Federal money for clean energy sources

With Congress hotly debating an economic stimulus package, there’s been a lot of talk lately about government support for various energy sources.

On all sides of this debate, there’s an agreement that there’s no silver bullet — we’re going to need all of our available domestic energy resources to help meet that demand.

That means baseload power sources such as coal, which provides about half of our electricity. And yes it also means renewable energy, which has an important role to play in our energy portfolio when it comes to peaking power.

It is not an either/or situation, and people should remember that we’re not at war with other fuel sources.

Having said that, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) made a good point when he said more federal research dollars are needed to develop clean coal technologies, since coal is an affordable and abundant fuel source.

Per the Associated Press:

"Coal and nuclear are carrying the load," Manchin said. But he said they account for a disproportionately small share of research funding.

So let’s work together to develop good jobs pursuing clean technologies that will capture and safely store CO2.

Comments

[Brian]

Gov. Manchin needs to worry more about Massey Energy knocking the tops off of his state's mountains and dumping waste in its streams. That's how coal can never be clean.

[RickD]

CO2 is exactly what a closed system algae biodiesel reactor needs. This sounds like a potential energy bonanza. The generating plants burn coal for electricity. The CO2 is sent directly to to local algae biofuel farms. Very little (if any) storage is needed.

I did some calculations and I have found that we could produce enough biodiesel to completely eliminate diesel processed from fossil fuels. We could do this entirely on desert and unproductive land. No cropland would ever need to be used. Scientists have estimated that an algae bioreactor could produce about 100,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre per year.

I also have the idea of rooftop algae bioreactors that could be put on top of homes and businesses. The algae could be collected and sold to a local biodiesel processing plant. The refined biodiesel could then be sold to local gas stations. This could greatly reduce the expensive and energy consuming diesel distribution network.

Please review my proposals and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Jared]

I agree and believe that we should be pushing toward multiple energy sources. We should also put a value system on which energy systems are most important into the future. I do think that although we should be looking into cleaner coal production we should also be looking at converting from a fossil based society to none fossil based.. wind, solar, hydro etc). The coal industry has to change its tune on the efforts of marketing "clean coal". People hate the ads and will hate it more the more its pushed. What they are pushing isn't going to be "clean" its hopefully going to be"cleaner"... than the disgusting crap they are pushing into the air now. Just to be clear. NOT CLEAN..CLEANER They need to start telling us how much better it is than the current coal tech. That will sell it. People arn't stupid..they will just look it up on the internet after the ad and find all the opposition.