The Oil Glut And Renewable Energy
There is a lot of trouble in power generation land. We know that the oil market has been flooded with product. Does anyone actually believe this could have happened by accident? The oil market was one of the most tightly controlled product markets in the world with OPEC raising and lowering output, whenever they wanted to keep prices high. So why would OPEC suddenly continue to pump huge amounts of oil knowing there is a glut on the market and it will drive the prices way down? Some say they got scared and the source of the scare was the fracking going on in the United States and in Canada. Suddenly they started to hear stories about how the United States was going to become the world’s leading producer of oil. Knowing that fracking for oil costs more than just drilling for it, they decided to make oil really cheap to put the oil fracking companies out of business with the idea they would then raise oil prices back to the price it was. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it certainly sounds feasible.
One of the problems is times have changed. There is another player in the energy field and that player is clean energy. Even if we left our grids the way they are and just changed the power source everything would still work the same way. Australia realized this and the Perth Wave Energy Project was the result. Wave generators have been installed and use the natural motion of the ocean which is supplying electrical power without fuel. As long as the ocean has waves and ebbs and flows these generators will continue to put out current. They are under the water and seemingly present no harm to marine life. And if you consider aesthetics, they are the perfect answer, since no one can see them. No longer will someone have to look at those huge generating plants spewing out their fumes or those nuclear plants which are all so dangerous. Australia has established the world’s first wave generating station. The wave generators are tethered to a 250 kW buoy and a water pump which converts the movements of the ocean into a stream of high-powered water which is then used to create hydroelectricity and power a desalination plant.
The reason I mention this is the oil dependency landscape is changing very fast and there are even a couple of small countries which receive most of their power from renewable energy such as wind, water and sun. Overall oil sales must fall in countries like China which is doing everything they can to get off coal and I am sure when they accomplish this oil will be next. The last energy source to bite the dust will probably be nuclear. Even with the announcement about a breakthrough in fusion generation by Lockheed, it seems to me renewable energy will make this unnecessary, since it is a lot more efficient, less dangerous and probably a heck of a lot cheaper. I think fusion generators will find themselves inside spacecraft and the fact that Lockheed was the one to announce the breakthrough seems to me they were doing it to power air and spacecraft. They even said that they could make it small enough to fit into an aircraft.
20 years ago OPEC was able to rule with an iron hand, but circumstances are certainly different today. If the United States really wanted to, they could institute a project to change us from oil to renewable energy for electric generation and we could do it in about 25 years. We all know why this is not happening fast enough, it is because the lobbyists in Washington who represent the oil companies are spreading the wealth around to try and prevent this. It is inevitable, but the question is how long will it take? Some people say renewable energy doesn’t make sense for the entire country, because of different environmental circumstances. For example some places have a lot of wind while others may not have enough to power turbines. Some places receive much more sunshine than others while some places are near the water and others are not. This is not really the problem that it seems. A new way has been found to send energy through electrical lines for a great distance without having to boost them. We can actually set up all these different types of electrical generating devices in places where they work best and are still able to transport the electrical power to the places where it is needed without losing much of it. Some parts of this country can have huge wind generating devices because they have a lot of wind, the Midwest and Florida along with other hot areas can be the basis for solar power plants, while all the coastal communities of the United States could have wave generation capabilities. The wave generators don’t have to be near the shore and can be anchored on the bottom of the ocean.
If we can generate enough renewable energy we might be able to reverse the heating of the Earth. First of all we would be doing away with all those plants that release excess heat and carbon. Secondly if we could produce enough excess energy we might be able to cool the earth a little bit. I don’t know if this is possible because it would take an incredible amount of energy, but if we subtract the heat from the power plants perhaps it might be possible sometime in the future. One has to wonder how far we can take renewable energy. Will we be able to generate enough renewable energy just by moving around to keep our bodies cool? Some people believe this is going to happen and we are going to produce energy and that we have enough energy now from natural sources in our body to power small devices.
The world is going to be a completely different place as far as power sources are concerned. People who are very young today are in the same situation as those of us who were alive before personal computers. We have seen a tremendous revolution which has changed the lives of everyone. The same is going to happen to those people who are young today. Someday they will be telling their grandchildren about how we used to use oil and coal as a power source and the grandkids will laugh.
