Energy Alternatives

There is today no energy shortage. The highly publicized energy crunch in the United States following the Arab Israeli 1973 war was artificial,Footnote1 and should a country be willing to pay prevailing prices, it can have as much energy as it wants. The energy equation is made-up of three factors: availability, reliability and price. The immediate problem is of price, and to a lesser extent of reliability. Energy can be said to be the basic input of any civilization; it was therefore natural that all nations were severely jolted when the cost of oil, a major energy source, quadrupled overnight. Despite the public impression, there is little real evidence that supplies to any oil-consumer nation were significantly reduced, to a level where it hurt, with the possible exception of Holland. Nonetheless, the question of reliability remains. The Western nations are generally reliant on overseas sources for some or most of their energy, and should there be any interruption of supplies, severe economic damage could result. This is one major reason for the search for alternative sources.