Abstract: Our energy and global warming future and outlook will affect decisions we make on durable goods, such as tractors, cars, etc. Several articles will be forthcoming to help predict and understand our energy and global warming policy decisions. Hopefully this will help position our business and personal lives to take advantage of the pending changes. This first article is on general outlook, the second on primary energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and biomass and the last on biomass and its competitiveness with other primary fuels.
Reflections on Energy Future
Accept the following as an OSU Extension Educator’s slightly informed insights about our energy future. First, even though many are doubters, global warming is slowly but surely being accepted as real by Ohio, U.S. and global legislators. Even if you don’t accept global warming as reality, our policy makers in government do. This means that public money will be spent to slow global warming. The real winners in public funding will be those practices that address both global warming and dependence on foreign oil.
Why do I say foreign oil? I say foreign oil not only because of the universal concern about our dependence on other nations and sending our money away from the U.S., not all of whom think well of the U.S.; but also because our very being and economy is so dependent on foreign oil.
Keep in mind that the industrial revolution and life as we know it today is oil based, from the products produced such as the automobile industry to modern agriculture to transportation to and from work. We are about 100 years post industrial revolution today and one is hard put to spend a day, where we are not directly dependent on oil.
Granted, we currently have the technology to be oil independent, but just like it took 100 years to develop a society, industry and life style so dependent on oil, it will take another 100 years to wean away our dependence on oil and replace all the industrial, personal and public equipment that runs on gasoline and oil.
So, how will this transition evolve? First, there will be many changes and modes that interplay as oil becomes more expensive and limited, the price goes up and we wean from it’s use. Natural gas is perhaps the easiest primary fuel to replace oil. It’s price will trail oil, but it too will become more expensive as we transition from oil.
The role of coal and clean coal technology will be governed by government regulation, clean air legislation, carbon tax or credits and greenhouse gas emission legislation. Suffice it to say that just as the transition from oil will take time, so too will be the transition from coal. We in Ohio are especially dependent on the burning of coal in plants along the Ohio River to produce the low cost electricity we use.
Electricity will become increasingly important in the future.
Electricity is not primary energy, just an energy transport, and will become increasingly important in the future. Electricity goes to every home, business and even gasoline station. Plug-in electric cars are in our future, first as plug-in hybrids, next as electric only commuter cars and later as all electric primary cars. In the future, every gas station will also be a plug-in recharging station. Once batteries in cars are commonplace, a smart grid will draw down those batteries during peak demand and recharge them during low demand.