Supposedly dwindling supplies of oil prompted the chants of drill, baby, drill that polluted the public discourse during the presidential election.

Did we miss something?  When oil was $147.00 per barrel, which occurred ages ago (five months as this is written) Big Oil had its army of schills screeching for relaxing environmental protections so they could help America achieve energy independence.

“Just let us at that oil that’s off limits in two miles of water all around the country, and we will rescue the country from the evil oil empires and godless communists/socialists who are holding our economy hostage.”

The chanters have fallen silent.

Did the supply of black gold suddenly increase?  No, the price of oil suddenly fell due to the world economic slowdown and decreasing demand for oil.  So, for now we don’t need to exploit those off shore oil assets.  The fact that drilling for oil in two miles of water is only economically feasible when the price is well over $100.00 per barrel has nothing to do with it.

What would the reaction be if we forced the oil companies to drill for that oil in the interests of national security, or better yet, cut them out and let the government do it.  Cries of socialism, communism, collectivism, and other denigrating isms would abound.  Oil companies are the best to judge when the time is right to gut environmental protections in the interests of energy independence, not the people or the government.

When will we need to drill, baby, drill again?  You got it, when the price goes up again.  It really has nothing to do with supply, it only has to do with price (which of course goes down when demand decreases).

So, by extrapolation, if we could decrease demand for “burning oil” to close to zero, how close to zero would the price go?  (more…)

The cheapest and dirtiest source of energy is coal.

That cheap energy is old sunlight in the form of decayed plants compressed over millions of years (a so called fossil fuel, coal).

The future cheap energy is eight minute old sunlight.  Estimates are that enough solar energy strikes the earth every day to provide the power the entire planet uses in a year.

Here is a link to the SOHO Satellite which monitors the sun.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/bestofsoho.html

Warning: this solar observation can become very addicting.

The technology to capture sunlight and convert it to electricity already exists.  We have solar photovoltaics, like we install on the roofs of buildings, and CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) like utility companies are building.

Here are videos about both of these technologies:

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-2-v-5.html

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-2-v-108.html

As the scientist from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says in the video about CSP, the hope is that America will invest in solar energy the way that Spain and other European countries are.

If a country were looking for a way to invest in economic security and energy security while stimulating a sagging economy, there is no better use of our money than to move from the cheap old sunlight (coal) to the cheap (once the collectors are installed, it is close to free) new sunlight.