Electricity should come from nuclear generation since the sun and wind are to unreliable to provide 24 hour a day electricity.

In the same vein, Has anyone done an update of the Princeton ‘wedges’ senarios?

I thought that approach did a good job of translating the needed change into understandable units — ie installing solar panels equal to the surface area of Conn gets us 1/7 of the way to 550ppm. Doubling auto gas milage gets another 1/7, etc.

If we can ever generate a WWII style effort, we need to translate science into very understandable lahguage.

http://biopact.com/

The first is to co-fire biomass with fossil coal in a CCS reactor and sequester the resulting carbon dioxide. If more biomass is used than fossil coal, the result is carbon negative.

Even better is to produce biocoal via hyprothermal carbonization and sequester the stuff in abandoned mines or caron landfills. There is a demonstration plant in The Netherlands which produces 75,000 tonnes of biocoal per year from forestry wastes (and generates 5 MW electric power on the side). This biocoal is currently being co-fired with biocoal in German coal reactors to produce electric power.

Additionally, hydrogen fuel cells can be constantly recharged with a steady input of hydrogen and the amount of energy able to be stored will never fluctuate, as opposed to conventional batteries that take far longer to recharge and decrease in energy storage capacity over time.

There are three parts of the general EV discussion that I disagree with.

Firstly, by my estimates, an EV running off our current (US) grid emits about as much CO2 per mile as a hybrid does. So there is no gain until we shift our grid. And we have plenty of room to shift our grid - at least 50% (away from coal). You allude to this issue, but you state that EVs emit only a third. I don’t buy that number (the “1/3″), I suspect that it derives from comparing 20 mpg cars with ultra-lite EVs, as opposed to 50 mpg sedans with *equivalent* EV sedans.

Second, batteries are much too expensive. Hybrids emit less than 100 tons of CO2 over their *lifetime*, so even at a $20/ton tax (which is high) with interest taken into account, the NPV of zero emissions is about $1000. Battery costs over the lifetime of an EV are more than an order of magnitude higher. So it makes little sense for government policy to push for much above $1000 in taxes and/or subsidies.

Thirdly, the operating cost issue. At $0.13 per kWh and 0.4 kWh/mi, energy cost for an EV is about 5 cents per mile. At $4 per gallon and 50 mpg a hybrid costs 8 cents per gallon. At a US average of 12,000 miles per year, that’s a potential saving of $360 per year. Consumers can probably be enticed with a 3-year payoff, so that, also, sets a limit of around $1000.

I wrote about much of this stuff on my blog (http://petersmagnusson.com) so I thought I would invite you to comment. Is my math off?

To Peter S. Magnusson, I think your statement about no gain compared to a hybrid is an important fact, and it kind of agrees with my analysis if we are talking about a PRIUS hybrid. But you say there is room to shift our grid. How do we do this.

We already have a substantial reserve capacity in natural gas fired facilities, but the cost of natural gas compared to coal makes it hard to get the US producers to use expensive natural gas.

Hard numbers need to be used in these discussions, but in the interim, I note that the US is not looking to be in a great position to shift much of anything. Of course, in the context of dumping a trillion dollars or so minding other people’s business, it might seem that we could well afford to spend a trillion dollars to displace the coal fired facilities with wind towers. It is certainly enticing, but I am afraid the trillion for war is only now starting to be a bill that we are starting to pay. I see it in the $1.56 euro and $110 oil, not to mention the insane inflation in housing that led to near failure of banks, only halted temporarily by money maneuvers that will further shift the load to the future. For a country that does not seem to be producing enough to get trade balance under control, it may be tricky to find enough workers ready and able to pay taxes to cover any of these bills.

My first approach is to actually use less energy. It takes a very different kind of car to do this. Yes, the PRIUS would be an improvement, and if that is the best we can do, then ok. But do not get tricked by the latest batch of “hybrids” or even electric or plug-in vehicles that simply shift more energy from oil to coal. These actually have economic merit and would help with oil dependency problems. But they will not help with CO2.

It really is possible to travel in personal cars, quickly and efficiently, but they sure will look different.

But for those interested in global warming, I interpret the plan by GM at:

http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/PDF/presentation-sm.pdf

to mean that GM is fully aware of the 500 year supply of coal. They also would very much like to continue to build very profitable large cars. By use of electricity as a means for bringing energy to the cars, there is no real need to worry about efficiency. And the electric car will turn out to be the global warming devil.

Page 12 of this plan shows a lot about how things will go in the GM view of the future.

If people only glance at this plan they might think that the GM interest in reducing pollution has something to do with global warming. Look again.

This is not to say that GM is to be faulted for acting in the interest of its stockholders. It is the public’s responsibility to make laws to control corporate actions.

Not sure, but my understanding of EVs is that are damn few moving parts, and no need for filters, oil, lube, etc. Imagine the ensuing chaos as every ancillary business of the Auto industry goes belly-up. I’m not saying thats the one thing holding our Govt back from an aggressive implementation of EV technology…but it will produce casualties, and well, politicians don’t like that much….