Several thousand feet deep, actually.
I should clarify something first: the energy crisis about which your resident harbinger of doom prophesies will never come, hence the quotation marks in the title. I know this because I'm not a moron. Every few weeks I see articles on websites like PhysOrg.com heralding vast improvements and breakthroughs in alternative energy research.
For example, the first photovoltaic cells (converting sunlight directly to electricity), developed in the 1880s, were about 1% efficient; in comparison, the newest solar cells are capable of 40% efficiency and higher. Another example is a recent breakthrough in fuel cell technology, allowing scientists to extract pure hydrogen from liquid water using an aluminum-gallium alloy as a catalyst. In essence this means liquid water may replace liquid hydrogen as a fuel source.
Anyway.
Companies like Exxon Mobil, posting $12 billion QUARTERLY profits, and Royal Dutch Shell, raking in an average of $3 million per HOUR, will not soon loosen their grip on the trillions of dollars still to be made in the billions of barrels of oil sitting underground, and they will do everything in their power to retard or preclude entirely the emergence of viable, alternative sources of energy. This is probably why most people, especially here in the United States, don't hear much about developments in these venues outside of highly specialized news outlets like PhysOrg.com.
Having said all of this, I now return to my admittedly vague allusion beginning this article. In my opinion, the answer to all of our energy problems is not solar, wind, nuclear, or even my beloved fuel cells, but rather the least publicized of all the alternative energy sources - geothermal. MIT recently published a massive report concerning the prospects of geothermal energy; I'm only a few pages into it, but I hardly expect anybody else to read it in its entirety as I plan to do, so I'll highlight a few interesting points contained within this e-Tome:
I should clarify something first: the energy crisis about which your resident harbinger of doom prophesies will never come, hence the quotation marks in the title. I know this because I'm not a moron. Every few weeks I see articles on websites like PhysOrg.com heralding vast improvements and breakthroughs in alternative energy research.
For example, the first photovoltaic cells (converting sunlight directly to electricity), developed in the 1880s, were about 1% efficient; in comparison, the newest solar cells are capable of 40% efficiency and higher. Another example is a recent breakthrough in fuel cell technology, allowing scientists to extract pure hydrogen from liquid water using an aluminum-gallium alloy as a catalyst. In essence this means liquid water may replace liquid hydrogen as a fuel source.
Anyway.
Companies like Exxon Mobil, posting $12 billion QUARTERLY profits, and Royal Dutch Shell, raking in an average of $3 million per HOUR, will not soon loosen their grip on the trillions of dollars still to be made in the billions of barrels of oil sitting underground, and they will do everything in their power to retard or preclude entirely the emergence of viable, alternative sources of energy. This is probably why most people, especially here in the United States, don't hear much about developments in these venues outside of highly specialized news outlets like PhysOrg.com.
Having said all of this, I now return to my admittedly vague allusion beginning this article. In my opinion, the answer to all of our energy problems is not solar, wind, nuclear, or even my beloved fuel cells, but rather the least publicized of all the alternative energy sources - geothermal. MIT recently published a massive report concerning the prospects of geothermal energy; I'm only a few pages into it, but I hardly expect anybody else to read it in its entirety as I plan to do, so I'll highlight a few interesting points contained within this e-Tome:
- The concept of geothermal energy harvesting is very simple. Superheated water located several thousand feet below the earth's surface is used to drive steam turbines, generating electricity. The steam cools and condenses after it passes through the turbines, and it is collected and piped back to its source in the earth, where it is naturally reheated and sent through the cycle again and again.
- Geothermal power plants have virtually no environmental footprint
- Based on rough estimates, the amount of geothermal energy available in the UNITED STATES ALONE could supply all of humanity's annual energy needs for the next 30,000 years
- We already have the technology available to dig tunnels deep enough to reach geothermal hot spots, each of which would cost somewhere between $10 and $15 million (compared to the $3 billion it costs to build a nuclear power plant, plus the $500 million to decommission it at the end of its life)
I also learned on the History Channel yesterday that a geothermal plant supplies power for about 20,000 households in Reno, NV. Pretty cool. I didn't think the U.S. had any commercial geothermal plants at all.
As for mobile power (i.e. cars), they'll all be running on rechargeable batteries soon enough, so we'll be indirectly powering them with electricity anyway.
So yeah. Geothermal will solve all of our problems. We don't need the sun, wind or uranium-235, and we sure as heck don't need oil. Even if one of these energy sources proves to be completely unfeasible financially, there are so many other options to choose from that we'll hardly feel any setback at all. We are certainly selfish, greedy, and collectively stupid creatures by nature, but we're also incredibly adaptive, and that, friends, is why I have no worries about the future.
As for mobile power (i.e. cars), they'll all be running on rechargeable batteries soon enough, so we'll be indirectly powering them with electricity anyway.
So yeah. Geothermal will solve all of our problems. We don't need the sun, wind or uranium-235, and we sure as heck don't need oil. Even if one of these energy sources proves to be completely unfeasible financially, there are so many other options to choose from that we'll hardly feel any setback at all. We are certainly selfish, greedy, and collectively stupid creatures by nature, but we're also incredibly adaptive, and that, friends, is why I have no worries about the future.
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