Questions for energy "experts"

[Bizwah]

I've been hearing a lot about natural gas in the news. It's been said that NG burns cleaner than oil.

I'm not quite sure how that works. Is it like propane? Is it a liquid fuel? How difficult would it be to change our cars over? How difficult would it be to change our gas stations to pump NG? Is NG even a viable alternative?

I also went and visited the pickensplan.com site. Anyone have the scoop on this guy?

I like the idea of harnessing wind. It makes sense....His whole plan seems to make sense. He appears to be an "all the above" guy when it comes to energy. That's my stance as well.

But with any person's plan, there has to be a flip side. Before I support any person's ideas, I want to know what the drawbacks are.

Can anyone give me a scoop on this guy?

[yeahyeah]

Originally Posted by Bizwah

I've been hearing a lot about natural gas in the news. It's been said that NG burns cleaner than oil.

I'm not quite sure how that works. Is it like propane? Is it a liquid fuel? How difficult would it be to change our cars over? How difficult would it be to change our gas stations to pump NG? Is NG even a viable alternative?

I also went and visited the pickensplan.com site. Anyone have the scoop on this guy?

I like the idea of harnessing wind. It makes sense....His whole plan seems to make sense. He appears to be an "all the above" guy when it comes to energy. That's my stance as well.

But with any person's plan, there has to be a flip side. Before I support any person's ideas, I want to know what the drawbacks are.

Can anyone give me a scoop on this guy?

Yeah kinda..its mostly Methane..yeah its not that hard to convert vehicles..It burns alot cleaner and there is tons and tons of it that is actually vented off in the drilling process. Literally trillions of cubic feet.
The other stuff i dont know about man.

[VietCowboy]

Originally Posted by Bizwah

I've been hearing a lot about natural gas in the news. It's been said that NG burns cleaner than oil.

I'm not quite sure how that works. Is it like propane? Is it a liquid fuel? How difficult would it be to change our cars over? How difficult would it be to change our gas stations to pump NG? Is NG even a viable alternative?

I also went and visited the pickensplan.com site. Anyone have the scoop on this guy?

I like the idea of harnessing wind. It makes sense....His whole plan seems to make sense. He appears to be an "all the above" guy when it comes to energy. That's my stance as well.

But with any person's plan, there has to be a flip side. Before I support any person's ideas, I want to know what the drawbacks are.

Can anyone give me a scoop on this guy?

Honda's got a NG car, but very limited due to stations.

[ThaBigP]

From my understanding, NG vehicles have much less range simply as a factor of fuel density. NG is a gas (although compressed for such use), whereas gasoline and deisel are obviously liquid, so the same volume of the liquid fuels has much more energy stored in it.

As for wind, I heard a very interesting statistic that kinda throws cold water on the whole idea. The turbines cost more money than they recoup by producing electricity. Currently, it takes about 20 years or so to recover the cost of the turbines, but they must be replaced much sooner than that. Only government subsidies are making it a viable option. So in effect, we're footing the bill (through taxes) to pay for a technology that walks backwards in terms of return on material investment. Perhaps that will change in time, but the disparity is quite large.