I recently read about a new energy technology thet produced power by igniting salt water. The technology was being debunked by the writer because it took more energy to ignite the salt water than it produced. Here is my reply…

Every form of of creating power takes more energy than it returns. That’s a law of physics.

The energy required to produce fossil fuels; gas or coal, requires large amounts of solar energy over a huge amount of time… the theory being that it’s economical to use it because the ‘more energy it took to produce it’ was consumed long ago.

And as far as gas and coal, we don’t even take into account the political energy and human energy it takes to produce it with wars, lives, etc. 

Fuel is about taking energy that it stored somewhere and releasing it for use now. If the cost of releasing the energy is greater than the value of the energy then we have a problem until the cost of energy increases… which it is doing every day.

Fact is, we have all the energy we need. It’s abundant and omnipresent. We just waste almost all of it. The two most important technologies are storage and efficiency.

Storage: During times of peak electricity use (summer 4-6 pm), we use at least 5 times more electricity than at night. The concept of ’spinning reserves’ means that utilities are producing huge amount of electricity that go nowhere just in case everyone turns on their air conditioning at the same time. It’s like idling your car with the clutch disengaged so you can zoom off if you have to. If we could generate energy at night and store it (efficiently) for use during the day we’d be on track to a solution.

Efficiency: The California small appliance efficiency standards enacted about 15 years ago leveled consumption during a huge high-growth period. Refrigerators, Air Conditioners were required to become more efficient… and did… while reducing retail prices of the products. We could do everything we are doing now at a fraction of the power. The barriers are economic, not technological.

Conservation: (Oh No! Not That again!). Grocery Stores that enclose coolers, public air conditioning systems set at reasonable levels (Airports: Brrrr), occupancy sensors on lighting, Variable Frequency drives on motors… please don’t get me started (too late). Conservation is the ultimate good news because the very day we wake up to the need we can probably trim our energy use by 10%. It’s our built-in buffer.

We have the technology, just not the desire.