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"After the second OPEC oil embargo, we flirted with many alternate technologies during the Carter years, but once OPEC's back was broken as an effective price fixing force, those initiatives died away, even when they worked and made sense," he said.
Since cheap, plentiful oil is a thing of the past, one solution may lie in coal-based fuels. "We clearly have more coal than oil," Barnett said.
Change Takes Time
The switch to coal-based fuels, if it ever comes, will require a monumental paradigm shift in the energy industry.
Barnett doesn't think a switch to coal based fuels will happen commercially until the country is faced with a stable price of five dollars per gallon gas and then only if coal gas could provide the same BTU power at a stable price of about three dollars a gallon.
"It would take that kind of cost differential to drive infrastructure, and regulatory reform," he said.
The bigger issue pertains to the infrastructure—getting coal based fuel into a parallel distribution with petro fuels, assuming the oil-based and coal-based fuels couldn't be mixed for technological or regulatory reasons.
"This will be hugely expensive, at least at first and the government will likely have to fund that," Barnett said.
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