My overall point is that it is possible to meet the basic need for rapid, flexible, personal transportation with a car that requires about 12 hp. This could be an important factor in reducing CO2, regardless of the engine type. If there was only need for minimal engine development, this could facilitate rapid deployment of such cars.

The car I am proposing is an odd looking vehicle that is contrary to auto industry fashion, so getting public acceptance is not expected to be easy. It is frustrating to see the excitement that results when someone puts an electric motor in a muscle car and claims this is great progress. While there might or might not be some CO2 reduction benefit, such things as the Tesla, Fisker, Volt fall far short of the needed solution. The problem is that the public is led to believe otherwise.

I don’t insist on a complete well to wheels analysis, which so often leads to arguments that bog down the general point. However, the important distinction is that thermal energy in kWhr units is a very different kind of energy than mechanical or electrical energy in kWhr. It is not a particularly satisfying system, but it helps to keep these forms of energy separate if the heat is expressed in BTUs and electrical and mechanical energy are in kWhr.

If this is not carefully articulated, the enormous heat losses in central power plants are easily overlooked. I believe you once said that cogeneration is on your favored list, and I completely agree, since this is a good though limited way to rectify the historical disaster of our central power station system.

I tried to do a careful analysis of the actual efficiency of US fossil fuel power plants. It is at http://www.miastrada.com/analylses where it includes detailed references for the data. It is useful to know the actual efficiencies for different fuels, and I could not find it as direct data in official sources.

An electric motor is not “inherently more efficient than the gasoline engine.”

An electric motor in combination with a wind generator, solar cell generator, or hydro generator has infinite efficiency. If you ignore the various costs, this is infinitely better than the car driven by the internal combustion engine.

An electric motor driven by the average fossil fuel power plant in the USA is modestly more efficient than the typical internal combustion engine. Electric efficiency comes out at about 27%. Typical car engines probably range from 20% to 25%.

An electric motor driven by the average fossil fuel power plant in the USA is substantially less efficient than the Prius engine mechanically coupled to the wheels 36% to 38% according to Argonne data, and also substantially less efficient than diesel engines running at better than 35% efficiency.

I am estimating the electric motor at 90% efficiency as an energy conversion device. It could be a little more or a little less depending on cost trade-off decisions in the design process.

Misinformation is not helpful in pursuit of climate progress. It could be a contributor to failure of the campaign because it leads to ineffective or impractical choices.

[JR: No misinformation here. An electric motor IS "inherently more efficient than the gasoline engine." Your analysis is a redefinition of "efficient" to a one-sided well-to-wheels calculation. But a gasoline engine could run on corn ethanol or liquid coal, both of which would kill its WTW efficiency. But as stand-alone devices, an electric motor IS "inherently more efficient than the gasoline engine." If it would make you happier, replace "gasoline" with "internal combustion."]

Very true. The Californians may have a strong EE policy, but it’s not that ambitious from an engineering or even economics viewpoint.

Average European use per capita is half that of US per capita. But the living standard is generally very good, and even the Europeans aren’t very aggresively (from that engineering and economics viewpoint) pursuing EE.

It would not be strange to think that a concise nation wide EE effort would bring the average per capita energy use lower than the average European level even with little conservation. But higher energy prices are here to stay, so will also provide more incentive for conservation. Things are looking good for the Negawatts potential.

Thanks, Joe, for making efficiency the core solution. Couldn’t agree more.

I look forward to your discussion of conservation, which I consider core. It is the nebulous solution. I asked an economist neighbor if he could define it; he only shook his head slowly. It is often mixed in with efficiency and renewables, but conservation is sui generis. It is the only global one. It is the sum of what we don’t consume.

Does the bible give us some some clues? . . . “On the seventh day, God rested” . . . and “honor the sabbath, and keep it holy”.

I wasn’t saying any state had outperformed CA — what I was saying is that if we took the best approaches from all states, as well as those that are applicable and relevant from abroad and those that have been proposed by serious climate folks, and developed a strategic policy platform, we could get more efficiency than even California’s exemplary program has.

Just to pull some of the good — but not yet fully implemented ideas — out of the air:

Imagine applying — in an integrated strategy — something like ISO NE’s forward capacity markets with Gore’s proposal for a Fannie Mae for energy efficiency Rehabs, and Berkley’s use of on-bill financing, with requiriments for efficiency upgrades upon sale of a building (Add in semi-annual requirements for industry to do something like DOE’s industrial audits, and you would get more ee faster, cheeper and from the most difficult and energy intense sector — the built ennvironment and existing industrial operations …

Here’s what such an integrated policy framework could do — money spent on efficiency upgrades (or on-site renewables) upon sale of a house or commericial establisment could be financed with low interest money, amortized over 20-30 years (by using on-billl financing attached to real estate taxes ala Berkely) . This would do several things:

1) it would dramatically lower the MONTHLY cost of efficiency and on-site RE, allowing for much greater investments — as long as monthly costs equaled or were less than energy savings — the investment would make sense.

2) It would embed the value of the upgrades into the building, not the owner and his or her short term ROI/discounted perspective);

3) It would reduce lender risk and administrative costs (since it’s colllected on-bill with real estate taxes. it fucntions much like a guaranteed loan without overhead;

4) It would effciently address the most intractable — and the largest — user of electiricy — existing buildings — greater than 40% of all energy use.

My statement “… it should (not) be held up as the zentih of what’s possible…” was not meant to say they are best in class within the states.

But it’s one thing to be better than the rest, and quite another to be the best that’s possible.