The phrase 'alternative energy' is often deployed as a euphemism for options that don't seem to provide enough power to be worth the trouble. Yet almost all the big energy sources we use were once the alternative to what was being used before. There are many energy options in the works today that promise to power much more of our world tomorrow than what we often call 'alternatives.' These potentially huge solutions rarely receive the same attention.
Defenders of wind and solar subsidies often point to nuclear energy as an example of an alternative that needed taxpayer help to succeed. True, but unlike each of those nuclear power was a big solution that scaled up quickly. Today a nation as large and rich as France can obtain most of its electricity from nuclear.
Germany recently began a shutdown of its nuclear program and launched an energy regime based on 'renewables.' Because the wind won't blow and the sun won't shine reliably, the result has been painful prices and other market distortions. The Economist reported two years ago that 38 percent of Germany's non-fossil fuel 'renewable' consumption came from burning wood, the fuel choice for the caveman.
Wind power will always be with us, but its day of dominance was also yesterday. It brought Columbus to this continent, but ocean vessels have long since switched over to coal, then petroleum and even nuclear. The status of wind as a promising 'alternative' after five centuries should set off alarm bells about its limits.
Solar surely is cutting-edge technology, but even wind power output dwarfs solar. And like wind, there is a reliability issue: We still need power when the sun doesn't shine. Burning wood still produces more American power - and more reliable power - than solar panels.
By contrast, hydraulic fracturing was a sketchy 'alternative' just over a decade ago, but has since transformed the world's petroleum and natural gas markets. Real alternative energy is in these big scale possibilities.
Here are others:
One is methane hydrates: Natural gas trapped in water crystals at the bottom of the ocean, the remains of ancient sea life. The Japanese are leading the way in developing it, according to a recent cover story in The Atlantic. If (when?) it becomes commercially viable, the estimated size of the fuel reserves range from 100 times to three million times current U.S. yearly energy usage. Today's fracking gas boom would be a cap gun blast by comparison.
Another option is nuclear reactors that use thorium for fuel. First developed by the United States, thorium reactors are far safer than the already safe reactors we have, and the fuel is both plentiful and difficult to weaponize. For these reasons it has always had game-breaking, low-cost potential, but that's also why we haven't developed it further. According to the Economist the United States government abandoned its thorium research because we couldn't make reliable bombs out of the stuff, and now the Chinese have deployed more than 400 scientists to pick up where we left off.
The New York Times reports Bill Gates has a company working on a reactor that runs on nuclear waste, and the Skunk Works at Lockheed-Martin claims to be on the way to creating commercially viable nuclear fusion power.
While critics could portray each of these options as far-fetched, success for any one of them would dwarf the wildest realistic promises of our so-called 'renewables.' And the bottom line is that a real alternative energy breakthrough will provide a large and viable alternative to our current sources, giving us more power at better prices.
Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to provide economic education to employees, and is currently the director of policy for InformationStation.org. His employer is not responsible for what he says here, on Facebook, or Twitter ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.
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