Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

Once upon a time, some serious people used to believe that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) might have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a practical and affordable climate strategy in our lifetime.  Those very sincere people were used by some of the car companies and Bush Administration as part of a strategy to oppose or delay the introduction of more viable alternative fuel strategies, in particular electric cars — see, for instance, the movie “Who killed the electric car?”

That isn’t to say pure EVs were slam dunks as successful mass-market consumer vehicles, particularly with the technology of the 1980s and even 1990s.  HFCVs, however, required multiple technological (and other) miracles to succeed and every plausible competitor, including EVs, to fail first (see “Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective“ and “The car of the perpetual future” — The Economist agrees with Climate Progress on hydrogen“).  That is but one reason the absurdly expensive infrastructure will never be built — nor has any independent group ever proposed a plausible scenario under which the infrastructure would be built.  And that’s the fundamental hydrogen cars will not be practical or a cost-effective climate strategy in your lifetime.

Under the leadership of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California briefly flirted with a serious investment in hydrogen cars and infrastructure — the Hydrogen Highway.  A driving force for that alliterative but ill-fated effort was Terry Tamminen, who “headed California’s Environmental Protection Agency and was Cabinet Secretary and Chief Policy Advisor” to Schwarzenegger, who is now “the Cullman Senior Fellow for Climate Change and Director of the Climate Policy Program at the New America Foundation” and author of a recent but outdated attack, “The Myth of Battery Cars” debunked below.

The California legislature in particular sped away from the Hydrogen Highway effort once it became clear that both the fueling station and the cars were insanely expensive and not terribly practical (see “California Hydrogen Highway R.I.P.“)

Today, with rapidly advancing battery and related technology, we know that pure EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are a core climate solution since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline (or hydrogen), even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“).  That is why pretty much every car company in the world will be introducing one or more models of PHEVs or EVs in the next 2 to 4 years, but we still don’t have a single commercial HFCV anywhere near production (see L.A. Times: “Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won’t work in cars.” Duh.).

In particular, a renewable-energy-based hydrogen fueling system capable of handling even half the cars and light trucks on the road would cost many hundreds of billions of dollars.  And it would have a cost of avoided carbon dioxide of more than $600 a metric ton, which is more than a factor of ten higher than most other strategies being considered today.  Also, the total well-to-wheels efficiency with which a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle might utilize renewable electricity is roughly 20% (although that number could rise to 25% or a little higher with the kind of multiple technology breakthroughs required to enable a hydrogen economy).  The well-to-wheels efficiency of charging an onboard battery and then discharging it to run an electric motor in a PHEV or EV, however, is 80% (and could be higher in the future)—four times more efficient than current hydrogen fuel cell vehicle pathways.

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Media reports of the death of the clean tech industry have been exaggerated (see “Global recession? Must be time for the media’s alternative-energy backlash“).  The Cleantech group reported Thursday, third quarter “results for clean technology venture investments in North America, Europe, China and India totaling $1.59 billion across 134 companies.”

That means total cleantech VC funding this year is already about $3.8 billion — which puts total funding on a pace to exceed every year except 2008!  And what has brought about this miraculous recovery:

“The billions in government funding being allocated globally in clean technology have begun emboldening private capital, which has in turn helped propel clean technology to the leading venture investment sector, now eclipsing biotech and IT,” said Dallas Kachan, Managing Director, Cleantech Group. “The two largest venture deals (Solyndra and Tesla Motors) and the largest IPO (A123Systems) this quarter were all recipients of U.S. government funding. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new venture funds this quarter are also evidence of investor confidence and momentum, including $1.1 billion in two new funds by Khosla Ventures alone.”

“The extension of tax credits for renewable-based power generation along with government stimulus and regulatory requirements to meet renewable portfolio standards are helping to drive continued investment on the part of VCs and utilities into the cleantech sector,” said Scott Smith, U.S. leader of Deloitte’s Clean Tech practice. “Utilities are increasingly bringing their access to capital to the sector through direct investment and power purchase agreements, driving new projects and increased capacity. We continue to see utilities investing in wind and solar and expect this trend to continue as cleantech projects become more economically viable and desirable for utilities.”

Thank you President Obama and progressives in Congress (see “Sure Obama stopped the Bush depression, cut taxes for 98% of working families, and jumpstarted the shift to a clean energy economy with a $100 billion in stimulus funds — but what has the green FDR done lately?“)

Where is the money going?  Solar, transportation, green buildings:

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A massive shift to clean energy is needed to stop one third of the planet’s habited land from turning into a permanent Dust bowl and to stop several meters of sea level rise (see “Hell and High Water“).  And unrestricted fossil energy use is “capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas” and, at the same time, it is expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area — as much as 175% by the 2050s.

But that doesn’t stop really bad analysis from suggesting dirty energy somehow protects our land better for than clean energy, with wind supposedly 8 times as destructive as coal!  In fact, modern wind turbines are so tall that they take up very, very little land — allowing virtually all of the surrounding  land to be used for other purposes, including farming.

Guest debunker Dr. Matthew Wasson, Director of Programs for Appalachian Voices, notes “the habitat impact of the Mount Storm Wind Farm in the first image [below left] is assumed to be 25% greater than the impact of the 12,000 acre Hobet mountaintop removal mine in the second image (images are taken from the same altitude and perspective; the bright connect-the-dots feature in the windfarm image is the actual area disturbed)”:

LOS ANGELES – U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson will announce today in a keynote address at the California Governor’s Global Climate Summit that the Agency has taken a significant step to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act. The Administrator will announce a proposal requiring large industrial facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of GHGs a year to obtain construction and operating permits covering these emissions. These permits must demonstrate the use of best available control technologies and energy efficiency measures to minimize GHG emissions when facilities are constructed or significantly modified.

The full text of the Administrators remarks will be posted at www.epa.gov later this afternoon.

This is from an EPA press release.  I will phone in to the press call shortly and add any interesting updates.  It’s great to see that the EPA nd the Obama administration have not been intimidated by the efforts of Lisa “fiddle while Alaska burns” Murkowski to block EPA regulation.

I’m told that the Murkowski amendment came as a big shock to the White House — and that, ironically, it may put the Kerry-Boxer bill on a faster timetable, so the Senate doesn’t give her another chance to repeat her hypocritical effort (see Murkowski amendment to undermine the Clean Air Act is dead — for now. Feinstein says “we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand on climate change”).

The two biggest myths about the EPA’s efforts to regulate CO2 are, from the right, that EPA will be regulating everybody, including small businesses and farmers, and, from the left, that the EPA’s endangerment finding can somehow stop dangerous warming if the climate bill dies.  What they will mostly be doing is new sources, although if Congress fails to act on CO2 regulations, they will no doubt pursue stricter regulations than they otherwise would.

Here’s the rest of the EPA release:

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“Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”

Those words, “attributed” to the 18th century English essayist Samuel Johnson, are a perfect summation of the oeuvre of The Breakthrough Institute (TBI).  So it is with their latest attack on the climate and clean energy bill — “Climate Bill Analysis Part 20 [!!!]: Over-Allocation of Pollution Permits Would Result in No Emissions Reduction Requirement during Early Years of Climate Program.”

And no, I can’t bring myself to link to their crap — that is apparently what the status quo media is for (see “Memo to media: Don’t be suckered by bad analyses from TBI and “The Audacity of Nope: George Will embraces the anti-environment message of TBI” and “TBI is lying about Obama, misstating what CBO concluded about Waxman-Markey, and publishing deeply flawed analyses” and “Will America lose the clean-energy race? Only if we listen to the disinformers of TBI“).

Indeed, this time I don’t even need to debunk their “analysis” — which looks strangely like the evil twin of a blog post I wrote two weeks ago that they never even reference (see “EIA stunner: By year’s end, we’ll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 — halfway to climate bill’s 2020 target“).

No, someone in the media has actually done a bang-up job of it already, truly a fine piece of journalism by Greenwire, “Institute’s critique of Waxman-Markey draws fire” (subs. req’d), which I  excerpt at length below:

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This is a Wonk Room repost.  WR has been reporting from the Clinton Global Initiative conference this week.

Earlier this year, the American Society for Civil Engineers roundly panned America’s disintegrating infrastructure, giving it an overall D grade and estimating that “it would take a $2.2 trillion investment … over the next five years to bring it into a state of good repair.” One of today’s discussions at the Clinton Global Initiative focused on how to develop infrastructure in both the U.S. and the rest of the world, and the role that government plays in such development.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt — who has been critical of the business community for investing too much money in preserving America’s status quo — noted that successful infrastructure improvements, particularly in creating the capacity for clean energy, means coordinating government standards with private investment:

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A shrinking cap on emissions and a rising price for carbon dioxide is the sine qua non of enabling a sustained transition to a clean energy economy (see “The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill“).  But it is not the only strategy needed to ensure a rapid transition at the lowest possible cost.  CAP’s John Podesta, Kate Gordon , Bracken Hendricks, and Benjamin Goldstein discuss what “A Comprehensive Approach to Building the Low-Carbon Economy” would entail in a new report (here) and a post first published here.

The United States is having the wrong public debate about global warming. We are asking important questions about pollution caps and timetables, carbon markets and allocations, but we have lost sight of our principal objective: building a robust and prosperous clean energy economy. This is a fundamentally affirmative agenda, rather than a restrictive one. Moving beyond pollution from fossil fuels will involve exciting work, new opportunities, new products and innovation, and stronger communities. Our current national discussion about constraints, limits, and the costs of transition misses the real excitement in this proposition. It is as if, on the cusp of an Internet and telecommunications revolution, debate centered only on the cost of fiber optic cable. We are missing the big picture here.

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This guest post is by two members of a student environmental group on the University of Maryland campus called “UMD for Clean Energy”.

This upcoming fall, we’ve decided to get involved in our city’s elections, which take place in College Park, Maryland on November 3rd.  Why now?  At the state level, policies and programs such as the Maryland global warming bill, new energy efficiency standards, an improved Renewable Electricity Standard, and renewable energy rebates are underway.  At the same time, the federal government is investing record amounts of money in clean energy and energy efficiency, and could soon pass a climate change bill that will drive hundreds of billions of dollars worth of public and private investment into clean energy and energy efficiency over the next decade.  In the next 10 years, we expect to see clean energy investment and the jobs that come with it raining down on many states, including Maryland.  Where is it all going to land?  We think the areas that benefit the most will be the ones out in front and in the lead on clean energy and low carbon technology policy.

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Back in May,  the Obama administration announced it would move forward on national standards for new vehicle fuel economy and tailpipe greenhouse gas emission (see here):

“This is a very big deal,” said Daniel Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign, a group that has pushed for tougher mileage and emissions standards with the goal of curbing the heat-trapping gases that have been linked to global warming. “This is the single biggest step the American government has ever taken to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Today the Administration rolled out the final details.  The AP reports:

The Obama administration is unveiling plans to require higher efficiency standards for cars and trucks and tougher rules on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson planned to release the proposed regulations Tuesday. They call for the auto industry’s fleet of new vehicles to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The plan follows up on President Barack Obama’s announcement in May that the government regulations would link emissions and fuel economy standards.

Greenwire (via the NYT) notes, “The carbon dioxide limit under the plan — which will apply to passenger cars, light-duty trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles — would reach an average of 250 grams per mile per vehicle in 2016.”

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Although the House-passed clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill doesn’t have a big focus on the transportation sector, it does achieve real benefits in oil savings at low cost (see “EIA analysis of climate bill finds 23 cents a day cost to families, massive retirement of dirty coal plants and 119 GW of new renewables by 2030 — plus a million barrels a day oil savings“).  Some people have asked me for more detail on this, which I provide courtesy of this guest post from Jeremy Symons, Senior Vice President, Conservation and Education, National Wildlife Federation (bio here).

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA’s) recent analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) includes the first government estimates of the legislation’s impact directly on oil imports.  A number of models, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have determined that ACES would save significant amounts of oil, but EIA is the first to project the specific impact on oil imports so that we can more directly assess the security and financial implications.

Overall oil imports would decline by 590,000 barrels per day by the year 2020 under ACES, according to EIA .  This is roughly equivalent to the total amount of oil we imported from Iraq in 2008 (620,000 barrels per day).  Over the next twenty years, America would save $650 billion on foreign oil (cumulatively through 2030).  This is in constant 2007 dollars, and is calculated by applying EIA’s forecast of oil prices to EIA’s projected savings in oil imports.

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While some are still building new climate-destroying coal plants in North Carolina, the Outer Banks Ocean Energy Corp. sees clean energy potential in the windy “First in flight” state.  The Energy Daily (subs. req’d) reports:

Feeling the wind at its back following its recent formal chartering as a new company, the Outer Banks Ocean Energy Corp. announced plans Tuesday to develop a giant wind- and ocean-powered renewable energy project off North Carolina’s coast.

The Outer Banks Ocean Energy Corp. (OBOE) said it is in the early stages of developing the North Carolina Hybrid Energy Preserve, a predominantly wind-based project planned to generate between 200 and 600 megawatts of renewable energy in federal waters up to 25 miles offshore of the Tar Heel State.

But OBOE sees more opportunity for clean energy that never runs out than just offshore wind:

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The House climate and clean energy bill has made energy efficiency a centerpiece (see “The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030“).  It would generate some $500 billion through 2025 in efficiency investments alone (see “The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill“).  This new CAP analysis, which includes a state-by-state data on energy savings, cost savings, job creation, and pollution reductions from efficiency investments under the American Clean Energy and Security Act (.xls), by Daniel J. Weiss, Erica Goad, and Jonathan Aronchick was first published here.

Energy efficiency is the “low-hanging fruit” of energy policy, and is the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective way of driving new investment, creating jobs, saving consumers money, and cutting pollution.  Energy efficiency alone could cheaply—and often profitably—provide two-thirds the necessary greenhouse gas reductions to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050—a level based on the science-driven conclusion that the risks of dangerous climate impacts rise sharply as planetary warming exceeds 2°C from preindustrial levels. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454—which passed the House and is now pending in the Senate—recognizes and invests in the economic benefits of energy efficiency.

The bill would provide up to $65 billion in allowances from 2012 to 2020 for state and local government energy efficiency programs (see chart). These funds are in addition to other investments in energy efficiency from utilities and the federal government. The state and local programs in ACES would create up to 137,000 jobs in 2015 from energy efficiency investments that year [1]. It would save consumers up to $63 billion on their electricity bills from 2012-2020, while reducing enough greenhouse gas pollution during this period to equal taking 26.5 million cars off the road.

These projections are based on our analysis that provides estimates of efficiency investments, job creation, electricity savings, and greenhouse gas pollution reductions under state and local government energy efficiency programs funded by ACES. This includes the cumulative benefits from these efficiency investments. Once a building is made more efficient, the electricity savings and pollution reductions accrue every year compared to business as usual. So the lower energy costs that occur due to investments in 2012 are also a benefit in 2013, 2014, and so on. Any energy savings from efficiency measures undertaken in 2013 are in addition to the savings in 2012.

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To all readers in North Carolina — Duke University students, I’m talking to you — please spread the word from the North Carolina Conservation Network on the Duke Energy Rate Hike Hearing at the Durham City Hall this Thursday evening:

Duke Energy is seeking an 18% rate hike this year for residential electricity customers. Over 13.5% would cover costs such as the Cliffside coal-fired power plant, now under construction west of Charlotte. Another 4.5% increase has recently been approved for rising costs of coal. The NC Utilities Commission has scheduled six hearings across the state to hear public comment on whether or not to approve the proposed rate hike.

Please attend the public hearing in Durham, NC to show your opposition to this unnecessary rate hike!

Yeah, Duke Energy has argued “We Can ‘Decarbonize’ Without Painful Electricity Price Hikes,” it supports the climate bill, and it just quit the scandal-ridden coal front group over the issue.  But they are still a big coal utility, and building new expensive, dirty plants when energy efficiency would be much cheaper and infinitely cleaner.  Why should NC ratepayers suffer for Duke’s bad decisions?

The NCCN is “a statewide network of over 100 environmental, community and environmental justice organizations focused on protecting North Carolina’s environment and public health.”  Click here for details on attending the rate hearing.

You’re perhaps wondering about how Duke can get a rate increase for rising coal costs when the price has collapse, as the figure from the Energy Information Administration below shows:

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Plug-ins and electric cars are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline, even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“).  Since no one is going to build a serious hydrogen infrastructure in your lifetime, it’s great to the growing efforts to build an EV charging infrastructure, as discussed in this CAP repost.  The photo is of a group looking inside a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle’s gas tank parked on display outside San Francisco’s City Hall after a $1 billion network of electric car recharging stations that will dot the Bay area highways was announced on November 20, 2008.

Last year, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said he wanted to see 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the United States by 2015. General Motors responded by unveiling the Chevrolet Volt last week, a plug-in electric/gas hybrid that’s set to be available to the public in 2010. According to GM, the new Volt can achieve a city fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon based on unofficial development testing of “pre-production prototypes,” and it can function solely on electric mode “without having to use any gas.” Nissan also created a new prototype called the “Leaf.” The company says the car is 100 percent electric and reaches the equivalent of 367 mpg.

The companies claim the cars’ batteries can be recharged using electrical outlets at home, but if you’re in the city and need to power up, you’ll need to recharge somewhere. As a result, on-street recharging stations in cities are becoming more popular as electric car production takes off.

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Harvard Business Review touts space solar in its September piece, “On the Horizon: Six Sources of Limitless Energy?” (subs. req’d)  Of course, they also tout nuclear fusion as one of the six (see HBR figure above), so perhaps that tells you their time horizon is … 50 years from now (or maybe never), long after the climate is destroyed.

More puzzling is Yale e360, which has a long piece on space solar, with the hype “Now, a host of technological advances, coupled with interest from the U.S. military, may be bringing that vision close to reality.” Aside from discussing the military’s interest, which may not be totally benign and in any case is largely irrelevant to the question of commercial viability, the piece discusses the deal Solaren Corporation has with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) “to provide 200 megawatts of power — about half the output of an average coal-fired power plant — by 2016 by launching solar arrays into space.”

As I blogged here, the physicist Marty Hoffert sent an email to the media in the spring on this (which I reprint in full below) that begins:

The PG&E deal is a scam. Pure and simple. We don’t need to study it in detail any more than one needed to study Bernie Madoff’s investment scams.

Since space solar is getting hyped again, let me start with my original discussion (here).

Not many people I know think space solar is a low-cost, scalable solution.

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The UK website BusinessGreen reports on a survey of 2,700 UK adults, which “found that half of respondents are interested in finding out whether their home is suitable for renewable energy systems, such as solar panels”:

Meanwhile, over a third said they would be willing to pay more for a house where some of the energy was supplied by renewable sources, suggesting that those investing in microgeneration systems will be able to recoup some of the cost through increased house prices.

The same should apply in this country, especially since a lot Americans understand energy prices are going up whether or not there is a climate bill.  The point is that as peak oil kicks in and the reality of human-caused climate change becomes painfully clear, energy efficiency, geothermal heat pumps, solar panels and the like will increasingly be seen as a desirable if not essential elements of a home, like an up-to-date kitchen, rather than just a “cost.”

The story on the from the Energy Saving Trust survey continues:

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Conservatives hate the notion of green clean energy jobs because their entire anti-science, anti-climate, anti-environment message is built around the (false) notion of a trade-off between reducing pollution and jobs (see “Mything in action: Why conservatives hate green clean energy jobs“).  If you don’t care about the health and well-being of future generations, you certainly don’t care if they have good jobs (or any jobs, for that matter).

President Obama has cut through conservative myths better than anyone: “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline…  We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects….  The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”

And so conservatives spin out disinformation on every clean energy jobs study (see “Heritage Foundation pushes ‘completely untrue’ attack on clean-energy jobs with a panel bought and paid for by dirty energy“).  In this repost, guest blogger Brad Johnson updates the story.

A Spanish paper that claimed support for green jobs “may destroy two jobs for every one created” has been debunked by an official publication of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The paper’s conclusions — led by Exxon-funded libertarian Gabriel Calzada — have been cited by GOP leaders, Fox News, right-wing columnists, conservative think tanks, and Big Oil front groups to attack President Obama’s green economic agenda. However, the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) finds that the Spanish authors’ claim that renewable support kills jobs “is not supported by their work“:

The analysis by the authors from King Juan Carlos University represents a significant divergence from traditional methodologies used to estimate employment impacts from renewable energy. In fact, the methodology does not reflect an employment impact analysis. Accordingly, the primary conclusion made by the authors – policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses – is not supported by their work.

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Escalating a dispute between the companies as to who is to blame for the schedule slippage, Areva said Monday it will not proceed with work on the delayed Olkiluoto nuclear reactor project in Finland until Finnish utility TVO makes unspecified changes to the project.

Areva, the French government-owned nuclear giant, made that disclosure in a financial statement for the first half of 2009.

Ouch.  That is from Energy Daily (subs. req’d).  The Financial Times story begins:

The financial risks of nuclear power were cast into sharp relief on Monday as Areva, the French state-owned group, revealed new provisions on its troubled Finnish reactor project that virtually wiped out interim operating profits.

Double ouch!

The ongoing saga between Areva and Finland is now more like an episode of Desperate Housewives than a sitcom, however.  Or maybe Law and Order:  Nuclear Intent.

Last September, I reported that “Finnish plant’s cost overruns to $6.66 billion.”  Then in February we had a radioactivity-free kind of meltdown:

The Finnish nuclear power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) is seeking damages of EUR 2,400 million from the consortium of Areva and Siemens for delays in the construction of Finland’s fifth nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto.

Areva made clear in May it wasn’t going to keep swallowing the price escalation risk — see “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”

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Videos are now available (here) for the “National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 on Jobs and the New Economy” at UNLV in Nevada August 10.

Participants at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas, NV, discussed ways smart federal and state-level policies can work to upscale existing markets for energy-efficiency retrofits, renewable energy, and energy infrastructure in a way that creates jobs, saves consumers money, and generates private investment. In conjunction with the summit, John Podesta and former Senator Timothy E. Wirth (D-CO) authored a short memo about the promise of natural gas as a bridge fuel for the 21st century, and CAP released a report with the Energy Future Coalition.

The videos represent an excellent six-hour workshop on the clean energy challenge and opportunity from some of the leading experts in the country  (see also “An introduction to the core climate solutions“).  Here is the agenda with the full list of Summit Speakers you can listen to:

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Plug-ins and electric cars are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline, even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“).  I think the Volt was overdesigned (see “CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid“), but very much hope it succeeds.  Our guest blogger, Kate Tecku, Energy Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress, has the latest updates on the Vote (first posted here).  See also “So what is it like to actually drive the Chevy Volt plug in hybrid electric car?“).

On Tuesday, after weeks of buzz from a viral media blitz, GM finally answered its own marketing spin, “What is 230?” Apparently, the new Chevrolet Volt – set to hit show room floors in 2010 – will achieve an astounding city fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon.

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