Category Archives: Alternatives to Oil

Obstacles Facing US Wind Energy

In the United States, we have been working on scaling up wind energy but not getting very far. In 2010, wind energy supplied only 2.3% of electricity purchased. Such slow progress seems strange for a product that seems to have … Continue reading

Posted in Alternatives to Oil | Tagged , , | 81 Comments

Will plug-in automobiles be a success?

Will plug-in cars be a success? If by success, we mean “sell lots of vehicles” the answer is probably “no” unless the price comes down a lot–say 50% from today’s prices, so that price is in line with what common … Continue reading

Posted in Alternatives to Oil, Energy policy | Tagged , , , | 75 Comments

Natural Gas: The Squeeze at the Bottom of the Resource Triangle

Theoretically, we have a very large amount of resources of many kinds available–oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, gold, fresh water. There is a relatively small amount of high quality, inexpensive-to-extract resources, and we tend to extract those first. From there, … Continue reading

Posted in Alternatives to Oil | Tagged , | 20 Comments

Uranium supply update

Will uranium supply be adequate for planned nuclear electricity? This question has seen sharply differing views. The purpose of this post is to give an update, showing where we are now. The supply situation is recently looking better, partly because of an … Continue reading

Posted in Alternatives to Oil | Tagged , , , | 30 Comments

Is loss of electricity a risk for spent nuclear fuel?

The usual plan for spent nuclear fuel in the United States is to transfer it to a cooling pool and then after some time to transfer it to dry cask storage.  Eventually, the plan is to move it to a … Continue reading

Posted in Alternatives to Oil, News Related Post | Tagged , , | 25 Comments