11 Responses

1. The best substitute will be a combination of all of those. It may be determined regionally or through some other form. Given the properties of these viable alternative fuels, there is no “best” substitute”.

2. Hi Rush, I thought you were in Rehab?! Welcome back man.

3. Electricity requires petroleum anyway, so I would say solar panels.

   BTW, this question means that you are obviously not Rush. That’s good.

4. my vote is for steam but

   perhaps hydrogen,
   possibly fission,
   hopefully fusion

5. Actually, all of them are pretty good substitute. You can also use manure to fuel things as well (its essentially biomass). In fact, my cousin’s dairy farm is fueled by cow manure. So, he’s saving a bundle by using what comes out of a cow to fuel his farm. Ethanol is the best for unleaded gasoline. Heck, the companies need to buy from my father he grows corn and use his corn for unleaded gasoline. ;-)

6. oxygen and carbohydrates. you know like thoughs burned from walking.

   other then that I say hydrogen.

7. The alternatives you mentioned will all be used in their own context where they fit best. But vegetable oil has another problem, and that is that it takes enormous amounts of area to grow the plants. Today natural forests are being replaced by plantations, and thus wiping all wildlife (orang utans can’t live on a plantation) and whole villages (landslides because of the deforestation) from the face of the earth. And it takes large amounts of fuel to plant, harvest and transport the fruits and plants they make the oil of, and to make the oil out of the plants. These oils are also more and more used in all other kinds of products (food, soap etc), and are a new threat to the worlds ecology.
   But I think hydrogen, solar and nuclear power (nuclear I hope as less as possible) and “new” ways to produce electricity will eventually replace the fuels in use today. New ways could be the electric current that runs between sweet and salt water (river/sea connections), solar powered hydrogen generators and so on.

8. I don’t know who said steam but steam isn’t even a fuel. It is superheated water vapor and has to be heated from some other source.
   As for the question, I would say electricity and hydrogen are the best bets for future energy solutions. Electricity could pretty much power everything stationary, and use hydrogen as an energy carrier for electric cars. (Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are just electric cars with the hydrogen providing electricity). Really the hydrogen, electricity and solar panels options are all intertwined. Solar panels provide electric energy and hydrogen is an energy carrier so I would put both under the “electricity” blanket.

9. Ethanol/Methanol it will likely be one or the other or both, Methanol is easier to make out of almost anything organic. Solar / wind electric also Hydrogen is too hard to handle, but will have a place somewhere…

10. I agree that a certain combination may work well:

    HYDROGEN: difficult to store and transport, requires energy to extract hydrogen for fuel cell use, requires new filling stations to be built, pretty good range before requiring refill, overall I say this fuel is over-hyped.

    ETHANOL: makes good use of crop overabundance, requires a lot of work to harvest and convert to finished product for vehicles, overall seems like a decent supplement for the time being.

    VEGETABLE OIL: promising use for fast food waste, can supplement diesel fuel.

    ELECTRICITY: easy access to fuel by simply plugging into the existing grid, electric motors are somewhat mature technology as applied to vehicles, shifts energy responsibility to power plants who can use alternative fuels in very large bulk quantities (wind, nuclear, hydro etc), seems like the easiest and best overall solution to me.

    SOLAR PANELS: simply not enough juice per unit area to fully power an electric car reliably, could be used on individual electric cars to supplement power from outlet and increase range, overall seems like a good idea combined with electric cars.

    I say winner would go to electricity since you can access electricity more conveniently than any other fuel out there (no need to visit a filling station). Also, electric car tech has been out there for a little while (albeit in limited doses) and is thus a more mature practical technology than the others. I also see the number of jobs for electrical engineers in the electrical power and automotive sectors going through the roof if this type of car catches on.

11. I THINK IF WE WERE ABLE TO DISCOVER A WAY TO USE WATER AS AN ENERGY SOURCE WE WOULD BE FINE. AS FOR ONE OF YOUR SELECTIONS MAYBE ETHANOL.