Energy Revolution Needed — Can Anyone Deliver LENR to the Masses?

As we look at the current volatility in energy markets where a spike in oil prices is threatening to put even more negative pressure on an already precarious world economy, it is clear that the world is ripe for a better energy solution. While staggering technological advances have taken place over recent years and decades in many industries, the energy industry has remained relatively unchanged.

While there are exceptions (e.g. nuclear fission, hydroelectric), we are still largely dependent on the burning of fossil fuels for our heating, electricity and transportation, and so long as that is the case we are going to be at the mercy of market forces that vary according to such things as geopolitical tensions, availability and discovery raw material reserves, costs of extraction and refining, etc. Energy prices rise and fall, but rising seems to be the long-term trend — and huge price spikes are possible in the face of international crises in energy producing regions such as the Middle East.

None of what I have said is news to anyone — it’s simply the reality of world economics, and to many it’s just the way things are, a situation that can’t be changed and something we must learn to live with, even if that means wars and international tensions, higher prices for goods and lower standards of living worldwide.

This would be the depressing reality if there were not the possibilities of better energy technologies on the horizon, and we are seeing great promise in the field of LENR/cold fusion. Certainly more attention is being paid to it now than at any time since it first burst on the scene in 1989, before rapidly falling out of favor. When you study the research that has been done in this area dispassionately, there seems to be firm evidence that it is possible to produce large amounts of excess heat from certain types of electrochemical reactions — heat that cannot be explained in terms of a normal chemical reaction — and it is possible now to conceive of LENR as a potential rival to fossil fuels.

The promise of LENR, however, does not amount to much if it stays in the realm of small-scale experiments in the laboratory environment. For LENR, or any new energy technology for that matter, to be of much use to the human race, it has to have a practical application, and ultimately this means producing energy technology on an industrial scale — and in today’s economic environment we really could benefit from seeing a new technology emerge as quickly as possible. This, of course, takes financial, engineering and manufacturing resources.

The goal of rapid production and proliferation of useful LENR technology at low cost is the stated goal of Andrea Rossi and Leonardo Corporation. Rossi is not shy in proclaiming that he wants to see a revolution happen, and it appears that he is fully committed to doing all in his power to make that a reality. There are also other players in this field — Defkalion, NASA, JET Energy, and others all believe they have discovered new and better ways to produce energy.
Whether anyone succeeds in their goals remains to be seen, but a heroic effort is needed by someone who has the vision, tenacity and ability to bring a much-needed improved energy technology to the masses.