Hi
In some Asian countries, the price of gasoline is only US$ 20 cents.
The price of biodiesel is US$ 40 cents. Perhaps in the future, someone will build superconductor undersea cable for sending electric power over logn distance.
There is also a recent innovation on getting energy from the bottom of the sea.
===================================================
The researchers found that the electrical potential of sediment on the sea floor differs from the electrical potential of the surrounding salt water, according to Leonard Tender, a co-author of the study from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Collecting power from that difference could supply energy for fuel cells for self-sustaining oceanographic equipment, he said.
Organic matter in sediment on the ocean floor ordinarily releases energy as it decays. In shallow waters (less than 1,000 meters, or 3,280 feet), that energy is concentrated just below the ocean floor. Energy for the fuel cell - like the voltage between opposite poles of a battery - comes from a reaction involving chemicals released from the buried sediment and the oxygen, according to Clare Reimers, a co-author of the paper from Oregon State University in Corvallis.
=================================================
The biggest unknown — and the one with the greatest potential impact — is the release of methane from a warming sea floor. The amount of methane in the sea floor is thought to be greater than that of all hydrocarbon gases stored in reservoirs on land. In fact, it has been claimed that “methane-laced ice crystals in the seafloor store more energy than all the world's fossil fuel reserves combined” (Erwin Suess, Scientific American, Nov 1999). The icy storage is within a compound called “methane clathrate”, also called “methane hydrate” (See glossary for more on gas hydrates). Methane hydrates form within smelly mud at depths of several hundred meters within water near freezing temperature below high-productivity regions in the oceans. They are unstable when warmed or depressurized and quickly begin to disintegrate when brought up from the seafloor. The importance of methane hydrates only emerged in the last twenty years or so. Their abundance suggests they may be a new untapped source of natural gas. Natural gas is relatively benign in terms of producing pollutants since methane has only consists one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, and burning it produces more water than carbon dioxide.
