Question

I have a project to do on a study of unrenewable and renewable resources. Does anybody know a good site to go on to find how much it cost to build, maintain, get, and keep fossil fuels?

Answer 1

To a very good approximation, the total cost of providing fossil fuels simply equals their price. That is, the price of providing a gallon of refined gasoline at my neighborhood gas station today, starting from exploration, through drilling, refining, transportation, overhead, government regulation and taxes, management, environmental remediation, et cetera and so forth is simply the price, which is about $4.50 per gallon.

That's what the free market does, you know. Price is a signal -- it tells you how much it costs to provide the resource.

Where you may have difficulty, however, is in picking that price apart. How MUCH of that $4.50 per gallon is the cost of drilling for the oil? How much is the cost to ship it across the ocean? How much is the cost to refine it, transport it, market it? How much is the healthcare costs of employees in the industry? How much is extracted by government for other purposes (building highways, government pensions, R&D)? There are all things you might want to know, if you are comparing one form of energy to another, particularly if you want to theorize about what a different form of energy would cost IF it had some of the characteristics of fossil fuel use (like a big infrastructure already in place).

Unfortunately, it's very hard to tease out the various components of a price, to know how much of the price of each gallon is this or that cost of supplying it. Many economists earn high salaries doing research into just this.

You might get a start at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (www.bea.gov), or the US Energy Information Administration (www.eia.gov). If you google "US energy statistics" you'll get many more sources.

Answer 2

http://www.waterpoweredcar.com
http://www.friendsoffreshandgreen.com/

Answer 3

Thanks guys