OPEC: What if...

for a start, we could have gotten some pretty good wind farms and tidal power plants up and running for until 10 billion.

then we would have spend another 10 billion subsidising US automakers' R&D into hybrid car designs so we can catch up to the japanese (seen that cool new prius?).

another 10 billion might be spent looking into hydrogen fuel cells and other electric motor/energy storage technologies, eventually to be applied to transportation (cars and planes)

then another 30 billion might go into refurbishing our aging national power grid.

then another 10 billion might be put into advanced solar panel/materials research to make lighter, more durable, more efficient solar panels.

then another 10 billion might erect some nice solar farms.

and the final 20 billion i'd put toward some of that exotic DOE biodiesel, ethanol, biofuel research. i read lots recently about this new stuff that really blew my mind:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993464
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994813
http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/Week-of-Mon-20030804/004435.html

At the end of all this, will America be fuel self-reliant again? Probably not, 55% of America's current fuel needs are met by foreign oil, 22% of which come from the Middle East.
http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/energy_security.html

But 100 billion invested in fuel technologies can yield massive strategic, economic, AND environmental dividends, not to mention avoid alienating Muslims worldwide.

Strategic = cutting our oil consumption can mean that we no longer have to look to the middle east for oil. venezuela, UK, mexico, and domestic production may prove sufficient.

Economic = the massive reduction in oil imports can greatly reduce our trade deficit, and so directly reduce our foreign debt. The money saved on fuels (which would have gone into the pockets of dubious middle eastern plutocrats often sympathetic to the likes of bin laden) could now be spent domestically on our own service/manufacturing economy, making the average American richer.

Environmental = reduced fuel consumption, carbon emissions, global warming, and pollution speaks for itself.

i'll always vote republican simply because of their staunch support for Taiwan. but boy do i wish they could be a bit more sound on their energy policies.

 

Almost certainly. Some ideas:

1) Fusion. With 100 billion dollars, fusion is no longer a dream.

2) Moon-mining Helium-3. In direct connection with proposition 1), the moon has a tremendous amount of helium-3 (~1 million tons). This is the perfect fuel for fusion reactors. For 100 billion this is concievable. At an estimated value of 4 billion/1 ton you could probably make a hefty profit too! See http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html

3) More efficient solar power, namely better photovoltaic cells.

4) Microwave energy, beam power from orbiting solar collector to earth. Don't mis-aim!

5) Easier and cheaper still -- better fission reactors, or improved oil efficiency

6) Probably the most politically viable and least life altering -- develop cheaper methods to refine oil shale or tar sands -- the U.S. has the vast majority of this unused fossil fuel!

Breif explanation-
Oil shale is a sedimentary rock, often but not always shale, which contains a thick, sometimes solid potential fuel known as kerogen. It is necessary to crush and heat the rock to get the kerogen out. Once the kerogen has been removed, it can be refined in a way similar to crude oil. Most of the world’s oil shale is located in the United States. However, we are not yet using this vast resource to any large extent. This is due in part to the fact that large amounts of rock that must be processed. Furthermore, the cost is prohibitive compared to current fossil fuel refining options. Tar sands are also sedimentary rock, containing a thick, almost solid tarlike substance. Like oil shale, extracting the fuel from tar sands requires large amounts of rock to be processed and is very expensive.

Just some ideas.

 

Never mind the alternative energy/fuel. Japanese will clean the clocks of the big three when they start selling hybird Accords, Camrys and SUVs.

 

i'm a big space energy fan too. but remember you gotta put like 20-30 billion into affordable space access first to make all that work...

 

Yeah, but once you have a space elevator in place, moving things into space becomes almost trivial, both in risk and cost.

 

For $87 billion I expected gas to be free for at least the next couple of years.

 

...rather than hitting record highs a year after the "successful" invasion.

 

This from the man who said he would "jawbone" OPEC to keep prices down during the 2000 campaign.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040331/pl_nm/energy_opec_bush_dc_4

 

If this keeps up, he's going to get "jawboned" himself in November.

 

And lookie here! Who proposed the cuts? Why Jr's good friends, the Saudis!

No wonder he won't criticize them.

 

It's hard to believe that science has enabled doctors to reshape the lens of a human eye with a laser beam, that scientists have found a way to transmit binary impulses through molecules, and NASA is now searching for life on Mars - but that no one has figured out a practical way to create and mass market a car that runs on something other than petroleum.

Well - it's not just that it's hard to believe it, it's that I don't believe it.

But alternative energy has a hell of a time getting funded when the country is being run by oil corporations (whether directly or through bribery, i.e. "campaign donations"), and alternative energy has a hard time being considered seriously when the oil conglomerates own significant portions of the national media.

 

Spending a $100 bil on debt reduction would've done more good than going to Iraq let alone ending dependence on foreign oil.

The sad thing is that we don't need to spend more money on scientific research to end our dependence on foreign oil. The technology already exist. Hybrid cars exist, bio-diseal and ethanol exist (we can run cars and trucks on them with next to no modifications needed), wind turbines exist, energy efficient computers and appliances exist, heck if we can get serious about the waste issue nuclear power exist. What doesn't exist is the political and societal collective will to become more energy efficient even though as Lil points out it makes sense, economically, environmentally and politically.

 

Let's use more nulear power and dump the waste to the moon. Hahh

 

rhadamanthus's post is exellent.

The number one energy choice in the future is fusion. A year ago, China's controlled fusion experiment lasted 4 minutes. Recently, the Europeans achieved a controlled fusion for 6.5 minutes. With 100 billion dollars, a continuous fusion can definitely be achieved in two decades. However, that will put a lot of us in Houston out of work.

 

Controlled fusion is clean and safe. There's also plenty of Helium-3 in the sea water.

 

So fusion is completely safe unlike current nuclear power? I really don't know much about fusion power except for what I learned on the Sim City series?

 

I was thinking the same thing when I watched the news yesterday. It's amazing how much less trouble we'd get if we only didn't rely on oil so damn much. The billions upon billions we've invested on the Middle East has only brought more terrorist attacks and united hatred by other countries.

The worst part is, the only alternative to Dubya is a guy who thinks the problem will be solved by releasing the stored oil for emergancy purposes. When there's not enough supply of them to actually influence the market. We are so screwed.

 

Two things:

1) Much safer. In a fission reaction, if you get it going, the only way to make it stop is to try to put in controlling chemicals (control rods) to absorb the neutrons. In a fusion reaction, you just turn the power off (literally). There is no "uncontrollable" initiator. According to a study in 1992, European Safety and Environmental Assessment of Fusion Power, "fusion has very good inherent safety qualities; there are no chain reactions and no production of 'actinides'. The worst possible accident originating in a fusion power station could not breach the confinement; any releases could not approach levels at which evacuation would be considered."

*actinides are highly radioactive elements that will breakdown rapidly releasing mucho radiation

2) No long term pollution. The radiotoxicity of a fusion power station's waste materials decays rapidly. They would not need guaranteed isolation from the environment for very long timespans, like the waste from a fission reactor. Also, fusion produces no climate-changing or atmosphere-polluting emissions.

The problem is that so far no group has been able to build a fusion reactor that produces more power than it consumes...

 

For a hundred billion dollars they could have perfected the sonic wave powered car - it only emits noize pollution dawg...