Renewable Energy Now

Oil and Gas
1. North America is running out
2. We will import it at increasing prices
3. Resulting in huge trade deficits, all kinds of bad geopolitics...
4. Oil sands are but a drop in the bucket (oil shales not worth the effort)
5. Then the world will run out (could be some very rough times)

Coal
1. Lots of it around - but harder and more expensive to get at
2. Climate change/carbon trading (climate change will occur faster than they think)
3. Cheapest way of sequestering carbon will be to leave coal in the ground

Good Farmland
1. The basis of wealth in the sustainable future
2. Will increase in value
3. Grows food
4. Grows energy (sugars, oils and cellulose)
5. Plant wind turbines
6. But with less and less petroleum based chemicals and fertilizers productivity will decline

Heating
1. Goes from natural gas and propane
2. To solar thermal, passive solar design and electric heat pumps
3. With increased efficiency (and smaller buildings)
4. Rural areas use more biomass/wood stoves (including grass pellets)

Transportation
1. Goes electric
2. Goes rail
3. Plug in hybrid biofuel cars
4. Biofuels for longer travel and electricity for short trips
5. Smaller vehicles and less travel
6. Gets expensive (see the world while it is still cheap)
7. Rich will drive (while the poor starve)

Power Generation
1. Natural gas too expensive for power generation
2. Coal with carbon taxes declines
3. Wind farms move off shore and into the big windy areas (with beefed up transmission networks)
4. For about a decade or two nuclear returns (a transition fuel)
5. Solar electric farms in the southwest
6. Solar electric standard on commercial buildings and homes
7. Solutions found for large-scale electricity storage

Big general trends
1. Energy goes electric (from cars to space and water heating)
2. Solar electric, and solar thermal are huge
3. We will live smaller (homes, cars, refrigerators...)
4. Energy efficiency is huge and implemented through legislation5. We will live more locally (food, travel, work from home...)
5. Eventually the county with the best farm land (that is well above sealevel) per capita will do best (Canada or the US perhaps?)