Speaking of how politics and energy overlap... Here is a "supercritical" way that the DoE could reduce natural gas usage significantly:
http://www.r744.com/knowledge/faq/files/ecocute_all.pdf Why aren't we doing this here, or even talking about it? Answer: the natural gas lobby is rich and powerful, but even more importantly - few American manufacturers could be competitive using US labor to build the units, and since we do not want to import them, and sent dollars to Asia - which would mean a net loss of our jobs, then this will probably never happen here.