[In the other future, we phase out fossils in favor of high efficiency and fuels that are abundant, clean and free.]

Is that future behind the pearly gates?

Time to get real about the real cost of energy in the now — and future.

Your promising ‘clean and free energy’ is the kind of hot air that confuses the public and makes us believers suspect. We are all in for some hard times and the public has to know that!

Given that the average retail sales price of electricity is 9 cents per kWh, a cost of 7-10 cents per kWh, it does not appear we need to be “in for some hard times” as John suggests, at least in electricity. Here in California, PG&E charges 13 cents per kWh, which is sufficient to allow 7 cents per kWh to be profitable, I would guess. Yes, bills might go up *slightly* in the rest of the U.S., if the rest of the U.S. doesn’t enact efficiency legislation. If the U.S. does adopt California efficiency standards, and the U.S. per capita kWh falls 45% to California’s per capita kWh, there would probably not even be an increase in bills.

If John is concerned about gasoline, well the answer to that is to switch to electricity as car fuel. If we assume 35 MPG from the new 2020 CAFE standards, and gasoline costs 3 per gallon (good luck if you think gasoline will cost only that in 2020), then the fuel cost is 8.6 cents per mile. Even at a retail price of 13 cents per kWh, a 1990s technology RAV4-EV using 0.302 kWh/mile has a fuel cost of only 3.9 cents per mile. So driving off of sunshine is like buying gasoline at 1.365 per gallon. Is 1.365 per gallon “hard times”? I don’t think so.

Of course all of the above assumes we are smart enough to elect the right people in 2008, so that CSP and EVs happen. With Presidents like Bush in the White House, Senators like Inhofe in Congress, we are definitely in for the “hard times” that John predicts.

But, it is more an observation than a comment.

Earl, you thow up those answers to the massively complex and expensive retrofit America and the developed(ing) world of energy consumers will bear.

Yes, sunlight is free but the capital cost of installing the collector is more than the average budget of the 60 million individual home owners aare likely to spend on this eve of a likely prolonged economic recession. Don’t ignore the reality of the struggle families are coping with to pay higher prices foar everything. We are already carrying nearly $2 trillion in creadit card debt and many of us have tapped into our home equity to pay bills and send our children to college.

Yes, I would like to have a Tesla but I have maxed out on my credit. I will have to wait until the price comes down to that of the new Indian people car being marketed in Bombay. And, guess where my old ICE will go if I could afford to buy an EV. That’s right…into the used car lot where someone less fortunate will pay less than the cost of an EV to have affordable wheels to get to their second job.

The enviros hawking AGW are beginning to look like the eletists

But, it is more an observation than a comment.

Earl, you throw up those answers to the massively complex and expensive retrofit America and the developed(ing) world of energy consumers will bear.

Yes, sunlight is free but the capital cost of installing the collector is more than the average budget of the 60 million individual home owners are likely to spend on this eve of a likely prolonged economic recession. Don’t ignore the reality of the struggle families are coping with to pay higher prices for everything. We are already carrying nearly $2 trillion in credit card debt and many of us have tapped into our home equity to pay bills and send our children to college.

Yes, I would like to have a Tesla but I have maxed out on my credit. I will have to wait until the price comes down to that of the new Indian people car being marketed in Bombay. And, guess where my old ICE will go if I could afford to buy an EV. That’s right…into the used car lot where someone less fortunate will pay less than the cost of an EV to have affordable wheels to get to their second job.

The enviros hawking AGW (I am one) are beginning to look like the elitists we are unfairly branded. Look, I want to see GHG reductions as fast as you, but stop offering up lifecycle costing to people who struggle to pay their phone bill. There will have to be more thinking about how to make people pay more for efficient energy up front because not all of us have the cash or line of credit. And, the real world is looking expensively ugly…as in global recession.

Also, I wasn’t talking about a Tesla. Our RAV4-EV cost 42K in 2002 (then we got 9K of state rebate, and 4K of federal tax credit). It now has 76,000 miles on it, and it is still going strong.

There are plenty of reasons to shift to electricity as fast as possible, especially in California:

I recommend the work of:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/
particularly the papers in Section I, which really imply that most auto transport, especially in CA, needs to be electric. [I still think some trucks and machinery will end up needing to run on biofuels in the long term, and I’d certainly rather have biofuels than fossil, but if Jacobson’s results, as in section I.e., hold, the less of *anythng* burned by cars, the better.

I’m sympathetic to drastic changes that hammer poor people, but I guarantee, I can imagine few things that will make life tough for poorer people than bruning oil as fast as possible into the jaws of Peak Oil.

1.4 billion tires (includes the spare)

740 billion pounds of scrap

Numbers can be fun but you still have not addressed the credit problems of families struggling to meet monthly payments.

Heck, lets all just walk to work and save oil and the atmoshpere. I am losing you Earl and a 42K investment is my son’s college tuition.

[1] The number of passenger cars in 2004 was estimated at 136 million, with 6 million motorcycles, and 92 million non-car 2-axle vehicles (mostly light trucks and SUVs), or 234 million vehicles. Sales were 7.5 million, 1.1 million, and 7.5 million respectively. So you can see that it takes 18 years to turn over the passenger car fleet, 5.5 years for motorcycles, and 12 years for the other 2-axle vehicles.

How many vehicles on the road? What if there was a mandated reduction of fuel use by 30% (rationing), starting next month. How many tons of carbon would we save?

National strategy should center around ensuring we have abundant, reliable(not solar, wave, or wind) power. That is for the near term, coal and nuclear power–get over it.

Costa Rica wants to be the first carbon neutral country by 2021.