I'm a geologist, so I won't delve too deep here but I wanted to post on a talk I heard last Thursday in Pittsburgh.  The speaker was Daniel Rice (check this link: http://business-journal.com/fracking-up-gas-driving-down-fuel-price...).

Fairly interesting, not a heck of a lot I hadn't heard before but some really good points on energy consumption in the US and the stagnate economy.

His main argument is the US economy will likely grow only ~2% over the next 10 years, and during that time period oil will likely raise to ~$150/barrel, creating fuel costs domestically of $4.50-5.00.  The point being that in previous decades as the price of oil went up, the US economy was doing well and therefore we could stomach higher costs.  But now with only marginal growth yet higher fuel (as China becomes the leading consumer, thus driving fuel costs even as the US stays relatively flat in terms of demand) the US is poised to take a beating from rising costs.

A point I hadn't seen before, he had some statistics that the US consumes 19million barrels of oil each day.  Of that 19, 12 go to making gasoline, and another 2 for jet fuel - 14 of 19million in transportation fuels.  He argues that green technologies (solar, wind, etc) won't have a drastic impact but that compressed natural gas cars/trucks COULD.  Since you can't put a wind turbine on a vehicle, and solar/electric cars would require MASSIVE overhaul of the auto-industry, vehicles could be more easily converted to CNG (as they are still internal combustion).

I do see the utility of encouraging more efficiency and less consumption in the household but to see ~75% of oil used goes to transportation was somewhat eye-opening.

Interesting points - thought I'd share!

Cheers,

-Area Man