Energy to Burn
Windmill turbines, solar energy, hydrogen, etc., are all attractive-but years and years away from filling a fraction of our needs.
The typical American reaction is a technology fix. The fix du jour is ethanol, but it is certainly no elixir. It is expensive. Without subsidies running around $9 billion today, there would be no corn-based ethanol at all. Ethanol, moreover, uses corn and absorbs something like 20 percent of all the corn production of America, skewing the price of corn feed for poultry, hogs, and cattle, which in turn raises meat prices.
So the indirect costs are also substantial, particularly since ethanol, at best, produces only slightly more energy than it consumes. Markets can deliver low-cost energy most of the time and high-cost energy some of the time; ethanol markets deliver high-cost energy all of the time with, at best, a modest impact on our energy needs.
Now the new ethanol hope is cellulosic ethanol, which is sugar-based, but this is estimated to cost over $2.50 per gallon to produce. In other words, we are decades away from relying on this as an efficient source of energy, but our politicians will talk a lot about ethanol and vote still more subsidies for it. The "feel good" idea that ethanol is an alternative fuel will be promoted because it is the least costly politically: The tendency in government is always to choose losers requiring subsidies that will benefit selected constituencies but have minimal broad public benefit. Our leaders would rather avoid the tough issues of fuel efficiency and higher taxes.
Our energy crisis is undeniable, unending, and unsustainable. Depressingly, it joins a whole series of other serious, long-term issues, like Social Security reform, healthcare reform, and a fiscal crisis that our political system seems utterly unable to address, much less resolve.
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