I personally am not union. I am an engineer. However the utility I work for is union, so are most utilities. These jobs with power and gas companies will more than likely be mostly union. The turbine blades are manufactured by airplane companies. So most of the turbines mfg. jobs will be good paying jobs. The compressors that would need to be installed at gas stations will be manufactured by an automotive company. We are talking good jobs.
It will take 5-10 years to convert the fleet vehicles to natural gas. (Approximately 20-25% of vehicles are in fleets of 25 or more). One large compressor can serve 25 vehicles daily with complete fill ups. The complete large compressor station with back up bank of CNG bottles can fit on a flatbed tractor trailer. Honda sells a natural gas car with a home compressor that is about the size of a water heater. It can refuel the car overnight, slow fill.
Windmills are large slow movers to avoid killing birds. They cost a little more than natural gas or coal boilers to produce electricy. Power companies would need a tax break to install them. Fleets will need tax breaks or mandates to install the natural gas filling stations. We order Cheverolet trucks from GM already set up for natural gas at about the same cost as gasoline. The high pressure tank costs more, but a natural gas vehicle doesn't need a catilytic converter or polution control. Natural gas is CH4 and burns with oxygen to produce one CO2 molecule and two water molecules, the cleanest and lowest carbon emission fossil fuel. The infrastructure for natural gas vehicles is already in place, just the compressors would have to be installed at the fleet yards or at gas stations or both.
These things can be done right now and not in 20-50 years. Feds have to vote for the tax credits and or mandates. Later after the first phase of 5-10 years getting the fleets off gasoline or diesel, then we can give tax credits to build algae oil greenhouses to replace oil. If every car in America burned algae oil, the greenhouses to manufacture the algae oil would cover an area the size of Maryland. But if 25-40% are already burning natural gas, then we wouldn't have to build so many greenhouses. Algae is a plant that takes carbon dioxide out of the air, but you put it back when you burn the fuel, so it is carbon neutral. Natural gas produces about 2/3 less carbon dioxide than gasoline or diesel, so it would also help with less carbon emmissions.
Another phase is to build solar power plants in the southwest to complement the wind from the plains states and around the coasts. Nuclear being last could replace the coal plants in which coal could be used to make synthetic fuel in the distant future.
All of this can be done in phases, starting with Picken's plan. We can eventually be energy independent. But we have to do it all, not just parts and bits and pieces.
Windmills, natural gas vehicles, algae, solar, and nuclear. All must start now.
Something I was also thinking, why would any Muslim nation want nuclear power? They have more sunlight than us, they should be building large solar plants. Their oil will eventually run out, so they will need a lot of electricity in the future. They could also build saltwater greenhouses to grow algae for fuel too. They just want the nuclear power for making nuclear weapons.
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