Thoughts on Energy
updated 12/10/2010
I'm hopeful that a decade from now America will have progressed on our energy situation in the following ways;

More efficient transportation
I have no problem always getting over 50 miles per gallon in my car the last 60000 miles, despite still seeing advertising by American auto makers that their new vehicles are gas misers at a whopping 30 miles per gallon.  My car is a Civic, not designed for ultra-high  miles per gallon but it does have an optional hybrid drivetrain, just about paid for itself in less than 4 years.  There are a lot of autos in the works that will be on the market in the next 4 years that will give consumers choices of vehicles that will be at least as cheap as mine and able to get better miles per gallon than I get.  The public should not tolerate hearing that 30 or 35 miles per gallon is efficient, or that hybrids are too expensive or high on maintainence.  My hybrid maintainence has been zero.  My vehicle maintainence, including tire rotation  has been 919 dollars in 60303 miles and all hybrid stuff has had zero maintenece cost and is warranted for 8 years anyway.  Are you going to keep your car over 8 years?, If so, remember that the net present value cost of car maintainence costs that far off won't be the deciding factor on new car choice.  If you are worried about distant hybrid costs, I checked what my battery would cost to replace today, if not still under warranty.  It runs a thousand dollars, a third the cost just three years ago.  That's about the cost of a tranny in an aging car, which is what my hybrid would be by the time the warranty runs out.  My hybrid drivetrain will pay for itself in another 5 months if gasoline does not increase in cost, as we know it will.  Fuel savings these three years have been  $1800.00.  I think the hybrid Toyota Camry has the highest dependability rating by Consumer Reports of any vehicle manufactured, conventional or hybrid.   Here in the US, Toyota's Prius was their third best selling vehicle in 2008, beat out by Camry and Corolla.  Worldwide, the Prius has been in the top 3 vehicles sold in 2009 and 2010.  All the trucks and SUVs brought up the rear.  The plug in vehicles will get double my miles per galon and their cost per thousand miles driven will be much less too.  The Volt doesn't sound very good but the Nissan Leaf sounds perfect as a second car for in-town commuters.  The plug-in Prius, currently in fleets, out to the public in about a year will be a great vehicle in terms of cost, dependability, and low cost to drive and maintain.

Click here  to see my mileage records. Each of the 123 tanks of gas were recorded along with the gallons of gas used, price paid, and odometer reading at the time of fillup.  Average miles per gallon, including waiting for trains, trips with heavy loads, gridlock, sweltering air condtioner days, freezing morning drives to work, is 53 miles per gallon.   MPG was calculated the old fashioned way, with odometer readings and gas used at fillup, also occassional odometer calibration checks from highway markers every six months.  Odometer readings vary less than 1.5 percent actual milage with either of two sets of tires so almost no adjustment was needed to calibrate the odometer.

Better and cheaper biofuel
I expect to eventually see a lot of auto fuel someday coming from biologically derived products like butyl alcohol(not ethanol), produced by hybridized or bioengineered bacteria from cheap source stuff like sawdust and organic waste and cultured algea.  I expect the butyl alcohol or other light to medium weight biologically produced  liquid fuel to go into auto gas tanks.  This will be superior to diesel since the light to medium weight liquid will not use the high 22 to 1 compression ratio of diesel and hence not be prone to forming nitrous oxides from the air intake, which is the problem with all newly designed "clean" deisel engines as well as all older ones. (Air plus diesel compression ratios equals nitrous oxide and it has nothing to do with the fuel itself)

Electricity
As a petroleum geologist I believe there is still a pretty good amount of undiscovered natural gas around the US, in both the Gulf of Mexico, on the onshore Gulf Coast, and in source rock throughout the country.  This is good because natural gas is a lot cheaper on a BTU basis than oil and its carbon footprint is lower than oil or coal. Natural gas has about a 4 to 1 ratio of hydrogen to carbon while oil has around a 2 to 1 ratio of hydrogen to carbon ratio. Coal has a dismal ratio, being almost pure carbon.   Because natural gas has practically no mercury as some coal does, and because it has a very low carbon ratio, it makes an excelent fuel for electricity generation with less impact on global warming than those other fossil fuels.  Even coal-generated electricity is both cheaper and less polluting as electric auto energy than an efficient gasoline engine.

Global warming is so far advanced already that two facts encapsulate the situation pretty well.
First, there was only 20 miles of the several thousand miles of the northwest passage still blocked by ice the last two years and sailboat owners are watching for their chance to be the first to complete the voyage, maybe this coming summer. 

Secondly, my petroeum profession periodical for October 2010 (AAPG Explorer) is advertising for technical papers on the second "Polar Petroleum Potential Conference" to be held in Nova Scotia.  There is also an advertisement for the "Inaugural Artic Technology Conference, to be held in a few months.  The north pole is melting.  Developnment of the north pole watere is about to commence.

I expect our nation will be able to increase its electricity generation from wind turbines a lot more than many believe.  The issues seem to be mostly with site selection that minimizes harm or conflict to birds, animals, and scenic aspects; as well as transmission hurdles.  Having read extensively on turbine-caused Golden Eagle fatalities, it seems the turbine manufacturers have altered the blades placement and rotation speed to be relatively harmless, to not just eagles, but most other birds as well. 

I expect solar energy to expand a thousandfold or millionfold in about a decade due to recent breakthroughs in the solar cell and semiconductor technology that not only improves the efficiency of generation, but drastically lowers the cost of the hardware.  The discoveries and improvements have already been made and should only take a little time to scale up to large scale manufacturing.

But we have a ways to go.  A high mileage auto is a very good start for this interem period.  Consider this:
By switching from driving my SUV to and from work; I have cut my carbon footprint in half, paid less than half what I used to pay to to Chavez and the arabs for oil, and I have just about paid off the fancy drivetrain from the first three years of driving it.  The remaining 5 to 8 years of the auto's life will be saving me 600 dollars a year if gasoline stays around $2.75 a gallon, more if the price creeps up.

Summary
I am very optimistic America will have a greatly improved and more stable energy supply in about a decade.
I expect much more efficient vehicles at reasonable cost in a few years, and not at luxury car costs.
I expect domestic natural gas, now cheap and fairly clean, will be able to play an increased role in keeping electricity both affordable and keeping the carbon footprint from increasing in the near future.
I expect more diversified and affordable fuel sources for vehicles in a decade that are less dependent on the middle east.
I expect, through greatly increased solar and wind produced electricity, and source rock natural gas, that the cost of electricity will not become unreasonable in the future .

I expect  your next regular priced vehicle choice to be one that cuts your fuel costs in half as mine has.  Make it so and not only will you save, but our country will be more independent and our planet more pleasant.  Our kids would like that.