Tag: energy research

Technical Innovation 2030 – Part 1

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We’re in an odd moment technologically speaking.  The only thing anyone talks about is AI.  It’s the alpha and the omega.  It will bring on the singularity or it will usher in a golden age where we all live like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine.”  On second thought maybe that would be the singularity since being lunch for troglodytes doesn’t sound like much of a golden age (unless you’re a troglodyte that is).

But I think it’s time to start looking beyond the glory of AI and begin to think of what comes next.  After all, in a manner of speaking AI is kind of like this century’s electronic calculator.  It made engineering work much more efficient but it didn’t eliminate the need for humans to look for answers to problems that needed to be solved.  It just made the process faster.  So once all the tech companies get through firing their engineers and computer scientists the industrial world is going to find that they’re still going to need to design “stuff” and solve new problems that are supposed to make the world a better place.

And contrary to present expectations AI isn’t going to plan and design the next bridge that spans a couple of miles across a bay or between mountains.  Sure, the engineers will use AI to find out the state of the art in civil engineering but eventually a human being will have to sign off on the drawings and take the legal responsibility that the bridge won’t collapse and kill a bunch of people.  And only an idiot would assume that the answer that AI gives him is worth risking prison time without making sure that he knows that the answers are correct.

So, let’s put AI into the category of modern tools and instead look at what problems are in our near future to solve.

Regardless of what everyone has said for the last thirty years, solar and wind energy are not the future energy sources we need.  But there will come a time when hydrocarbons will not be sufficient.  So, I would say that a replacement for oil and gas is the largest technical problem that humanity will face toward the end of this century.  But that means it’s already long overdue to start working out the details of what that will look like.  There may be several technologies that will exist.  I’ve questioned (and not just in a fictional setting) whether geothermal might become a significant source of global energy but if I were to make an educated guess, I’d say that nuclear fission will be the main energy source.

But just because fission has been a stable part of the energy grid in places like France for more than half a century doesn’t mean that the form currently employed is even close to what will power the world for the next century and more.  The science and technology of fission power is in its infancy.  The research in the United States that was going on in the 1950s and 1960s was strangled in its crib by the whole anti-nuclear movement of the time.  There will need to be a rebirth of nuclear power technology that will combine government, industry and academia.  And it will require energy policy to be handled by intelligent people in government.  And that is something we haven’t seen in half a century in this country.  Because it is a massive effort.  Eventually we will have to decide whether battery technology is a better storage medium for things like transportation than something like synthetic hydrocarbons or hydrogen.  And these questions should be answered based on efficiency and other important factors like safety.  But definitely not decided by idiots like Al Gore, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Let’s see what’s next after power in Part 2.

Drilling for Megawatts

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Human beings depend on energy.  It’s almost what makes us human.  When we discovered fire, we became truly the masters of creation and the apex of the animal kingdom.  You can imagine our cave dwelling ancestors wielding a flaming torch in the face of a cave bear or a saber-tooth tiger and living to tell the story.

So, what should be our attitude about the prospect of running out of energy?  Well, windmills and solar panels don’t seem to be the future.  Of course, if photovoltaic cells become more efficient and cost effective, maybe they will be a big part of the answer.  But I tend to think there will be more cost-effective options.  And this is long term.  Short term we’ll probably be using uranium fission technology to produce power but sometime in the future we’ll run out of recoverable uranium and need to move on.

As I’ve reiterated endlessly, I think that geothermal energy will be a very important source of power in the future.  The earth has an enormous heat source to be tapped into for our energy needs.

And now, finally, results are moving beyond the research and pilot plant stages:

“Leading Companies in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) or advanced variants like closed-loop or superhot rock geothermal, involve drilling wells several kilometers deep to access hot rock formations, fracturing them if needed, and circulating fluids to extract heat for electricity generation. These technologies aim to scale beyond traditional hydrothermal resources, enabling baseload, carbon-free power almost anywhere.

As of October 2025, commercialization is accelerating due to oil/gas-derived drilling innovations, major funding, and partnerships with tech giants like Google and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Based on recent developments, the companies closest to large-scale commercialization (defined here as multi-MW projects entering operation or construction by 2026–2028) are those with demonstrated pilots, secured financing, and firm power purchase agreements (PPAs). Below is a summary table of the top contenders, followed by details.

These companies stand out for their progress toward utility-scale electricity production (tens to hundreds of MW), distinguishing them from firms focused on shallow heating/cooling (e.g., Dandelion) or conventional geothermal (e.g., Ormat, Calpine). Progress is driven by DOE’s FORGE initiative and private investments exceeding $1B since 2020.

  • Fervo Energy (USA): The frontrunner in EGS commercialization, Fervo adapts shale-fracking techniques for deep (up to 15,765 ft) horizontal wells in hot granite, achieving flow rates over 80 liters/second—surpassing commercial benchmarks. Its 2023 Nevada pilot (3.5 MW) powers Google’s data centers and demonstrated energy storage capabilities. The Cape Station project in Utah, fully funded at $206M in June 2025, targets 400 MW Phase I by 2026, with multi-GW expansion. This positions Fervo to supply 24/7 power to AI/data centers at costs competitive with coal.
  • Eavor Technologies (Canada): Specializing in closed-loop systems that avoid hydraulic fracturing by using insulated U-shaped boreholes (up to 10 km deep), Eavor enables site-agnostic deployment. Its New Mexico demo reached 250°C at 18,000 ft in 2024, proving scalability. The Geretsried project (Germany) will deliver 65 MW baseload power by 2027, with heat co-production for district heating. Backed by $991M, Eavor has operational pilots in Alberta (2019) and Colorado (2023), making it a leader in Europe and North America.
  • Quaise Energy (USA, MIT spinout): Focused on ultra-deep drilling (20 km) to access superhot rock (>500°C) for 10x higher energy output per well, Quaise uses gyrotron millimeter waves to vaporize rock, bypassing mechanical bits that fail in extreme heat. A 2025 demo drilled 387 ft at 16 ft/hour through basalt, the deepest with this method. Targeting steam extraction in 2026 and commercial ops in 2028, it plans to retrofit fossil plants globally, with $91M raised and DOE support. This could unlock 5,500 GW in the U.S. alone.
  • GreenFire Energy (USA): Its GreenLoop closed-loop tech retrofits existing deep oil/gas/geothermal wells (3–5 km) without stimulation, reducing costs and risks. Partnerships with DoD (e.g., California naval base) and GeoZone aim for 200 MWe by 2027, leveraging idle infrastructure for quick deployment. Selected for DOE’s 2025 next-gen initiatives, it’s ideal for scaling in oil-rich basins like California’s Geysers field.
  • Sage Geosystems (USA): Developing GGS, which stores excess renewable energy by pressurizing deep fractures (kilometers below surface) with water, then releasing for on-demand power—acting as a geothermal battery. A 2025 Meta contract for 150 MW highlights its commercial traction, with DoD pilots in Texas. Using proven fracking tech, Sage could integrate with wind/solar for hybrid grids by 2027.”

Now it goes without saying that geothermal energy is still in its infancy and no one knows what kinds of technical problems will surface (pun intended).  But at the same time the problems will mostly involve well understood parameters like material of constructions to deal with the pressures, temperatures and corrosion problems inherent in circulating water and steam in a bore-hole.  But these are not mysterious or insoluble problems.  They are the bread and butter of material scientists and engineers.  I am also interested to see that tech companies are financing some of these ventures in order to control their electric power supply in the face of power shortages and interruptions associated with the “green energy revolution” that many of us currently suffer under.  Imagine that!

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 24JAN2025 – Nuclear Power

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“Now the real problem is managing the wastes and breeding more fuel.”
Interesting choice of words.
If only there were a way of capturing all those extra neutrons and making fuel grade Uranium from more common ore. We could call it a “Breeder reactor”.
Nah. It will probably be decades until we could do that.
Like negative 7 decades.

There is no scientific reason not to use nuclear power. As you pointed out, the French have been doing it for 70 years. (They sell power to Germany.)
And if the French can do it….
The roadblocks are 90% political and 10% engineering.
Nuclear waste can be dealt with if we give American engineers a chance to attack the problem. But with no new activity going on, we can’t solve the problems.

Spending billions on a waste storage project in Nevada and then letting a corrupt politician kill the project was clearly the wrong way to go.
BTW, Nevada, I’d like that money back.

The Next Big Thing

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According to Elon Musk the big project is man going to Mars.  According to Donald Trump it’s Big AI.  So, which do I think is the next Manhattan Project?  Well, neither of those.

Mars will have to wait until there is a compelling reason to send men there.  Sure, send some really advanced drones and bring home some Mars rocks (or Martians if you can find them).  Heck, send a lander to Titan or Ganymede.  I’m all for that.  Even capture an asteroid made of gold and platinum and break off chunks and throw them into the desert or the ocean.  All good clean fun.  But that’s not the Manhattan Project.

And neither is AI.  That’s just more of the same.  That’s management reducing the payroll to a minimum.  Sure, it’s a stunning tool that will enhance the ability of all kinds of projects.  And it will make a lot of us redundant too.  So, I don’t look at it as some big breakthrough for humanity.  At least not as advertised at the moment.  Maybe when we get the AI implants, I’ll change my mind.

No, the Manhattan Project for the 2030s is the changeover of the American power grid to nuclear plants.  We have a window of opportunity while the current fossil fuel reserves are still relatively robust to begin systematically designing and optimizing fission plants to make them as close to foolproof as humanly possible.  We have about fifty years to achieve this before we run out of fuel and based on how the French have been using them for about seventy years without a catastrophe I’m confident that within thirty years more than fifty percent of the American power capacity could be converted to fission plants.  And after that it would be a short time until the only other plants would be hydroelectric and some exotics like solar panels in the desert.

Now the real problem is managing the wastes and breeding more fuel.  A lot more work needs to be done on optimizing the life cycle of the radioactive materials in both the fuels and the wastes.  Long term storage and recycling materials for reuse are still underdeveloped areas of study.  Just dumping depleted fuel rods in an underground mine under a mountain in the Nevada desert is a pretty crude plan for the materials produced by the reactor.  Often the byproducts of the reactor can be reclaimed and even transmuted into useful fissionable material.

But we are still in the infancy of nuclear technology.  Combustion is almost as old as hominid life on the planet.  Neanderthal possessed fire.  Now we have to make the leap to domesticating the neutron.  What’s needed is a push in the right direction.  A pilot project sponsored by the federal government to design a plant that can be tested under the most disastrous set of circumstances imaginable and proven safe.  This will provide the American public with the confidence that their bogeymen from the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl events are long dead and buried.

Right now, it wouldn’t have to be some trillion-dollar boondoggle.  Use reasonable resources to build the test case.  Tap into the existing designs and the recent innovations that are going on in China and India and then let the big brains at the big engineering firms show what they can do.  Who knows, maybe Elon Musk could be convinced to put his Mars mission on hold to bring forward the future of human energy production.  Surely, he would consider that a worthy project.  And it would make his dopey electric cars a lot cheaper to charge.

Cold Fusion, Again

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https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.07245v2

Cold nuclear fusion is real!  But it’s also extremely lame.  Apparently when deuterium gas is put in contact with solid palladium metal the gas can find its way into the crystalline metal structure and fill voids in the lattice of palladium atoms and the structure of the metal lattice can somehow shield the deuterium nucleii from each other’s positive charges in order to fuse into a helium atom (²H + ²H → ⁴He).

Unfortunately, the rate of fusion is so low that it’s barely detectable.  And if energetic means such as lasers are used to enhance the rate then the energy balance is extremely poor with much more energy put in to speed up the reaction than is produced by the fusion reaction.  As a practical energy source this would be described by the technical term “lousy.”

But all is not yet lost.  The authors of the paper speculate if three separate accelerating processes are employed simultaneously there is the potential to produce the forty orders of magnitude improvement needed to make cold fusion a useful energy source.

Forty orders of magnitude.   Hmm.  That’s a lot of orders of magnitude you know.  That’s 1040.  That’s a really, really big number.  If I had 1040 pennies I’m pretty sure it would form a black hole of pennies.  It’s a lot.

So somehow they think they can increase the fusion rate that much?  Hmm.

So I really like the idea of cold fusion.  The fact that you can take palladium and heavy hydrogen at ambient temperatures and somehow get a nuclear reaction that produces really clean energy is extremely appealing to me.  It sounds like what E. E. “Doc” Smith used as his source of energy for interstellar flight in the “Skylark” series of space operas.  It’s amazingly exciting.  But  1040 anything is a lot.  So I’ve decided not to hold my breath or invest heavily in the technology or rip the oil burner out of my basement just yet.

The good thing about cold fusion research is that you don’t need billions or even hundreds of millions of dollars to work on it.  You don’t need magnetic containment to avoid your nuclear plasma from eating through the metal walls of your reactor.  And you don’t need giga-watt lasers to blast a pellet of boron hydride or anything else that would break the budget of any second world nation.  It can all be done in a lab with all the stuff found in MIT or even Brooklyn College for that matter.  So I’m all for research into this avenue of science.  After all twenty years ago cold fusion was declared a hoax and that turned out to be wrong.  Who knows what else they’ll find.  Maybe if you use alloys of several of the platinum group elements the geometry of the spaces in the lattice will make the process run at some phenomenally faster rate.  Maybe not 1040 times faster but something reasonable and that would be enough to throw the whole thing into the range of practical applications.  But to reiterate I won’t be holding my breath.

But it is something cool to think about.  Or even write into an sf story!  But instead of palladium I’m going to make it tantalum.  It’s just cooler.

Fusion Versus Fission, The Sad Story

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Joe Biden loves windmills and solar panels.  He’s happy to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building them and hiding the actual costs associated with creating and maintaining them and hiding the actual real-world electrical capacity they represent.  And he underwrites temporary discounts to power companies and private citizens who fall for his grift.

But on a much smaller basis Joe Biden loves him some nuclear fusion.  And the basis is smaller because all the fusion he can buy is laboratory fusion.  Laboratory fusion is a research and development creature.  Large universities with generous DOE and DOD funding get millions (not billions) of dollars to build very powerful lasers to shoot at really tiny pellets of various isotopes of hydrogen and lithium and helium, trying to get them to fuse together to form heavier elements and thereby releasing relatively large bursts of fusion energy.

In 2022 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was able to get more energy out of a fusion event than the amount of laser energy put in.  I believe the ratio was 1.5/1.  So, it got out 50% more energy than it put in.

And of course, the crowd went wild!  Yay!!!!!!  Unlimited energy!  Almost for nothing!

Yeah sure.  What is neglected isn’t mentioned until the end of the article:

“Plenty of other obstacles remain than those noted above, too. Current calculations compare energy generated against the NIF laser’s output, but that brushes over the fact that the lasers draw more than 100 times the power from the grid than any fusion reaction yields. That means either energy gains or laser efficiency would need to improve by two orders of magnitude to break even in any practical sense. The NIF’s fuel pellets are also extremely expensive, says Kritcher, each one pricing in at an estimated $100,000. Then, producing a reasonable amount of power would mean dramatically increasing the frequency of NIF’s shots—a feat barely on the horizon for a reactor that requires months to load up the next nanosecond-long burst.”

So, let’s review.  They put in a hundred times more energy than they produce.  Each tiny pellet costs $100,000.  They only fuse a few atoms every few months.  The infrastructure is state of the art “giant lasers” that probably cost a cajillion dollars to build and ten cajillion dollars to maintain.

Based on these “obstacles” my engineering intuition says the likely date of commercial implementation is about five years after the heat death of the universe.  Give or take.

Joking aside.  Give me a break.  This is right up there with world peace and practical communism for impossible dreams.  But the author ends off this depressing list of obstacles by saying:

“Those are the biggest challenges,” Mordijck says. “But I think if we overcome those, it’s really not that hard at that point.”

Here he sounds like every crackpot who wants money to invent time travel or faster than light space craft or perpetual motion.

In the far future I think we’ll extract energy from geothermal sources.  In the immediate future we’ll use fossil fuels and nuclear fission reactors.  Nuclear fusion will require breakthroughs in physical science and engineering that currently aren’t even imagined.

When I was a kid, the Scientific American articles said we were fifty years away from commercial nuclear fusion.  That was fifty-five years ago.  I’m still waiting for my cup of fusion.

What Will Real Energy Innovation Look Like?

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Back when Barry Soweto pretended to be an American president, he spent his terms in office trying to convince us that solar and wind powered electric generation installations were the future of the American energy strategy.  Because he was just an actor playing a part, he can be partially excused for espousing a policy that is pathetically absurd.

If you covered the planet with wind turbines, land and sea, besides killing off the bird population of the planet you would not solve the energy problems of the human population.  Wind by itself is a fluctuating power source.  As are photo-voltaic solar panels.  On their own they will not provide the kind of consistent supply of electric power that we expect from our electrical utilities.  That is why California, the land of fruits and nuts, that despises fossil fuels, has recently installed many gas turbine generators to augment the unreliable and inadequate “renewable” wind and sun-based generation.

None of this is to say that wind and sun-based power is valueless.  In places where there is substantial wind and plentiful sunny days there is power to be harvested.  But it should be used in an intelligent manner.  Storing that energy in a recoverable form would allow it to be accumulated into a valuable commodity.  For instance, if it was the power source for an electrolytic process for separating water into hydrogen and oxygen then that hydrogen could be stored and used later as a vehicle fuel, chemical raw material or for combustion to fuel electrical generation.

Or sun and wind generated power could be used as a source of power for water desalination plants.  The output of the plant would be controlled so that at night when only wind power was available a lower out put would be maintained and likewise in the day when clouds limited the amount of solar energy available.

But with these environmental energy sources careful attention should be made to the cost of maintaining the generation infrastructure.  I have been told that the replacement cost of the solar panels had been ignored in the Obama era installation of these panels willy-nilly across the roofs of unsuspecting Americans.  Just because the government decides to “give” you something for free doesn’t mean that the cost of these items make them sensible investments.  And the cost of maintaining wind turbines also must be reckoned in the calculation of their desirability as an energy choice.

And there are other energy sources that must be explored.  Geothermal energy has only seen limited exploitation because of the scarcity of obvious geothermal hot spots.  But if resources are made available to study how a more general approach could be taken there might be great gain to be made on this front.

But the most obvious source of energy has been available to us for almost a hundred years.  Nuclear fission thermal power stations provide enormously dense energy supplies in almost limitless capacity.  The fact that there are safety and waste management challenges in such a complex and new technology is hardly surprising.  The fact that people around the world have allowed themselves to be panicked into abandoning this technology says more about the low morale of the current human population than it does about the difficulty of harnessing this amazing natural resource.  After all radioactivity is the source of the sun’s power and in fact the nuclear fusion that powers the sun is a much more technically challenging process for humans to harvest than the heat coming off of a fission pile.  To think that radioactive energy is any more mysterious than electrical or chemical energy is to be a primitive undeserving to utilize modern technology, one who should be relegated to living in a cave and warming himself by wearing furs and daubing himself with mastodon lard, too stupid to harness the frightening technology of fire.

The good news is that more confident humans at some time in the near future will return to nuclear power.  If the West fails to be the ones to do it then they will see themselves eclipsed and will deservedly sink into the lower echelons of third world nationhood.  Hopefully before that happens the modern humans among us will rally the people and admonish them to man up.

Guest Contributor – TomD – Thoughts on Energy

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In Reply to Energy Equates to Wealth

and Guest Contributor – Chemist – Thoughts on Energy

You don’t need to be all that intelligent to realize that the entire green movement is built on extremely shaky engineering underpinnings. And I’m pretty sure those at the top fully realize the sheer unreality of the movement. But, I think it’s a decoy and that the base impulse behind the entire thing (at the top levels anyway) is Malthusian in nature. There are just too many people, increasing at an exponential rate and that trend will not end well.

I have sorta had those leanings myself for a good portion of my live. Decades ago, I remember watching some documentary showing the world population through history. During the Napoleonic wars in 1800, it was around 1 billion, with the GREAT majority of that in China. Over 200 years later, during WWI, it had only grown buy around 15%-20%. I remember thinking that, whatever the problems of the early 20th century world, very few people ascribed them to a lack of population.

When I was born after WWII, the number was around 2.75 billion. What’s it up to now? 10 billion?

I’m not wise enough to know if there is a optimum human population or what it is. I do know that if there is a provable optimum and that population level is significantly below current (as I suspect), I am not aware of any method of getting from here to there by any means that I could condone or tolerate.

I’m not sure that last statement applies to the top elites of the green movement. I think they just may want to bring the whole structure down and let the chips fall where they may as long as they are protected.

Eggs, after all, must be broken.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – Thoughts on Energy

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In Reply to Energy Equates to Wealth

You are more correct than you know. The green revolution is powered by oil. Oil to make diesel fuel for the giant tractors and combines that plant and harvest the crops. Oil to make energy to make the fertilizers that turn marginal soils into high yield soils.
Without petroleum we would be poorer, hungrier and there would be fewer of us. Millions would have starved to death over the last 100 years that, instead, thrived due to petroleum.

If you want carbon free energy you have to look at nuclear. The greens may not like it, but its the only real solution if carbon is the problem. The newly designed modular reactors are incredibly safe and the Thorium cycle reactors are not only safe but do not use nor do they produce material that can be weaponized.
Ah, but: Nuclear bad! (Insert image of Frankenstein’s monster near a torch.) Its dangerous right? Deadly even! More Americans were killed when Biden abandoned Afghanistan than have died due to Nuclear power accidents in the US since the first reactor. That’s a pretty damned good safety record.

Solar? Its a boondoggle. Here is something they don’t talk about a lot wrt solar panels: They only last about 20 years. And the output drops every year. So if you are getting 5KW your first year you are getting about half that a decade later.
Oh, and its damned near impossible to recycle a solar panel.
Its been a lot of years since I did the math (College undergrad research project) but the last time I ran the numbers, it took more energy to make a solar panel that it ever generated in it’s lifetime. It turns out that it takes a crap ton of energy to make, purify and melt silicon. Who knew?

Wind? Another boondoggle. Look into disposing of damaged or end of life turbine blades. There’s a nightmare for you. And the vibrations from the turbine destroy the land they are mounted on to the degree that you can never put another turbine there. If you love nature, don’t look at the number of birds and bats killed by these things.

Geothermal? Maybe. I don’t know how many locations are suitable for it though.

If we could get past the fear of nuclear power, we could build a golden age with cheap, plentiful power and yes, make long chain molecules from water and CO2.

Energy Equates to Wealth

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Something that Environmentalists don’t want to admit is that fossil fuel has produced the modern world.  Without coal, oil and gas as fuels (and much, much else) we would still be living like the peasants in medieval Europe did in the 1300’s.  Coal was the fuel that made steam power possible which produced locomotives and steam ships.  Oil became the default fuel for electrical generation, automobiles, modern trains and also the basis for the myriad petrochemical products that make possible everything from pharmaceuticals and clothing to building materials and every other thing that’s made of what we call polymers.  Natural gas is the fuel for most of the modern electrical generation installations built in the United States over the last forty years or more.  And it heats a large percentage of homes and businesses.   Without these fuels we would literally be poor, cold, hungry and sitting in the dark.

And the Left knows that.  Now Jeff Bezos and the rest of the plutocrats are fine with this.  They know that they would still be able to reap the benefits of energy even if they denied it to the rest of us.  Bezos could have his own private solar collecting system and wind turbines with battery back-ups that could allow him to enjoy all of the modern comforts that would be denied to us.  His jet and helicopter and cars would mysteriously be able to use fuel while we would only be able to purchase a battery car that could only go a short distance and would be hard pressed to recharge by the next morning when we had to commute back to work.  Impoverishing and disenfranchising us is actually the goal of this whole exercise.  A new feudalism would replace a free country and the aristocracy and their minions would lord it over the rest of us deplorables.

Of course, we may not be happy about letting them do this.  Right now, $3.50/gallon gas and the inflation that causes in our economy is making Dementia Joe awfully unpopular.  When it reaches $5.00/gallon he may get tarred and feathered.  And that would be a wonderful thing.  Impoverishing the American people should be considered treason.  So hopefully the environmental insanity being pushed should create a strong reaction to the progressive agenda.  That would be a good outcome.

But there is something that needs to be faced.  There is a finite amount of hydrocarbon fuels in the Earth.  I’m not saying we’re close to the end.  I’m only saying there is an end.  And now is the time to be doing the basic research to find the next energy source for the modern world.  Maybe it’ll be nuclear fission plants, safer versions of the ones currently in place, maybe it’ll be better applications of solar power, perhaps solar collectors outside the atmosphere beaming microwave energy down to collection stations on earth.  Maybe it’ll be geothermal hot spots.

An inexhaustible energy supply solves one of our problems.  With it we can produce electricity to run our factories and if it is truly inexhaustible, we can even heat our homes with it.  But whatever it turns out to be we will still need a fuel for our cars and planes.

Airplanes will never be able to run on batteries.  The power density is too low.  And as we’ve seen battery powered cars are very limited in their range.  Unless there are large gains to be made in battery technology which is unlikely, the best solution is a synthetic fuel.

Maybe it will be hydrogen.  Hydrogen is highly energetic and when it is burned with oxygen its  combustion product is water.  It doesn’t get cleaner than that.  But hydrogen is a small molecule gas and it leaks easily and it blows up mightily.  So extremely fail-safe equipment will be a necessity if it becomes the fuel, we run our automobiles and planes on.  But hydrogen is not the only option.  With unlimited electrical energy engineers could very easily produce synthetic methane (natural gas).  Or with a little more work they could make longer hydrocarbons.  Octane is the optimal component of gasoline.  That could be the main product we produce as our global fuel.  Of course, we would be using water and carbon dioxide as our starting materials so at that point we would have a carbon neutral effect on the environment which unfortunately would make the environmentalists happy.  I wouldn’t feel so good about that but I guess it will have to be.

So, the exhaustion of supplies of natural hydrocarbon fuels is something we should be anticipating.  But instead of giving up the modern lifestyle we’ve gained from these energy treasures we need to use our ingenuity to invent replacements that enhance our ability to control our environment and improve our way of life.  And that’s my version of following the science.