Why not governments think of developing other alternate sources of energy, rather than fighting for oil?

Question

Could we not develop more modern gadgets to generate power, harness solar, harness other renewable sources? We have abundance of academics and scientists the world over. Why are we waiting?

Answer 1

The oil companies make billions of dollars in profit every year, and funnel large amounts of that profit into the pockets of politicians who help maintain their monopoly on "energy." Greed is why "we" are waiting, nothing else.

I'm not waiting, however -- I have solar and wind power at my house, and rarely ever have to buy my electricity -- in fact I sell my excess to the power company. It's so easy, the only thing keeping more people from doing this is the startup cost (about $15,000 in my case), but it pays for itself in just a few years!

Answer 2

Bang for the buck.

That is pretty much the driving force. It is cheaper to get the energy stored in oil, gas, and coal than to set up the systems needed to utilize renewable resources. When it gets cheaper to use the renewable stuff then the governments will put more emphasis on them.

It is expensive to build and run a solar plant. It is expensive to harness wind energy. The same can be said for using the tides to create electricity. The apparatus to use oil, coal, and gas are already there. The technology involved is already worked out. It is the cheaper alternative.

Some will say that it is because of greedy capitalists sticking to oil because they can charge an arm and a leg for it. Well, these capitalists will be the same people who will finance the alternative energy projects when they come and these guys will also make a profit on these as well. It does not matter which one is being used, they will make a profit from it. That is why the oil, coal, and gas work so well for them. Those make a bigger profit.

Answer 3

It is not always best to have the "Government" solve our problems. If the government were to figure out this problem, then the resulting use of this new product would be under government rule. This would not be a good thing.
There will always be private enterprise trying to solve these types of problems.
But just imagine for a minute that we did not need oil anymore. Have you any idea how many people would immediately become unemployed? Our economy would collapse! Using other means of energy has to be a gradual transition. As we move away from using oil a little at a time, smaller groups of people will be unemployed and and then must seek other work.
Give it time, we will become less and less dependent on oil, in time. Americans always find answers to such problems.

Answer 4

As this is a wide subject to be discussed. But according to me being an Mechanical engineer, the renewable sources of energy are yet not easy to make them the servant of human being.

First of all to set a power plant running on solar energy or wind energy or tidal energy or biomass energy is time consuming.It requires around 10yrs to build a hydel power plant, 5yrs to build a solar or tidal powe plant where conventional thermal power plant hardly requires 2yrs. Secondly the capital investment required to build this power plant is very considerable compared to conventional coal or gas based power plant. Third the payback period of these energy sources is so long that for a developing country like India cannot afford such huge investment for such a long time period.

These are some of the reasons why oil is still the favourite source of energy for the goverment.