In response to:
Geo-thermal is not practical in the US. The only source with high enough energy density is the Yellowstone caldera too far from about everything.
The environmentalists wanted solar electric but the politicians screwed that up and it would never work anyway with today's solar cell efficiencies. It takes more energy to manufacture the solar cells than you get out of them during their useful life.
Now Obozo is going to prevent coal fired generators from being built and convert electrical generation to natural gas.
Obozo and the environmentalists are stupid and they are doing exactly what China and OPEC want them to do.
I just wrote a check this morning for my monthly power bill, made payable to American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) in the amount of $260.02.
I'm not alone. AEP serves five million residential and business customers in 11 states.
Rain or shine, that's five million checks that pour in each month. They add up fast. AEP's utility segment collected $14 billion in revenue in 2011. But on closer inspection, the company only retained $2.8 billion in operating profits.
Where did the other $11 billion go?
Well, nearly half ($4.4 billion) was spent on...
If you dig deep enough you can get this kind of energy almost anywhere in the US. The operative is "deep enough" and I believe in roughly this is shallow enough to be economically viable..
OTOH it's misleading to say their feed stocks are free because in all but a few spots they are very expensive to reach with large, deep wells.
Yes you can get back more energy than it took to make the cells, but the cost of the electricity from them, or rather the installation is far more than what the utilities charge.
IMHO over-regulation of the energy industries is the single biggest cause of the current economic malaise.
Eliminate one regulation, requiring the certification and testing of natural gas vehicle conversions would bring down the regulated $15000 cost to be $2,500 for of a tank, tubing, regulator.
In 1980 -1983 oil imports dropped by 75% due to the mass conversion of vehicles propane and home heating from fuel oil to natural gas. Low cost energy brought the biggest US economic boom that it has ever seen.