Clearing Up Confusion About Types and Uses of Energy

The national debate on energy is a confusing mish-mash. I hear both private individuals and pundits talking about nuclear, clean coal, ethanol, new domestic drilling, synthetic gas, and every other sort of fuel in the same breath. The fact is that it is very important to separate the sources of energy from the uses - and how that use may change over time.

The most important differentiation is to always separate energy used for transportation verses energy used for electricity - our two biggest needs. We can build nuclear plants to greatly expand the generation of emission free electricity. But for now, this is largely irrelevant to our consumption of oil and the resulting distillates.

80% of the oil consumed in our country is for transportation - gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc. The current ethanol mandate is diverting 30% of our corn crop to produce 3% of our automotive transportation fuel. Plus, ethanol consumes as much energy as it produces, or worse. We can produce all the electricity in the world, while having zero effect on the price of gas.

51% of our electricity in the United States is generated using thermal coal. Without a rapid build out of additional generating capacity, we will limit our economic growth and our standard of living. Without an accelerated build out in new electricity generation we may begin to experience countrywide what is occurring in California - a lack of reliable electricity and rolling brown-outs. Right now nuclear energy is the only technology that can scale quickly enough to provide baseline power to the grid. In fact, nuclear power gives us a much better short term solution than we have for transportation fuel. Solar and wind are important components but solar in particular is years away from being cost effective.

There are currently no economical substitutes for transportation fuel. Longer term, there is great hope that electricity will fuel our cars, but that is a still a long while off. We need to greatly improve plug-in and hybrid technology. In the meantime, we need to continue to develop new sources of oil to bridge the gap. Synthetic fuel produced from coal is a technology that already exists but is currently not cost competitive - even with gas at $4.25 per gallon. Hydrogen fuel cells are extremely expensive to operate and free hydrogen is not free.

I don't think we need to worry about oil prices falling to a level where it will impede research and development. We need to keep pushing on all fronts - electricity and transportation - traditional and alternative.