for most commuters. If the daily mileage exceeds 50 miles, the gasoline engine takes over. When you get back home or to the campground, plug it into an electrical outlet to recharge for the next day.

Many small cars would not have the room to install an additional electric motor, but the ones that need it most—SUVs, trucks, delivery vans—do and would see an instant reduction of fuel costs as well as a giant reduction of CO2 emissions—some estimates go as high as 60%. And most if not all of the cost of installing an electric motor would also be covered by incentives and tax breaks. These incentives would be one of the best investments of government money you might ever see as it would result in an immediate reduction of oil imports, a drop in the price of oil, reduced air pollution, and the taking of a giant step toward an electric economy.

So where does all this electricity come from? There are many ways to produce electricity that do not require oil (in fact, none of the electric utilities now use oil to produce electricity) such as hydro-electric, solar, wind, tidal turbines, geo-thermal, coal, and nuclear.

Yes, I said coal and nuclear. Coal as it exists in power generation now, no, but with tax breaks to coal burning utilities to install CO2 sequestration and scrubbing coal could be cleaned up. The advantages include the availability of huge quantities of coal in this country to offset much of the need for oil. Nuclear still needs some work, but with incentive or venture capital money to put study of safety and nuclear waste disposal issues on the fast track, these problems might also be overcome.

Experts say that compared to drilling new sources of oil where the amounts recovered would still be sold at high world market prices, and do little to either satisfy increasing demand or lower prices, through these measures we could quickly  reduce our oil imports by as much as 50%, and since we only get about 20-25% from OPEC nations, that would be the end of that problem.

What do you think?