In the eastern US, there is not enough wind to maintain windmills to be cost effective, only in the plains states. In the east also, coal is abundant and was and still is used for power production. Clean air EPA mandates with stack filters costing like $100,000 each and have to be changed weekly, make coal burning expensive. Natural gas costs about twice what coal cost in bulk, yet that is what the power companies are going to so they can get out of these mandates. Thus, most power bills in the eastern US have gone up about 12% a year the last few years.
Now, windmills actually cost about the same as a natural gas generator for the same amount of power produced, but the plains states are sparsely populated compared to the east so they do use windmills. Problem is transmission, power can't be transmitted but a couple hundred miles because of the loss of power in the resistance in the wires. So getting the power from the plains states east, and west, requires large scale power transmission lines and they are expensive to build and install.
Natural gas generating plants can be installed from start to finish in less than 2 years. It takes about 10-20 years for a nuke plant to be approved and built.
I work in the natural gas industry. My take, using it to produce power is not cost effective. 2/3" of the energy in natural gas is lost in the energy transfer to mechanical to electrical and transmitting to your house. Running a pipeline from well to your house or to a natural gas filling station is 80% efficient. Not a good use of natural gas.
I say use coal until more nuke plants can be built. Use natural gas for vehicle fuel, especially fleets like utility trucks, garbage trucks, UPS delivery trucks, postal delivery trucks, school buses, city buses, etc. This would cut 40% of our imported oil. Once the infrastructure is in place, vehicles could then be sold to individuals. In the meantime, money spent on solar panels, which went bankrupt and are now made in China, could have been spent on coal gasification plants to make synthetic diesel and gasoline, further eliminated foreign oil. That allong with drilling our own could withing 5-10 years get us completely off foreign oil and all that money would stay home providing jobs here.
We have an estimated 800 year supply of coal, a 200 year supply of natural gas, and a 200 year supply of oil on government land and offshore, not being drilled or used.
Solar and wind will come along with nuclear, when these supplies are eventually used up and become more expensive.
Obama has several things wrong with his socialist thinking. He thinks there is only a set limit of wealth. He thinks when you get a $1 an hour raise, someone somewere else is getting a cut in pay. He doesn't realise the pie can grow, and it can grow by allowing the use of abundant cheap energy along with more jobs. His father was communist, he studied under communist mentors. There is NO UTOPIA, never will be. Even Jesus said the poor will always be with you. Obama also thinks green energy is the answer, because of "global warming". One volcanic eruption puts out more CO2 and ash that all the industry in the entire world in one year.
Right now, pie in the sky ain't helping, we need jobs, we need people OFF the government dole working paying taxes. Our traditional fuels have served us well, and will continue to do so for at least another 100 years IF the government gets off the backs of Americans and lets us work.
