"Enough electric power for the entire country could be generated by covering about 9 percent of Nevada—a plot of land 100 miles on a side—with parabolic trough systems." You could build a couple more plants of the same size to generate hydrogen, and the United States would be completely energy self-sufficient. This is not advanced technology -- it is a bunch of mirrors. This map shows a 100 mile x 130 mile plot of land in Texas:







With two or three solar energy plants of this size, America becomes completely energy self-sufficient. And our carbon output would drop very close to zero.





With two or three solar energy plants of this size, America becomes completely energy self-sufficient. And our carbon output would drop very close to zero. "Concentrating solar power technologies currently offer the lowest-cost solar electricity for large-scale power generation (10 megawatt-electric and above). Current technologies cost $2–$3 per watt. This results in a cost of solar power of 9¢–12¢ per kilowatt-hour... Future advances are expected to allow solar power to be generated for 4¢–5¢ per kilowatt-hour in the next few decades."

Two weeks ago I ran three articles here that talked about "peak oil":The gist of these articles is simple: As oil gets more expensive, we will replace it with less-expensive technologies in a completely natural way. Therefore, peak oil will be a non-event.Then I started collecting a large quantity of material showing all of the different energy technologies that are currently being researched and deployed. You can find the material here:What you can see is that the United States can be completely energy self-sufficient within a decade. We simply need to make the decision to do it. We do not have to create any new technological magic. Here is one example that uses some of the simplest technology possible.The technology is called CSP (Concentrating Solar Power). And this technology is incredibly simple -- you use mirrors to reflect lots of sunlight at a single focal point. The mirrors can be arranged in a trough configuration, a dish configuration or a tower configuration. At the focal point, you use the heat of the sunlight to create steam, and use the steam to drive a steam turbine and electrical generator. This page provides a very nice, easy-to-understand overview of the concepts:There are two great quotes in this article:Clearly, if we make the decision to do so and put our minds to it, the United States can become energy self-sufficient in a decade or so. This problem is much, much simpler than putting a man on the moon , and we did that in about the same amount of time. The fact that we are not actively doing this already is sad In all likelihood we will never make that decision. What will happen instead is that normal economic forces will cause the transition to happen in a natural way. The cost of electricity and gasoline will rise as oil gets more expensive. The cost of solar electricity, nuclear power, wind energy, etc. will fall as technology advances and economies of scale kick in. There will come a point where companies find it quite profitable to build power plants using these other technologies rather than fossil fuels. So they will. Oil will come to play less and less of a role in our economy, and peak oil will be a non-event.See also Simulated oil meltdown shows U.S. economy's vulnerability