So, what if we also utilized solar and hydroelectric resources? I know solar panels don't last forever, and you can't have too many hydroelectric damns.
Anything else I'm forgetting? Is there a way to get power geothermally? I know you can heat your home like that but idk about making electricity.

The answer is nuclear.

They suffer from the same basic shortcomings as wind power- namely energy density. No "renewable" energy technology presently known, including stuff that's being tinkered with in the laboratory, has the ability to come anywhere close to either nuclear or fossil-fuel-based power generation, insofar as the ability to generate a large amount of power, continuously, within a relatively small and cost-effective footprint.

Don't get me wrong- I'm sure that if money (and land usage) were no object, that even given present-day technology we could probably build a sufficiently large number of solar / wind / geothermal / tidal / etc., generating stations to satisfy our demand for transportation energy, and probably put a significant dent into our overall power consumption demands as well.

But we're talking about money and land usage on an almost comical scale here. Beyond the fact that somebody always complains (and files federal lawsuits) every time any utility company proposes to build a wind farm / solar plant in their backyard (or on the spawning grounds of the endangered ring-tailed slug), consider the economic quandary- we're talking about amortized costs which are at least an order of magnitude higher than present-day values.

Hell, everybody in the US thought that western civilization was coming to end end when gasoline hit $4 per gallon. Short of a Mad-Max-style apocalypse, how do you propose to sell the public on the idea of $40 / gallon equivalent?


Yes, it surely is.

Unfortunately, the question was "Which emissions-free energy technology has been set back another 30 years by the recent Fukushima Incident?"

(Sidebar: as of 3 days ago, all reactors at Fuku are officially in a cold-shutdown state.)

ftfy

Answering my own question time.

I found some data in a FAQ from Windustry, a non-profit organization which "promotes progressive renewable energy solutions and empowers communities to develop and own wind energy as an environmentally sustainable asset."

They note that "The costs for a commercial scale wind turbine in 2007 ranged from $1.2 million to $2.6 million, per MW of nameplate capacity installed."

Since we're going to be buying in bulk, we'll take the lowest price ($1.2 million / MW). That puts our 1.5 MW turbines at a paltry $1.8 million each. Multiply by 375,728 and you have a total base cost of $676,310,400,000. To be honest, that's not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things. A little under 20% of the entire US Federal budget.

Of course, that's for turbines on land. What multiplier do you use for installing something in the middle of the ocean? 10x? 20x?

geothermal cars.

problem solved, your welcome.

You would think that if you bought 375k of them you'd get a slightly better deal. :x: