Suddenly everyone is talking about conserving energy. It reminds me of the first time around, in the 1970s, following the OPEC oil embargo. I had a three-ring binder full of energy saving tips put out by the Administration. Lowering thermostats at night. President Carter called conservation the “moral equivalent of war.” He wore sweaters. He put solar collectors on the roof of the White House. He created tax breaks for insulating your home. He led by example.
The leadership this time around is coming not from the White House or Congress, both of whom could go a long way toward relieving our energy problems by simply raising mile-per-gallon standards. Nope. This time, it’s coming fromt the people, from the states. California makes stringent MPG standards. New York investing in creative ways of making bio fuels – ethanol – not from corn, but from willow trees. Believe it or not, a willow tree will grow 30 feet in just 3 years. Harvest it, chip it, and turn it into alcohol and you have a much more efficient way of making ethanol.
Kansas is seeking to become a leader in wind energy, investing in large, new wind turbine farms. Texas planning to build the country’s biggest, sitting offshore in the Gulf.
Even Wall Street is getting into the act, with alternative fuel stocks now hot, and the “street” investing in green technologies.
What’s happening in your neck of the woods?
Two projects I know of in Arizona are:
1) The 1 MW Saguaro Solar Generating Station (operational in Dec 2005), which is a solar thermal parabolic trough system. I was impressed with these systems when I first saw one nearly 20 years ago, but, this one seems kind of lame when you consider a single wind turbine does 1 MW.
2) The 15 MW Steel Park Wind Farm to be built near Kingman, AZ.
I expected to see more homeowners with solar panels in the Phoenix area by now, but I do not. Maybe when thin-film solar cells hit the market (see Nanosolar).
Electric utilities in Arizona have been mandated to generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2025. This mandate pales in comparison to the mandates of the neighboring states. Hopefully, homeowners will be empowered to take control, and no longer need much from the electric utilities, if it’s going to take that long.
Most of the utility scale projects that I am aware of involve foreign corporations. However, Southwest Windpower of Flagstaff is the world’s largest producer of small wind generators.
i went to an electric car club meeting a long time ago. there were officials there where their only concern was how road tax would be collected. not that hybrids cannot be plugged in to recharge the batteries. this is why many believe GM’s electric car were taken away….political pressure.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
I wrote this in response to last weeks show on Electric Cars and the Fuel Crises but there was no heading for it so it seemed appropriate to add it to the Red White and Green Thread since that post noted President Carter’s “vision” in wearing sweaters while cancelling funding for the EPA Oil Shale Pilot Plant Project of his predecessors.
Dear Ira:
Yours is one of the better shows on NPR because it’s unusually honest and fair in its presentation of any subject. Even though you ask insightful probing questions of your guests you are at their mercy so to speak as to how they respond. This is especially true when your guest may be championing his or her particular project such as an electric car. While their answers may be accurate with regard to their project, often times the response is misleading because it’s a microcosm response in a macrocosm environment.
The responses to your questions on the electric car are a great illustration of the phenomena. The questions were probing and the replies accurate about electric cars but in the end both misleading because the over all subject, supplies of oil and gasoline in particular were ignored. Your electric car show reminded me of the three blind men describing an elephant where on thought it was a snake because he could only feel the trunk and not the whole elephant and so on. No solution to the gasoline crises can be discussed without a frank and honest review of the macro economics of the supply of fossil fuels and the business/political issues affecting the decisions affecting which fuel sources is being selected by our politicians.
For example, electric and hybrid cars have some significant advantages over the internal combustion engine alone such as being able to improve mileage by recapturing some of the energy used to accelerate the mass of the car by using the electric motor as a generator during braking. It’s also true that an electric motor will not emit the air pollution an IC engine does. It’s also true that battery technology has advanced greatly making them better and less expensive. It’s also true that the new batteries allow electric cars to be plugged in overnight to recharge and with 100 miles between charges these generally small electric and hybrid cars are suitable for a single person or two to commute to work.
But these answers did no consider the macro issues. For instance the rise of the new electric and hybrid cars is being driven by the high cost of gasoline which is in itself subject to issue of insufficient refining capacity [no new refineries in the last 10-20 years because of the not in my backyard syndrome] and general availability of crude oil which is further broken down to availability of grades of crude oil that can be easily refined in existing refineries. Skipping the refinery and availability of crude issues because while macro issues they don’t really deal with the issue of availability of foreign oil.
Foreign Oil is therefore the macro issue that must be dealt with before looking at forms of transportation. Actually, the overall macro question is “are there alternative fossil fuels that can be used to eliminate dependence on foreign oil”. The simple answer to that question is “no we are not and if we did the electric car debate would be superfluous”.
Moving back to the electric car claims and putting them in context of the macro issue lets look at the claimed benefits. The fuel efficiency can be improved because the electric motor can be used as a generator when stopping. Some IC cars in Germany are currently being supplied without an alternator greatly reducing the load on the engine and improving mileage. They accomplish this in the same manner as the electric cars. The starter is also the generator on these IC cars. Like the electric car the technology of IC cars continues to improve. There is no reason that a two seater IC commuter car getting 50 or 75 mpg can not be produced that would be equivalent to the small electric commuter car in terms of the cost of fuel to get back and forth to work which is the premises of the electric car answer to one of your questions. Frankly, that IC commuter car would be more efficient, less polluting and less costly in terms of operating cost per mile than the electric car.
How can this possibly be? Easy, the electric car doesn’t emit as much pollution on the highway but that electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels, either coal or natural gas. The claims against coal burning is that its polluting but technology exists to eliminate all coal burning pollution other than CO2 but our government has chosen not to enforce existing EPA laws or make them more stringent. The efficiency of turning fossil fuels into electricity was left out of the equation by your electric car advocate when he claimed that most of the energy developed in an IC engine is used to run the engine. When fossil fuels are burned to make electricity there is a loss because a lot of the energy produced is used to run the generating equipment and in transmission line losses as well as the purely mechanical loss of energy in the burning process that produces hot flue gases that waste energy.
Batteries are a pollutant due to the materials of construction and can not be disposed o in ordinary landfills. Imagine the pollution levels if all cars in the US were electric. There would have to be a way to recycle the batteries. That would also use energy. The energy equation for IC cars and electric or hybrid cars must start at the production of the #6 crude used in electric utility boilers and back to light sweet Texas Crude or Brent Sea Crude used to produce gasoline. The macro issue must include a look at the sources of these two fuels. Where they come from and what the political cost is to obtain them. If we really wanted an efficient commuter car and considered all the costs a small two seat IC car would come out on top in every way.
I say political cost because we really have to add in the dollar cost to fight two Gulf Oil Wars to the cost per gallon of foreign oil. If we didn’t have the need to use foreign oil would we have fought these wars at great expense in dollars and American lives? A second political issue is that our politicians have chosen to support the automakers over efficient rail commuter traffic. If you really want efficiency, reduction of foreign oil dependence, we need a national policy to encourage or mandate efficient short haul commuter rail lines. Commuter rail can move people the 100 miles more efficiently than any electric or hybrid car. Our politicians are too busy making sure what is good for General Motors is good for the US. Unfortunately lack of vision and the cojones to implement it on the part of our politicians who are too busy being elected and accepting PAC money from automakers and other business over the years to have the vision needed to make this country great. Lack of vision combined with the arrogance of the statement, what’s good for GM is good for the US” are no longer valid.
The other issue not covered in the electric car debate was “what to do with the millions of IC cars on the roads that low income people own and can not afford to trade in on expensive electric cars that only go 100 miles on a charge. Heck many of these people can’t afford their current electric utilities now. Only the affluent will and can buy hybrid cars and electric cars and by the time they filter down to the masses, the battery pollution problem will be apparent. It’s a lose/lose situation for the low income masses or even the slipping middle class. Lack of vision?
Moving on to other related issues, alternative renewable fuels we are told we have to switch from MBTE because it pollutes to ethanol which does not. It did in 1986 but since 1996 all fuel tanks have double walls with sensors inside so MBTE or gasoline can not pollute ground water. Ethanol may burn cleaner than MBTE as an oxidizer or octane booster, but it will pollute our ground water far more than MBTE ever did or could because of the massive amounts of petro-chemical based fertilizer and herbicides, fungicides and bug killer that must be used to grow the corn. This fertilizer will run off to our streams, rivers and ponds in states that already have some of the most polluted water from the existing agricultural run off.
Next to keep the farmers happy, who still cant sell their agricultural products in the world despite the claims that a free trade economy, NAFT, CAFTA and a lot of other ideas that have not worked, our politicians give out large subsidies at the state and federal levels to produce grain ethanol, claiming that it’s a renewable resource that will lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.
Producing Ethanol from corn uses 29% more energy than the energy contained in the ethanol, requires state and federal subsidies and increases already serious groundwater pollution from the extra petrochemical fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides. Automotive grain ethanol production actually increases foreign oil dependence; compounded 29% per year while increasing our groundwater pollution at an equally massive rate. Each year just to stay even they would have to produce 29% more corn until there was not a spot of ground without corn growing on it just to stay even. Actually there is insufficient arable land to grow even a fraction of our ethanol need in the first place and ethanol from sugar is a more efficient process thought still not a solution.
On the other hand, there is more oil in Montana oil shale than Saudi Arabia and perhaps a few other countries thrown in for good measure. Lacking vision President Carter killed funding for the EPA oil shale pilot process that would have virtually removed dependence on foreign oil and insured a steady gasoline supply with stable prices for the next 100 years. Carter said it cost more than conventional oil, which was true then; but not now or the future. If the cost of the two Gulf Oil Wars were added in to the price of fuel, the real price at the pump would be far more than the cost of oil shale or coal produced gasoline today. Just as the electric car people claim technology will keep on improving, oil shale technology will keep on improving. If Carter had the vision to press forward with oil shale development we would have an existing process that would have steadies our fluctuation price and supply issues or even eliminated. Yes, the fuel produced might have coast more initially but what we are paying today for fuel is enough to support oil sand production in Canada quite profitably. Paying a little more to begin with and having vision to reduce dependence on foreign oil would have paid off big time. We would also have reduced the cost through improvements in technology and economies of scale over time.
Recently EPA turned down Exxon’s plan to produce oil from oil shale saying that they have not provided enough proof the process won’t pollute the ground water. Yet we hear nothing from the political appointee running the EPA about the massive ground water pollution caused by increased corn production or the battery disposal problems related to electric cars or the increased electrical generation needs that will require burning more coal which they claim pollutes or building atomic generating plants which we know pollute with their radioactive waste we can’t figure out what to do with now. Why did EPA do that? My answer would be because it’s run by a political appointee of a party beholden to big oil and business in general [Democrats and Republicans equally fall in that category].
If utility companies installed pollution control equipment manufactured in the USA, coal wouldn’t pollute. Instead coal burning would create quality jobs and businesses in the USA producing pollution control equipment rather than sending money to Saudi Arabia and other Moslem Countries whose clerics urge their followers to kill Americans. If we continue to cater to big oil companies who produce oil in foreign countries like Venezuela which recently nationalized the oil fields that US companies have spent billions developing, back corrupt despots like the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein {against IRAN} and allow jerks like the Iranian President to threaten us with oil supply blockage by sinking oil tankers going by the straights of Hormuz unless we let them build atomic bombs, our oil prices will fluctuate and gasoline shortages develop. The first gasoline shortage started the slide of our auto industry to Asia because they were making tiny fuel efficient commuter cars at the time. Cars that frankly didn’t have the quality or room inside to keep my head from hitting the roof when I looked at them in the late 70’s and early 80’s to cause me to buy one. Free trade finished GM off and has sounded the death knell of the auto unions and unions other than government ones. Neither result is in the interest of the average person.
During WWII the Germans almost won war using Fischer coal gasification/liquefaction process to produce gasoline. Recently a company announced it was moving forward with the Fischer Process so perhaps things have gotten so bad or at least one company has the vision to see that to be truly independent of foreign oil we need to use our proven oil shale and coal reserves to produce gasoline. By the way the Fischer process produces gasoline the burns cleaner and better for more efficient power production than anything we have now and can be used in all the older cars. Actually if you added the cost of fighting the two Gulf Oil Wars and supporting Saddam Hussein and the Shah to the cost of Fischer process gasoline, I am certain it would cost less than current fuel prices.
We have more coal reserves than any country with good engineers and technology that could easily make us totally independent from foreign oil. Instead, our politicians are too busy running around trying to please short term special interests to have the long range vision needed to insure the future wellbeing of all our citizens. Sadly, current politicians lack even a fraction of the vision our founders had July 4, 1776. What we have is more of a lack of vision than a lack of fossil fuel resources. Next time you have a micro issue to discuss, perhaps some of this information might help you ask the proponents more probing and pertinent questions? In any event I hope I have opened your eyes a bit. If I have not then we are in real trouble with our media as well as our politicians.
30-30
Disclosure: I own stock in Grey Wolf, Noble Energy, Sunoco, PDC and other oil production related stocks so its not in my personal interet to be critical of the lack of vision and policy dictated by big oil that put us in two Gulf Oil Wars. As a realist I have to protect myself in the stock market even though I decry the policy that made it possible for me to profit in oil stocks. Id rather profit elsewhere frankly
There is a (hybrid) truckload of good information on energy, efficiency, sustainable design and like subjects on the WorldChanging.org blog. Its where I get most of my information on the environment topic.
I have always felt that the government, in spite of lip-service towards renewable energies, especially for cars, never really wanted to have anything other than oil and gas be used. How much money is generated from gas sales? This tax goes towards road construction and repair, but how much money generated by the tax actually goes towards this? If there is an excess of money, does the government use this money then for other purposes? It makes you wonder what the government truly wants. I’ll wager the government would rather be in control with oil and gas, rather than Electric vehicles where they can’t control tax generation.
Here’s what’s going on in OUR neck of the woods…next friday, saturday and sunday (see you there Ira!) Here’s the SolWest web calendar listing for this year:
Energy independence and self-reliance are the focus of the eighth annual SolWest Renewable Energy Fair July 28-30, 2006 at the Grant County Fairgrounds in John Day, OR. Admission includes 50 free workshops on both off-grid and grid-intertied renewable energy (RE) and sustainable living topics. Over fifty exhibitors show tools for energy and lifestyle self-reliance, including solar, wind and agricultural resources. Keynote speaker Deborah Lindsay emphasizes the connections between community and power. An Electrathon race highlights efficient, lightweight vehicle technology. Cost is $5 per adult per day, with weekend, youth, and senior discounts, volunteers and children under 12 free. Camping is available (free for volunteers).
for more information contact:
Jennifer Barker
SolWest/EORenew
PO Box 485
Canyon City, OR 97820
phone 541-575-3633
info@solwest.org
http://www.solwest.org
After listening to the podcast on July 21 about Wind Energy, I feel compelled to shed a bit of light on one of the bat studies in the east that one of the guests spoke of. The study she referred to was a 6-week study on the Mountaineer wind energy site on Backbone Mtn in West Virginia in 2003. The findings were published in 2004 by Kerns and Kerlinger. During the 6-week study, they discovered that bat fatality rates at the wind facility were the highest EVER RECORDED. As a result, the owner and operator, FPL Energy, prohibited further studies from being performed at ANY of their facilities. Not only does this prevent scientists from determining if sites are suitable (or unsuitable) for wind facilities (pre-construction monitoring), but it prevents scientists from learning how to mitigate post-construction bat fatalities. A very important way to learn more about the effects of this alternative energy source is to perform pre and post construction monitoring.
It was hard for me to believe the statement on the wind farm segment that the DOD/Homeland Security wouldn’t allow wind turbines to be built because the turbines might interfere with DOD radar installations. Did I hear that right?
I just got back from a military tour at Guantanamo Naval Station. There are three newly built wind turbines on the highest point on the base, not far from the radar installation. Supposedly they replace a significant fraction of diesel generated electricity on the base, at times more than a third.
It seems to me that the problem of collecting a road tax is a non-issue. Certainly someone in the tax office will figure that they can tax the electric autombile directly… Wait a minute, someone already figured that out. It’s called a personal property tax.
The main object of discussion in fuel consumption is on how to stretch the use of fuel whether it be gasoline, diesel, ethanol, methanol, etc., as we all understand it. It has been commented that the lighter the vehicle, the more mileage it gains in fuel consumption.
How about inventing a device that will make a vehicle lighter as it travels faster. I think this can be achieved by installing an automatic electronically controlled flaff-like mechanism on the roof of an automobile that catches the wind that would “lift” the vehicle a little bit to make it lighter as it partialy glide along the highway? The “lighter” the vehicle, the more mileage per gallon will it gain. What can you say about this idea?
James,
Did you mention that in transforming coal to oil to electricity we loose something like 80% of the energy in the coal. Then we have left over coal ash, baghouse waste, carbon dioxide, fly ash, etc. We have to limit the use of petroleum, redesign our cities, go for negative population growth and get back to a sustainable population (like 2 billion not 7 billion people) When is this going to happen? your use of coal to produce oil would have worked 120 years ago if the politicians had stood up to big oil (Both dems and Repubs). Your ideas are somewhat out of date. We need to rethink the entire system. The survivalists of the past had it right, but just about the wrong catastrophe and the wrong time scale. I hope we have longer to work on the solutions than I think we have. You certainly have thought alot about this. No mention of wind, nuclear energy or geothermal?
Ira,
Please accept an invitation from the Green Sanctuary Group of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax (UUCF) to attend the screening of “An Inconvenient Truth” at the UUCF campus, on Sunday evening October 1 from 6-8. This movie features Al Gore’s compelling presentation of the evidence for global climate change.
The press, members of religious institutions and congregations, the public at large and elected government leaders (local, state and federal) are being invited. Following the movie, the public will have an opportunity to ask our leaders questions related to the implications presented in the movie… Mike Tidwell who wrote an article that appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section (8/20/06) Has been invited. Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerry Connolly has already accepted his invitation as well as Virginia House Delegate Ken Plum and Mrs. Plum.
LOCATION: 2709 Hunter Mill Road, Oakton, VA 22124 (directions)
Phone: (703) 281-4230 (www.uucf.org)
The movie is made possible by Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, (http://www.gwipl.org/) “a non-profit initiative that helps congregations, religious institutions and others in the Washington, D.C. area work for a more just, sustainable and healthier creation by reducing the threat of global warming” and saving $ doing so.
To help make this a carbon neutral event, renewable energy will be available for sale to event attendees.
RESOURCE
A Greener Faith, Is environmental activism a natural extension of religion? Discover Magazine book review
Please RSVP to solarelectrics@verizon.net
I am looking forward to meeting you at the event.
Sincerely,
Jody Solell
Jody,
Thanks for the invitation. I saw the film when it opened in NY. I think it is very powerful and makes one wonder if this is just a “trial balloon” for another run at the presidency by Al Gore.
Here’s a question: Would Gore get fewer votes now than he did last time, when he won the popular vote? If so, why? If not, why not run?
BTW, his office has turned down repeated requests to have him appear on SciFri.
How about looking into Europositron EV aluminum battery. Its web site is as follows:
http://www.europositron.com/en/index.html
It claims that its batter invention can run a vehicle up to 870 kilometers (around 508 miles) per charge.
Marlowe ..
Nice
Sorry, you’re asking for something for nothing. You will get lift in exchange for increased drag.
I enjoyed reading your commentary and criticism of the Science Friday electric car discussion. I agree, comprehensive commentary seemed absent.
To me it sounded as though, de facto, the electric car was an all around good thing, and what we need to do now is figure out how to sell it, by taking a few hints from Detroit, adding “sleek and sexy” design features to the package, for instance.
You are correct in pointing out that any useful discussion of the merits of an electric car must include a consideration of global systems.
This Prius owner has no illusions that he’s saving the world by driving one. (In global terms, I am probably making the situation worse.) I agree that internal combustion cars could be made more efficient than the electric car.
However, even if the electric car, as well as alternate fuel technologies, were abandoned, and oil shale and sand were developed, we are still facing a slow death due to carbon emissions.
The human species exists on this planet only because the environment had remained stable enough, over the course of plant and animal evolution, to allow it. This depended in part on an atmosphere which did not vary over a range so wide as to foreclose further evolution. That constancy depended on steady-state processes, where no single atmospheric component become destructively predominant.
I have heard it proposed that the only way for us to forestall a Mars-like endpoint for Earth is to recycle the atmospheric carbon. Push atmospheric systems back toward steady state by putting the carbon back where we got it, so to speak. This would require increasing the photosynthetic biomass to a point such that as much carbon were being absorbed as released.
I have heard of arcane-sounding technologies for scrubbing carbon from he atmosphere. That’s in the right direction, but given the size of the problem I lament that it is too little too late.
Practically speaking we may be faced with re-populating the planet with the green plant biomass that has been removed. The local act of planting a tree is symbolic. The challenge is to transfer that thinking to the macrocosm.
Meanwhile, we may switch high mileage conventional or electric cars. But let’s not delude ourselves that having modified our lifestyle, the hard work is done. The challenge we face is to reset the extraordinary planetary systems to the stability without which we would not be here in the first place.