New Energy
Yesterday I went to Columbia University to hear a talk put on by their Earth Institute. The Governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, was the speaker. His topic of discussion was the future of energy in America.
As you know, the President mentioned our nation's energy crisis in his state of the union address last month. Our nation's foreign policy today is directly determined by our demand for oil. We are giving billions of dollars to dictators across the globe to feed our energy addiction. Dirty regimes in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran have us pinned by their ability to supply us with oil.
Much has been talked about new fuel alternatives to gasoline since the soccer mom's are sucking it all up in their SUV's. Gov. Schweitzer went into detail about these fuel options. A good point he made is that there is no single solution to the problem. There need to be several other energy alternatives. Montana gets 10% of its electricity from wind. Another popular idea for car fuel is ethanol. This is certainly a potential source, but is not the perfect solution to our problem. Schweitzer's favorite prospective fuel source involves converting coal to a liquid fuel. Montana sits on 30% of our nation's coal and by converting it to liquid fuel, could provide enough energy for our country to survive for 40 years. The process is economically friendly and cost efficient. Montana is currently negotiating to build multiple facilities to peform this conversion within the next four years.
The Governor is spending the rest of his week visiting with banks and energy companies about coal liquefaction. He will be featured on 60 minutes Sunday night and then will meet with President Bush to discuss the national energy crisis and their ideas for a solution.
5 comments:
gas tax, dude...gas tax
Everyone buy Willie Nelson's Bio-Diesel! Made from corn, so you're also supporting good old fashioned farming in the Heartland.
I think Houston is so inefficient. You gotta sit in traffic for half an hour to get anywhere. If there was any type of mass transit that ran towards my office, I'd take it!
wow that's interesting...i'm from montana and i didn't know that.
I'm from Montana, too, and I found out that we should be making Willie's biodiesel instead of chasing schemes like diesel from coal -- it's a better way to do it. Go to www.northernplains.org.
Thanks for the great link. It describes in full what the Gov. is proposing.
While I wholly support the idea of biofuel, I think we should keep our minds open to many alternatives. Instead of accepting one new source of energy, we should instead adopt multiple energy souces which can include different biofuels, coal liquefication, and even domestic petroleums.
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