subject: Renewable Energy: Impossible Dream? [print this page] If we listen to the talking heads in the corporate mainstream media, it sounds as though renewable energy is impractical and can never be a real alternative to fossil fuels.
Of course, those messages are bought and paid for by the coal and oil industries. And while corporations such as BP and Exxon-Mobil may be issuing claims that they are researching sustainable energy and other renewable resources, the fact is that they are seeking ways to control its use and distribution.
The primary problem with most types of renewable energy, at least from the perspective of industries whose goal is profit, is that once they have recouped their initial investments, renewable energy power plants would provide free, clean energy. Needless to say, the profit margins on free energy arent as good as those on oil and gas-powered plants.
Socio-political aspects aside, there are several forms of renewable energy available to us today. Much of it has a long way to go before it can be competitive with fossil fuels, but that day is coming much sooner than the oil and coal industries would like.
Solar is a large part of that equation, but it is not the total solution. Nonetheless, there are large areas of the planet that are hot and dry enough to provide hundreds of thousands of megawatts of sustainable energy, such as the Sahara Desert and the American Southwest. The problem is engineering; these locations are very far away from the "grid," and it would entail a great deal of time and expense to bring such electricity from its point of origin to homes and businesses in urban areas. The more practical solution is to build small, individual solar generation facilities as part of building and home construction and for temperate regions in which sunlight is unpredictable and sporadic, it will not be able to fulfill all clean energy needs.
It is an unfortunate fact that petroleum does in fact provide the most proverbial "bang for the buck" when it comes to generating energy; however, there are some real alternatives on the horizon. One is the use of algae as a source of biofuels (as well as food). The advantages to this form of renewable energy: it is non-polluting, the product is biodegradable, and potentially, enough algae biofuel could be produced in a total of 15,000 square miles to replace all the petroleum used in the U.S. (This sounds like a huge plot of land, but it is a relatively small fraction of what is used to grow corn for ethanol which is controversial for several reasons.)
Other renewable resources include wind generators and geothermal, both of which are abundant in the Western and Pacific states.
