I recently interviewed Brewster McCracken, of Austin, Texas’ Pecan Street Project, who tracks the behavior of households that transition to renewable smart grid power and electric vehicles, and he noted that the top things electric car owners noticed after owning one for a period of time were the speed, and the quiet. EV owners know that their cars are zippy and responsive, surprisingly so.
So its great to see a car company find a way to feature it in an ad – especially in a way that doesn’t rely on a testosterone soaked muscle car approach.
But, speaking of muscle cars, I was at the Battery, EV and Hybrid show in Novi, just outside of Detroit, in mid September, and was lucky enough to see BigFoot – the world’s first electric Monster Truck – and interview driver Jim Kramer.
Imagine how much faster yet they would be if the road was electrified instead, and electric cars didn’t need 600-800 pounds of battery. And how much less expensive they could be as well.
Yeah, and the money we save on batteries will be used to run wires under all the roads—-for digging, repaving, copper wiring, transmission and control devices, etc—-sounds like a plan the free-marketers can get behind! I actually like the alternative idea of each car having it’s own reel of miles-long extension cord so that it can go places where the electric roads don’t extend.
In the meantime, read the papers and see that sales of fossil-fueled pick-up trucks are surging, along with larger SUV’s, while small car sales are flat. It’s a great country.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-japan-demo-electricity-ev.html
We already have electrified roads. They’re called “railroads.”
Well actually, the USA only has a few of those. Most trains in America are diesel-electric, meaning they generate electric power onboard with a diesel engine. Not that many people in America ever ride on trains.
Where I live (Taiwan) trains are all-electric, and are pretty popular as a form of transportation. But too many people drive cars here as well.
We have electric motor scooters. They are actually not too expensive at roughly US$1000. Powerful enough to get you around in the city centers and dirt cheap to run. However, they suffer the limitation in range, only about 50 km before needing a recharge. And that range declines as the batteries age.
I have seen some of the USA’s previously-electrified railroads with my own eyes.
Concrete arches over railroad tracks, minus the overhead wires the arches once carried. There’s traffic… but what was once powered by electricity is now driven by petroleum. Cui bono?
Cui bono? Why General Motors, of course. GM made diesel locomotives as well as busses, so it was a natural extension to go after the electrified railroads after finishing off the trolleys and interurbans. To be fair, maintaining electrified railroads is a bit expensive, and now economical only in high traffic density areas like the northeast. That was not the issue back in the days of the Streetcar Conspiracy. If we ever want to deal with CO2, we may need to throw electric railroads back in the mix (and power them with some catbon-free energy source).
The Streetcar Conspiracy is pretty well documented. Another example of how “big business” and greed work together to destroy the planet.
http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm
I guess all subways would qualify as electric roads. All mag-lev designs.
For that matter, all streetlight systems demonstrate the same sort of engineering to some extent. Drainage systems – these are all examples of huge infrastructure expenses we don’t blink an eyelash at – but electric roads, which should have an enormous benefit and a very long lifespan, are always portrayed as ridiculously expensive.
Yet, they would have an enormous economic benefit not only to our economy, but to every individual who drives a car. Call me crazy, but I have this ridiculous notion that when I pay my taxes, I should receive benefits in return.
Just ask the Germans about that – they pay their taxes, and they get free health care and free college tuition, and the highest standard of living and healthiest economy in the world. Socialism and democracy mix really, really well.
And this is how we remove Republicans from office. Get people to understand that they are being ripped off.
Read a bit disturbing information. About 50% of carbon emission in a cars life cycle is made before the car is sold. Its car making and infrastructure like roads and pumps.
If thats true then electric cars is not the answer to climate change because we in rich countries needs to reduce emission by 80% to 90%.
remember, that’s assuming cars are fabricated with a fossil fueled industrial plant. As more electricity is renewable, that number goes down.
That said, coke for steel production is one of the stickiest processes to replace, but as cars go more to other, lighter, non steel materials, I think you might get a better number still.
No doubt, creating other transportation choices is a big priority, or should be.
Some years back, the now-defunct Institute for Lifecycle Energy Research found that a Ford Taurus only consumed about 11% of its LCE in construction. Search engines are no longer returning results for this, so I’m unable to give you a Wayback machine link for the details.
Of course, electric cars are not THE answer to climate change. THE answer relies on making advancements in a number of areas including electric transport. But you knew that, didn’t you, peter jazz?
No, it isn’t.
The only answer is human behavioral change. You can’t cut emissions on a global scale with economic growth, and new technology fuels economic growth. What we see from the very few examples of developed countries reducing emissions is simply a pushing off of those emissions into developing countries, which in turn develop by rapidly ramping up their own emissions base and then start to diffuse those sources in outlying parts of their own countries and into still developing countries.
Technology isn’t the answer. The Kolbert article a few posts back SHOULD make that abundantly clear, and I’m not surprised it has only one real response. We don’t want to face the obvious, even the ones who accept climate change science, because we don’t want to believe we’ll actually degrade the biosphere to an unmanageable point. And yet, all we see is an amplification of that process, which is exactly what one would expect with an exponentially growing system. It starts very slow, and it’s largely completely unnoticeable until it’s near its end.
Even we in the rich countries dropping emissions 80-90% won’t cut it, because those emissions will simply move elsewhere as we do so. Only stopping the process of economic growth on a global scale and cutting back on those activities that pollute necessary environmental support systems will have actual effect. That’s the answer – the only one we have. It’s also the only one we won’t consider.
What do we see here? Monster truck EVs – as sure an indicator that we won’t change our behavior with new technology as there could be.
Very well said. Your comment returns the focus to where it should be—-not on “making advancements in a number of areas”, but on the simple fact that the growth-based economic system that now dominates the world is at the root of the problem and will probably drive AGW until it’s too late.
Of course, that could lead into a discussion of whether man is “worthy” of his position of dominance on today’s Earth. Fortunately, it is so obvious that man is “unworthy” that we need not go there.
Whether growth drives climate change depends on what you’re growing. Or contracting. Contraction of energy in e.g. Greece led to deforestation and consequent liberation of fixed carbon as people cut firewood for heat.&nbs; Contraction of nuclear energy in Germany stopped the post-unification downward trend in carbon emissions, and Germany now plans to burn lignite into the indefinite future.
Moot points. All that resulted from the same root—-modern-day exploitative and growth-driven capitalism and the greedy search for “profit”.
I saw a Home Depot truck (as in, a big delivery truck that resembled one of those huge scale U-haul trucks) that said it was ‘all electric’ and that it had a top speed of 50mph to ‘save juice’. If they can make a truck that big all electric, then they should be quite able to make all UPS/Fed-Ex trucks all electric.
Something like that, which is always on the road everyday, should have a total operating+capital cost cheaper than a ICE truck on the gas savings alone, i would imagine, based on VIA motor’s stats regarding electric vans and trucks.
It also is good in that it built for big business which has the capital resources to invest in something like it (higher capital cost; lower operating cost; makes business sense to those that can afford it up front). So your paring up big-money with big-efficiency in a manner that is replicable all over the country.
UPS has been doing it for a year and a half now in CA—both hybrids and full electric. Google “UPS electric delivery trucks”. I kind of remember seeing some U-Haul-sized electric delivery trucks in the city back in the 1940’s—sounded like trolly cars (yes, I remember them too)
[b]”You can’t cut emissions on a global scale with economic growth,…”[/b]
I truly do not understand this. You can cut emissions completely by not burning fossil fuels. You can stop burning fossil fuels by converting to electricity, and getting your electricity from 100% renewables. (and some biofuels for airplanes to be carbon-neutral).
I see no reason why we could not, if we wanted to, continue to have economic growth while at the same time having zero carbon emissions.
I see no reason to assume that going all green would lower the standard of living, or output, or productivity. Indeed, the opposite would occur if we go all green and all public. The average family would have an extra $12,000 in their pocket every year, because they would no longer have to pay for gasoline or natural gas or oil or firewood.
I am not saying we should not curb population growth – we need to live sustainably. But that is a 100 year program. And AGW has a two decade window.
Every time you bring up something besides reducing CO2 emissions as our “real” problem, you are taking us off track, and influencing people to think improperly.
Can we agree to solve AGW before getting serious about population?
“I see no reason why we could not, if we wanted to, continue to have economic growth while at the same time having zero carbon emissions”.
That’s unrealistic even here in the U.S., where we are making only slow progress towards “zero carbon emissions” (so slow that we won’t get there for decades).
Have you read what the prime Minister of India had to say at the UN? Basically, “You got yours in the West. We want to get ours now and don’t tell us not to. You made all that CO2 and won’t even clean up your own house”. And China is right there with them—-over 1/3 the human population of the Earth, and they’re going to burn fossil fuels whether we like it or not.
China is supposedly going to put up enough solar next year alone to totally power California. In one year, a (Chinese) Federal project which would power 1/4 of the needs of the U.S.. Stand back in awe, America!
What CAN be done COULD be done..
But that is a different question – I think – than what JimBills was saying. He was saying it was impossible, or perhaps that the ‘laws’ of economics prevent it.
I don’t see how trading an ever-more-costly energy source for a less expensive one could possibly interfere with the engines of industry.
And I think that is the way to frame it – saving money.
China has ~25 GW total of solar right now, and plans to install 13 GW this year. Compare that to the figures below.
“In just 5 years, from 2005 through 2009, China added the equivalent of the entire U.S. fleet of coal-fired power plants, or 510 new 600-megawatt coal plants”. (If my math is right, that’s 300+ GW)
“From 2010 through 2013, it added half the coal generation of the entire U.S. again” .
“At the peak, from 2005 through 2011, China added roughly two 600-megawatt coal plants a week, for 7 straight years.
(If my math is right, that’s 1.2 GW a week, 62+ GW a year, for a total of 434 GW)
“And according to U.S. government projections, China will add yet another U.S. worth of coal plants over the next 10 years, or the equivalent of a new 600-megawatt plant every 10 days for 10 years”.
(If my math is right, that’s 219 GW)
No matter how you cut it and no matter how good China looks compared to California, those numbers make talking about what COULD be done and what CAN be done a moot point.
China is growing too quickly for the indeed impressive renewable energy numbers to make a difference. Their emissions are set to rise for several more decades. Even if they do manage to stabilize them, by that time they’ll be far ahead of the U.S. in total emissions. It will take them several more decades to lower them further.
As that happens, other countries will be developing and continuing the same process as China. Globally, assuming global economic growth, emissions will only rise. We MIGHT hit a point where renewables/nuclear truly take over and global emissions reach something like 1950s levels, but this isn’t likely to happen before 2050.
Economically, we are approaching the peaks in fossil carbon sources, and as we are we see their prices rising. This makes other energy sources more cost competitive, and so they will ramp up in use. But as they do, they’ll ease the financial impact of the fossil carbon peaks, allowing full exploitation of the remaining fossil carbon sources. Basically, they’ll smooth the peaks a bit, allowing global economic growth to continue (with probable fits and starts). We’ll frack and burn tar sands and yes, we’ll build renewables. All of the above.
We’re fooling ourselves by thinking otherwise. Technology only allows continuation of environmental, population, and resource overshoot. It gives us the ability to do so. At some point, the system collapses under its own weight, and who knows how that happens for certain – environmental degradation causing something like widespread crop failures, resource depletion (like water), positive feedbacks in climate change tripping each other in rapid succession, etc.
When one thinks of the great environmental successes, it always boils down to preventing humans from doing what they want to do. We built the national parks to prevent us from developing the land. We ‘saved the whales’ by banning whaling. We cleaned up water sources (to a degree) by putting a halt to dumping. We didn’t do these things with technology. Instead, we put limits on our behavior.
The ‘saved by technology’ fantasy ignores all these successes, and it’s doing so with perhaps the greatest environmental risk we’ve ever faced.
Our entire way of life is built on fossil carbon. We don’t get to do the things we currently do without it. Our jobs, our products, our food, and our population sizes all rely on it. It’s potentially possible to replace all the uses of fossil carbon in our lives, but it won’t be done in anything near adequate time scales without regulating human behavior. We’re going to have to sacrifice to really pull it off, and that’s the one thing we won’t accept. We want our toys, our shiny things, our monster trucks – and all these things require economic growth, which makes transition away from fossil carbon infinitely more difficult. We think we can have our cake and eat it, too, but the cake eats us.
Well put.
“Regulating human behavior” will soon be forced upon the world—-Gilding’s Great Disruption is fast approaching, and the “regulation” will likely take the form of the death of many—-can’t “misbehave” very much if you’re dead.
Fossil fuel reserve estimates range from 100 years for petroleum to 150+ years for natural gas to 250 years for coal—-and that was before fracking took off and we started looking in new places like the arctic that are now more accessible (because of melting of ice caused by AGW—-vicious circles anyone?).
As you said, economic interactions will cause an ebb and flow in the renewables versus fossil fuel picture, but anyone who doesn’t believe the fossil fuel interests intend to burn every last bit of the fossil fuel is deluded. Anyone who believes that China and India will sacrifice their growth for the greater good of the planet is deluded. We’re not even doing that here in the U.S.
We have already used up nearly 2/3 of the “carbon budget”, and estimates are that it will be gone in 30 years, CO2 levels will be pushing towards 500PPM, the dreaded 2 degree rise will be with us, and it will be serious SHTF time.
I can see in 25 to 50 years, once oil is less worth fighting over, the military-industrial-media complex pushing de-carbonization wars, war-on-carbon – that sort of thing. Coal plants get bombed. Halliburton brings in solar panels and batteries at 200% actual cost. Or maybe at that point Chindia will be so economically strong that the US will have to stop bullying other countries for profit.