What's your favorite alternative fuel?

We installed solar shingles on our roof and we are now saving 78% on our electric bills compared to the same time last year. Nothing feels better than seeing our meter running backwards. GO SOLAR !!!

I drove across a valley in California where the temperature was 110 degrees. I drove through New Hampshire when the temperature was twenty below zero. We don't just need locomotion. We need to heat and cool our vehicles. So what would be the reasonable driving range expectation for an electric powered car with the heater or air conditioner turned on?

Did anyone ever notice how many trucks are on the road? That becomes painfully obvious when you're toughing out one of those 15 mile long traffic jams that seem to be happening everywhere every day. Will we fix the problem by improving our cars if we ignore the trucks?

When I first started flying in the 60s, lights of cities an suburbs were clearly defined. Now the entire nation seems to be lighted. Even over the plains. If one thinks it's only a problem is only moving vehicles, then one doesn't understand the overall problem.

None of you are going to like this, but the only currently known solution to our overall energy predicament is generation of electricity by nuclear fission.

--- CHAS

VOIP conference calls, videoconferencing, document sharing via Google/docs etc all avoid the need for energy intensive travel alltogether. Recent example, I retired and spend the winters in Florida. I "needed" to be in Washington for a professional association meeting. The weather turned extremely bad in Washington so we did 90% of what we needed to do by conference call instead of travel. We could reduce energy consumption by an amazing amount if everyone who could, worked from home one day per week or more.

Continued investment in collaboration technology, human resource culture changes to encourage working from remote locations and continued telecommunication bandwidth improvements would pay much greater benefits that the drop in the bucket available from some of the sources being suggested.

1. South American countries like Brazil have almost completely converted to Ethonal, To us this means that there are already conversion kits for U.S Fuel injected cars readily available. However, The EPA has not approved any kits to date. New legislation has given them the authority to use whatever means they can to lower green house emissions, it will be interesting to see what they do.
2. There is a company in Canada that has a concocted a mold substance that traces its roots back to WWII that will turn corn by products (i.e. stalks)and starch into a sugar type substance that will make the production of ethonal more economical with no ill effects to the food supply.
3. you could flat out have and ethonal spill with no long term effects to the environment
4. Auto's and the internal combustion engine were designed to run on Ethonal
5. We would not be dependent on oil,there would be no more reasons for us to be at war for oil. The middle eastern terrorists would lose money from selling oil and would have the less capitol to work with to finance terrorist attacks.

DGman

The answer is simply conservation, which can yield far more than any of these pie-in-the-sky answers involving corn or french fry oil. Compared to many alternatives, gasoline has environmental advantages. Consider, for instance, the very large amount of fossil fuel it takes to make ethanol, to power things like farm tractors and distilleries - it's actually better to just burn the gas in the car. Electricity is simply a means of concentrating the pollution at the power plant, instead of spreading it out among millions of cars. So my favorite is to use gasoline, but to use MUCH less of it.

Buy a smaller car that gets better mileage on ordinary gasoline. Hybrids help in congested city traffic, but are worse on the open highway. Decide before you buy based on your driving habits.

Use public transit, and support funding its expansion at the ballot box.

Carpool, and combine trips.

There are over 240 patents in the US for carburetors that can get up to 250 miles per gallon. See any on the market yet? Got any idea who might oppose such innovation? Because they are the reasons you never will see one in your car.

Over thirty years ago Stan Meyer's developed and ran a dune buggy on water. He was offered billions to keep it off the market, when he refused to sell out he died of poisoning and all his work was stolen. He was by no means the only person to develop such technology.

Water is the future energy we all need, but no one wants us to have. How would our government fill the hole in the budget of the .50 per gallon in taxes they collect on gasoline? Check out www.waterpoweredcar.com and then tell me again how bio or battery is our future.

Back in the early 80's, I remember reading an article in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics about embedding electric transmition into the road bed. This transmitted electricity to the electric car by induction. This would remove the distance restrictrions casued by batteries. Toll roads could incorporate this technology and you pay for the electricity along with the upkeep of the road when you pay your toll. The batteries or other electric generating mechanism in your car would be used only for local travel. If you had enough available power, you could recharge your batteries as well as move the car while traveling on one of these roads so that when you arrived at your exit, you would have full driving range to get to your final destination.

The article mentioned above was not just theory but had been an actual test where they built a 1 mile section of road with this technology. I don't remember the efficiency of the electricity transfer via induction or even if they tested this. They certainly didn't have the variety of electric or hybrid cars then that is available today.

I'll leave the problem to someone else of metering the electricity use of each car and how to pay an appropriate price when the toll is paid.

I own a service company in Western Canada. We use propane in our truck as it is cheap $.50/litre($2.30/US gal.) versus $1.17/litre ($5.35/US gal.)for fuel right now. It is less poluting so we can run a truck inside a building. For delivery or working trucks it is the only affordable way to go.

My favorite alternative fuel would be ANYTHING that does NOT involve FOOD SOURCES or ANYTHING AGRICULTURAL.
If you think there's a shortage of OIL or that we're going to run out of it eventually, you're right. But with development as rampant as it is in this country, agricultural lands are disappearing at ALARMING rates. We're not even going to be able to feed ourselves for long at current rates. We DO NOT NEED TO BE USING OUR FOOD SOURCES FOR FUEL!!!
Even Fidel Castro has said this. Mind you, it might be the ONLY coherent thing he's said in his nearly 50 years in power, but on this, HE'S RIGHT!
I personally expected much more from SOLAR energy exploration, but it appears as though it's too difficult to warrant any real exploration.
Aj

water

How about compressed air? I hear there has been some development on engines and small cars that simply run on compressed air. Zero pollution. I'd be curious if anyone else has information on this technology's pros and cons.

electric seem like a viable source for power. what they need to figure out is how to make a generator built into the system to make it more self sufficient. tje old chevys had a generator system that created electricty to the point where once the car was stared you could take out the batery and the car made its own electricity. why can't they make a unit like that for the new electic cars that will constsntly recharge the onboard system.

There are plenty of new developed technologies out there and are being ignored by the real world. Our country especially ignores the technologies because of the control by oil companies.. Air and water are both tremendous resources for fuel. Air seems to be the best since it is widely available and easily used for small and large engine designs.

The stuff coming from the auto industries is truly shameful. We should be running cars now with more than 60+ MPG, easily. Just plain poor designs. Take a look at the alternative engine designs now available.

randy

I'd use alcohol. It saves lives by being in your cars tank instead of your own while you drive, and an engine adapted to run on alcohol has the sweetest sound! (Makes Camry sounds like Trans-Am). What more do we need?

I've read many of the posts here, and some are pretty convincing- also some are pretty lame. I think that although there doesn't seem to be an efficient, economical, and permanent solution to all of the issues at this time, that doesn't mean that we can't come up with one (or several) in the future. Just because, for instance, neither biodeisel nor alcohol nor H2 can be made in sufficient quantities to become our ONE fuel source doesn't mean that we should scrap them all, use each of them where it makes sense. And the Inefficiencies of converting electricity or H2 back and forth or transporting them to where we need them shouldn't stop us from using sources that can be cheap and environmentally friendly. Also, whether global warming is real or not, the oil (and coal) WILL run out. We also need to think of the pollution that using them causes. And anyone who would argue that they don't pollute should stand about 20 miles outside of any major city for a day and watch the great brown clowd that forms from automobile and industrial use of fossil fuel. Even more efficient use of what we have would greatly improve our environment, we could live closer to our work, use less heat, air conditioning, and hot water and do some of our chores manually rather than using powered tools and vehicles for every task that we accomplish.

For heavier work I think Bio Diesel has excellent potential, including running your 6.0 Power stroke diesel off of french fry oil.

Every form of energy be it wind, solar, nuclear, biodiesel, ethanol, have drawbacks. The trick is to set up a balance between our need for energy and our ability to preserve and protect our envronment.

Hydroelectric has effects on fish spawning, Wind has effects on raptors and other birds, nuclear has excellent power generation properties but provide hazards we all know are going to be hard to live with. If we can make a magnetic accellerator as a launch platform we could probably get rid of spent fuel rods by flinging them into the sun, but besides that, there are very few places we can think of to safely store them.

Any combustion oriented generation is going to have an effect on a steadly warming planet, so the trick it to reduce the need to burn fossel fuels for everyday existance. I think the answer is "all of the above, in moderation.

Hemp.

We use aour push bikes (Aussie slang for one that is foot powered),
and the fuel is a beer at the end of the ride. Distances that we used
to commute were about 8 miles each way.
Now retireed we use bike so our Prius hybrid is in use only twice a
week.

There is a company in Canada that is making great strides in developing a hydrogen generator that makes hydrogen AS NEEDED, so you are not FILLING UP with hydrogen, which could create more problems.

Anyone interested should check out this site....www.ihsresearch.com

Innovative Hydrogen Solutions is the name of the company.

I urge anyone interested in this topic to go to this site to see for themselves how this could help cut down on fuel consumption, cut greenhouse gasses and the demand for foreign oil.

The Canadian government is dragging its heels, as usual, in recognizing the opportunity to utilize this new technology. Americans have shown great interest, and I thought that I would let more people know about it by putting it on your site.