Originally Posted by
genec
So instead you'd prefer we "ruin landscapes" by scraping oil out of tar sands, or fracking, which ruins ground water supplies... right. What happens when that runs out... it is not renewable.
Are you proposing that electricity replace "scraping oil out of tar sands, or fracking"?
As [MENTION=250609]asmac[/MENTION] said perfectly, electricity is simply a means of transferring energy. The only way that you could 'capture' electricity is maybe in a superconducting loop.
You could also consider a capacitor 'stored' electricity. What we should be talking about are the stable sources of energy that we actually harvest to generate electricity or shaft power.
I could use my petrol engine to run a generator to generate electricity to then feed a motor to generate shaft power, but it would probably be more efficient to simply use the petrol engine's shaft power. Of course, a massive turbine at a power plant is probably more efficient than a 3-liter automobile engine at burning fossil fuels.