Prospects for alternative energy

...After all, back in '79 everybody and their brothers thought wind power was here to stay, and countless doctors and lawyers invested in pinwheel farms all over Collie-fornia, mainly as a tax loss, and a lot of them ain't spinning anymore. The bottom line is that total energy costs, as a percentage of US household income, are lower now than at any time in history while at the same time consumption rises unabated... all with scant contribution by wind, solar, manure or cow farts combined.

It could easily be another two decades before fossil energy costs remain consistently high enough to draw massive alternative investment, and there again it could be just two years. Who knows? New micro-power and CHP (combined heat and power) technologies that burn fossil fuels, the increased use of the virtual workplace over commuting and other macro trends in behavior and choice could make both wind power and grid congestion non-issues for many, many decades, and don't think that "big oil" is going to just sit back and let a bunch of spinning lawn ornaments put them out of business. As just a modest example of the differences between the two energy storage and delivery systems, just look at the wide disparity of the costs of "batteries" for the storage of intermittent demand supply or surplus energy between an electric car and a fossil fuel vehicle, the former requiring exotic design and materials with unknown long term disposal issues, and the latter needed little more than a simple tank.

If the oil and gas companies can find the technology for you to save money and increase reliability by going off grid, they will, and frankly I think the odds of success in such developments are about equal to those of wind power garnering as much as even 15% of our electric utility generating capacity. But what do I know that we didn't all know two decades ago? Like Shultz, I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing. Come to think of it, I've got an old Beckett oil burner I should graft into my wall oven so I can get those kilowatts off-grid. Then, in addition to "bake" and "broil", I'll be able to "cremate".