For many years OPEC kept oil prices down in order to discourage the development and use of fuels other than oil. Cheap oil made coal, natural gas, ethanol, solar, and wind power either uneconomical or unattractive for other reasons.
Recently OPEC has allowed world oil prices to rise to levels where alternative fuel technologies begin to become attractive. I wonder...do you suppose they think the laws of economics have been repealed? As if....
As noted below in yesterday's posting, efforts to turn coal to liquid fuels become attractive at current oil prices. High oil prices will also make less cost-prohibitive technologies like using renewable resources to generate electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water, creating a non-polluting hydrogen fuel.
At current prices Brazil has reached energy independence, using ethanol made from sugar cane. I wonder what form the movement will take in the United States?
