Energy wake-up call

Excerpts from OUR ENERGY FUTURE by Jeffrey Carter [via InstaPundit]

At the Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business Management Conference Friday, I listened to a panel discussion on energy. It was interesting, primarily because the two panelists didn’t mince words. They offered up some interesting stats. . .

• Running an oil company isn’t cheap and has a lot of fixed costs.


• Energy prices aren’t going lower in the long run and instead of battery powered cars and trucks we should figure out how to make uranium powered cars and trucks.


• Research into green energy isn’t a total waste of money or time since fossil fuels will eventually be gone. However, government subsidies and government money pouring into research seems ill spent.


• Natural gas is a good alternative, but we need to figure out how to develop an ecosystem so that it becomes easy for companies to switch. Natural gas has more energy density than diesel fuel.


• We don’t need CAFE standards to stimulate car companies to create better cars. Economic incentives create them. There is no secret car that gets 90 MPG that car companies are withholding from the market. If they had it, you could buy it on a lot.


• Give up on high speed rail. It’s not going to be possible under the current political environment, or economic environment.

• The US will squander much of it’s storehouse of current energy due to bad policy.


• Things like the Chevy Volt in the current technological environment are not efficient. They are science experiments.

As an angel investor, I don’t see me making investments in green energy that will take years to come to fruition. However, as an angel investor I can make investments into companies like Power2Switch that are in the energy sector, but not in the research and development of it.