Saturday, November 10, 2012

Hurricane Sandy illustrates the importance of fossil fuel energy to our economy, both now and for decades to come

The following is a clip from an article posted on AEI-Ideas.org by Mark J. Perry:

Oil—and, more specifically, diesel fuel and gasoline—are proving to be the most important commodities in the wake of the huge storm that recently pummeled the East Coast. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, all of the critical pieces of equipment were burning gasoline or diesel fuel: the pumps removing water from flooded basements and subway tunnels, the generators providing electricity to hospitals and businesses, and the cars, trucks and aircraft providing mobility.

The Sierra Club and its allies on the green left will doubtless continue their decades-long war on the oil and gas industry, but the Sandy disaster-response efforts are showing again that there is no substitute for oil. No other substance comes close when it comes to energy density, ease of handling or flexibility. A single kilogram of diesel fuel contains about 13,000 watt-hours of energy. That is about twice the energy density of coal, six times that of wood, and about 300 times that of lead-acid batteries.

Combine diesel fuel’s miraculous energy density with the power density and durability of a modern diesel engine—which can run for weeks at a time with little or no maintenance—and the size, speed, and cost advantages become apparent.

The Sierra Club, Greenpeace and other groups claim that we can run our economies solely on renewable-energy sources such as wind. But if you are trying to pump water out of your rapidly molding basement, would you prefer a wind turbine that operates at full power about one-third of the time, or a greasy, diesel-fueled V-8?

Sandy left millions of East Coast residents in the cold and dark. If any of them have been demanding “green” energy, I haven’t heard about it. In the storm’s aftermath, the most hopeful sound of recovery is the joyous racket that comes from an internal-combustion engine burning fossil
fuels.

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