government should intervene in the transition to alternative fuels

No. Yes, the market will take care of it. Currently, non-renewable sources, especially natural gas, is the cheapest form of energy according to the EPA (http://www.eia.gov...), and that won't change in the near future. Some renewable sources will catch up, but the majority will still be more expensive than non-renewable sources. Also if you take a look at the mill/kWh of different energy sources from 2002-2012 (http://www.eia.gov...), you can see that natural gas even declined in price over thise period, whereas all other mentioned resources, renewable and non-renewable, increased by up to 80%. Secondly, if the government should intervene, my question to you is how. Monetary, or by introducing new legislature? I'd like to remind you that if you want the government to assist renewable energy sources monetarily, the money has to come from somewhere; either from new taxes or cut away from other budget items (where I'd prefer the lesser option, gov is big enough already). Thirdly, you don't provide any sources for your claims. Therefore I have some questions regarding your very vague arguments: 1) "companies say they can make alternative biodiesel fuels for a dollar a gallon" -> where does this number come from? What does it include (only investment, or also operating / maintenance cost, or only variable costs)? 2) "alternative energy companies often must put operations on hold. why? because there's no demand" -> Well, according to the EPA the demand for renewable sources is rising and will continue to rise, whereas e.g. coal is projected to decline (http://www.eia.gov...). Again, I ask you to elaborate on your claim and show me your sources for that. Your argument that there's "no" demand is invalid. 3) "say a new biodiesel machine at a gas station costs fifty thousand" -> This is just the investment. You purely ignore the O&M costs. I could continue demading more sources, but altogether your arguments can't be judged as highly valueable if you only provide things you may know or may have heard/read somewhere without any source to prove your credibility. Fourth, let me remind you that Tesla's foudner, Elon Musk, recently released the patents of Tesla cars and thereby made the technology open source (http://www.teslamotors.com...). This can be an incentive for car companies to create their own electric cars, as they don't have to do the R&D anymore (which can reach hundreds of millions of dollars). In the following costs per car can decrease as the large manufacturers can produce the cars faster and have more experience in assembling them (whereas Tesla's USP was the technology and R&D). Thereby electric cars can get cheaper, meaning more people will buy them. Following that, the demand for electricity will rise whereas the demand for fossil fuels will fall. Whether the electricity comes from renewable or non-renewable sources is another question, but according to various sources (e.g. http://www.acore.org...), wind power will increase heavily, as well as solar power, geothermal, TPD and others. Last but not least: rather than allowing the government to intervene to increase renewable energy sources, the government should, and is already, stop to prefer non-renewable sources like oil. The DoD for example already plans to lower its reliance on oil and increase renewable energy consumption (http://energy.defense.gov...).