Ways to solve our energy problems long term

U.S. energy consumption
Rather than waiting for the government to solve your energy problems (if they ever will), maybe it's time to solve your own energy problems. Maybe everyone cannot do this right now but if enough of us individually take responsibility it sets an example for all others and gets them to start thinking in this direction as well.

First of all, where I live in California, for now, electricity isn't the biggest problem. Gas and diesel prices are the biggest single problem(gas was $4.25 a gallon last time I bought it) because utility companies primarily use natural gas to heat water to make steam to generate electricity. Since natural gas prices are low and might even stay low electricity (at least for now isn't the problem like it was around 2000 when our state got into financial trouble paying state citizens utility bills when they became ridiculous for a while.

For now, that problem has gone away(at least for now).
So right now the biggest problem is gas and diesel. There are a few ways to handle this problem for those who have enough money to do it. For example, my god Daughter's boyfriend and she bought his parents Prius which gets between 40 to 70 miles per gallon and then they kept her car which is also a high mileage car so they have two cars for work.

But I'm thinking about people who can afford to set up new systems like myself. For example, I've toyed with the idea of going off the grid by buying a fuel cell electrical generation system like Google uses in Silicon Valley because putting solar cells on my roof isn't cost effective because living so near the coast there is a lot of clouds off the ocean and fog, especially during the summers here(Mark Twain: The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco). So, even though I might like solar cells on my roof it just isn't practical enough year around. However, like I said, electricity at least right now isn't the biggest problem it is gas and diesel.

I've thought about buying a  Zap truck or car that is all electric but when I actually looked closer at this type of vehicle it is more suited to a business or company than most private individuals. Also, the problem I have with most electric vehicles is that I don't trust their electrical corona shielding. In other words, because of my father dying from electrical coronas from working around coronas from high voltage generation of power I'm very suspicious of even something like  Prius, even though my God Daughter drives one and my cousin's wife drives a Lexus hybrid as well. When I've told my cousin and his wife about my concerns their response is, "Well. How long do we expect to live anyway? And for now at least we are burning less fossil fuels and keeping down the price of gas for our kids." In one way that is very noble of them.

So, I guess what I'm saying here is energy conservation is an individual effort. Only by each person trying to save both themselves money and trying to reduce fossil fuel consumption in order to keep prices as low as possible for everyone do we all economically survive here in the U.S.

In the meantime all of our individual plans need to be directed away from fossil fuels(gas and diesel) towards something both individually as well as collectively sustainable. (Gas and diesel prices inevitably will continue to rise in fits and spurts until they are priced right out of the market completely. And this actually is a good thing because it will allow us to convert to electrical vehicles (hopefully with internal lead shielding to prevent cancer of the occupants from coronas caused by large generators and large electrical motors). The nice thing about electricity is that it can be generated by solar, wind, natural gas, rivers, lakes, streams, geothermal, waves, or gas or diesel and maybe a few other things. So, because of this people are slowly moving towards all electric or almost all electric vehicles on air, land and sea as a result. This is inevitable unless some other form of useful engine is devised. So, each of our individual plans will aid the whole world to a much more economical and survivable energy future.