The long-term solution to the world’s energy supply, the end of oil-financed terrorism, and the solution to the world’s pollution problems has been staring us in the head for the last 3 billion years – the sun.  And no, it’s not solar energy.  Solar energy is just a byproduct of one of the most fundamental forces in the universe – nuclear energy.

That’s right.  Nuclear energy already powers everything we do.  It created the fossil fuels that we use, it creates the sunlight, the wind, the geothermal energy that many want to tap.  So why not go right to the source.

Here are some things to consider about alternate energy sources:

• Fossil fuels are entering the end of their life-cycle.  They are dirty, increasingly expensive, and in the wrong geographic locations (the Middle East).  Within 30-40 years the bulk of exploitable fossil fuels will be depleted.

• Solar energy will always be a marginal source of energy.  It is too diffuse to capture and requires the production of expensive equipment to collect and focus it.  Despite many years of research and development, solar energy has yet to generate a significant quantity of the world’s energy.

• Wind is also a niche energy source.  Humans moved away from windmills hundreds of years ago.  There are only a limited number of places in the world where conditions support the economic user of wind-power. It is hard to imagine that the future of the world is of a landscape dotted with wind-mills.

• Bio-fuel is impractical.  It practically takes more energy to grow, transport, and process the crops then is generated by them.  Bio-fuel is also a third-generation energy source meaning nuclear energy produced the sunlight, which produced the crops, which produced the bio-fuel.  Once again, why not go right to the source?  Places like Brazil generate large quantities of biofuel but this is not sustainable and not practical to scale on a world-wide basis.  Energy should be used to help produce food, not the other way around.

• Hydo-electic energy has reached its limit.  Many across the world object to the construction of additional dams (see the uproad over the Three Gorges Dam in China) and most of the best rivers have already been dammed anyway. 

 
Nuclear offers none of these disadvantages.  It is: 

§         Clean.  Nuclear energy does not generate any pollutants or CO2.

§         Safe.  New technology makes the likelihood of a meltdown or nuclear problem very remote.

§         Proven.  Nuclear energy is already being used throughout the world on a large-scale.  It produces 17% of the world’s electricity from 442 commercial reactors.  In the United States, 20% of the country’s electricity is produced using nuclear energy.

§         Cost-effective.  As the technology improves, it will become increasingly cost-effective to generate energy via nuclear.

§         Scalable.  Nuclear energy offers an infinite source of power.  If more energy is needed, additional plants can be built.

 
This conclusion has many business implications.  If nuclear power is the primary energy source, what will the transmission source be?  Will electricity be used to power houses, cars, planes, etc?  Or will hydrogen be the transmission source of choice? 

I believe that the future energy economy will be powered by a mix of electricity and hydrogen.  The large energy companies – BP, ExxonMobil – will increasingly move towards hydrogen.  The expertise to refine hydrocarbons will be re-appropriated to produce and transmit hydrogen (not an easy undertaking.  The production of hydrogen is very energy intensive, requiring power from the nuclear power plants).  These companies also have end-user infrastructure, gas stations, which will become hydrogen filling stations.

The current infrastructure already exists to distribute electricity.

The nuclear plant operators will become large conglomerates which will take the place of OPEC.  But they will never have the same power as OPEC.  They will be producing a nearly infinite resource under strict government oversight. 

Is this inevitable?  As inevitable as the sun (a nuclear reactor) rising every morning.