[Vision2020] who killed the electric car?

Tue Feb 6 15:48:30 PST 2007

Perhaps a medical analogy might be apt.

Suppose you are ill and your options are: 

1.    You do nothing after which you will die a slow, accelerating tortuous death.

2.    You have a $1,000 operation with the likelihood that afterward you will die a not quite as fast, accelerating tortuous death.

3.    You have a $50,000 operation after which you might not be as functional as you were before, but you will be able to live an almost normal, productive life.

Which would you chose?

The situation is similar to the current energy crisis.

We can:

1.    Do nothing.  Allow the accelerating demand for fossil and other fuels to continue given the world's burgeoning population until there are not enough resources left, and wars, etc ensue to secure the last bits left.  In the meantime, environmental disasters doom many and reduce the quality of life for almost all.

2.    Try to develop more efficient fossil fuel cars and fossil fuel based electrical generation.  Results:  the same as in 1. just above, only just a little slower.

3.    Invest heavily in alternate fuel sources, even [Gasp!] supporting massive research and development with tax dollars (I can hear Crabtree's perpetual "free enterprise is the only answer" hernia exploding from here) in an effort to provide sufficient energy and to attempt to prevent various kinds of environmental disasters.  I am thinking of the kind of massive program that occurred right after Sputnik I went up.  There was a lot of money spent.  There was lots of waste and corruption (most of the waste and corruption occurred in private corporations because of lax government oversight).  But we did get a person on the moon.  Somehow, in my possible short-sightedness, solving the energy crisis seems more important for the survival of humankind, animalkind, and plantkind than getting to the moon.

My guess is that we will do too little until it is too late.  Many of those in influential policy making positions remind me of college students who do not study seriously until the night before the exam or those that do not study at all hoping for a severe snowstorm.  The problem is complex.  Energy companies have spent millions pooh-poohing the global warming crisis and assuring us they have the energy demand problem under control.  Many of the credulous believe them.  Their money elects far more politicians than does that of the ordinary citizen.

Fill in the blanks.

Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Ted Moffett 
To: Art Deco 
Cc: Vision 2020 
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] who killed the electric car?

Wayne et. al.

Boise has heated many homes with geothermal energy for decades...On Warm Springs Blvd. I stayed with some friends just a few years ago, and they complained that the dang geothermal heat system kept running in the summer!  

Idaho and the nearby area has several geothermal energy projects underway or being investigated for development.

Like solar or wind, geothermal has tremendous potential (read the quote I posted in this thread from the energy scientist who gave figures that wind generation power potential in some areas of the US equals the energy from OPEC's petroleum output), but till we see massive implementation of affordable geothermal, the question must be asked that if this is such a practical and affordable option, that can soon replace cheap CO2/mercury polluting coal electricity, for example, what's the hold up? 

Ted Moffett

On 2/6/07, Art Deco <deco at moscow.com> wrote: 

    a.. Home    | News    |Blog    | Special Reports    |Subscribe    | Search    |RSS
  Hot clean power under our feet
  America can kick its addiction to fossil fuels by drilling more wells, says a panel of experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not for oil, but to tap Earth's heat.

  Converting geothermal heat into electricity by pouring water onto hot rocks underground and using the steam to turn turbines is arguably the most promising - and renewable - source of "green" energy on the planet. So concludes the MIT experts' report, released on Monday, which examines what geothermal energy could do for the US in the 21st century. 

  The 18-member panel calculated that there is more than enough extractable hydrothermal energy available to generate the entire 27 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy consumed in the US in 2005. In fact, a conservative estimate of the energy extractable from the hot rocks less than 10 kilometres beneath American soil suggests that this almost completely untapped energy resource could support US energy consumption, at its current clip, for more than two millennia to come. 

  Developing a new generation of geothermal plants is thus a top priority for tackling global warming, the panel says. "By any kind of calculation, this is an extremely large resource that is technically accessible to us right now," says the study's lead author, Jefferson Tester. "It doesn't require new technology to get access to it. And there's never going to be a limitation on our ability to expand this technology because of limits of the resource." 

  From issue 2588 of New Scientist magazine, 27 January 2007, page 4

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ted Moffett 
  To: Paul Rumelhart 
  Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 2:18 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] who killed the electric car?

  All-

  I do not doubt that the corporate manipulations regarding the electric car in California were obstructive to improving and implementing consumer use of these cars...

  But the bottom line on electric car/trucks being practical for widespread use (even ignoring the limited range of these vehicles before needing recharging, which has been a significant negative in many consumers minds) is the huge amount of electricity that would be needed.  

  California has problems supplying enough electricity for current needs.  To implement widespread electric car use in California would require huge increases in electricity generation.

  Paul's suggestion that electric cars make it possible to turn off coal fired electric plants that might power these cars en masse, by replacing the coal fired plant with nuclear, wind or solar plants, is not a practical solution.  The need for the massive amounts of electricity involved would require adding more coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, plus adding wind and, well, maybe solar, though solar is currently too expensive.  We need to cut back on coal electric generation as it is, due to CO2 output, or switch to CO sequestered coal power, yet we still get 50% of our electricity from coal, and there is tremendous resistance to cutting back on cheap coal generated electricity, cheaper than nuclear, wind or solar.  New nuclear fission plants have many drawbacks also.  Wind and solar electricity to power widespread use of electric cars can be a part of the solution, but not enough to turn off coal plants. 

  To solve these problems nationwide would require a massive reorganization of and expansion of electricity generation requiring cooperation across numerous sectors of the economy.  Even if the oil and auto industry pushed the electric car option for widespread use, they might not succeed. 

  The elephant in the room of the energy/fossil fuel depletion/global warming crisis is the fact that our current consumption of energy for transportation needs of all kinds uses too much energy, and increases in efficiency and implementation of new technology will not sufficiently solve the problems quickly enough, even if they can eventually be solved, given our current economic and lifestyle demands on energy consumption.  It is hard to get around the need to radically downsize transportation energy consumption.  Almost no one wants to face this fact, the economic and lifestyle implications.  It is assumed we can have our energy cake and eat it to... 

  There is no patent that the oil or auto industry is hiding (though they may be hiding some) on electrical generation sources or super efficient electric motors that will make solving these transportation energy problems easy, nor is lifting corporate control over the work of engineers going to make the problem less daunting, though that might help.  

  We could use more coal combined with CO2 sequestration to generate some of the extra electricity needed to power electric cars, but coal will deplete, and coal electricity with CO2 sequestration is more expensive, though absolutely necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. We could expand natural gas generated electricity, but this source will deplete.  We could build 100s of new nuclear power plants to power electric cars.  Good luck with that idea, with the nuclear waste problem, the expense of nuclear plants, and the storage of dangerous nuclear material in a world of terrorists threats.  More hydro could be implemented, as if our rivers are not damned enough already.  Wind power is being expanded and is a realistic option, but will eventually be needed to replace coal and natural gas energy... Solar is currently too expensive, though hopefully it will become less.  What else?  Hydrogen fuel for electric fuel cell cars...?  Some of the options for generating large amounts of hydrogen fuel suggest building more nuclear plants.  Again, good luck!: 

  http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2002/kiss.htm

  Third, hydrogen ? unlike electricity ? can be stored, and so the tremendous value of nuclear power can be translated into energy for the transportation energy system, a vast market into which nuclear power can now penetrate. Professor Paul Kruger of Stanford University has estimated that requirements for meeting this demand, but avoiding carbon emissions, will require hundreds of nuclear plants in the coming decades, unless one believes that renewable energy systems can grow at staggering rates [ Ref 16].
  -------

  What else?  Biomass, biofuel, geothermal, tidal or wave electric generation?  Probably not solutions for powering a nation wide fleet of electric cars.

  The development that might make electric cars practical for widespread use, even hydrogen fuel cell electric cars, that could be the energy breakthrough of human history, fusion, is currently just a gleam in the eyes of the physicists and engineers building ITER in France, a 10 billion dollar project that is the largest internationally funded scientific project after the International Space Station: 

  http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2005/ITER_Host.html

  Ted Moffett

  On 2/5/07, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com > wrote: 
    Bill London wrote: 
      Yes, engineers likely could design more efficient vehicles and better power sources -- but will they be allowed to do so?
      That is the lesson of the electric car fiasco in California.
      When the gas/auto industries were able to destroy the state mandate for zero emission cars, they stopped their engineers from improving the existing electric cars, stopped their customers from buying any (or transferrring their leases to purchases), and destroyed all existing vehicles. 
      BL

    I think they will eventually be allowed to do their designs.  What I can't tell you is if they will be allowed to do so by the forward-thinking progressives or by those who will be picking up the pieces after the oil runs dry and the economy comes crashing down. 

    I definitely want to watch the DVD.  I am entertained by watching self-serving billionaires ruin everything for us because they have a level of greed most people stamp out of their children by the time they are four.  Gives me faith in humanity. 

    Paul

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    a.. Home    | News    |Blog    | Special Reports    |Subscribe    | Search    |RSS
  Hot clean power under our feet
  America can kick its addiction to fossil fuels by drilling more wells, says a panel of experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not for oil, but to tap Earth's heat.

  Converting geothermal heat into electricity by pouring water onto hot rocks underground and using the steam to turn turbines is arguably the most promising - and renewable - source of "green" energy on the planet. So concludes the MIT experts' report, released on Monday, which examines what geothermal energy could do for the US in the 21st century. 

  The 18-member panel calculated that there is more than enough extractable hydrothermal energy available to generate the entire 27 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy consumed in the US in 2005. In fact, a conservative estimate of the energy extractable from the hot rocks less than 10 kilometres beneath American soil suggests that this almost completely untapped energy resource could support US energy consumption, at its current clip, for more than two millennia to come. 

  Developing a new generation of geothermal plants is thus a top priority for tackling global warming, the panel says. "By any kind of calculation, this is an extremely large resource that is technically accessible to us right now," says the study's lead author, Jefferson Tester. "It doesn't require new technology to get access to it. And there's never going to be a limitation on our ability to expand this technology because of limits of the resource." 

  From issue 2588 of New Scientist magazine, 27 January 2007, page 4

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ted Moffett 
  To: Paul Rumelhart 
  Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 2:18 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] who killed the electric car?

  All-