- Joined
- Jun 10, 2009
- Messages
- 27,254
- Reaction score
- 9,350
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Certainly, but again, fuel oil for large electricity generation is not common in most places (maybe some places in Alaska).
No one is claiming it is. ???
As the price of oil rises so does the price of those alternatives. Care to guess what their parts and components are made using? That's right, oil (and a whole bunch of other finite supply rare earth materials).
That is contrary to the reality of the cost of solar and wind technology going down as the price of oil goes up.
The only thing that would make the alternatives a replacement for carbon (coal, not oil, in this case) are significant improvements in the two weak sisters of our eletrical systems - transmission (we lose 47% of the electricity we generate in the transmission) and storage.
I agree onsite systems are the most efficient, its why so many of us now have onsite systems to reduce our need for grid power.
Trading one woe for others. You're not saving oil in the generation here, but in the fuel where an electric car replaced a petro-based fuel car. We already try that with buses and commuter trains. Only solves a small part of the problem as you can see.
What "woe" are you talking about? The majority of commuters do not use buses and trains, they use cars, the majority of which could be electric cars that do not use an oil product for energy. 49% of oil use in the US is gasoline.