I am not a resource investor, by any account I am not much of an investor at all, unfortunately. But, there are investors out there who concentrate on our earth's resources. An advisor on the site Resource Investor gave his viewpoints on the technologies and resources required to make the President's talking points a reality. Here they are in condensed form:

• Coal fired power plant technology and materials
• Processes for extracting metals from coal ash
• Processes for producing ethanol from non food agricultural products
• Thorium mining
• Thorium fueled nuclear power plants
• Technology to safely switch existing uranium fuelled nuclear power plants to thorium fuelled operation
• Lithium extraction, mining and production
• Large scale Lithium ion battery technology
• Fuel cell technology that substitutes basic metals for platinum group metals
• Hydrogen production and distribution technology

The writer, Jack Lifton, gives his reasons for the above at this link, and seems to make some sense. At least, he seems to know what he is talking about on the resources he speaks of, I make no judgments on any opinions of the State of the Union or the President's speach.

I can say, though, that I would like to see other forms of battery technology in addition to lithium-based technology investigated as well. Just because that is what seems best here and now does not mean that it will seem like the best in five years. Think back five years and you'll remember nickel-metal-hydride technology as being the new best choice from nickel-cadmium, and before that, lead-acid was much more common. What's next? Ultracapacitors? Hybrid chemical batteries and ultracaps? Dunno... hope to find out soon, though!

[Source: Jack Lifton / Resource Investor]