We are looking for a blanket solution to our current excessive gasoline consumption and there doesn't seem to be one, at least for now. We are looking at adding ethanol to our current gasoline formulations, but that will only give us better miles per gallon and of course much cleaner by-products with its use. Ethanol becomes temporary fix...at best. The reason, of course, is the need for corn base sugar (and other similar sugar and starch crops) to produce it. It is a simple deduction that this will eventually begin to deplete our nation's food supply and also damage our exports of these grains. We could, with the expected increase in the need for our corn crop, grow additional acreage would be needed to meet all anticipated needs. We must keep in mind the amount of work that would be required to accomplish this task. The question remains... Will the ethanol approach keep the price below our current gasoline prices?
All in all, we have to accept the fact that we won't be able to have gas and also eat our corn muffins. There are also other crops that can be used to make ethanol fuel like soybeans, sugar beets, raw sugar cane, etc.. The fact still remains...the choice will be gas for our cars and with that will eventually come a huge amount of depletion of one or more of our key domestic and export crops. This does not mean that this scenario will eventually occur, but without other renewable fuels being developed together, such as the hydrogen fuel cell, to aid ethanol fuel access, it could lead to shortages of some key foods. The last question might be…”We prefer the wheels below our legs or the food in our stomach." Common sense tells us to proceed very carefully at this point. It is true that the very large South American country of Brazil has embarked on an Ethanol program for about a decade with fairly good results and has enjoyed a weaning from foreign oil. Whether it will ever be 100% remains to be seen.
Solar energy is one possible approach to producing hydrogen to power our future power plants, and the hope is that the electricity now helping to deplete our fossil fuels will help provide the fuel needed to produce power for advanced 'fuel'. Cells' being developed to power the cars and trucks etc. of the future.
Unfortunately, the production of hydrogen using solar energy is very inefficient. That being said, solar energy is fully renewable and should therefore be considered. Along with the Hydrogen fuel from Solar approach comes the recent announcement of some breakthroughs with great promise of using Solar to economically produce the hydrogen needed for fuel cells for both the automobile and our industrial needs without using up all of our food resources. most of the governments of the world have made it their priority to start solving the problems of energy consumption and how to deal with the excessive consumption of fossil fuels together with renewable energy sources. Many are embracing the latest renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power. Many of them have started new projects that, when completed, will save millions of dollars in imported oil, domestic use of oil or other fossil fuels.
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