Is this a cool idea or what? Slash oil and coal subsidies and put $8 Billion into clean energy!?

In a prior post,

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ao...

I noted that the US could meet its transport energy needs through the production of biocrude. The key issue with this path is that 30% of the land US area would be needed for energy crops. After the biomass feedstock, the next largest cost in the process is hydrogen. I think that Obama is making a mistake reducing funding for hydrogen research. Although I doubt that hydrogen will ever be a viable transportation fuel, it is an important intermediate product for the synthesis of gasoline from biological feedstocks. Advances in producing hydrogen from renewable sources would have tremendous economic value and the research should be supported. Meanwhile, hydrogen can be produced from natural gas or via electrolysis. In an industrial sense, the main piece of the puzzle missing for a biocrude economy is industrial plant for the pyrolysis step. I hope that Obama's plan gives support for this step. Existing refineries can be used for making the finished product.

The second issue is electricity generation. The main issue for wind and solar is that they are intermittent. Either storage technologies need to improve or another technology such as nuclear is needed to handle the base load demand. I think that Obama is on the right track supporting both the construction of nuclear generating capacity and research into storage and transmission technologies.

Edit: I am well aware that using waste is a good source of energy. My name is on an industrial process patent to convert agricultural waste to biofuel and I have a significant shareholding in the corporation that owns the rights. The company can produce about 400,000 tonnes biofuel annually based on the process at very low cost from waste streams in MB, SK, ND, SD and MN. That is the low hanging fruit. Very profitable, but only a tiny fraction of total demand. Incremental capacity comes at a higher cost. The switchgrass example is scalable enough to meet all of the demand. Algae is another option. Estimates of the land area required are on the order of 30,000 km ^2 for ponds in the California desert. I have current algae experiments in progress. We get less sun in the north, so the yields are lower. However, we have abundant water and don't have the cost of excavating ponds. The switchgrass results are public domain. My algae results aren't.

Nuclear is not a strong option due to the shortage of expertise. $18 billion will build 3 plants and I think there are enough experts around to do that. 10 plants are probably out of the question. My lab is in an Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) facility, so I am well aware of the shortage of nuclear expertise. I did part of my PhD at AECL Chalk River, so I could go over to AECL if the terms were right.

There is no question that nuclear power has to be part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, solar and wind could play a large roll in a hydrogen economy. The use of solar and wind power to produce hydrogen is a way to solve the problem of the need to store power from these sources. A global power grid would also help. Solar farms in Saudi Arabia could then keep the lights on in the Americas at night. Solar farms in Mexico and Arizona could also keep the lights on in Europe.

The sooner we move onto 21st century power generation the sooner we can break away from 19th century power generation. Instead of adding unneeded CO2 to our paper thin atmosphere we could begin to deal with this problem. The sooner we can get a real wind and solar industry up and running the sooner we can put a few million Americans to work putting together a brand new, mostly decentralized power infrastructure that uses FREE fuel instead of dirty and far more expensive coal. We have the work force...we have the industrial infrastructure...we have the money. All we need is leadership. Eisenhower gave us the National Defense Highway System. Maybe some republican could give us the a National Defense Power System. Take away a few bucks from coal and oil? Sure...they don't need it. Funnel the same money into wind and solar....you bet!

As long as it is Nuclear Energy, I am all for it. Solar and Wind not very reliable for 24/7 power needs. Solar and Wind are also not even close to being cost-effective in most areas.

I know - all the "Environmentalists", News media, and Solar / Wind companies say different. They are either liars, or misinformed. I will simply stand by the math and economics.

We need much more clean energy. I am not certain about the whole global warming argument, but for me, it is a national security argument. Would we care and get involved with those maniacs in the Middle East if we didn't need their oil? They could do what they want and it would not impact the US at all. Instead, we make these maniacs rich and get involved in a place we would not otherwise care about. Again, we need energy sufficiency in the US. Oh, subsidies stink for any reason. I am a free market guy.

They've been saying the same crap since the early 60's. Never caught on then, highly unlikely to make any difference now, concerning cost association...Now on the other hand new drilling techniques for oil will almost immediately offset oil dependency by 20%. Why do alarmist have such a hard time with simple addition and subtraction?

the only clean energy that will work is nuclear, and if he wants to spend 8 billion that would have already been spent on new power plants then i am all for it.

Is this a cool idea or what

you really are 15 aren't you

no problem at all, and the reason for not getting one built is because of the loony toon environmental movement in this country

makes a lot of sense but the oil and coal companies will fight it all the way to the point of owning congress and the next president.

Then we can have rolling black outs and people not able to afford to drive their cars! Yay!