“Establish energy independence. This includes coal to oil conversion.”
Quite frankly, shouldn’t this be the other way around?
Not only should we reverse the “war on coal”, we should begin pushing coal into a GREATER role in the country’s energy future.
Coal is our most abundant fossil-fuel resource. We should be building MORE coal-fired plants, and begin re-converting power plants (that were once coal-fired but have since been converted to oil or natural gas) BACK TO coal.
We have become more and more dependent on foreign petroleum, and I doubt the USA could ever become “energy independent”. We must face the reality that we will always need to import petroleum, however, we can make efforts to lower the total amount we need to buy.
One way to do so is to begin apportioning those fossil fuel resources we have more wisely. I don’t consider burning oil to produce electricity “wise” when we could burn coal for that purpose instead, and use the petroleum we do have available for different applications (such as vehicle power, lubricants, plastics, and other related industrial processes where petroleum is absolutely necessary.
Further, I don’t consider it “wise use” to heat homes with oil, when other alternatives are available. No, I don’t think we’re going to see many “oil-to-coal” home heating conversions, nor would I advocate them. But since we have expanding reserves of natural gas, I -could- foresee infrastructure improvements to make gas more available for home heating. Water-based geothermal heating is more expensive (by roughly a factor of 2x) than “old-style” heating/air conditioning designs, but offers all kinds of advantages once installed. Here’s one area where tax credits and rebates promote building decisions that are wise for long-term energy strategies, and should be encouraged.
Other posters have suggested a top priority of the Romney administration should be restoring America to a state of “energy health”. I agree….
First steps:
- End the war on coal
- Promote coal instead
- Build the Keystone pipeline and put more pipelines “into the construction pipeline”!