Comments on: Energy and Global Warming News for May 11th: ‘Cash for clunkers’ deal not a climate winner

By: Felix Kramer

Felix Kramer — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:40:59 +0000

It’s great to see this analysis coming from Duke, and to hear about the 21st Century Plowshare plan. There’s one more missing piece: instead of crushing clunkers, many gas-guzzlers can be converted to run partially on electricity instead. We at CalCars.org (who did the first conversion of Prius to a plug-in hybrid) have been talking about this for some time, and finally getting some attention to the idea. It helped when we did a study showing that scrappage pays back only if the replacement car has 2x the MPG of the clunker; that it takes 40,000 miles of driving to be even with the energy costs embedded in a car, but only 8,000 miles to catch up if the vehicle is converted.

Plus the point no one has yet recognized: unless we convert existing cars, the rate new plug-in vehicles arrive will be too slow to have an impact in the time we need (the next 10-15 years). See the White Paper we wrote on all this at the top of the CalCars home page (click on my namefor that URL) or at http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html

– Felix Kramer, Founder, The California Cars Initiative

By: ecostew

ecostew — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:53:38 +0000

If you look at GHG emissions under average US driving over a 10-year period, some 20% of the GHG emissions occur during manufacturing, etc. before the driver gets in the vehicle.

By: Gail

Gail — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:01:08 +0000

Deborah, that is brilliant. I will make the pledge.

By: rlb

rlb — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:27:01 +0000

Success of the cash for clunkers program will have a detrimental impact on the environment. The cheaper it is for people to drive, the more they are going to drive and the United States will continue to develop in its heinously inefficient manner.
On the other hand, if everybody kept their clunkers, gas prices will go up the cost of driving will sky rocket as gas prices increase, people will decided driving isn’t the best thing to do, and the United States will stop digging itself into the deep hole of inefficient development.
Any solution to the environment that still has everybody in cars equals no solution.

By: oxnardprof

oxnardprof — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:25:00 +0000

I agree that the car exchange program is an inefficient use of resources to reduce carbon emissions. I wonder if the older car will be the primary vehicle in a household, or a secondary vehicle. The exchange vehicle should be at a higher efficiency threshold, perhaps fleet average of 35 mpg (is that the ‘new’ number?)

Regarding the pledge to stop buying internal combustion engine vehicles, I wonder if the incentive to install home PV to charge the electric cars would give more benefit than the exchange program. My current electrical consumption of about 8 kwh per hay is too low to justify photovoltaic on my home, but I wonder if that would change if I had an electric car, or at least a plug-in hybrid.

Regarding the ‘clean coal’ power plants in China, the headline seems more optimistic than the full article. Efficiency is (I am estimating here) about 20 % greater than the older US power plants, but sulfur dioxide, NOx emissions are not necessarily well controlled. I do not believe that mercury emissions are mentioned in the article (I may have missed this). Thus, the ‘clean coal’ in the Chinese power plants seems something of a misnomer. Perhaps a link to the blog here challenging the concept of ‘clean coal’ is in order? (I could not find the post, but I thought Joe discussed this previously.)

By: vfx

vfx — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:08:58 +0000

GPM not MPG

http://www.mpgillusion.com/ 2009/ 05/ cash-fo-clunkers-and-1-gpm-rule.html

By: John H

John H — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:59:52 +0000

Sorry, my comment should read “Shouldn’t the cap part of cap-and-trade make this irrelevant?”

By: John H

John H — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:59:13 +0000

Why do we need this provision at all? Should the “cap” part of cap-and-trade make this irrelevant?

By: Jim Beacon

Jim Beacon — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:29:54 +0000

Oops… typo… the new vehicle bought should have to be at least 50% more efficient than the old vehicle to qualify for the subsidy.

By: Jim Beacon

Jim Beacon — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:27:30 +0000

It is true that something must be done to get the millions of gas-guzzlers Detroit manufactured over the past 15 years off the roads, but it doesn’t seem like this proposal will do that. The only way this program will do any good is that, for every gas-guzzler turned in, the auto industry is bound by law to make one less *new* gas-guzzler — not just this year, but never again. If they can keep making new gas-guzzlers, then pulling an old one of the streets does nothing and the program is just another subsidy to buy a new car.

And, of course, the provisions of the plan have to make sense. At first, it should only be applied to cars which get less than 15 mpg. Once those really horrible gaz-guzzlers are a thing of the past, then you could let it apply to cars which get 20 mpg or less. And there must be tracking provisions to insure that the new car which is bought to replace the gas-guzzler is at least 30% more efficient than the old vehicle was. Again, anything else is just a subsidy to buy a new car and will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions in any meaningful way.