[Continuing his homage au Puter the Czar drops another screed on a topic near and dear to the Ghetto P’s heart. Energy. The Puter knows a lot about energy, actually, and now we’ll all wait with bated breath to see if he replies! Are you atingle? Yes? Freak. —ŒV]

Back even before the Czar of Muscovy was born, Nikola Tesla had hit upon the wicked idea for broadcast power, by which you send electricity over long distances without the use of wires.

The only two problems with it? Well, first, he evidently figured out how to do it, but thought the technology so absurdly self-obvious that he never wrote the procedure down and died thereafter. And of course, like most wireless technology, it’s pretty tough to capture the usage down so that your utility company can bill for it: one of the reasons that the air you breathe is one of the few things more or less untaxed on God’s brown earth.

Turns out, both problems may be solved. Peter Sage, the apparently-only-eighteen guy to the right (his biography says he founded an “anti-aging” company, so perhaps he’s well over 340) and his company Space Energy seems to have figured out a nifty way to do just that.

So get this. You pop a couple of satellites in orbit with big solar panels on them. No real leap in technology there: just keep them pointed at the sun. Then, with the electricity that produces (here comes the clever bit), you simply convert it a microwave beam and shoot a very weak and harmless pulse down to a big recollector on Earth. Actually, not too different from how satellite television works, really. But instead of getting the Logo network introducing your unattended kids to shrilly gay fetishes, you power up a crapload of houses with clean power.

For the first time, the Czar found a solar energy plan that actually makes sense, and uses technology that’s fairly proven. This Czar a lot of hopes for this company, which is currently building the first satellite of what one hopes would be many.

This is way better than the other Hollywood-level idiocy masking as “alternative energy” these days.

Wind power works, but is expensive to build and gobbles up crucial real estate…except in desolate areas where there is no need for power. Sadly, land-based solar power suffers from the same problem: the only place to put efficient fields of panels is where no one wants them. [And the transmission costs and en-route power losses render destroy any chance of profitably in getting them into most major cities. —ŒV]

Electric cars, of course, work reliably, run silent, and produce no terrible emissions for the entire fifty feet before they whirr to a golf-cart like stop, dead. Oh, and recharging them in your garage requires a heckuva lot of juice from your nasty coal-fired plants.

Hybrid technology makes cars partially electric, but there is a reason that Prius owners are dumping them to the point that there’s a glut of them on the market: the battery replacement costs (needed after about 3,000 recharge cycles) are exorbitantly expensive. Did you think Toyota, selling them at an initial loss, was going to ignore the chance to recoup the investment with interest? Pretty soon, the only folks who can afford these cars will be the megamillionaire A-list celebs insisting you drive them. [Give away the razor, make money on the blades.]

Hydrogen, many bet, will be the next salvation: its only emission is pure water. That is, if you discount the horrific expense of producing pure hydrogen which absolutely hates to stay at ground level. That is, of course, why the Germans filled the Hindenberg with it. There is, of course, a reason why they stopped.

But more pragmatically, there are only two ways to get hydrogen into a car. One is to compress it so enough of it fits into a standard-size car; however, the weight of tanks make it less efficient than gasoline (about 5 mpg). The second method is to use solid hydrogen, which is pretty much a perfect solution aside from the nagging issue of it never having being invented. Current hydrogen manufacturing methods are greener than gasoline refining, except that there are only a handful of places that do it. Increase production to match the number of cars in the US that would need it, and the electrolysis and steam reforming methods wind up using more energy than gasoline! [GorT, where’s my $&#!ing cold-fusion reactor in my car? I want to have an accident where my only hazard from the fuel supply is that I end up talking three octaves higher from the cloud of helium. —ŒV]

Geothermal power, like hydrodynamic power, suffers a bit in that the good sources have already been taken: by spas, national parks, or angry, lava-spewing volcanoes. Yeah, you could dig yourself a new, vastly safer source, but if you have a drill that reliably goes ten miles down, you’re already using it to drill for oil and making a significantly bigger and faster profit.

Nuclear power is an easy alternative that could be used today to solve most of the world energy needs with almost zero pollution or foul emissions. However, the liberal environmentalists did an excellent smear job in the 1970s and 1980s that no one wants to suggest building a facility in your neighborhood. Not because they believe there is a real risk of a Soviet-style Chernobyl (the Soviets understood nuclear technology as well as they understood economics, military leadership, and fashion), but because it would be a confession that they were dead wrong on another science and technology issue. [NUCLEAR $&#!ING POWER! NUCLEAR $&#!ING POWER! NUCLEAR $&#!ING POWER! NUCLEAR $&#!ING POWER! —ŒV]

So there is something delightfully middle-fingerish about a handful of entrepreneurs using business to solve a future world problem. The Czar wishes them a lot of luck: soon, the Hollywoodies will come flying out of Mastro’s Steakhouse to scare the world away from the dangers of your space-based radiation beams giving children cancer, pausing only to slip into the nearest tanning bed for a good hourlong soak.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.