I like rjm’s idea of ‘the international google political party’. That is exactly what is needed.

What does “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” mean? Does it mean that if I offer views that you disagree with my posts are deleted?

[JR: As everyone can see, many commenters offers views that I strongly disagree with. The few people who offer those views with strong ad hominem arguments or who repeat long-debunked disinformation get put into moderation, where I read the comment first before publishing. I do not think you will find many blogs on this subject that do not moderate. Many blogs moderate everybody, but that in my mind slows the discussion down too much. It really works better for blogs that have new posts once a day or less.]

I did scan the DOE renewable report and found it full of resource demand data and economc assumptions but it lacked a view of how 300 GW of wind capacity by 2030 can be met with continually growing world demand for steel, copper, aluminum competing with material demand for US deployment of 100,000 to 170,000 turbines in about two decades. And, the DOE and Google plan relies upon huge individual and family investments in efficiency and lifestyle changes to flatline electricity demand growth at a time when credit has dried up.

What, in today’s world will make the international credit crunch go away or prevent even worse scenarious like rapid spike in interest rates to attract capital which increases the cost of the Google plan. China’s response to global recession might be calling in some of its loans to the US and then the US wheels begin to fall off (possibly FY 2010-2011-2012).

I want to see a world the Google plan envisions. I just don’t see it fitting into the next 10 or 20 years of bailing out bad debt and restructing the world banking system.

Without affordable credit coming soon, families will be hard pressed just to cover survival expenses.

It all sounds like a lot of hope and not a lot of logic — given the damned mess the world of finance has sunken into.

John McCormick

1. Baseline electricity. Isn’t taking “all coal” and “half of the gas” plants offline going to have a tremendous impact on electricity productions? Maybe have some more nukes to provide a base? Also, I think the only place in the US that relies on oil for electricity production is Hawaii — and there are good reasons for that.

2. MPG. Moving to 45 is great — but is that highway, city, or combined? The only way to improve city mileage is to make very very light small cars, or just a EV. Granted with a projected 90% hybrid sales in 2030 city mileage may not be a a concern. But moving a CAFE requirement just means smaller cars, or city cars — and that is a HUGE change. As a city dweller, I can’t afford 2 cars (one city, one for other driving) because of parking and other charges. Not to mention, as a city dweller, I can’t use a plug in hybrid (no electricity where I park)

3. Why the phaseout of older cars? I have a 15 year old car right now. I get 30 highway, 15 city. I’m planning on keeping it for a few years, then my next car would also get 15 city, 30 highway. Every car since fuel injection was widespread in 1985 gets about that mileage. Large SUVs are being removed from the roads anyway. Not sure that getting rid of older cars has an efficiency benefit — there may be a marginal improvement in air pollution, but even a 1988 car right now is pretty clean.

[JR: Yet.]

I’ve got a plan. How about whereever we use a carbon fuel for heating or power, install and use a non carbon fueled energy or power source until that market is saturated with non carbon energy sources and then stop building them.

Is that to complicated?

We know what the non carbon fueled energy sources are. The problem is the politics and economics. How do we get people to want non carbon fuels to run their lives and how to pay for all the bankrupted utilities and other businesses that willl go out of business as well as paying for all the new generation non carbon fueled power and heating systems? That is the hard part.

It didn’t mention, that I saw, replacement of carbon fueled heating with biomass. That can be one important source. We may never get cellulosic ethanol because breaking down biomass for ethanol is hard to do. But breaking down biomass for heat is easy. Fire. In every large heat needing building and plant in rural and agricutural areas in the United States should be heated with biomass gathered from that area.

Large biomass burners can do relatively well on pollution. Small biomass burners are not so easy to solve the pollution problem economically. If a few people use polluting biomass burners, it might be tolerated, but if everybody does it, it could be a major problem.

It may be possible to heat more than one building with a central burner. Like many small towns might have a school with houses nearby or downtown area that can have one large burner and then plumbed to share the heat. We had it mentioned in our large local newspaper. They are doing it in Northern European countries.

http://www.startribune.com/ business/ 30399529.html?elr=KArksUUUU

The idea is where fuel oil is used for heat now, put in one of these things and use the fuel oil for diesel fuel. The same with natural gas, use the natural gas for transportation. Much easier than trying to convert solid biomass into a liquid or gas fuel.

People understand the value of an electrical grid, many small towns could have a heating grid with a central heating plant which is feed biomass from local farmers. Keep the money in the community as well.

Around 1990, there was a plan from the government much like this one. I remember the costs for the plan was 3.3 trillion over 30 years. Those against it always keep mentioning that it was going to cost 3.3 trillion dollars and was to expensive. They never mentioned that the plan was to be over 30 years and as mentioned in the plan it was going to return 4.4 trillion dollars. About the same costs and returns as this google plan.

Particularly in the area of fuel efficiency. Going from 31 to 45 mpg for conventional vehicles is far too modest a goal. We can get 60 or better now — why not set stretch goals. And buy-back programs targeting the worst pigs first could help low income folks (they typically have the oldest most inefficient vehicles) and move the national fleet average down to 13 years or so.

I also believe that ocean thermal, tidal and ocean currents deserve a second look. With current energy prices and a carbon adder, they can be a source of near-base load renewable capacity, contributing cost-effective GW scale power.

Now is not the time for conservatism, and cautious prudence in goal setting. We need to challenge ourselves to do more than we think we can, not merely map out what is most likely possible.

Maintaining the momentum of emissions reductions will require political will that passes from government to government, both in times of economic growth and distress.