Energy independence for America requires government action that is probably not politically possible at present. The real issue is not energy so much as fuel for transportation. Petroleum is the cheapest form of transportation fuel available at present. From a purely economic perspective oil will remain the primary fuel until it becomes so scarce that the cost of oil exceeds the cost of alternatives. (Even at $70 per barrel, oil is probably still the cheapest transportation fuel source now.) At present most (65%) of the oil used by the US is imported, and comes from areas of the World that are politically unstable. The supplier nations are increasingly using the oil supply as a policy weapon. Thus from a national security perspective it may be desirable for the US to develop more domestic energy production to reduce the dependence of foreign oil. One obvious solution is to exploit more domestic petroleum sources. The US has undeveloped sources that are about equal to the reserves of Saudi Arabia. But drilling in the far north or in coastal areas is vehemently opposed by Democrats and militant environmentalists. (It seems likey to me that Democatic opposition will recede when they regain the Presidency.) Democrats make the specious claim that developing new oil fields or developing approaches for extracting oil from oil shale takes a lot of time, which is true, and so will not help, which is not true. Building more nuclear power plants would help some, but would also take several years to do, and Democrats and militant environmentalists are opposed. Democrats favor conservation, without acknowleding that significant reductions in energy consumption will also take a long time. An approach that seems to be politically possible is to use ethanol for tranportation fuel rather than gasoline. This has the support of farmers (who enjoy a subsidy from the government). Environmentalists seem to like it since it does not add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Flexible fuel engines that can run on either ethanol or gasoline are available. (A pure ethanol fuel is not practical, but a fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline is practical.) The US currently consumes about 400 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel per day. It would require almost all of the arable land in America to raise sufficient corn to make enough ethanol to satisfy the US demand for transportation fuel. Sugarcane is a better source for ethanol than corn, but in the US there is only a little land (which is along the Gulf Coast) suitable for raising sugarcane. The US could import ethanol from friendly countries in the Western Hemisphere, but this is not true independence.

So what should the US do? What is the long range solution, since it is likely that petroleum will become more scarce. It seems to me that we should start drilling to develop new oilfields immediately. (Cuba is drilling off the coast of Florida, so why shouldn't the US?) We will need the oil for the transition period to alternative fuel sources. We should also start building nuclear power plants . At some point in the future I expect that there will be a lot of electric cars on the road. One problem with these vehicles is limited range (maybe 100 to 150 miles), and slow recharge. It is hard to imagine service stations where depleted batteries are exchanged for charged batteries, though I suppose it is possible. More than likely families will have two autos, one battery powered for short trips around town, and one with an internal combustion engine to be used on longer trips. It could be that in some areas of the country a family would have only electric vehicles, and would rent one with an internal combustion engine for longer trips. Much more electric power would be required to recharge these electric vehicles. Renewable sources could be used, such as solar power and wind power. Both of these sources are intermittent, so some sort storage system or a base power system to augment them would be necessary. Nuclear power is obviously one solution. Reduction in energy needs through conservation is desirable, but does not happen quickly. It is not economically feasible to simply replace all of the motors, buildings, and gas guzzling automobles immediately. The transition to alternate fuel sources will take several years. Republicans would like to let the market dictate which systems will ultimately prevail. This is an approach that is often messy but does work. Democrats would like to impose solutions through central planning. This approach is generally used in collectivist (socialist and communist) nations, and has not been very successful.