DIG-L: Re: fuel price "subsidies"

[aj574@detroit.freenet.org (Lowell Prag)]

piolenc@mozcom.com ("F. Marc de Piolenc") said:

>A minor correction, which has no real bearing on the point of the
>original post but still needs to be put forward.

>Lowell Prag wrote:
>
>> Just compare our fuel prices to those of Europe. If our fossil fuel prices
>> were truly governed in an "open market", they would be much higher and
>> viable alternative energy technologies would have long ago made it to the
>> marketplace.
>> 
>> In spite of the constraints that the artifically low fuel prices in the
>> USA [...]

>Fuel prices in the USA are not "artificially low!" On the contrary, the
>high cost of petroleum products in Europe is the result of heavy
>taxation, with 3/4 of the cost of gasoline at the pump going to taxes.
>Even in the USA, typically $.50-.60 per gallon of automobile fuel is
>taxes - read the tiny label on the pump next time you gas up. This is
>hardly a "subsidy."
>
>I, too wish that petroleum products cost more on an open market, but all
>my wishing and yours won't make it so. Punitive taxation is keeping
>prices artificially high, yet even so the products are so desirable and
>the raw material so accessible that there's no likelihood of an
>immediate turn away from the use of petro feedstocks for fuel. We have
>the worst of both worlds - we're sopping up a finite resource on which
>we have become completely dependent, and most of the profits from our
>purchases are squandered by government!

Hi Marc,

Yes but you are only partially right, as there are still hidden 
subsidies in the way the USA oil industry can write off costs.

The major point is:

fuel cells are going to rapidly change the oil industry's 
position of power, as they can run on any hydrocarbon. 

This will eventually lead to a pure hydrogen pipe line infrastructure
and/or abundant solid metal hydrides which can similarly power fuel cells. 

Fuel cells also make biogas methane a viable choice for powering vehicles
and also the on site generation of electricity and heating/cooling in the
residential and industrial sectors. 

The fossil fuel industries see the writing on the wall and are rapidly
positioning themselves by buying into alternative energy technologies. 

In my opinion, the sooner we run out of oil, the better, as it will force
us to very clean technologies, the cleanest of which is pure hydrogen in
fuel cells, as you only get pure hot water as a by-product. 

Biogas methane in fuel cells is certainly also a viable option but you
still get CO2 as a by-product but with the eventual elimination of oil and
a much more efficient use of the methane via fuel cells, we can still
lower greenhouse gases and possibly, actually lower the cost of energy. 

In addition, we would have a huge amount of compost to put back into the
soil on farms and other logical places which need the nutrients, rather
than dumping everything into landfills or burning everything in
incinerators. 

In short, we would begin to develop a "sustainable" approach to resources
which would allow both us humans and the rest of the life on the planet to
coexist without the fear that we may reach the point of no return on the
destruction of our planet. 


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