alternative energy to replace fossil fuel?
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at
9:18 pm
im writing a paper and needed help on:
recommend an alternative energy to replace the U.S dependency on fossil fuel?
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Tagged with: Alternative Energy • fossil fuel
Filed under: Alternative Energy
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Here’s an interesting tack that you might want to approach the subject from in terms of transportation-do a little research on what is called the ‘National Fleet’ of vehicle here in the U.S, look into how many internal combustion engines are in use otherwise, from chain saws to snowblowers, and then see if you can find out how large the infrastructure is to supply all of these engines and vehicles with fuel.
Then do a little more checking and see how long the average car in the U.S. is driven during its lifetime.
Armed with this information, then examine the different forms of fuel that are being proposed; there’s:
Ethanol/Biomass
Hybrid/Electric
Electric
Hydrogen
…and there are a few others you could add to the list, I suppose, but these are the main alternatives being developed and reseached. Now here’s where it gets interesting-of all the alternatives to fossil fuel, the only one that doesn’t require replacement of the entire national fleet and new infrastructure at the same time is Ethanol/Biomass.
It constantly amazes me that some people want to totally reject ethanol and other biomass fuels as an alternative or partial substitute for fossill fuel use and seem to believe that when electrics or hydrogen fueled transportation is brought to the market it will change our need for petroleum based fuels overnight or something-it won’t. Without MASSIVE government intervention, expenditures and mandates it will take decades for the market to transition to a new source of energy for transportation.
People say a lot of bad things about ethanol/biomass, especially corn ethanol and there is definitely a downside to it, but when you consider a number of factors it is a very good partial alternative for transportation since:
1) We’re already expending a lot of energy and fossil fuels to produce agricultural crops, both to power equipment to plant and harvest, as well as nitrogen fertilizers, which are largely produced from fossil fuels. So food production is a very inefficient process to begin with, and is even more inefficient when you consider that it takes LOTS of corn to produce one pound of beef. However, when people make the "food for fuel" argument you almost never hear them say what happens when you use corn to make ethanol; after the ethanol is extracted from the corn you have…animal feed. So in terms of relative efficiency, ethanol improves the crop yields in agriculture-and, as algae and cellulostic ethanol advance in efficiency and become practical, it with further multiply the relative efficiency and environmental friendliness of agriculture, because we will begin getting several different crops out of the same use of fuel and fertilizer, and the equipment to harvest it is already-for the most part-in place.
2) Ethanol and other biomass fuels can be poured directly into the gas tanks and used in most vehicles and engines already in the fleet, so you don’t have to replace tens of millions of vehicles and engines over a short period of time either by government mandate or a long period of time by relying on market forces-the benefit is immediate, if imperfect.
3) The infrastructure is already largely in place.
Now, in no way am I proposing that biofuels are the ‘best’ alternative energy source, not at all. I’m simply pointing out that as a part of the total solution-unless somebody comes up with a way of burning water or lawn clippings in a 2006 Toyota Tercel gasoline engine as well as all of it’s internal combustion kin-biofuels are pretty much a vital way of transitioning from fossil fuels to an alternative energy source. And I think any paper on the topic should address both biofuels and the cost and time to replace EVERY SINGLE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE IN AMERICA.
hydroelectric energy, wave power, wind power, solar power, tidal energy, geothermal energy…and more..
If you want to be realistic, you’ll write that there is no "alternative" fuel that packs the punch that fossil fuels do.
Except nuclear, which you & your teacher will most likely dismiss as evil.
Gas
Biodiesel made form algae.
Algae is the orginal source of 90% of all fossil fuel. Algae is a renewable alternative fuel source.
Solar is best, wind and hydro.
Hi Tania, didn’t I just answer a similar question to this one? Well, reading through the answers you have already to this question, I think the answer is obvious. The best alternative energy to replace fossil fuels is all of them. A diverse energy economy would be the best for our future.
First of all, regardless of what energy we use, fossil, wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and so on, one day something will come along and make one of them either unavailable, inconvenient, prohibitively expensive, immoral or fattening. Which ever one it is, it would be best if it only made up 10 or 20 percent of our mix, rather than 90%. This way it would be simple work to retool and offset that energy source with the 5 or 6 other ones we are already using. Relying heavily on fossil fuels is what has gotten us into this pickle in the first place. So now we find ourselves having to do research and developement on several good energy sources at one time. The other reason to diversify our sources is geography. A good alternative energy source in Nantucket might be a bad one in Tucumcari, and so on. The Dakotas have the best wind resource in our country, the sun is better in the west, the Northwest has good hydro sources, and so on. Here are some sources to do some research on your own for your paper. Good luck, and take care, Rudydoo