The future of energy distribution and production in the west

Wired Magazine has an interesting article on energy distribution and production in the west: The Energy Web. A couple of quotes to give you a taster: “The current regime in Washington believes that the tree-huggers can go be virtuous and make sacrifices while real men go out and build more pipelines,” [Electric Power Research Institute] spokesperson Brent Barker observes.” and “If you add up the horsepower of all the machines and engines in US factories, businesses, farms, power plants, mines, ships, aircraft, railroads, and automobiles,” [EPRI’s] Barker says, “you find that 95 percent of the power capacity in our country resides in automobiles, with only about 2 percent in electric power plants.”
The last observation by Barker is particularly interesting. Consider a future where all cars run clean fuel cell engines and can be plugged into your house or office to take part in supplying required energy. Suddenly there is no power shortage. The energy still has to be produced somewhere, but that is where OTEC power comes in.