Why Conventional Energy is Sustainable

The reason that renewable energy projects are more likely to become eco-ruins than lasting sources of working energy has everything to do with the latest revolution in fossil fuel production and significantly safer nuclear power.

Slowly and surely North America and much of the world is waking up to the fact that there will be no energy crisis in the near future ... in fact, it is highly unlikely that even our great grandchildren will have much to worry about.

For starters, there is the shale revolution. There are challenges of course, not the least of which will be the blizzard of misinformation and protest that will issue from the renewable energy lobby ... aka the enviromental movement. But in the end, nobody is going to shove expensive environmentally damaging renewables down our throats when there is affordable conventional energy close at hand ... and a booming economy as a spin off:

• Enough natural gas to meet US electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand for generation levels
• Enough natural gas to fuel homes heated by natural gas in the United States for 857 years
• More natural gas than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan combined.

While conventional fuels hold the key to energy security, other more esoteric but affordable forms of non-renewable energy are also available and poised to break out.
  
Take Thorium reactors for instance:

China has committed itself to establishing an entirely new nuclear energy programme using thorium as a fuel, within 20 years. The LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) is a 4G reactor that uses liquid salt as both fuel and coolant. China uses the more general term TMSR (Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor).

Or, how about Clathrate:

“The message is quite clear, you can produce gas hydrates using conventional techniques,” says Scott Dallimore, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the project in the Mackenzie Delta. Over two winters the researchers drilled down more than a kilometre into a 150-metre-thick layer on the edge of the Beaufort Sea at Mallik — the most concentrated known deposit of the frozen fuel in the world.

So, the next time you're accosted by some eco-maniac spewing garbage about "sustainable" energy, assist her with a few facts ... shale, thorium, and clathrate just for starters.  Of course she'll toss the whole carbon-green-house-hoax at you, but at least you can crush the "un-sustainable" myth right out the gate.

In other words ... We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Fans ! ... and it's going to be a hell of a long time before we do.