I feel like this post is more appropriate for a many-page essay, but here I go with a short blog-burst.

I think most folks are well aware we’re in an energy crunch. Sure we’re a country obsessed with energy consumption, but right now I’m really not that worried about the future. Alternative fuels are booming, and while there are certainly drawbacks to current methods, the fact of the matter is that these are new, unexplored energy distribution systems and they still need to be developed.

Ethanol is the most widely hyped example of these burgeoning new energy sources, and I myself use ethanol in my Tahoe. However many people point to it as being both inefficient and one of the main contributing factors of the increase of global food prices because of its use of corn and subsequent disruption of the food chain.  And frankly, they’re correct. However I’m disappointed in the fact that all of these predictions of failure are based on current, corn-based production methods.

The current method of ethanol production is highly disruptive and inefficient, but rest assured that most of the powers-that-be are well aware of this. The end goal of ethanol production is to create cellulosic ethanol that can be generated from the cellulose in cell walls organic waste and non-food based crops as opposed to complex sugars in corn, and these new methods should both be more efficient and have less of an impact on global food prices. There’s even a startup now that claims it can produce ethanol from municipal waste at $1/gallon. It’s the closest thing we’re going to get to the cold fusion reactor on the back of the DeLorian in Back to the Future 2 in which you could cram trash and get 1.21 gigawatts in return.

In the long run, it’s important to understand that Ethanol is not the solution. It’s widely been argued that it’s not the best bet for our next-generation transportation fuels. Until we figure out how to efficiently harness the wireless nuclear power plant at the center of our solar system, Hydrogen fuel appears to be our best bet, but Ethanol could serve as a great bridge on the road to the solution. Ethanol is at best a Band-Aid, and it’s very important for both lawmakers and consumers to understand this.

However we need to stay on the path of finding clean, renewable energy sources. Oil prices might actually begin to drop in the near future, as it turns out there might not really be any regular gasoline shortage, just way too many jittery speculators. (Which I think deep-down we all knew.) I worry that however that this new predicted drop in oil prices will be a mirror of the price drop that happened after the 1970s oil crisis in which OPEC simply increased production and crushed oil prices. After that, the 1970s search for alternative fuels died out with the re-emergence of cheap gas, and I worry that the same thing might be getting ready to happen again! (On an unrelated note, this reminds of me a quote from a history lecture I took in college: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.”)

Perhaps I’m exposing some Libertarian leanings, but at the end of the day the energy business is just that, a business. And there’s nothing worse for profits that annihilating the planet on which your customers live. There have been many desperate pleas and cries for new energy sources, and if there’s a buck to be made out there in these new markets, you better believe there are many, many people out there trying to cash in. We’re going to be all right people.