Solar, it is available in abundance and the panels last for up to 50 years(more than 3 times the payback period) have few moving parts. Soon these numbers will skew even further in favor of panels as yeilds increase and cost of mfg falls.
Trekd
Nuclear and diesel fuel from algae.
Dead Day Afternoon
CNG: clean and renewable.
dustin f
People can run cars on air now…. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that :p
?? Peace ??
I have many choices actually. I would go with Wind Power for now.
Yes there’s Solar, Geothermal, Tidal, Wave, Biomass, Hydro And Nuclear.
But honestly, with Solar energy, you cant use it during night or in the winter time.
Most alternative fuel sources are also hard to convert, but Wind Power is one of the easiest and cheapiest actually. The only problem is finding a site. But Wind Power is now one of fast growing in terms of alternative source. Since you’re asking for fuel source, I would go with Biomass.
Lorette
Solar all the way (until hydrogen fuel cells are perfected). You CAN use it during the night/on cloudy days, because it actually converts the sun’s energy and stores it in a back-up battery of sorts. It’s clean, 100% renewable, and, well, the sun’s not going to go out any time soon. It is, however, probably one of the LEAST efficient sources of alternative energy economically speaking.
I’m also a BIG fan of biomass. I’ve been to a 10,000 cow dairy that’s run (almost 100% off the grid) by a methane digester that removes the methane from the cows’ manure. The byproduct of this is really great fertilizer, and the odor level is actually pretty low, considering. The drawbacks to this are that the methane digesters are, from what I’ve been told, are pretty big conductors in lightning storms. They’re also pretty expensive to put in.
Wind is a good source, too, but it has some issues. You have to have a certain amount of wind over a pretty large percentage of time where you’re planning on putting the turbine. The turbine, itself, has to be pretty tall, and if it’s improperly installed, can cause property damage. The big industrial wind turbines can be pretty big (I’ve seen a photograph of one in a news article, a picture of the fan-portion of the thing sitting on the ground with a two-story barn nestled comfortably between two of the blades), and some people believe they disrupt bird migration patterns. I’ve also heard that they’re causers of noise pollution.
Nata T
what do you mean efficient.
Here goe anyway. Nuclear by far, 100′s times 100% efficient
Coal 45% efficient
Natural Gas 40%
Solar heat 35%
Wind 33%
Wood/biomass 30%
oil 29%
Solar electric 18%
Wind turbines have a life of 20 to 30 years, don’t believe this, the first two generations of wind turbines in CA are rusting away.
I started to say Firewood, but really it’s not very efficient. It warms you twice, and a lot of the heat goes out the chimney.
But fuel sources aren’t efficient, fuel uses are efficient. My best bet is bio-methane powered gas turbine generators used for cogeneration of electricity and steam, 81% thermal efficiency.
Richard
Bio-diesel from algae is the best bet right now, it’s has almost the same energy content as diesel, it can also be used as home heating oil and the studies have shown that would could replace ALL are energy needs with some left over and not use a any crop land.
GABY
Nuclear to provide power for EV’s and our other electric power needs.
CO2 produced from cars is a very small percentage of the CO2 produced by man (about 8%). We need to be focusing on and putting our resources into Nuclear, Wind, and solar to replace coal and gas plants where just about all the CO2 from energy production comes from.
Even if we could magically eliminate all the cars in the world, it probably wouldn’t make a significant difference in AGW. We need to prioritize our problems and use our resources accordingly.
kkkiz4me
Gasoline
Contrary to popular belief oil reserves can quickly be refilled, it’s only said to be limited to increase the prices
ivangoh
Hydrogen produced safely from water by electrolysis.
ToolManJobber
Rhetoric. The Government seems to get more mileage out of it than any known fuel.
Science of The Futare
fat
BURN FAT NOT FUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
jazzfan
I agree with the posters who mention algae, it can produce about 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, compared to around 360 gallons for an acre of corn. And algae doesn’t require prime farmland like corn does. The bad news is ethanol now has a bad rap due to idiots using corn to produce it, idiots in the form of politicians. Farmers are as willing to make a buck as anyone.
We need to do more research on wind and solar but they’re already very competitive with conventional sources, the new solar thermal plants in Nevada produce electricity for about 6cents/kWh. But it takes a lot of money to build the plants, we need to update our power grid to distribute that energy with less loss and we’d need to subsidize a switch to electric cars. I prefer hybrids that could use ethanol if needed to boost your range or when your batteries fail. CNG is also good but it’s a fossil fuel and would require it’s own infrastructure so I’d rather just switch to ethanol and flex-fuel cars.
Nuclear makes sense, too, since at times wind and solar just don’t work, calm or overcast days or at night. They are going to make small reactors that cannot overheat and meltdown, about the size of a hot tub and they can power 20,000 homes for years on a single small bit of radioactive material. That material can be reprocessed and used again and doesn’t pose a risk from someone wanting to use it to make a bomb since it’s a long ways from weapons grade plutonium.
The one part of Obama’s plans I support enthusiastically is his energy plan. I’d just rather not have it based on the hype of global warming, it should be enough to do it because it’s sensible and we’re foolish to enrich our enemies because we won’t change from a centuries-old energy source. We should invest a lot into new batteries and capacitors for storing energy for an electric car as well.
The air car is a joke by the way, you can’t get enough energy back and you lose a lot while filling the tank. Which is why compressed air only makes sense in a few limited uses.
John W
Synthetic Gasoline and Diesel from Fischer Tropsch synthesis of syngas from biomass gasification or directly from CO2 and H2O with Solar power as in Sandia Labs CR5 reactor.
FT liquids have been used as vehicle fuels for entire countries in the past (WWII Germany and embargoed South Africa) so it’s proven at the scales necessary. If the syngas is from biomass, then the fuels are carbon negative in that some of the carbon is sequestered in the buried ash and slag and the carbon was recently removed from the environment to begin with.
Using synthetic fuels avoids the substantial carbon footprint of replacing existing vehicles and building new infrastructure since existing vehicles and infrastructure will work fine with the synthetics. They burn cleaner and can be tailored for desired properties.
So far, only synthetic fuels have been proven to be carbon negative, proven to work at the scales needed, and the vehicles/infrastructure already exists saving trillions of dollars and massive amounts of carbon release from manufacturing that would take generations to amortize with any other alternative fuel approach.
JOHNNIE B
Alternative fuels are a joke. All added together will not produce 1 million barrels a day.
Solar, it is available in abundance and the panels last for up to 50 years(more than 3 times the payback period) have few moving parts. Soon these numbers will skew even further in favor of panels as yeilds increase and cost of mfg falls.
Nuclear and diesel fuel from algae.
CNG: clean and renewable.
People can run cars on air now…. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that :p
I have many choices actually. I would go with Wind Power for now.
Yes there’s Solar, Geothermal, Tidal, Wave, Biomass, Hydro And Nuclear.
But honestly, with Solar energy, you cant use it during night or in the winter time.
Most alternative fuel sources are also hard to convert, but Wind Power is one of the easiest and cheapiest actually. The only problem is finding a site. But Wind Power is now one of fast growing in terms of alternative source. Since you’re asking for fuel source, I would go with Biomass.
Solar all the way (until hydrogen fuel cells are perfected). You CAN use it during the night/on cloudy days, because it actually converts the sun’s energy and stores it in a back-up battery of sorts. It’s clean, 100% renewable, and, well, the sun’s not going to go out any time soon. It is, however, probably one of the LEAST efficient sources of alternative energy economically speaking.
I’m also a BIG fan of biomass. I’ve been to a 10,000 cow dairy that’s run (almost 100% off the grid) by a methane digester that removes the methane from the cows’ manure. The byproduct of this is really great fertilizer, and the odor level is actually pretty low, considering. The drawbacks to this are that the methane digesters are, from what I’ve been told, are pretty big conductors in lightning storms. They’re also pretty expensive to put in.
Wind is a good source, too, but it has some issues. You have to have a certain amount of wind over a pretty large percentage of time where you’re planning on putting the turbine. The turbine, itself, has to be pretty tall, and if it’s improperly installed, can cause property damage. The big industrial wind turbines can be pretty big (I’ve seen a photograph of one in a news article, a picture of the fan-portion of the thing sitting on the ground with a two-story barn nestled comfortably between two of the blades), and some people believe they disrupt bird migration patterns. I’ve also heard that they’re causers of noise pollution.
what do you mean efficient.
Here goe anyway. Nuclear by far, 100′s times 100% efficient
Coal 45% efficient
Natural Gas 40%
Solar heat 35%
Wind 33%
Wood/biomass 30%
oil 29%
Solar electric 18%
Wind turbines have a life of 20 to 30 years, don’t believe this, the first two generations of wind turbines in CA are rusting away.
running cars on water?
http://runyourcarwithwater.com/?hop=ambell589
I started to say Firewood, but really it’s not very efficient. It warms you twice, and a lot of the heat goes out the chimney.
But fuel sources aren’t efficient, fuel uses are efficient. My best bet is bio-methane powered gas turbine generators used for cogeneration of electricity and steam, 81% thermal efficiency.
Bio-diesel from algae is the best bet right now, it’s has almost the same energy content as diesel, it can also be used as home heating oil and the studies have shown that would could replace ALL are energy needs with some left over and not use a any crop land.
Nuclear to provide power for EV’s and our other electric power needs.
CO2 produced from cars is a very small percentage of the CO2 produced by man (about 8%). We need to be focusing on and putting our resources into Nuclear, Wind, and solar to replace coal and gas plants where just about all the CO2 from energy production comes from.
Even if we could magically eliminate all the cars in the world, it probably wouldn’t make a significant difference in AGW. We need to prioritize our problems and use our resources accordingly.
Gasoline
Contrary to popular belief oil reserves can quickly be refilled, it’s only said to be limited to increase the prices
Hydrogen produced safely from water by electrolysis.
Rhetoric. The Government seems to get more mileage out of it than any known fuel.
fat
BURN FAT NOT FUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree with the posters who mention algae, it can produce about 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, compared to around 360 gallons for an acre of corn. And algae doesn’t require prime farmland like corn does. The bad news is ethanol now has a bad rap due to idiots using corn to produce it, idiots in the form of politicians. Farmers are as willing to make a buck as anyone.
We need to do more research on wind and solar but they’re already very competitive with conventional sources, the new solar thermal plants in Nevada produce electricity for about 6cents/kWh. But it takes a lot of money to build the plants, we need to update our power grid to distribute that energy with less loss and we’d need to subsidize a switch to electric cars. I prefer hybrids that could use ethanol if needed to boost your range or when your batteries fail. CNG is also good but it’s a fossil fuel and would require it’s own infrastructure so I’d rather just switch to ethanol and flex-fuel cars.
Nuclear makes sense, too, since at times wind and solar just don’t work, calm or overcast days or at night. They are going to make small reactors that cannot overheat and meltdown, about the size of a hot tub and they can power 20,000 homes for years on a single small bit of radioactive material. That material can be reprocessed and used again and doesn’t pose a risk from someone wanting to use it to make a bomb since it’s a long ways from weapons grade plutonium.
The one part of Obama’s plans I support enthusiastically is his energy plan. I’d just rather not have it based on the hype of global warming, it should be enough to do it because it’s sensible and we’re foolish to enrich our enemies because we won’t change from a centuries-old energy source. We should invest a lot into new batteries and capacitors for storing energy for an electric car as well.
The air car is a joke by the way, you can’t get enough energy back and you lose a lot while filling the tank. Which is why compressed air only makes sense in a few limited uses.
Synthetic Gasoline and Diesel from Fischer Tropsch synthesis of syngas from biomass gasification or directly from CO2 and H2O with Solar power as in Sandia Labs CR5 reactor.
FT liquids have been used as vehicle fuels for entire countries in the past (WWII Germany and embargoed South Africa) so it’s proven at the scales necessary. If the syngas is from biomass, then the fuels are carbon negative in that some of the carbon is sequestered in the buried ash and slag and the carbon was recently removed from the environment to begin with.
Using synthetic fuels avoids the substantial carbon footprint of replacing existing vehicles and building new infrastructure since existing vehicles and infrastructure will work fine with the synthetics. They burn cleaner and can be tailored for desired properties.
So far, only synthetic fuels have been proven to be carbon negative, proven to work at the scales needed, and the vehicles/infrastructure already exists saving trillions of dollars and massive amounts of carbon release from manufacturing that would take generations to amortize with any other alternative fuel approach.
Alternative fuels are a joke. All added together will not produce 1 million barrels a day.