Looking For A Career

Try alternative energies.

Last week Bush called for a 20% reduction in gasoline consumption and he also visited an ethanol plant. Whenever the price of gas takes a serious turn North, people start to talk about alternative energies. The difference this time is that the science is here, the price is right and for the first time the people are ready to accept change. Currently the changes, at the consumer level are minimal, a new pump at the local station and slight adjustments to the engines. In Europe bio-fuel blends have been common for years and the trucking industry have already been converted.

Behind the scenes the ethanol industry has been busy, so busy that the price of corn has almost doubled since June. The infrastructure to deliver the product isn’t available yet, but with a huge supply of product the businesses that put in the pumps and produce the parts required for existing autos to run on the blend will be covered up with business.

Now the good part. Ethanol is only the tip of the alternative energy mountain. According to the Christian Science Monitor’s article, Greener, cleaner ... and competitive?, in 18 short years, 25 % of our nations energy supply will be generated from renewable sources such as wind, solar, bio-fuels. The real difference, in the way we drive, will come from hydrogen fuel cells. Since the production of ethanol is not energy efficient, hydrogen fuel cells is thought to be the future for automobiles with the ethanol craze just a stop-gap measure in the fight against foreign oil imports.

The entire spectrum of energy/power production will change within 20 years and there will be many interesting and fulfilling careers created in these fields.

“There is an emerging consensus that we need to enter a rapid transition to clean energy technology," Reid Detchon, executive director of the Energy Future Coalition, a nonprofit energy advocacy group that requested the RAND study. "For years there has been this myth of an expensive and painful transition. This report helps knock that down."