The Future of Renewable Energy

Of course, we all want to concentrate our efforts on the technologies that will bring us clean energy within the foreseeable future. The most mature of these, PV and wind in particular, continue to make progress in terms of improvements in efficiency and reductions in cost – and these trends can be predicted to continue as efforts scale up and more corporate interests set enormous R&D teams to the task. What’s more, there are a dozen or so less mature technologies, e.g., solar thermal/CSP, coming along right on their heels.

But I think it’s reasonable idea to ask ourselves where all this is going—especially in light of the fact that advanced physics continua es to learn more about the vast untapped energy in the universe. Chief among these conversations in the public discourse is cold fusion, which, for the last 20 years, has been the Holy Grail of energy scientists. Controversial as the subject may be, I believe that cold fusion is legitimate science, and that the work displayed at the organization to study Low Energy Nuclear Reactions will eventually prove fruitful.

Someone wrote me the other day, suggesting that everyone working on wind and solar was wasting their time, and that "within a decade, these devices would be so ubiquitous and inexpensive that we’d all have cold fusion hand warmers in our pockets." This, of course, is ridiculous, but I urge readers to learn more about this nonetheless.

In particular, you may want to check out the work of Dr. George Miley, distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, recipient of the prestigious Edward Teller Medal from the American Nuclear Society and the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Award in Fusion Technology. Apparently, Dr. Miley has pioneered an innovative approach generating useful energy from fusion.

Dr. Miley’s technology is essentially "warm fusion," operating at temperatures of 900C. According to what I’ve read, virtually all the major elements of the technology have been tested both experimentally and theoretically, so that with a relatively modest set of technology integrations and engineering experiments, fusion energy can be demonstrated within 5 years, if they can get the funding in place.

If anyone wishes to know more about this, please let me know and I’ll put you in touch.

- Craig Shields is editor of 2GreenEnergy.com, and author of Renewable Energy -- Facts and Fastasies (published by Clean Energy Press, 2010)