Other countries ahead of U.S. in energy race

Jeffrey M. Shear, North Las Vegas

Saturday, May 24, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

Regarding John C. Lovelace’s Wednesday letter headlined “Voters responsible for energy crisis”:

We all bear responsibility for the United States’ energy predicament — if not for the representatives we’ve elected, then for our energy wastefulness, including everything from our transportation choices to where and how we live.

The United States is relatively rich in low-sulfur coal and natural gas, a fact that few politicians seem to comprehend. There’s also an untapped wind corridor that spans the high plains midsection of the country from Texas to North Dakota. The technology for wind-generated electricity and coal gasification exists — the British are placing huge wind turbines on abandoned drilling platforms in the North Sea that by 2012 will provide Scotland with half of its electricity, and in South Africa coal gasification is being done on a large industrial scale; compared with $135-a-barrel oil, both energy sources are cheaper than traditional ones.

Short of joining OPEC, we could significantly alter our transportation and energy infrastructure, using wind and coal (during peak generation periods) to generate electricity while reserving gas for our transportation needs — already many urban areas use buses powered by natural gas, and it comes into many of our homes as well. Conservation would be at the center of any U.S. energy strategy, and in some areas, electric and hydrogen cars, similar to what they use in Iceland and Norway, as well as solar energy, might constitute feasible alternatives.

Sound futuristic? Not really. While the United States, particularly during the seven-plus years of the Bush administration, has buried its collective head in the Luddite, anti-Kyoto groupthink of Big Oil and big autos, the rest of the world has pushed ahead. So we can get our wind turbine, coal gasification and auto fuel efficiency technologies from the Europeans, South Africa and the Japanese. Thus, this infrastructural change and alteration of our fuel and energy demands could be effectuated in as few as five years, if we have the political will and the intestinal fortitude to undertake it.