The facts are very simple and can be found on the Energy Information Administration web site.
Obama is 100% right on this issue and McCain is just not clear. We can't drill out of our way out of this problem and building 45 (or 145) nuclear plants will do nothing about our oil dependency.
First some basic facts:
- Almost all of our petroleum consumption goes to transportation. The only way we can get our dependency down is using less in our cars.
- We import about 2/3 of our oil and about half of that comes from OPEC countries. Most of the rest comes from Canada and Mexico.
- Most of our other energy consumption is directed toward heating and electricity, where we use very little oil.
- About half of electricity generation comes from coal and 20% from nuclear. We have practially limitless supplies of both, so the main issue is environment not availability. We have enough energy for electricity generation, it's just dirty.
- About 20% of electricity generation comes from natural gas, which can also be used for transportation (hence, the Pickens plan - he can make money on windmills and natural gas).
So with regards to energy, we have two separate issues: Oil Dependence and Environment.
Oil Dependence: Once you understand the facts above and use a little bit of arithmetic, the solution becomes clear. If we had 100% hybrid cars we would use half the oil and only have to import 30%. We could satisfy our oil demand from our own production plus Mexico and Canada (roughly, we also import from countries like Norway and UK). I'm pretty sure that's where Obama gets his timeline of ten years and why he keeps mentioning Detroit. It makes sense.
Plug-in hybrids and hydrogen cars would improve the picture even more, but they would require electricity production which at the moment is a very dirty business.
None of this means that we wouldn't import from OPEC or Venuzeula, just that we wouldn't have to. Besides, if we cut our oil consuption by half oil would be dirt cheap anyway. Even more so when you factor in that car manufacturers have big incentives to build the same cars everywhere so the rest of the world would consume less oil as well.
Environment: This is a far bigger problem, mainly because coal is so plentiful and so cheap. Nuclear has it's own environmental issues, but wouldn't polute the atmosphere. Natural gas is clean, but we have a limited supply. Renewables only make up about 4% of electricity production, so it won't be a big part of the picture any time soon. We might be able to get that up to 20% in ten years, which would be great, but expensive.
The only way out of the problem is clean coal. The best hope is Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). The basic idea is that you capture the carbon and store it someplace (i.e. underground). The problem is that this technology doesn't exist yet.
So Obama's plan makes a lot of sense, and we can really ween ourself off oof foriegn oil in ten years, although it will be difficult. 100% hybrid penetration in ten years is a VERY agressive goal, they currently amount to about 5% of new car sales.
The environment is a much more difficult issue because we don't have the technology yet to solve the problem. His idea for an energy version of the NIH is a good one, but doesn't guarantee results.
I hope this is helpful:-))