Let me make it clear, I voted for Ron Paul. However, Romney probably back in 2006 was/and is right. Gas prices have risen and have not got below $2 in several years.
There ARE alternatives:
1) Compressed natural gas. There are about 6,000-8,000 refueling stations in America now, but they are in big cities and are primarily used by city buses, school buses, garbage trucks, natural gas companies, some UPS trucks, and a few others. There are about 500,000 gasoline stations in America. More CNG stations need to be installed. My company is trying to get them installed but we are running into a brick wall with the oil companies stations. Private stations will let us install them, but they don't want to pay the $200,000 for a compressor. If they spent just a fraction of what they are giving solar companies, either with tax credits, or subsities, we could get the infrastructure at just about every gas station. Natural gas is less than $2.00 a gallon equivelant gasoline. All car companies can make a CNG car or truck for about the same price as gasoline off the assembly line. Oh, and supply is 100 years now already tapped. More coming.
2) Algae, this is what Obama is pushing. Problem is algae oil costs about $4-$5 to produce not counting the highway tax. This is why Obama wants gas prices to go up to over $5, so he can push this. Problem is, to produce enough algae, it will require greenhouses to grow it. They would have to cover an area the size of Rhode Island to replace the oil based gas. It will also take longer to get the infrastructure in place, than just installing compressors at stations, as (1) above. Land, buildings, enough water supply, just to get started. This is what will ultimately replace oil WHEN the cost of gas gets around $7/gallon. I don't think that is happening any time soon. People will riot.
3) Hydrogen, no infrastructure. Will take as much as 20-30 years to just put the infrastructure in place. Liquid hydrogen is -400+/- degrees. It will take a lot of electricity to make it and keep it cold. Not practical.
4) Electric, have to recharge in 8 hours and can only go about 50 miles on a charge, not practical yet. The vehicle will cost more than (1) or (2) above.
5) Coal oil. Synthetic diesel and gasoline can be made from our abundant supply (800 years). Gasification costs are about $4-5/gallon without tax. This is also a "fossil fuel" and no subsities to build the gasification plants.
So, bottom line, natural gas is a "fossil fuel", even though it is much cleaner burning than gas or diesel, the pipelines are in most of the country, only taps for the compressor stations and the stations need to be installed. The auto makers said they can make the vehicles now, but not enough infrastructure is in place. So they only make trucks or buses for fleets on special orders, but can easily gear up for more. Fueling at a cng station will only take about 15 minutes vs 6-8 hours for an electric or hybrid. CNG is the fastest way to get off foreign oil. Start with fed, state, city, and county vehicles first to get station owners to put in CNG stations. This would be about 25% of Americas vehicles. Once they are on CNG, imported oil will drop by 40%. Then gasoline prices will really drop because of competition.
But the current administration has no clue, or they want to push socialism. They have these pie in the sky ideas of electric cars running around the country, with all the electricity made from solar panels and windmills. Ain't going to happen. Solar panels deteriorate over time due to dust etching the glass, thus over about 15 years, they loose half their capacity. Takes fossil fuel to make them. Windmills are the same. Where wind is plentiful, some have already been blown over by high winds and tornados. If they build them tornado proof, they would cost twice as much, thus not cost effective. They also have to be maintained. They also kill a lot of migratory birds. Most power use is east of the Mississippi, but the wind is not consistant where it is needed most. So coal 40%, natural gas 25%, nuclear 25%, and hydro 10% is the main means of electric production. Nuclear is less expensive than a clean coal plant, natural gas is less expensive than all. 15 years ago, there were virtually no natural gas power plants outside Texas. Today they are popping up everywhere. So, almost all new power plants are natural gas. I think we need to use coal and nukes for power, save the natural gas for fuel to replace gasoline. No imports, all money stays in the US.
