Future energy

OK everybody knows that the oil and gas will run out one day and sure as hell the greens won't want that dirty messy smelly coal. So what is the answer from our greens, environmentalists, politicians? Electricity.

And of course there are super green ways of making it - wind farms, tidal barrages (although they will fuck the ducks), nuclear, ideally fusion because it creates little nasty waste. But electricity unlike carbon based fuel is notoriously difficult to store when on the move.

Sure we can use the old tricks like keeping the water behind a tidal barrage and only using it when demand warrants it. And yes we can pump water to the top of the hill at low demand and let it down again later. The latter always seemed wasteful to me.

But if it has to be portable, then as far as I can see it has to be batteries. (Yes I know you can use capacitors but they are for things of low energy for a small amount of time such as torches.) Even batteries have limited storage density compared to fossil fuels and batteries fade over time. Yes, so do internal combustion engines but I'd like to meet the battery that could take so much punishment over time and work in such a wide range of temperatures.

And then there is the problem of disposal. Batteries contain an array of quite noxious substances which are complex to separate and recover. Of course we could simply throw them away but in time that would cause more pollution and never forget we would be chucking away another non-renewable resource.

I don't know the answers but for transportation we might focus on liquid hydrogen engines. We are years away from them being practical and realistic. What is more, hydrogen is currently produced by electrolysis so that's more electricity consumption from various sources. Best we accelerate the development of fusion which I understand will produce more energy than it consumes. But fusions is years away from being a practical solution.

Anyone got any brighter ideas?