What do you think the best alternate energy source is?

Question

It's obvious that the current major source of energy (petroleum) is non-renewable, so it won't last forever. Which source do you think America/the rest of the world should move towards?

Solar power is good, but expensive to set up. Wind power is also very good, but so many people are worried about the windmills ruining the view of the landscape.
Nuclear power seems to be a very good option, but many people are worried about the byproducts or the chance of a meltdown disaster. What they don't realize is that our technology has advanced to protect us from accidents.

As far as I know, the best option seems to be hydrogen power, as you can get hydrogen from water (which covers 3/4 of the earth), and the only byproduct is water.

Answer 1

Nuclear power is the only option, at least in the short term. But the very same ppl who want us to quit using 'fossil fuels' cry about nuclear power being unsafe. The fact is that power generation of any kind is unsafe for someone. Coal mining is dangerous for miners, oil drilling is dangerous for all of civilization due to the terrorist states that possess the oil, etc.
In short, there is no completely safe way to convert from one kind of energy to another. France gets 75% of its power from nuclear plants. Why can't we?
Hydrogen would be nice, but with current technology, it takes more energy to extract the hydrogen from water than the hydrogen yields when used.

Answer 2

As others have pointed out hydrogen is not a power source but is rather a power carrier. Fundamentally there are only two power sources available both are nuclear. One is the sun and the other are radioisotopes such as uranium.

Conventional fission based nuclear power is really quite dangerous. Yes there have been advances but the one real problem that has never been solved is the waste issue. Nuclear waste is dangerous for tens of thousands of years and we are already making a great deal of it. If the world starts to rely on nuclear power for most or all of our energy needs we will be creating a vast amount of really dangerous material that we and our offspring will need to store for hundreds of generations. It seems fairly obvious that the storage costs of nuclear waste will far out weigh the energy value that it can generate. Personally I find that unacceptable.

That leaves us with the other nuclear generator, the sun. Safely located 93,000,000 miles away it causes no waste problems. Solar power gets transferred into several other types of energy including wind, hydroelectric, biofuels, fossil fuels, and of course directly as light. Photovoltaic solar power and solar thermal power have the greatest potential and I think will come to be our standard source. As the solar electric industry grows, and it is growing fast at about 40% per year, it will be able to drive down costs to the point that it will seem to be very nearly free compared to any other potential energy source.

Right now at today's prices you can buy a modest house where I live in the San Francisco Bay area for between 500K and 1M and it will not come with it's own electrical generation capability. That same house with a solar PV system that generates all of its own electricity would cost less than 5% more. So you could buy a house for $1M and then have to buy power for the rest of your life or you could pay $1.05M and have free power for the rest of your life. Solar power doesn't look so expensive that way.

Answer 3

Solar power is good and becoming better, but it is still rather expensive. Wind power is cheap, but people don't like the windmills. I don't understand why people don't like them. They don't seem to mind other types of artificial structures on the landscape, such as power lines or high rise buildings. Wind will help make energy cheaper and the air clearer (to make the landscape more beautiful). I hope people will eventually get over their dislike of windmills, because it is the best option right now. Nuclear power can be helpful, but the waste is very difficult to handle and remains dangerous for thousands of years. Advanced safety technology for reactors is only as good as the people that use it and maintain it, so there is still a risk. Hydrogen is not a good option because it takes electricity to make the hydrogen from water, so you need another energy source in addition to the hydrogen.

In summary wind power is currently the best option, but to really eliminate reliance on fossil fuel we will probably need to use wind, solar, nuclear, and bio-fuels (ethanol and bio-diesel) together.

Answer 4

And how do you get hydrogen from water? You need electricity, which is generated by other means. Hydrogen may be a great fuel, but it is not a primary energy source.

All the renewable sources you mention are good, and they are getting better as technology improves. The US has an irrational fear of nuclear energy. France gets nearly all its energy from nuclear and has never had an accident.

Other renewable sources of energy you don't mention are biomass (corn, wood, plants etc); geothermal (hot water from deep wells) tidal power (dams built in rivers that fill up at high tide and produce electricity at low tide); hydroelectric; biofermentation (methane from waste). They all have a place and are suited to different tasks. There is no real "best".