Commodity Trends

Although we don’t like to admit it,  Uranium is a big part of the energy picture with roughly 16% of the world’s electricity coming from nuclear power. In the U.S. it is almost the same at 19%, with 37% coming from coal, 30% from Natural Gas, 7% from hydro-power, and only 5% from other renewable sources including 3.46% from Wind, 1.42% from biomass, 0.41% from geothermal and only 0.11% from Solar. So Solar power would have to increase by 2000% to replace Uranium. This is not from some perverse desire by the electric companies but simply because the economics of nuclear power has been favorable with cheap Uranium and expensive solar panels. But with the advent of fracking Natural Gas is becoming cheaper in the U.S. while as we will see in this article Uranium will become more expensive shortly. Another factor playing against Solar power is the ability for decentralization as each homeowner could produce their own power but this would involve homeowners taking the responsibility for their own future and naturally this is not in the power company’s best interest, so it has been downplayed as an option.