I really hate stories like the one linked below, because I have to choose between not saying anything about them or expressing myself and then having to explain (especially for newcomers to this site) that I’m Really A Greenie, Honest.

This time around, the story is not about anything that’s actually being done, but is simply an idea a few people are pondering.

What If Gas Receipts Had Warning Labels?:

Cigarette packs have the Surgeon General’s warning. Heavy machinery has a word of caution about operating while intoxicated. Doritos tell us their saturated fat content. What would happen if our gasoline receipts had disclaimers too?

…

The idea comes from a conference speaker Lisa Margonelli, the director of the New America Foundation’s energy initiative and the author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank. In a New York Times op-ed awhile back, in the aftermath of the Gulf spill, she noted that every gallon of gas is indeed a gallon of risks, and that the spill is a unique opportunity to harness our political will to get “behind a sweeping commitment to use less gas — build cars that use less oil (or none at all) and figure out better ways to transport Americans.”

Now, I don’t think even she really believes her gas receipt warning label will actually come to pass. But it’s an interesting thought experiment. Most of the time, Americans live in a state of willful ignorance about the risks of oil. Before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there was an oil spill practically every day in places like Nigeria. And as the coverage of the oil spill fades, and as this summer of weather chaos fades into the background, the urgency of those dangers will diminish — as it always does (just look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina.)

…

Just as calorie counts inform us what we are putting into our bodies, a gas receipt warning label wouldn’t let us forget what we were really doing to our planet.

There’s no nice way to say this, so I won’t even try: This idea exemplifies precisely what’s wrong with the “environmental movement”, most notably in the US. We keep trying to come up with ever more creative and gentle ways to appeal to the better angels of consumers’ natures to coax them into making long-lived behavior changes. And, of course, it doesn’t work, for one blindingly simple and obvious reason: If you want all or nearly all people in a large and diverse group to do something they don’t want to do, you have to force them. That can be via law or by buying them off with a sufficiently large economic incentive, but be prepared to wield a carrot and/or a stick, because trying to reason with them just won’t cut it.

If we tried this gentle reminder thing on motor fuel receipts, I’m sure the overwhelming majority of Americans would not notice them at all or would see them and get pissed off that “someone was trying to tell them what they do with their own money”. In the latter case, it would likely make people dig even further into their entrenched position.

One slightly more interesting angle would be to really get in the consumer’s face. Instead of printing a static message or one chosen randomly from a static list, why not print something like, “The X gallons of gasoline you just purchased will add Y pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and add Z dollars to America’s trade deficit.” You could get even more creative and calculate the costs of adaptation to rising sea levels and other impacts, or who knows what.

Oh, there I go again — thinking that even an in-your-face version of a gentle nudge will convince a significant number of people to downsize their vehicle and/or drive less and/or hypermile when they do drive.

Silly me.

I hasten to add (he said, typing as quickly as possible) that I don’t like reaching these conclusions, so please don’t fall into the standard, hyper-polarized blogosphere trap of assuming that when someone says “X is true” he or she is pleased that X is true or stands to benefit from it in some way. In many cases all you should conclude is that your friendly neighborhood blogger thinks that X is true. I realize what a stunning notion that is, given the kinds of knock down, drag out knife fights over truly obscure minutia we see on almost any site about energy or environmental issues, but it’s true, dear reader.

On a related note, I highly recommend Dave Roberts’ Grist post, ‘Environmentalism’ can never address climate change.

Every once in a while I stumble across a rude reminder of just how precarious? perverse? stupefyingly weird? the road from laboratory to the mainstream commercial market can be for new technology. While looking for something in my countless gigs of downloaded reports and scientific papers, I ran across the February, 2002 document, Guidance for Transportation Technologies: Fuel Choice for Fuel Cell Vehicles [PDF], which has a real stunner of a chart on page 5, showing the projected rollout for vehicle fuel cells. It won’t fit here, so you’ll have to open it in a new window.

Hydrogen fuel cell commercial prototypes in 2004/2005, with commercial introductions in 2007/2009 and market penetration in 2010? And methanol and gasoline fuel cells on basically the same schedule?

Ouch.

My point is not to beat up the authors of this report, or even to slap around fuel cells, even though I still consider them to be a spectacularly bad idea for vehicles. I’m posting this as a rude reminder of the difficulty of making projections regarding the development and commercialization of new technology.

We’ve all seen technology take off like a rocket; I’ve been a computer hobbyist and professional in various forms since 1977, so I’ve had a front-row seat for that astonishing history, and even played my own tiny role in it as a software designer and programmer. And there are some instances where it’s pretty easy to predict success, like computer chips and Moore’s Law, or electric vehicles right now.

EVs are easy for a very simple reason: There’s only one thing standing between us and phenomenal growth of EVs, and that’s cheaper batteries. (Yes, there are other issues like customer acceptance of something that’s (gasp!) different, but I think those hurdles are insignificant and will more or less solve themselves once the price of batteries and therefore cars comes down.)

By the same token, hydrogen fuel cells make for a very dim picture, thanks to all the problems they present. Yes, we need a fueling infrastructure, as everyone points out. But we also need a hydrogen production infrastructure, and one that not only creates extremely pure hydrogen but also doesn’t create significant CO2 emissions, which means it has to either use electrolysis (which uses a buttload of electricity) or rely on CCS (which is still in the Magic Fairy Dust category). But we also need to drive the cost of fuel cells down dramatically, as well as find better ways to store the highly compressed hydrogen in vehicles. How anyone thought in 2002 that we could manage all that and begin to achieve “market penetration” by 2010 is beyond me.

And as for those jet packs we were supposed to have by now — who do I e-mail about that?

It’s been clear for years that the biggest single breakthrough one could reasonably hope for, the killer app, in computer terms, for addressing our energy and climate challenges, is batteries. That “reasonably” qualification is intended to rule out the SF stuff, like Doc Brown’s Mr. Fusion or some urban myth come true of a magic fuel injector that will let your V8 powered eclipse-inducing SUV get 200 miles per gallon. Once you weed out those fantasies, batteries are sexier than [something you find disturbingly sexy that I can’t mention on this site].

That’s why I just love seeing things like this press release, DuPont News: DuPont Launches Energain™ Separators for High-Performance Lithium Ion Batteries:

DuPont™ Energain™ battery separators can increase power 15–30%, increase battery life by up to 20% and improve battery safety by providing stability at high temperatures. With more battery power, drivers can travel farther on a single charge and accelerate more quickly and safely. For automobile and battery manufacturers, more battery power can reduce the number of batteries typically required in today’s hybrid and electric vehicles.

While the initial uses for the separator are in hybrid and electric vehicle batteries, the technology also will be targeted for batteries in renewable energy, grid applications and specialty consumer applications, including laptops, cell phones and power tools. Other products made using DuPont’s proprietary nanofiber technology will target a broad range of liquid filtration applications for the biopharmaceutical, microelectronics, and food and beverage industries, offering superior retention, filter life and flow resistance.

DuPont has begun construction on a facility in Chesterfield County, Va. (U.S.), to manufacture product for development and commercial sale. The new facility is expected to start up in the first quarter of 2011 and will initially be able to provide enough material to supply up to 20% of today’s hybrid and electric vehicle needs.

Assuming all that glossy corporate-speak didn’t cause you to bazooka barf all over your screen, this really is a big deal. Let’s run some numbers…

A Leaf-like EV gets about 5 miles per kWh of energy. For a 100-mile range that’s a 20 kWh battery pack. And at a price of roughly $400/kWh[1], that’s an $8,000 battery. For the sake of example, assume that adding DuPont’s Energain to a Leaf battery would decrease the cost/kWh by the quoted 15-30%. Yes, I’m hand waving the cost of Energain, which I strongly suspect DuPont won’t give away, but I’m also not including any other battery advances, so this is likely a very conservative view of the situation. So, Nissan or whoever builds the same size battery for the same cost that delivers greater range, or builds a smaller battery at reduced cost that delivers the same range.

In the first case, we still have an $8,000 battery, but it delivers enough energy to drive the car from 115 to 130 miles instead of the original 100. In the second case, the battery still gives you 100 miles/charge, but it costs from about $6,100 to $6,900, which reduces the cost to Nissan by $1,100 to $1,900. It won’t be long before nearly all of that cost savings is passed on to consumers, given the way the EV market is heating up. And unless there’s a dramatic turnaround in the economy, a roughly one to two thousand dollar drop in the price of an EV could make a big difference.

You could do a similar calculation for the battery in plain old hybrids, like the Prius, or plug-in hybrids, like the Volt. Because those cars have much smaller batteries than a full-blown EV they would see proportionately smaller savings, but who would argue against a lower price on the $41,000 Volt?

The key point here is that transportation emissions and oil consumption are huge chunks of our problem, so we can’t electrify transportation quickly enough.

Another potential use for improved batteries, as mentioned in the press release, is in “grid applications”. That means things like buffering the delivery of electrons from nondispatchable sources, like wind and solar, to meet the consumption cycles of society. Again, lower cost, even by 15 to 30%, is a huge win and it has potentially broad implications.

I’m not at all surprised to see such announcements about battery breakthroughs. I’m far from alone in figuring out how important batteries are, and therefore how large a mountain of money some inventor or company could make by developing the killer app. So I suspect there are dozens, maybe hundreds of companies working on ways to get more miles/dollar out of electrified transportation alternatives. Most of them won’t amount to anything, of course — that’s the way new technology is — but we don’t need all of them to work, just a few that will combine to drive the cost per kWh of storage down to something like $50 to $100. That would change the entire car industry more and quicker than 99% of the people buying and driving cars today realizes is even possible.

Just to be clear, such a turn of events would not be a silver bullet. We’d still be faced with the gargantuan task of cleaning up the worldwide electricity supply, and that’s such an immense challenge that I honestly don’t know how we’ll manage it when the US can’t so much as pass a law that says, “we [heart] Earth”, and China and India are both on paths to consume more energy and emit more CO2 for the next several years to a decade.

[1] The cost of auto-scale batteries is very hard to pin down. I’ve seen reports all over the map, including some much higher than $400, and one claiming that Nissan is making Leaf packs for $375/kWh. I pulled $400/kWh out of my hat as an example.

One of the most fascinating things about technological developments is watching them make it to market as real world products and services available to consumers. This process is almost always slower than we’d like (everything looks simpler to those of us who don’t have to do the work to make it happen, after all), and sometimes it takes some surprising twists along the way.

Plug-in hybrids and full EVs are good examples of both the delay and the labyrinthine route from laboratory to retail availability. I’ve been saying for longer than I (or my wife) care to think that electrified personal transportation will represent an immensely disruptive moment for the car business. The two main hurdles for companies are (1) getting battery prices low enough to make the vehicles more than niche products, and (2) getting would-be buyers to expand their comfort zone beyond the strengths and weaknesses of petroleum fueled vehicles.

I’ve long argued that the first hurdle is by far the bigger issue; if the battery in your 100-mile EV costs $30,000, I guarantee that you won’t sell many copies. Luckily, we’ve seen from the pricing of the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi iMiEV that the car companies have made great strides in reducing battery costs.

The second hurdle, customer acceptance, is to a large extent a figment of the imagination of some overly cautious auto execs and hydrogen car proponents. The idea that people will only buy a vehicle if they can drive at least 250 or 400 or however many miles between fill ups/rechargings is ridiculous. Once again, I say all you have to do is look at the US and see how many households have a convenient place to plug in a vehicle overnight and have at least one car that’s driven less than 100 miles/day by a comfortable margin. This still represents a potential market for millions of vehicles, even before businesses, government offices, airports, etc. are festooned with recharging stations. Given the slow initial production volume of PHEVs and EVs, we have years to get the infrastructure up to speed, unlike hydrogen, which demands that we have a refueling infrastructure in place on day one in any local area where one expects to sell HFCVs.

When disruptive events hit markets, there are two ways companies can react: They can leap into the fray, embrace the change, and basically gamble that being on the bleeding edge will pay off in the long run. Obviously this can be very risky in motor vehicles, computers, or any other technology-driven market. Call this the “no balls, no blue chips/bet the house” option. The other approach is to be far more cautious and see how the market plays out, and hope consumers don’t remember or care that you weren’t an innovator. This is the “let someone else jump first/we’re Microsoft, we don’t need no stinkin’ innovation” option.

It’s been clear for a while that among the major car companies, Nissan was taking option one. They saw the coming electrification of vehicles as an opportunity. They’re pushing hard on the Leaf, and so far it looks like the bet is going to pay off. Barring any major surprises, I expect to see them become a much more visible brand in the US, for example.

I’ve been disappointed in the reluctance of Honda and Toyota to leap into the EV space. Honda was the first to market a hybrid (the original Insight) and Toyota made the electric RAV4, the darling of the “who killed the electric car and got my dog pregnant” camp.

It seems that my disappointment was a bit premature, given the news that’s erupted recently:

• Report: Honda to announce plans for upcoming plug-in hybrid, EV
• Green Car Congress: Honda Introducing BEV and PHEV to US and Japan in 2012; Demonstration Programs in US Begin This Year
• Green Car Congress: VW Chairman Outlines E-Mobility Vehicle Launches In the US During Visit to Palo Alto Electronic Research Laboratory; Hybrids in 2010 and 2012, Full EV in 2013
• Toyota, Tesla Resurrect the Electric RAV4

Plus, Ford was already on board with a Focus EV set for production in 2011. (Honestly, I’m not sure what GM and Chrysler are up to on EVs.)

I think we’ve now progressed to the point where consumer surveys and Nissan’s early order program for the Leaf have convinced other companies that it’s safe to take the EV leap. I’d guess that these projects fro Toyota, Honda, and VW were in the works for a while, but moving them from a secret internal effort to a publicly announced product is a gigantic commitment.

This is all very good news, as electrification is the main step the US will take to reduce our oil imports and also our transportation-related CO2 emissions.[1] And it can’t begin too soon.

[1] I know that the people who hate the US’ car-centric culture will decry how we’re making a major transition but not fixing the core problem, namely the number of miles we drive. We should be reconfiguring our residential areas so that people can travel less and make much greater use of mass transit, bicycles, and walking, they say. My response is that I think that’s always been a pipe dream. While it’s undeniable that one can sit down with a clean sheet of paper and come up with plans that would, in fact, dramatically reduce miles driven and improve residents’ overall quality of life, the one thing I never see addressed is a general plan for how one manages to acquire enough clean sheets of paper and the funds to implement those plans, not to mention finds residents to move into them. Creating a few localized areas that follow a much more intelligent plan is one thing; coming up with a way to apply it to enough of a highly suburbanized country of over 300 million people to make a significant difference in our oil consumption and CO2 emissions is a whole different ballgame.

Love it or hate it, the US is locked into car-centrism for a long time, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to find ways for people to do the “wrong” thing better instead of waiting until we can convince (or force) them to do the “right” thing.

There’s a fascinating piece online from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory regarding the additional water requirements of CCS carbon capture and sequestration), Determining Carbon Capture and Sequestration’s Water Demands. This is one of those numbers, or sets of numbers, I’ve been trying to track down, as I knew there was some additional water required, but I honestly didn’t know if the amount was trivial or the proverbial Big Deal. The answer is that it’s certainly not a trivial increment, but it varies with the technology being used to generate electricity:

The additional withdrawal increases the water footprint by 55% to 97%, and while consumption grows by 73% to 93%.

As for what this means for, say, the US fleet of power plants, you could make a rough estimate by doubling the water withdrawal and consumption figures for subcritical and supercritical coal plants (which the DOE/NETL numbers show grow from 88% (subcritical, consumption) to 97% (subcritical, withdrawal)), and increasing IGCC withdrawal by 50% and consumption by 73%. Given that roughly 50% of the US’ electricity comes from coal, that’s a hell of a lot of gallons of water. The same article provides a pair of pie charts and text regarding showing US water withdrawal (2005) and consumption (1995):

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that thermoelectric generation accounted for approximately 41% of freshwater withdrawals, ranking slightly ahead of agricultural irrigation as the largest source of freshwater withdrawals in the U.S. in 2005. However, thermoelectric water consumption accounted for only 3% of total U.S. freshwater consumption in 1995 (Figure 1). A recent DOE/NETL study estimated that in 2005 total U.S. freshwater withdrawals for thermoelectric power generation amounted to approximately 146 billion gallon per day (bgd), while freshwater consumption was 3.7 bgd.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to dig into the numbers and cook up a more precise guesstimate of what a magic-wand style instant conversion of existing US generation facilities to full CCS operation would mean for water consumption and withdrawal. (Hint: The pie charts above show water figures for all thermoelectric generation, which includes natural gas and nuclear. So you can’t simply double the existing figures to get a ballpark estimate.)

But while we’re here, let me point out one detail that I think gets overlooked. If you look at those two pie charts above, one thing that leaps out at you is the disparity between withdrawal and consumption for thermoelectric generation. One way to think of this situation is that for power plants, withdrawal is more than anything a measure of any given the plant’s dependency on outside conditions, as opposed to its impact on the environment.[1] If your 1MW subcritical coal plant with CCS needs 1,200 gallons of water per hour, it better get it or you don’t push electrons, period. In other words, this is a measure of the vulnerability of a plant to local water availability.[2]

The water consumption, while roughly 75% of the withdrawal figures across the board for both CCS and non-CCS plants and quite literally a subset of the withdrawal amount, is more a measure of the plant’s impact on water flow, since that water is not returned to the source.

Taking a step back from the specifics, we’re left with some very big and troubling questions. How much of a factor will this additional water demand have for CCS and our ongoing struggles to reduce our CO2 emissions? I’ve said repeatedly that the biggest concern I have with CCS is the economic cost of retrofitting existing plants in the US, China, India, and basically everywhere else. These water withdrawal and consumption increments are so large that one has to wonder how many existing plants, even newer ones that happen to be close to a sequestration site or CO2 pipeline and have the on-site room for CCS hardware, will be viable candidates for retrofitting. Any reasonably accurate estimate of how the existing electricity generation infrastructure sorts out would require a plant-by-plant assessment that takes into account all these factors, with the potential for any one of them to escalate the cost of a retrofit, possibly to a prohibitive level.

With China, the world’s largest consumer of coal by a wide margin, already facing many water challenges even as they build more coal plants (which they would be all the more reluctant to abandon, since they’re brand new), one can only conclude that their prospects for nearly universal CCS retrofits are even worse than the US’.

This is certainly not the result I was hoping for when I found the water/CCS numbers, and it emphasizes yet again the importance of the energy/water nexus. If I can find the right inputs and the time, I will try to do a more detailed analysis of this situation.

[1] Yes, there certainly are such impacts, such as heated water that’s returned to lakes or rivers. I’m ignoring those effects here, as I’m focused more on the flow of water issues.

[2] The issue is slightly more perverse than that, as plants require not merely X gallons/hour to operate, but water at an acceptable incoming temperature, since it’s primarily used for cooling. This has already become an issue during heat waves with thermoelectric plants, and it’s one of the stealth issues that I think will become far more prominent.

MIT will release today the latest in their “the future of …” reports, this time focusing on natural gas. The report isn’t available online yet, as best I can tell, but there’s already copious coverage. The best article I’ve seen so far is from the NY Times (emphasis added):

Natural gas will provide an increasing share of America’s energy needs over the next several decades, doubling its share of the energy market to 40 percent, from 20 percent, according to a report to be released Friday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The increase, the report concluded, will come largely at the expense of coal and will be driven both by abundant supplies of natural gas — made more available by shale drilling — and by measures to restrict the carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to climate change.

In the long term, however, the future may be dimmer for natural gas if stricter regulations are put in place to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 — a goal set by President Obama. Although lower in carbon than coal, natural gas is still too carbon-intensive to be used under such a target absent some method of carbon capture, the authors of the report concluded.

…

High-mileage fleet vehicles, like taxis, could be economically converted to natural gas, the study said. But the recent history of natural gas vehicles in the United States suggests that buses and small delivery vehicles are more likely candidates for conversion than the great mass of privately owned vehicles.

Natural gas vehicles emit about three-quarters as much carbon dioxide per mile as gasoline-powered ones. The switch would not have a large impact on carbon — only about a ton per vehicle per year for a typical American car, according to the report.

As I’ve said here approximately Avogadro’s Number of times, a major shift to natural gas is not a good idea, simply because of the urgency of our situation. It will take so long to shift a significant portion of our energy consumption from coal or oil to natural gas, and the payback will be so small, that it’s not even a good “transition fuel”.

(Notice in the article above that the report is predicting a big increase in the use of natural gas over “several decades” that will be constrained by a need to achieve huge CO2 emissions reductions by 2050. How much of a gap is there between “several decades” and the 40 years until 2050? We’d have to begin ditching natural gas as soon as we fully adopted it.)

A lot of fleet owners are likely to switch at least some of their vehicles to natural gas, since it will save them money and give them a nice green aura. That aura means adopters will gain from a greenwashing effect plus likely tax breaks. The key point here is, once again, the disparity between the dollar cost of using any given fuel and the environmental impact of doing so. As long as CO2 emissions are undervalued, individuals, corporations, governments, etc. will continue to have very sizable incentives to do the wrong thing.

This onging delusion that converting from gasoline (or diesel) powered motor vehicles to ones running on natural gas as a way to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions just won’t die. And Edison knows I’ve done my best to squash it.

Looks like my work here is anything but done…

GM Places Bet on Natural Gas-Powered Vehicles:

Automakers have had a mixed history with natural gas in the United States, but General Motors Co. is betting that a new line of fleet vans can bring the technology back.

The automaker is rolling out compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) alternatives to the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana. The two full-sized vans are designed for those who must haul large amounts of equipment but don’t need to drive long distances.

The new vans will be available for the 2011 model year. Pricing hasn’t yet been released.

“We’re listening to our fleet customers and dealers about offering options that help them achieve their business objectives,” said Brian Small, general manager of GM’s fleet and commercial operations, in a release. “The industry commitment to expand the CNG and LPG infrastructure in key fleet markets was an enabler to allowing us to introduce these options now.”

…

The vans can also have a significant environmental impact.

The center did a study for AT&T, which plans to convert 15,000 fleet vehicles to green technology. Researchers found that once the company replaced those vehicles with either hybrid or CNG vans, there would be savings of 31,533 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, roughly the equivalent of taking 5,776 cars off the road. If half the country’s corporate fleets adopt the same strategy, it would be the same as cutting 1.2 million vehicles from the road.

Give me a few seconds to bang my head on the nearest wall.

Here’s a few tips on how to read an article like this:

• When it quotes just absolute values, like the amount of CO2 emissions avoided, the first thing you should ask yourself is: How big is the percentage? The second thing you should ask is: Is that percentage savings enough to justify all the costs involved in doing whatever it is that’s under discussion.
• You should also question why the people and organizations involved are behaving as reported. In this case, it very likely has nothing to do with reducing emissions. It’s a move based on two things: Brute force economics (NG is cheaper and will be much more stable in price than gasoline or diesel fuel), and greenwashing (the public has largely bought off on the idea that NG vehicles emit dramatically less CO2 than conventional vehicles, so when a company has its people drive around in trucks with “This vehicle is powered by clean natural gas!” plastered on all sides, it makes them look good).
• Never forget the inescapable basic details. In this case, it’s the fact that NG vehicles emit 20 to 25% less CO2 per mile driven compared to equivalent gasoline or diesel vehicles.

This kind of conversion might very well make good economic sense for an individual company, but for the economy as a whole it’s a non-starter. The cost and time lag involved in converting even a small portion of the US vehicle fleet to NG would be non-trivial, to say the least, and we would have to abandon NG as a fuel as soon as we got even partway through the adoption process, simply because the CO2 savings it would deliver aren’t nearly enough given the level of reduction needed.

Autoblog Green has an eyebrow raising story about a projection of EV sales success in the US,

New study expects electric vehicles to only be 2-5% of market by 2020:

A new study from Deloitte Consulting predicts that market acceptance of electric vehicles (EVs) will be much more limited than projections from companies like Nissan and Tesla Motors. Nissan and alliance partner Renault are betting big that electric cars will be huge and for Tesla that is the only option.

Deloitte blames the continued high cost of batteries and limited driving range for what it projects will be about 2-5 percent market penetration by the end of the decade. The consulting firm is projecting that batteries will drop to about $600 per kilowatt-hour which would still put the 24 kWh pack in the Nissan Leaf at $14,400. Some reports put the battery pack’s price at just $9,000 today.

The link in the end of the quote above points to another ABG article that says the current price of the Nissan battery pack is about $375/kWh.

But even beyond that detail, the number one question I have (and I can’t find the study so I can answer it myself) is: What did the consulting company assume the price of gasoline would be in 10 years? If they followed the more or less standard practice of assuming the price (inflation adjusted) would be $3/gallon in the US, then this study is very likely not worth the cost of the electricity needed to display the PDF on your screen.

As we get further into this merged energy and environmental mess we’ve created, I’m convinced that the practice of making a single projection based on one set of assumptions is nearly useless. The only approach that even remotely seems rational is to look at combinations of the most critical inputs; in this case, that might be a 3×3 grid of low, medium, and high prices for both batteries and gasoline. (Any carbon mitigation policies would likely have the effect of increasing the price of gasoline, so they could be folded in to those scenarios very easily.)

There’s also the “if X happens, we’re screwed, so we won’t let X happen” factor. If EV acceptance is that low, and there’s no other offsetting breakthrough, like a massive roll out of algae-derived, essentially carbon neutral motor vehicle fuels, then we’ll have utterly failed to contain CO2 emissions from the transportation sector and we will indeed be screwed beyond all recognition. Therefore, we won’t let that happen and we’ll intervene with public policy in the form of a higher price on carbon and/or incentives to buy EVs, that unscrew us.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think EVs will be a huge success in the mass market, especially in the US. Apparently somewhat less than the entire world agrees with me, so let me take one more run at this.

I start with the post on Autoblog Green, Ward’s: Nissan Leaf is a multi-billion dollar gamble that faces risky odds:

If the Nissan Leaf was a glitzy casino game inside a Las Vegas hot spot, Ward’s Auto suggests that few people would be willing to place their bets in hopes of hitting the jackpot. The odds for the Leaf would, in typical Vegas fashion, be in the house’s favor. Stepping away from the lights of Sin City and back into reality, Ward’s, like Forbes before it, believes the Leaf is Nissan’s multi-billion dollar investment that may end up going down as a great effort that never pays off.

What are the odds of success for the Leaf? It’s hard to say exactly, but if hybrids and their success (or lack thereof) is any indication, the Leaf has quite a challenge ahead. As Ward’s guest commentator John McElroy points out, after a decade on the market, hybrids have captured only a marginal amount of sales – just 2.5 percent. That’s ten years, seven brands and 20 different hybrids, yet only a minor fraction of total sales. McElroy adds that electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to face an even more difficult time cracking the market. But, even if you assume that EVs can match hybrids, the Leaf’s impact appears minor, especially when you consider that other electric vehicles will compete for their piece of the pie.

Here’s our take on it. Renault-Nissan has poured $6 billion into electric vehicle development and will likely hold the biggest chunk of that 2.5 percent. But a big piece of 2.5 percent is still mighty small. Leading us to wonder if Nissan is placing a risky bet on future success or just intent on using the vehicle as a marketing tool to show off just how “green” it is. If it’s the latter, $6 billion is quite the chunk of change to get a point across. Still, the Leaf could lead to an electric future with the odds strongly in Nissan’s favor – and that’s a gamble worth taking.

Click through and read the comments on that post (9 as I write this), and you’ll see they very strongly reject the notion that this is a risky gamble for Nissan.

My argument for the impending success of EVs is pretty simple:

• The per-mile fuel cost for electricity vs. gasoline is already very favorable–about 2 cents/mile compared to 10. As the price of oil and gasoline rise in the next few years, this disparity will only grow, even if electricity prices rise due to the up-front cost of decarbonizing our electricity generation.
• The cars are already coming in cheaper than expected, and I doubt we’ll see a decline in federal and state incentives. If anything, I would expect those incentives to increase as more states offer them. (I think that only California and Georgia offer incentives currently; if I’m wrong, someone please correct me.) And batteries will only get cheaper.
• Never underestimate the marginal utility of telling the oil companies and oil exporting nations to go screw themselves. Among Americans, this is a very powerful emotional factor.[1]
• Never underestimate the “greener than thou” factor. We saw that in spades with the Prius, and we’ll see it raised to a whole new level with EVs. Every one could ship with a bumper sticker pre-applied that says, “Driving this proves I’m a better person than you are. Deal with it.”, and most people would gladly leave it in place.
• The lack of a public recharging infrastructure won’t mean zip to the early adopters. Take just those people who have a garage, can use the car as a commuter/local errand vehicle (so 100 miles/charge won’t be an issue), and are susceptible to the above inducements, and you’re still talking about a potential market of several million vehicles in the US alone.
• Many fleet operators will love EVs, from cars to the Ford Transit minivans.

And no, I didn’t put down a $99 deposit on a Leaf today, although it was mighty tempting. I will likely get another two years out of Space Wart, my trusty Scion xA before I buy a second-gen EV.

[1] Yes, I know, the US imports more oil from Canada than from any other country. But the average US citizen doesn’t know that; they think we buy most of it from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

And speaking of using natural gas for transportation (as in part of my earlier post, The true face of shale gas), there’s the whole nasty issue of leaks.

Natural Gas May Be Worse for the Planet than Coal:

This week the U.S. Congress heard testimony supporting a bill that would push to replace diesel with natural gas in heavy vehicles. It’s an attempt to cut oil imports, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Part of the argument is that natural gas is substantially cleaner than diesel, and results in the emission of about 25 percent less greenhouse gas.

But experts are warning that natural gas might not be as clean as it seems.

In fact, using natural gas rather than diesel in vehicles could actually increase climate change, says Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. “You’re aggravating global warming more if you switch,” he says.

Howarth is basing his conclusion on a preliminary analysis that includes not only the amount of carbon dioxide that comes out of a tailpipe when you burn diesel and natural gas, but also the impact of natural gas leaks. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is much more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it contribute significantly to global warming. When you factor this in, natural gas could be significantly worse than diesel, he says. Using natural gas would emit the equivalent of 33 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule. Using petroleum fuels would emit the equivalent of just 20 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule.

Howarth goes further, suggesting that natural gas could even rival greenhouse gas emissions from mining and burning coal–the dirtiest of fossil fuels. He says it’s “not significantly better than coal in terms of the consequences of global warming” and is calling for a moratorium on extracting natural gas from shale, which requires more energy (and so emits more greenhouse gases) than extracting it from conventional natural gas sources.

Oops.

To hang some numbers on the magnitude of current methane leaks, see the US Dept. of Energy’s report, Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2007 [PDF] which shows (page 5) that the top three sources of methane emissions in the US are:

• Natural gas systems, 176.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent
• Landfills, 169.0
• Enteric fermentation (i.e. livestock farts and burps), 138.5

So, in addition to those existing leaks, add in tens of millions of new vehicles and connectors (since many people will likely use in-home refueling gizmos), and you suddenly have the potential for vastly larger impact. While Howarth’s analysis is still “preliminary”, I suspect now that he’s opened the door, a lot of people will be rushing through, calculators in one hand and a list of assumptions in the other.

Stay tuned.

Visiting Dimock, Seeing Gas Drilling’s Ugly Side Firsthand:

Like so many who have been following controversial gas drilling issues in the Northeast’s Marcellus Shale region (the geological formation that stretches from West Virginia to upstate New York), I have been hearing and reading about, and seeing images of, Dimock, PA for the past roughly year-and-a-half. For those not in the know, Dimock has become the unfortunate poster child for all that can go wrong when industrial gas drilling in the Marcellus isn’t adequately regulated and companies make mistakes. Residents have experienced the wide array of adverse effects associated with shale gas production – many of them, it should be noted, inherent in the activity even under the best of circumstances.

These impacts include: exploding water wells, contaminated water supplies necessitating daily fresh water deliveries (complete with home invasion in order to accept the regular deliveries), rural landscapes utterly transformed into industrial zones, constant diesel fumes, 24-hour-a-day traffic and noise that literally shakes the walls of homes.

…

Only when you’re standing in the front yard of someone’s dream home – which was once surrounded only by their residential neighbors and farms – and see, hear, smell and feel the vibrations of the incessant truck traffic that passes at all hours of the day and night can you truly understand how transformative it is when gas production arrives in a community. Only when you hear the constant industrial noise from every direction as new well pads are cleared, well bores drilled and then fracked – noise that likewise exists around the clock – can you comprehend how those whose lives have already been turned upside down by drilling gone wrong can never escape the constant auditory reminders. And only when you stand in the backyard of a family who moved to the beautiful Dimock countryside after their last home burned to the ground and see the well pads to both their immediate left and right does it become clear that – even if everything had gone “right” – this family now lives in an industrial zone.

My next post will focus on some of the myriad things that have, in fact, gone wrong in Dimock – things that have made it the unwilling cautionary tale for why Marcellus drilling should not be permitted in New York (or anywhere) unless and until we are shown if and how it can be done safely.

The image a lot of people have of natural gas extraction, that it’s a clean, quiet process vastly “nicer” than messy old coal or oil, is just as wrong as the bizarre idea that converting gasoline or diesel vehicles to run on compressed natural gas yields a huge reduction in CO2 emissions.[1]

With any luck at all, continued reporting, like the blog entry quoted above from Kate Sinding, will help get the word out.

[1] I’ve seen several reports of field tests of CNG-fueled vehicles that claim a CO2 emissions reduction of about 20% compared to an equivalent gasoline or diesel vehicle. One report I found just now, White Paper on Natural Gas Vehicles: Status, Barriers, and Opportunities [PDF] by the Argonne National Laboratory, says (page 4):

The Civic GX has been the only CNG light duty vehicle offered since 2007. The American manufactured vehicles, however, did not always have lower criteria pollutant emissions operating on natural gas than did comparable models with the same engine size. When running on gasoline, the Cavalier bi-fuel CNG/gasoline vehicle had slightly worse fuel economy than the comparable dedicated gasoline vehicle, probably as a result of added storage system weight. Based on today‘s EPA ratings of past CNG vehicles, for criteria pollutants, on average they were comparably clean to gasoline vehicles. ―Energy equivalent‖ fuel economy was consistently less, but due to favorable properties of natural gas, net estimates of tons of GHGs emitted are generally less. According to the DOE/EPA fueleconomy.gov website, the 2009 Civic GX emits an estimated 5.4 tons of CO2 per year, compared to 6.3 tons for the standard Civic, an improvement of 14%.

So we’re going to build out an entire refueling infrastructure and start mass producing new CNG vehicles for that piddling level of CO2 reduction? Really?

Without resorting to cheating-via-Google, and without putting a lot of thought into it, what do you think it would do to the per-mile cost of owning and driving a car in the US if we added a 100% tax to gasoline. That’s right, not a piddling little 10 cents here or 50 cents there, but a big, hairy-chested, visible-from-space, smack-you-in-the-face-with-a-2×4 100% tax on top of the current cost and existing taxes.

Would you believe that for the average American driver and the average car it would increase the per-mile cost by only 20%?[1]

Before anyone leaps to the (wrong) conclusion that I’m advocating an instant 100% tax on gasoline, let me explain my point: People have a very skewed idea of what it costs per mile to own a car. The total is much higher than most people realize, simply because so many large contributors to that figure are paid very seldom, but in much large increments. Insurance, maintenance, license and registration fees, loan interest, and depreciation don’t come to mind nearly as quickly as does the price you paid at the gas pump two days ago.

This is far more than a charming little observation about market psychology; this perception issue has very significant public policy ramifications in the US (and likely many other countries, I’d guess). The painful truth is that a sizable portion of our CO2 emissions come from the transportation sector (one third, in fact, just over two billion metric tons/year), and trying to give people enough incentive to drive less and drive more efficient vehicles, at least to the extent needed to make a big dent in that 2 gigtons of CO2 will almost surely entail higher gasoline prices. But how do we get a public policy in place if every politician who decides to support such a measure is sure to be carpet bombed with ads from his or her opponent in the next election that scream about the ravages of paying an extra 50 cents (or however much) per gallon?

Yes, in the grand scheme of things it’s not the most important point, I suppose. But it’s yet another example of the kind of myopia and misunderstanding that will slow or block us from taking the needed steps to minimize the impacts of climate change.

[1] This calculation is based on the latest edition of AAA’s “Your Driving Costs” [PDF]. That booklet shows that for 15,000 miles/year, the average car has a per mile cost of 56.6 cents, with gasoline being 11.36 cents/mile.

Like many of you, I’ve been watching the spasmodic reaction to President Obama’s offshore oil drilling announcement. Some of you probably contributed to said reaction. I have to admit, I’m not nearly as upset about this as most of my fellow greenies. It will likely take a long time–at least 10 years, by most estimates I’ve seen–for any oil to be produced from these areas, and no one has a solid estimate of how much oil is down there. (There are estimates, to be sure, but we should consider them all to have a +/- 80% implicit fudge factor.)

I have no delusions that we’ve found a way to extract oil from deep offshore areas with such precision that we’ll never have a major spill, and I’m one of the last people on this planet who needs to be reminded about the CO2 emissions of that additional oil consumption. Many people are running around proclaiming that this is a “political move”, since it will have (we’re guessing) a negligible impact on prices and a very small impact on reducing the US’ reliance on imported oil. To those people, I say, “Well, duh.” Some are saying it’s a really stupid political move, because the Republicans will take any offered olive branch and beat you with it until you knock them down and kick them into submission. “Well, duh, squared.”

I’ve been saying since the very earliest days of this blog that humanity would very like use all the oil we can pump out of the ground, plus an astonishing amount we can cook and shovel out (oil shale and/or tar sands). Peak oil is no less an issue just because we’re finally waking up to the immensity and urgency of the climate change problem. Consider this announcement from Obama as supporting evidence for that “we’ll use it all” prediction, as well as just one more nasty thing people on the part of the ideological spectrum I and most of you inhabit will have to live with.

Even with all that hanging over our heads, there’s a much bigger, nastier problem America has to deal with, as Howard Fineman points out in Forget oil, coal is Obama’s thorn:

Forget whatever else you hear about energy policy, the real fight — and the real political problem — this year in Congress will be how to deal with our nagging reliance on the most abundant component of our carbon-based patrimony.

We can talk until we’re blue in the face about offshore drilling, wind power, natural gas, and energy conservation … but the short-term drift of history still dictates a heavy reliance on the dirtiest and deadliest of all fuels: coal.

The big question in the energy bill — if there is one — is how and whether Congress will ask the American people to pay for the cost of controlling the environmental consequences of that reliance.

At its core, the president’s energy vision calls for switching our transportation system from oil to plug-in electricity. But 45 percent of all electricity in the country is still generated by coal-fired power plants. In other words, we run the real risk of merely replacing one polluting and increasingly scarce fuel, petroleum, with an abundant but even more environmentally troublesome one, coal.

…

The hard part is going to be convincing senators from coal-producing and/or electricity-exporting states to go along with any sort of carbon tax.

States with power plants that generate electricity from coal read like a roster of presidential swing states. Among them: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina. And other states with major coal commitments include: Georgia, Arizona, Kentucky and Wyoming.

Getting 60 votes for some kind of carbon-pollution tax, even if it’s in the most attenuated “cap-and-trade” form, will be next to impossible.

(Note that running a car on coal-generated electrons is still cleaner than running an equivalent oil-powered car, but not by much.)

The problems with coal are legion–mountain top removal or dangerous underground mining, the release of methane, mercury, and heavy metals, CO2 and sulfur dioxide emissions, etc.

In 2007, the US emitted over two billion tons of CO2 just from burning coal, which accounted for 36% of our total CO2 emissions. And nearly all of that coal was used for electricity generation.

We have two choices with coal: Figure out how to burn it vastly cleaner than we do it now, or stop using it. The first option is a logistical and economic (and therefore a public policy) nightmare, thanks to the hundreds of coal plants that were sited and built with no concern whatsoever for CCS (carbon capture and sequestration). And as for stopping altogether–good luck with that one. Any solution not only has to clear the state-level hurdles Fineman mentions, but it will also have to overcome the political clout of the coal companies and the railroads, which derive a huge portion of their revenue from hauling coal around the country.

And once you figure out how to get the US off its coal kick, you can move on to China, India, and Russia.

So, remind me again why this offshore oil thing is worth having baskets of kittens over?

04/01/2010: DOT, EPA Set Aggressive National Standards for Fuel Economy and First Ever Greenhouse Gas Emission Levels For Passenger Cars and Light Trucks:

Release date: 04/01/2010

Contact Information: Cathy Milbourn Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov 202-564-7849 202-564-4355 NHTSA Press Office: 202-366-9550

WASHINGTON - Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.

This action is one important step in fulfilling the Obama Administration’s commitment to moving towards a clean energy, climate friendly economy.

“These historic new standards set ambitious, but achievable, fuel economy requirements for the automotive industry that will also encourage new and emerging technologies,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “We will be helping American motorists save money at the pump, while putting less pollution in the air.”

“This is a significant step towards cleaner air and energy efficiency, and an important example of how our economic and environmental priorities go hand-in-hand,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “By working together with industry and capitalizing on our capacity for innovation, we’ve developed a clean cars program that is a win for automakers and drivers, a win for innovators and entrepreneurs, and a win for our planet.”

DOT and EPA received more than 130,000 public comments on the September 2009 proposed rules, with overwhelming support for the strong national policy. Manufacturers will be able to build a single, light-duty national fleet that satisfies all federal requirements as well as the standards of California and other states. The collaboration of federal agencies also allows for clearer rules for all automakers, instead of three standards (DOT, EPA, and a state standard).

Today’s final rules, issued by DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and EPA, establish increasingly stringent fuel economy standards under NHTSA’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy program and greenhouse gas emission standards under the Clean Air Act for 2012 through 2016 model-year vehicles.

Starting with 2012 model year vehicles, the rules together require automakers to improve fleet-wide fuel economy and reduce fleet-wide greenhouse gas emissions by approximately five percent every year. NHTSA has established fuel economy standards that strengthen each year reaching an estimated 34.1 mpg for the combined industry-wide fleet for model year 2016.

Because credits for air-conditioning improvements can be used to meet the EPA standards, but not the NHTSA standards, the EPA standards require that by the 2016 model-year, manufacturers must achieve a combined average vehicle emission level of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. The EPA standard would be equivalent to 35.5 miles per gallon if all reductions came from fuel economy improvements.

Specifically, the new National Program:

Reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 960 million metric tons over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated, equivalent to taking 50 million cars and light trucks off the road in 2030.

Conserves about 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated.

Enables the average car buyer of a 2016 model year vehicle to enjoy a net savings of $3,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle, as upfront technology costs are offset by lower fuel costs

“We are delivering on our mission and President Obama’s call for a strong and coordinated national policy for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and we will do so in a way that does not compromise safety,” said NHTSA Administrator David Strickland.

“These are the first national standards ever to address climate change,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Gina McCarthy. “Over the coming years, America will witness an amazing leap forward in vehicle technologies, delivering fuel efficiency that will save us money and protect the environment.”

The joint final regulation achieves the goal set by President Obama to develop a National Program to establish federal standards that meet the needs of the states and the nation as a whole to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama first announced the effort last May with a broad coalition of automakers, the United Auto Workers, States, and the environmental community.

NHTSA and EPA expect automobile manufacturers will meet these standards by more widespread adoption of conventional technologies that are already in commercial use, such as more efficient engines, transmissions, tires, aerodynamics, and materials, as well as improvements in air conditioning systems. Although the standards can be met with conventional technologies, EPA and NHTSA also expect that some manufacturers may choose to pursue more advanced fuel-saving technologies like hybrid vehicles, clean diesel engines, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and electric vehicles.

In conjunction with the United States, Canada is also announcing Light Duty Vehicle GHG-Emissions regulations today. U.S. EPA and NHTSA have worked closely with Environment Canada to ensure a common North American approach.

Climate change is the single greatest long-term global environmental challenge. Cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks are responsible for almost 60 percent of all U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

More information: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/regulations.htm

A few interesting items on the EV front today…

• Green Car Congress: North American Grid Operators Study Concludes 1M Plug-in Electric Vehicles May Be On the Road by 2020; Staggered Charging Can Reduce Potential Negative Impact on Grid
• Electric Vehicles Charge Ahead in US
• Another cost of going electric: Installing home charging gear
• 2011 Nissan Leaf Lease Pricing will Rival Toyota Prius, Honda Accord
• Five myths about electric cars

The last item above says:

5. Electric vehicles aren’t really clean because they use electricity from coal plants. This one is undoubtedly true, in that battery cars are not “zero emission” on a “well to wheels” basis. Coal power is indeed dirty power. But, all things considered, EVs are still much better for our planet than gasoline cars. According to Sherry Boschert, author of the book Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America (New Society), EVs reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 11 to 100 percent (depending on the type of power plant) compared to internal-combustion cars, and 24 to 54 percent compared to hybrid cars. Even if all our plants burned coal, we’d still reduce CO2 by as much as 59 percent with people driving only EVs. Boschert’s primary source was a study by the federal Argonne National Laboratories.

There’s a timing and intersection issue that this overlooks–we have no choice but to nearly decarbonize our electricity supply. That will make electric vehicles already on the road get cleaner automatically.

And as for the issue raised in another link above about the cost of adding a big-buck EV charger, I’m not at all convinced this is a big deal. At 1,500 watts, which is easily doable with a 110 volt line and standard wiring, you get 12,000 Wh in 8 hours, which is enough to drive 60 miles. And to be honest, many people park their cars for much more than 8 hours on a typical night–a more realistic average for a typical workday is more like 12, which would give you 18,000 Wh and 90 miles of driving range, nearly a full charge.

Again, tell American consumers they can drive for a fuel cost of under 3 cents/mile and flip the bird at the oil companies and oil exporting nations at the same time, at a lease price close to that of an Accord or Prius, and they’ll practically stampede the nearest dealer. Unless there’s some very nasty surprise, like the Leaf, iMiEV, et al. costing $75,000, the initial demand for EVs will make buying one very difficult; expect to see “market adjustment factors” on price stickers and waiting lists.

In trying to communicate the urgency of our climate situation to newcomers, there are two basic approaches we can take, and we’re doing a reasonable job on just one of them. We can talk about all the “feeds and speeds” of climate change–if we let atmospheric CO2 reach X parts per million it will mean Y degrees of warming and Z cm of sea level rise and W people turned into climate refugees because of inadequate food and/or water. This is the kind of talk that consumes about 95% of the blogosphere, and quite understandably–it’s hard not to scream about will happen if the ship we’re all on hits the iceberg that’s dead ahead.

But there’s another aspect of this, tied to that old devil I keep bringing up, timing, that realists who know what’s going on are doing a terrible job conveying to the newcomers: The difficulty of doing what science says we must to avoid all those horrific ramifications. The implication of ignoring that side of the coin are terrible; if mainstream consumers and voters think that climate change is a distant concern and that we “have plenty of time to deal with it”, then they will be far less inclined to do something about it now. This is hardly a new phenomenon, or one restricted to climate change. Ask dentists how many patients they see who neglect their teeth for years and then suddenly need root canal procedures or extractions. Ask doctors how many patients they treat who “have been meaning to quit smoking for years” but never did, only to discover they have a serious lung disorder or even cancer.

I find it very frustrating how many of my fellow dedicated enviros are utterly clueless about the sheer magnitude of the effort needed to hit that 80 by 2050 goal. Far too many of “us” think that driving a hybrid, changing their light bulbs, bringing home their groceries in reusable cloth bags, and not buying bottled water “makes them green” and they’re “doing their part to help”, etc. Not only are they not even close to doing “enough”, they’re actually doing considerable harm by inadvertently sending the message to mainstreamers that what they (the enviros) are doing is the silver bullet that will solve our environmental problems if only we could get everyone to be like them. The mainstreamers see that what the enviros do isn’t all that different from what they themselves do, so what’s the rush? Why is everyone getting so worked up about it?

One way to approach this particular gap in our communications is to look at just what it will take to reduce US CO2 emissions below 20% of the 1990 level by 2050. An excellent book on the topic, albeit one focused on the UK and not the US, is George Monbiot’s Heat, which I very highly recommend. I don’t plan to write a US-centric version of Monbiot’s book (although I would certainly read it if one were available). Instead, I plan to look at a series of scenarios for cutting US emissions, and present them in a slightly different way than I’ve done things in the past. For each installment of this series, I will create a spreadsheet that readers can download and fiddle with, and I will write a post that walks you through the spreadsheet and what it says, but without talking about every single cell.

I can’t stress this enough: I want your feedback about this idea in general, as well as what kind of scenarios to include in future installments. You don’t have to write a detailed treatment, just leave a comment here and we can talk about it publicly and narrow it down to something specific enough to be done in Excel. And to be blunt, I will likely not pursue this project unless I have some indication that it’s of value and people want to see more installments; this first one is an experiment.

For the first installment, I wanted to look at one of the enduring memes that’s arisen in the last few years, that we can make huge strides in reducing our CO2 emissions by making much wider use of our vastly increased natural gas reserves. We all know that natural gas is cleaner than coal or oil (and it certainly is), so making a big, long term commitment to using it in place of those other fuels would be a big win, right? Well, maybe not so much.

The Excel spreadsheet accompanying this post is here [XLS]. Please note that I added some pop-up comments to help explain exactly what I did. (Look for the little red triangle in the upper-right corner of some cells; hover your mouse over the cell to see the comment.)

In the spreadsheet, I started off by reproducing some data from the US Dept. of Energy’s Annual Energy Review. The first two tables present data from tables 12.3 and 12.2, which provide US CO2 emissions from energy consumption for 2008 and 1990, respectively. Next is a table showing how much each sector of the economy derives its energy from various sources (coal, oil, etc.).

The next thing in the spreadsheet is Scenario 1: All NG for electricity, transportation, and stationary use, which is simply a reworked version of the AER table 12.3 at the top of the spreadsheet. This is a “magic wand” scenario, in which I’m looking at what would happen if we could wave a magic wand and instantly transform the entire US infrastructure to replace all use of coal and oil for electricity generation, transportation, and stationary use, e.g. space heating and industrial processes). Thus there is no time lag for infrastructure transformation, no issues of how to finance such a massive undertaking, etc. Wave your wand and POOF!, it’s done.

I scaled the emissions from natural gas to replace coal and oil in the residential, commercial, industrial, and electricity sectors to show what they would be if an equivalent amount of energy were provided by natural gas. This assumes that the same mix of natural gas technologies would be used as is currently in place.

For transportation, I reduced the CO2 emissions from oil use by 25%. Why only 25%? As it turns out, that’s all the CO2 savings you get from burning natural gas instead of gasoline in a motor vehicle. Proponents of CNG vehicles talk about how it’s vastly cleaner than gasoline, and it is, if you take into account all pollutants, like particulate matter. But we’re talking here about CO2 emissions, and that’s all you get.

The results? This sweeping change gets us a whopping 13% reduction from 1990 emissions levels, or 26% from 2008 levels. If you look at the sector totals in the spreadsheet, you’ll see that transportation is a wash compared to 1990 levels, and the other sectors shoe a 13% to 24% improvement. Not exactly the improvement we were hoping for.

In Scenario 2: Scenario 1 + 50% more nuclear, I bumped the amount of electricity the US gets from nuclear power from 20% to 30%, and continued to make the simplifying assumption that nuclear power has zero CO2 emissions. (It does have some associated emissions, of course, but the level is very low so I hand waved it.)

This improves the situation, but not by a lot. We’ve now reduced CO2 emissions by 17% (compared to 1990), 30% (2008). Suddenly, 80% is starting to look like really immense number.

And I note that in the real world where we don’t have magic wands, that 50% bump in nuclear power would require one new nuclear reactor to go online every week for a year, or one a month for over four years. Anyone care to bet on that happening?

In Scenario 3: Scenario 1 + 100% more nuclear, I assumed a 100% increase in nuclear power, bring its contribution to 40% of US electricity (with a real-world contrustion time of two years at one/week, over 8 years at one/month).

The results improve slightly, and we’re now up to 21% less CO2 (vs. 1990), or 33% (2008).

In Scenario 4: Scenario 1 + 100% more nuclear + 33% reduction in elect I assume that not only do we have the full natural gas changeover plus a doubling of nuclear power capability, but we also achieve an ongoing reduction in electricity demand of 33%. That one-third conservation factor is purely a visceral guess about what could be possible in the US. I realize that would still leave us higher, per capita, than Japan and the EU, for example, but I don’t think that sort of mass hypnosis you could do better than that, given how many Americans think conservation is part of some vast hippy pinko plot to turn their children gay, remove religion from public life, and force them to eat cardboard-like cereal for breakfast.

Note that in calculating the conservation savings I assumed that all of it would come from that portion of electricity generation provided by natural gas, so we would get the maximum benefit fro the doubling of nuclear power.

This drags our numbers up to a 30% CO2 reduction (1990), or 40% (2008).

Finally, Scenario 5: Scenario 1 + 100% more nuclear + 33% reduction in elect + 33% reduction in trans adds a 33% reduction in all transportation emissions. You can make whatever assumption you want about how we get there–much greater use of public transit, more people walking and bicycling, a conversion of a large swath of private vehicles to EV’s, or some combination thereof.

After all that–NG conversion, doubling nuclear power, 33% reduction in emissions from non-nuclear electricity generation and 33% reduction in transportation emissions–we’re still at only a 40% CO2 reduction (1990), 50% (2008).

Clearly, this is a rough first pass at estimating the difficulty of making the kind of CO2 emissions reductions required. I didn’t take into account a major electrification of transportation, for example, the possibility of algae fuel delivering a major portion of our transportation at nearly zero net carbon emissions, or the continue expansion of wind and solar power. But I also didn’t point out that the population of the US is projected to rise to 420 million by 2050, according to the US Census Bureau [PDF], which throws a gigantic wrench into the works.

From Green Car Congress comes the article, Study Finds On-Road Transportation Sector the Greatest Net Contributor to Atmospheric Warming Now and in Mid-Term; Power Sector Takes the Lead by 2050:

A new study by led by Nadine Unger at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) that analyzes the net climate impacts of emissions from economic sectors rather than by individual chemical species has found that on-road transportatation is and will be the greatest net contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term.

…

Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it. In contrast, the industrial and power sectors release many of the same gases—with a larger contribution to radiative forcing—but they also emit sulfates and other aerosols that cause cooling by reflecting light and altering clouds.

Unger et al. used a climate model to analyze the effects of a wide range of chemical species, including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, organic carbon, black carbon, nitrate, sulfate, and ozone, from 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100. They based their calculations on real-world inventories of emissions collected by scientists around the world, and they assumed that those emissions would stay relatively constant in the future.

In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest net contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term, with a total radiative forcing of 199 mWm-2 in 2020. The researchers found that the burning of household biofuels—primarily wood and animal dung for home heating and cooking—contribute the second most warming. And raising livestock, particularly methane-producing cattle, contribute the third most.

The industrial sector releases such a high proportion of sulfates and other cooling aerosols that it actually contributes a significant amount of cooling to the system. And biomass burning—which occurs mainly as a result of tropical forest fires, deforestation, savannah and shrub fires—emits large amounts of organic carbon particles that block solar radiation.

Due to the health problems caused by aerosols, many developed countries have been reducing aerosol emissions by industry. But such efforts are also eliminating some of the cooling effect of such pollution, eliminating a form of inadvertent geoengineering that has likely counteracted global warming in recent decades.

By 2050, electric power generation overtakes road transportation as the biggest promoter of warming, according to the study. By the year 2100, the study’s projections suggest that power maintains the lead spot with radiative forcing of 554 mWm-2, followed by on-road transportation at 417 mWm-2, and then the industrial sector with 283 mWm-2.

The paper is here [PDF].

Note the mention of what I;’ve been calling the “aerosol whiplash effect”–we figure out that aerosols are bad for health reasons, or we figure out that we need to burn much less coal (a fossil fuel that produces a lot of cooling aerosols), so we change our ways, only to find out that because those aerosols drop out of the atmosphere very quickly, but the CO2 from that fuel use stays up there for a very long time, we'’re in a catch-22. Honestly, you couldn’t make up something this perverse and far-reaching without the aid of recreational chemistry.

I haven’t had a chance to read the paper yet and play with its numbers, but I will get to it soon, since this kind of sector analysis is something I’m particularly interested in. I will likely post again about this article once I, you know, know what it actually says.

Algae to solve the Pentagon’s jet fuel problem:

The brains trust of the Pentagon says it is just months away from producing a jet fuel from algae for the same cost as its fossil-fuel equivalent.

The claim, which comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) that helped to develop the internet and satellite navigation systems, has taken industry insiders by surprise. A cheap, low-carbon fuel would not only help the US military, the nation’s single largest consumer of energy, to wean itself off its oil addiction, but would also hold the promise of low-carbon driving and flying for all.

Darpa’s research projects have already extracted oil from algal ponds at a cost of $2 per gallon. It is now on track to begin large-scale refining of that oil into jet fuel, at a cost of less than $3 a gallon, according to Barbara McQuiston, special assistant for energy at Darpa. That could turn a promising technology into a ­market-ready one. Researchers have cracked the problem of turning pond scum and seaweed into fuel, but finding a cost-effective method of mass production could be a game-changer. “Everyone is well aware that a lot of things were started in the military,” McQuiston said.

Never underestimate the ability of the not-so-sexy solutions–algae grown and turned into fuel, flywheels or pumped storage to help time shift supply to better meet electricity demand, taking simple efficiency steps, etc.–to deliver some impressive contributions to our energy and environmental challenges once we feel sufficient urgency to take them. In fact, I expect algae fuel to play a much bigger part in our future transportation alternatives than the car companies’ (and semi-informed technophile’s) favorite hobby horse, hydrogen.

As for the claim of $3/gallon jet fuel from algae in “just months”, consider me highly skeptical, to put it mildly. I’m sure that the claim is a reference to being able to hit that price point, not real world production in any significant quantity. Even so, it’s one hell of a claim, and it’s either a gross overstatement of what DARPA’s been up to, or it’s a revelation that they’ve pulled a techno-rabbit out of their hat.

Stephen E. Koonin gave a presentation last October, Addressing America’s Energy Challenges. Koonin is Under Secretary for Science of Energy at the US Dept. of Energy, and he pulled together a lot of information and presented it in an excellent, and sometimes quite enlightening way.

The presentation is available here [36 page PDF].

The most interesting slides are:

• 15: Greenhouse gas emissions in 2000 by source, which shows a detailed breakout of worldwide emissions. (The slide doesn’t actually say that it’s worldwide and not US emissions, but it gives a 2000 figure of 42 billion tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases, which is clearly a worldwide figure.)
• 20 and 21: The relationship between yearly emissions and the overall level of CO2 in the atmosphere. This graphically depicts one of the nastiest details in our current energy and environmental predicament: The long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere.
• 23: CO2 emissions, OECD and non-OECD, from 1865-2005, which has a couple of call-out boxes that neatly delineate the biggest single point of contention between “developed” and “developing” countires, namely who emitted what when.
• 30: Renewable electricity costs. Let the hair-splitting and food fight begin!
• 31: Cost of CO2 reductions. This could be the best single graph I’ve seen on the topic to date.

Why, you might well ask, don’t I just reproduce these slides here? Because I want you to click through to the presentatoin and look at it all, of course.

Data Highlights: U.S. Feeds One Quarter of its Grain to Cars While Hunger is on the Rise:

The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004.

The United States looms large in the world food economy: it is far and away the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.

From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.

I’m not an expert in food issues, so I can’t and won’t comment on the numbers above regarding how many people can be fed with X amount of grain, or which countries export how much food. But I’m reasonably sure the 18% number is accurate.