VC Khosla blows his credibility dissing plug-ins:

He may be a “venture-capital star” who is now putting a lot of money into biofuels — but he is no clean tech expert, as he proved during a keynote address at ThinkEquity Partners’ ThinkGreen conference in San Francisco. In remarks that should worry anybody relying on his judgment, Khosla said:

Forget plug-ins. They are nice toys. But they will not be material to climate change.

Very, very wrong. Plug ins are likely to be a central strategy for dealing with climate change, as readers of Climate Progress know (see below). I hope cellulosic ethanol will be, but that still remains to be seen.

I couldn’t agree with the speaker (Joe Romm) more strongly. Eve if the only thing that plug-ins do is let us keep vehicles rolling without having to resort to the CO2-intensive step of turning cvoal into motor fuel, they’ll play a huge roll. And the sooner you think peak oil is coming, the more important plug-ins will be. Why do you all think I talk endlessly about them and how new battery technology will be such a huge game changer?

Panasonic EV Energy Co. Starting Studies Geared to Mass Production of Li-Ion Cells for Toyota:

Panasonic EV Energy Co., the battery-making joint venture between Toyota and Matsushita, has begun studies at its Omori factory geared to the mass production of lithium-ion batteries, said Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe in his end-of-year press conference. The Omori factory currently produces NiMH cells.

Lithium-ion batteries are better suited than NiMH cells for use in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, Watanabe said. Toyota, Matsushita, and Panasonic EV are currently conducting development on the cells and systems. Toyota’s current prototype plug-in hybrid uses a NiMH battery pack. (Earlier post.)

In the press conference, Watanabe briefly described Toyota’s three-pronged approach to sustainability: R&D into technology in pursuit of sustainable mobility; sustainable manufacturing and social contributions.

Hybrid technology will play a central role in achieving sustainable mobility, according to Watanabe, who noted that Toyota has now sold a cumulative 1.25 million hybrid vehicles worldwide. As previously stated, Toyota is targeting annual hybrid sales of 1 million units as early as possible in the 2010s, and will have a hybrid model in all Toyota series vehicles.

Watanabe referenced the ongoing testing of the plug-in hybrid prototypes in Japan and the US, saying that the company is making steady progress toward the commercialization of the plug-in vehicles.

As I was just saying about batteries…

Sustainable IT:

From the trenches of the datacenter to the corner office, from the eco-minded citizen’s living room to the Senate floor, it seemed that just about everyone had green on the brain this past year.

…

But the impetus to be eco-friendly wasn’t just tied to concern for our little blue-green planet. One of the obvious benefits for reducing energy waste is saving cash, be it in the form of lower electric bills or fewer dollars pumped into the gas tank.

In the world of business IT, however, lower power bills alone weren’t the inspiration for organizations to green up their acts. From coast to coast, companies have been struggling with a power crisis: They’ve outgrown their datacenter facilities, yet have need for more computing power — or the local utility can’t consistently provide them the juice they need to keep their operations flowing and their business growing.

In response, companies have embraced technologies and practices in the name of sustainability to wring as much performance as possible out of their existing datacenter infrastructure. The opportunity to highlight their technologies as part of the datacenter-refurbishing process was icing on the cake.

What follows are some of the highlights that made 2007 the year of green tech.

[Longish list follows in original article]

One minor note on this: From an economist’s viewpoint, a lack of space/power in a data center is no different from a higher electricity price. Economists typically consider the extreme case–no availability of a good or service at all–to be equivalent to an infinitely high price.

In less econo-wonky terms, much of what’s in this article is good news–many companies are taking aggressive steps to use less electricity in their own operations, as well as developing products and services to help others do the same.

NYPD to road test electric scooters:

Police working to keep the city safer will be trying to keep it greener too — by testing an electric, ultra-quiet scooter.

Four plug-in Vectrix scooters will be road tested starting early next month as the New York Police Department tries to become more environmentally friendly and reduce gasoline use in its massive motor fleet.

The nation’s largest police department already uses a handful of hybrid cars and so-called flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on both gasoline and ethanol.

[insert here Lou’s shtick about the value of large consumers making mass purchases of more efficient technology]

See the article for a photo of an officer riding a Vectrix with the NYPD color scheme and markings.

All I really need now is a way to justify buying one of these bad boys. (The scooter, not the police officer.) I drive so little that it would be an extravagance and a “statement vehicle”, and I’m not into spending that much money for either purpose.

Inhofe recycles unscientific attacks on global warming, NYT’s Revkin gives him a pass:

So Sen. James “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe (R-OK) issues a report in which he claims:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming.

“Padded” would be an extremely generous description of this list of “prominent scientists.” Some would use the word “laughable” (though not the N.Y. Times‘ Andy Revkin, see below). For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?

I’m not certain a dozen on the list would qualify as “prominent scientists,” and many of those, like Freeman Dyson — a theoretical physicist — have no expertise in climate science whatsoever. I have previously debunked his spurious and uninformed claims, although I’m not sure why one has to debunk someone who seriously pushed the idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs! Seriously.

First of all, Joe Romm is right about this pathetic, shallow, and extremely disingenuous Inhofe publicity stunt. This is no more respectable than when Inhofe called global warming “the greatest hoax” ever perpetrated on the American public.

But as for Joe’s cheap shot at economists–hey Joe–I gotcha concerned economist right here!

If you have the stomach, check the article and the 97(!) comments that more resembles an N-way slap fight between drunks than a debate. Honestly, if that kind of bullshit happened on this site I would disable comments on all posts.

Argonne Assesses a Variety of Total Energy Cycle and Emissions Pathways for Plug-in Hybrids; Focus on Charge Depleting Mode:

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, which has the lead role in DOE efforts to evaluate plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and PHEV technology, recently compared US near term (to ~ 2015) alternative pathways for converting energy to light-duty vehicle kilometers of travel (VKT) in plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), hybrids (HEVs), a simulated fuel cell HEV and PHEV, and conventional vehicles (CVs).

Among the findings of the study were:

• More kilometers of service from coal are obtained by the use of coal-generated power to support PHEV CD mode than by converting coal to synthetic diesel (CTL) for use in diesel engines.
• More kilometers of service from farmed trees are obtained by the conversion of the biomass to power to support the PHEV CD mode than by converting trees to ethanol for use in HEVs or PHEVs in charge sustaining mode.
• For wind and solar, PHEV CD mode provides far more kilometers of service than the use of the renewable electricity in electrolysis to create hydrogen.
• Biofuels do not look significantly better than coal-based options on a total energy basis, but do for greenhouse has emissions. Renewable energy options reduce GHG emissions by a factor of three or more, compared to the fossil-based options.

Not too many surprises here, especially for the exceptionally astute (and stunningly good looking) TCoE readers. I found the result about using tress to move electrons instead of as biomass for ethanol interesting–that’s one detail I hadn’t seen addressed before.

You can grab the paper with the study’s results here (32 page, 471K PDF).

Administrative note: As I shift the focus and/or implementation of this site slightly in the coming weeks and months, please feel free to use any post, Linkage or otherwise, as an open thread. If you see something online that I haven’t talked about but you think people here should see, drop a comment in the most recent post. A few of you have done this recently, and I would love to see more of it.