I read a story last week sometime about some guys over in Ireland claming to have invented a free energy source saying, “Mobile phones will never need recharging, cars will never have to be refueled.” All of this sounds cool but I am curious how they are breaking the laws of physics. Just think of how this would change the world if it were to be true.
This also got me thinking of what we could do today to help usher in a new era of energy independence. First, lets take a step back and ask why we desire energy independence.
If you were to ask me it would be to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and not give colluding nations that support terrorists regimes our hard earned dollars. Others will probably hold environmental friendliness higher than my beliefs and I am sure there are other reasons for energy independence that I haven’t thought of.
One fundamental flaw in all of this less oil usage thinking is that petroleum products are a universal good. There is a specific word for it that I saw in a Dilbert cartoon but I have no idea what it is right now. Anyway, something like 47% of every barrel of oil goes to making gasoline. There is that other 53% that we would be forced to consume even if we had some fantastic free energy device. The percentage might go down a little, but all of those plastics, oils, and other synthetics out there are necessities nowadays. A true environmentalist would be pushing for not only decreased gas usage but also buying glass containers and using paper bags, as sand and trees are renewable.
All of that aside, what can we do now to be energy independent? I looked up solar panels and personal wind turbines and those technologies just aren’t feasible for my needs. Sure if all I wanted to do was read books all day and sit in the dark at night I might get by but I work with the Internet a great deal and have multiple computers. Then there is the cost of implementing these devices. The most efficient windmill was $2500 and the cheaper ones seemed like toys. I am sketchy with solar panels as well as the weather here would tear them up in short order. Then there is storage of energy and hooking it up to the current system. Who knows what that costs. Being a college student I just don’t have the thousands of dollars required to implement those devices. Even then, to meet my needs, I would still have to pay the electric company.
After brushing that aside I thought about what we could do as a local community. The Texas panhandle is blessed with a vast amount of untapped wind energy. After browsing general electric’s web-site they provide 3 types of electricity producing windmills, two for land use and one for use at sea level. The bigger one for land use produces 2.5Mw of electricity. If we desired to fill the same needs as the proposed nuclear power-plant being discussed it would take 1080 windmills. Now I am not sure if we really need that many and I don’t know how much the implementation or upkeep of that many windmills would cost but it definitely would calm people’s fears about radiation and water usage. Also, I don’t think it would take and entire decade to put up as many windmills as we would need, either.
I also recently read about an upcoming initiative from wal-mart to sell compact fluorescent bulbs to all of its customers. I found another article on Slashdot that talked about the same thing and it said of the light bulbs, “if every one of 110 million American households bought just one [CFL], took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.”
Sounds good to me.