A good point being made by OG, regarding using some ingenuity and creativity to develop the technology needed to replace the use of petroleum to power automobiles, etc.
Not that it will be free, or even cheap. Electricity may be “clean” at the point of consumption, but that often simply means relocating the discharge to where the generating facility is operating – not to mention the net energy losses involved in power transmission and storage.
Since nuclear plants use the heat of fusion or fission to generate steam to drive turbines to generate electricity, it’s unlikely to power anything smaller than a submarine for awhile. Then there’s the problem of the byproducts.
Biofuels? At present, it takes more BTU’s to create them, than you get out of them.
Hydrogen fuel cell technology certainly shows the most viable promise for personal transport, as soon as the cost of the technology, and the production and distribution of the hydrogen fuel source, can be brought to the consumer level, at a cost and performance that rivals or beats that of gasoline technology.
In spite of legislative efforts to force the issue through regulation and taxation, solutions will ultimately appear, and be adopted, when people widely find them to be an advantage over what they have now.
Somehow though, I suspect that there will be nothing for generations to come that will match the thrill and romance of propelling one’s self at breakneck speed down a highway, powered by a rumbling roaring series of thousands of tiny little explosions.
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