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Electricity generated today by nuclear costs less than 5c/kWh to generate. On shore wind power, when it's blowing, costs about 50% more. Offshore wind power, when it's blowing, costs about twice that of nuclear. These technologies are scalable, nuclear in big chunks, wind in small chunks. A few hundered acres of land, anywhere, can support thousands of MW of nuclear power generation. To generate 2000 MW (avg) from wind would require 3000 2MW onshore wind turbines, or 1000 6MW offshore turbines. On land, this would require more than 300,000 acres, an area roughly half the size of Rhode Island. This land must be in a relatively high wind ares, either a coastline or a ridgeline, at least if they are to provide power to the sections of the country where most of the demand exists - on the coasts.
This points out that relatively carbon neutral & oil-free electricity doesn't cost much more than current electricity to generate. Eliminating oil & natural gas from electricity generation MOSTLY affects the cost of peak-time generation. Likely you will see more utilities charging higher rates for peak time generation, to encourage conservation of generation capacity during high demand hours.
As for liquid fuel, the most efficient producers of new (vs. waste vegetable oil) algae oil can produce it at less than $50/bbl. If scaled to meet the current national demand for oil, less productive locations would have to be used, such that the marginal cost of production would be near, but not over $100/bbl - which means that all algae oil would sell at $100/bbl. Oil at $100/bbl corresponds to at the pump prices of less than $5/gal.
If peak hour electricity generation is provided by surplus nuclear capacity, the off-peak electricity could be economically used to provide stored, portable energy. At 1 cent a kWh and 10% efficiency, some sort of stored power could be manufactured $3.70 a gallon equivalent.
Again, the prices of electricity and energy may spike, mostly due to uncertainty, but also due to demand exceeding supply during the formation of 'new' energy capital. During this time, owners of land on ridgetops, coastlines, over uranium ore, and in the sunbelt will see a windfall gain in wealth.
The relative increase in the cost of energy and fuel will tend to decrease the utility of roads as transportation networks, slightly suppressing sprawl and giving a slight advantage to locally produced goods and services. However, because ocean shipping is actually very fuel efficient, this increase will only very slightly effect the relative price of importing goods. Currently shipping coal represents a very large proportion of rail-freight ton-miles. Eliminating these shipments increases the available supply of rail shipping, which coupled with rail's inherent fuel efficiency, should see the relative cost of rail freight drop in relation to the cost of road freight.
The prices of oil and gas will likely force us to start making many of these changes relatively soon. However, the price of coal will, unless we make a powerful political effort, will likely allow the more short-sighted and selfish among us to continue polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, heavy metals, and radioactive particles.
Eliminating the uncertainty will allow prices to adjust slowly, and allow people to alter their consumption patterns in a non-disruptive manner. I would suggest creating a tax on carbon pollution, and scheduling increases in it, such that the price of gasoline is raised by $1 over 10 years (in addition to market-driven price increases), and the price of coal-fired electricity is raised by $0.10/kWh over the same period.
Such an increase in price of carbon based energy would gradually make these forms of energy less and less competitive with alternative forms of energy, as well as financially encouraging conservation. The revenue from such a tax would raise $50-100 Billion a year - money that could be used to offset harmful taxes on labor, provide families with energy assistance, or other positive measures.
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