Can alternative energy survive in a free market?

[HigherVision]

[ILUVRP]

i guess its time to kick this dead horse again.

http://321energy.com/editorials/engd...ahl031712.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-...b_1346035.html

i know many will not agree , saying this is a free market , but at least read these links this weekend .

[presence]

I heat my home on wood, it costs me about 1/3 of what my neighbors, that heat with propane, pay.

The guy across the street runs his dodge 2500 back and forth to work every day on waste veggie oil; he's paying under a buck a gallon; filters it in his garage and runs it without removing the glycerin... been doing it for 5 years... he mixes w/ diesel in the winter months. His cummins smells like french fries!

A friend of mine is distributing Heatilator pellet stoves, he also resells hardwood pellets by the pallet ton. He says its a good supplemental income for him. The year he started... he bought and installed his own stove and enough pellets for the year for less than the cost of heating with natural gas for a winter.

I have another friend that is a corn and hay farmer. He burns his corn stalks and moldy hay to heat his home in a modified biomass gasification boiler.

I'm looking at running a waste oil burner to reprocess the "waste of the waste" from my neighbors veggie oil truck. I'm going to use it for supplemental heat and hot water.

I also have built and installed 5 passive solar hot water systems on the cheap for friends/customers; good side work.

-----------------

The future of the alternative energy market is in small scale personal energy sources; and it certainly is and will continue to thrive.

presence

[ILUVRP]

great post , i had a good friend in Mn that had a corn burning stove , he saved a lot of money , that was when corn was about $2.25/bu , now corn is about $6.65/bu , i don't know if its a push or not.

before i joined the military in the 50's i worked on farms , the farmers used nat gas on their cars/trucks/tractors/combines ,worked great.

[klamath]

great post , i had a good friend in Mn that had a corn burning stove , he saved a lot of money , that was when corn was about $2.25/bu , now corn is about $6.65/bu , i don't know if its a push or not.

before i joined the military in the 50's i worked on farms , the farmers used nat gas on their cars/trucks/tractors/combines ,worked great.

Did he? Corn is one of the worst nitrogen depleting crops out there. How much money did he spend on fertilizer on his fields after that?

[ILUVRP]

thats why farmers switch crops every year , corn to soybeans , then back to corn the next year. every now and then put in winter wheat.