Both solar and wind power are creative ideas that may one day prove to be of value, but sadly, after 40 years of concerted efforts, they’ve thus far not delivered on the promise. Four long decades of improvements and fine tuning; and wind and solar combined, still only provide us with less than 1% of our energy needs.
The results of traditional “Biofuels” haven’t been much better, contributing 3.5% of our ever increasing energy needs. So what other plentiful and / or renewable options are left to seriously consider? Here are three most impressive options, currently available, showing continually greater and greater potential.
High Lipid Algae has long been considered a powerful, potential alternative energy source that could help take up some of the slack as our reserves of oil and coal continue to diminish. What’s even more amazing, is the fact that what we don’t use to fuel our planet’s multiple forms of industry and technology, can actually be used to fuel our own bodies as a excellent source of nutrition.
This, “two birds with one stone” advantage makes for some very serious consideration when it comes to choosing which form of alternative energy we should be investing our very limited, time, money and faith into.
Why is it a great option worthy of our pursuit? Well, first of all, it can be grown pretty much anywhere and everywhere, even out in the middle of the most arid and hot desert. Also there is the fact that High Lipid Algae is “carbon neutral.” This means that it absorbs or utilizes as much carbon as it gives off when being utilized as a fuel itself. In other words, being carbon neutral, high lipid algae has a “net zero carbon footprint!”
This amazingly versatile energy source can be utilized as highly nutritious food stuff, as well as an excellent form of vegetable oil for food preparation, salad dressings and cooking oil and then when it comes to energy for our transportation, technological and industrial needs, this amazing source of energy can be converted into various biofuels such as biodiesel, bioethanol, biogasoline, biomethanol, biobutanol, as well as many other biofuel options.
Most impressively, this high lipid algae does not pollute the fresh water sources that it is grown in, but actually helps to clean the water by absorbing some elements in the water that can possibly lead to potential PH problems. Also, this algae can grow in both fresh, as well as salt / sea water.
As a matter of fact, for the algae that is grown specifically for industrial and energy usage only, this amazing source of power can actually even be grown in polluted waste water, and will leave that water cleaner than when it was initially introduced into the system.
What’s more, this algae is completely biodegradable and harmless to the environment if spilled or leaked. Now while it is true that the farming, harvesting and production costs of high lipid algae can end up costing 2 to 3 times as much as other traditional biofuels, the fact that it yields more than “Thirty Times” MORE Energy per unit, than any other form of conventional, second-generation biofuel crop.
Last but not least, while scientists tell us that the #1 killer on the horizon, potentially positioned to end all life on planet earth is “Carbon Dioxide” (CO2) the good news here is that high lipid algae actually captures carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, and then converts that CO2 into oxygen and biomass. Amazingly, 99% of the carbon dioxide that is absorbed is effectively neutralized in the process.
In other words, the more high lipid algae that we choose to farm, the less dangerous CO2 will be floating around in our environment; waiting to unwittingly do us all in. Now if you ask me, that’s not just “Green” energy, that’s "life saving" strategy at it’s very best!
Nuclear Fission / Fusion is making a huge come back now that several safety and security issues have been effectively addressed and science has finally had to face the fact that all the rhetoric about wind, solar and other more directly natural sources of energy making risky “nuclear power” simply obsolete, have proven to be nothing more than a basket of false hopes and broken promises.
Most of the most blatant concerns that motivated the movement to close down nuclear power back in the 70’s have since been effectively and satisfactorily dealt with by the amazing advances in science and technology over the past 40 years.
For example, one of the biggest concerns in the 70’s was what do we do with all of that nuclear waste that is left over from the production process of creating energy / electricity? Well, first of all, great strides have been made to come up with ways of making more and more energy out of less and less radioactive materials.
Also, now, it has recently been discovered that there is a strain of the “Escherichia-Coli Bacteria” than can be used to “eat up” the once massively feared radioactive nuclear waste, thereby completely neutralizing it once it is consumed by the bacteria.
Of course, perhaps this new reality now opens up yet another potential “Philosophical Pandora’s Box,” as it quite logically lends itself to the fact that human consumption of this bacteria, after it has been feasting on nuclear waste, could potentially cause serious illness if ingested.
So I suppose we might now have to worry about putting up warning signs to try to keep those hungry tourists from gobbling up a bucket full of “Escherichia-Coli Bacteria” after it’s been fed by it’s nuclear scientist handlers. Hmmmmm?
So nuclear fission has become so much safer with all of the tremendous scientific and technological advances in construction, storage, core cooling, leak prevention and a plethora of intricate and meticulously elaborate and highly sensitive sensors and monitoring systems that were mere “science fiction” hopes and dreams back in the 70’s.
Strangely enough, even with all of the environmental flack that nuclear power took back then, it’s still managed to hold it’s prominence in the “power game” and even currently, still provides us with more than 9% of our energy today.
Then add to these facts the most recent advances in the movement toward “cold fusion” and you have a “sky’s the limit” possibility available to us, that, within 10 years could be quite easily be supplying us with nearly 30% of our energy needs.
That’s impressive, but it’s also all about “Going Green!” it was just recently announced that Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have now designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use “cold fusion” to effectively eliminate most of the “transuranic waste” produced by nuclear power plants.
Therefore, even if the “sky is falling, “Peak Oil” nightmare actually plays out to be true, and or oil reserves are cut in half in a decade, clean nuclear energy will be there to take up the slack and more than compensate for the diminished energy coming to us from oil.
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On-board Hydrogen Production Converters are just at the point where theory is proving to be reality and now we will very soon have the technology available to all of us, so that we might simply have our automobiles fitted with a special converter box that is designed to use the hydrogen already present in the system from burning fossil fuel, to effectively augment the efficiency of the gasoline combustion engine by as much as “Thirty Three Percent!”
According to “RenewableEnergyAccess.com,” a company called “Engineuity R&D Ltd.” has already developed a technology for “Onboard Hydrogen Production” for vehicles that will now put to rest forever, all previous concerns about safety, fuel distribution and of course, hydrogen storage.
This modified internal combustion engine can now be powered by a continuous flow of hydrogen and steam while under full pressure, temperature and power, by the use of a light metal wire made of either aluminum or magnesium, along with water, all combined in a special conversion unit.
According to the company, even the “spent” light metal oxide that is separated in the process; can be sent back to the factory for electrochemical recycling. They assert that this state of the art technology ensures that no CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
If each of the 600 million motor vehicles currently being driven across our planet were to be fitted with this technology, we would save ourselves nearly 30 million barrels of oil per day and reduce or carbon emissions by 33%.
Based on the current price of oil, the cost of fully developing and implementing this technology would actually pay for itself within a period of just 3 years. Also the concept of not only neutralizing, but actually utilizing hydrogen would be a huge boon for many other technologies, since hydrogen has thus far proven to be a problematic waste product of numerous industrial processes, effective storage of hydrogen has been a significant obstacle, since it is highly capable of leeching through the walls of most containers.
So, while these exciting alternative energy sources offer us a lot of hope for our future energy needs, they also go the extra mile, no pun intended, by not just providing energy, but also cleaning up or neutralizing a waste product or hazard previously released into our environment by other fuel sources that were a little less conscientious about their carbon foot-print and status of being officially on the “Green Team!”
