There is absolutely nothing that can compete with fossil fuels. The power of the sun locked into carbon and stored in enormous reserves simply has no equal. Extracting, processing, transporting, storing, consuming, and energy content. Pound for pound nothing comes close. Oh, except supposedly unlocking that carbon and releasing it into the environment is messing up our fish bowl.

Hydrogen? Right now we make it from natural gas, Carbon. We have not found a way to split it from water economical. Natural gas is finite. It is harder to produce, transport, and store. It has a low energy content. It's only emission is water.

Nuclear? Incredibly high energy content. High installation cost, no atmospheric emissions, we have plenty of Uranium, it is safe. Oh, ya, the waste is super deadly and IF something goes wrong 100,000 could die a slow death.

Solar, wind? High installation cost, no transmission lines in remote places, zero fuel cost, but high maintenance costs. they kill birds. Infinite supply. Oh, ya, the sun sets and the wind dies. They have use, but we can't power the national grid with it. Where are all the batteries going to go for the night?

Alternative fuels for cars. Ethanol and cooking oil are a joke. Nothing more needs to be said. Electricity comes from the grid. (70% is coal) Maybe coal gasification. Hydraulic? I'm for anything that can get us off foreign oil. Right now nothing is looking like a long term solution. Compressed air?

I'm not pro coal. Nukes are OK. All the other technologies are certainly doable. They are realistic alternatives that we can do if we wanted. However, how do we quantify Global warming? How do we say it is "x" amount of a problem and we need to commit "x" amount of energy to the problem. I believe That man is impacting our environment, but there is no free lunch anywhere. The bottom line to all of this is money.

Nothing can compare to fossil fuels. If GW and pollution are a major concern, no sweat. We take the lead, stimulate production, become technological leaders in alternative energy, solve some of our pressing issues like pollution and dependence of foreign oil, and pay double for our energy and watch as the rest of the world beats us producing everything using coal and oil. If the rest of the world does it that is cool, but if not, we are finished, but we will breath easier.

My point to this isn't to shoot this stuff down, it is just that many do not know about the subject. Technologies are possible, but not on an economic scale compared to fossil fuels. At this stage in the game, there is no free lunch. There is a reason we have been using fossil fuels to this point. On the other hand, eventual the decision will be made for us, we will run out.

Israel Is Set to Promote the Use of Electric Cars
By STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM — Israel, tiny and bereft of oil, has decided to embrace the electric car.

On Monday, the Israeli government will announce its support for a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, embracing a joint venture between an American-Israeli entrepreneur and Renault and its partner, Nissan Motor Company.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the active support of President Shimon Peres, intends to make Israel a laboratory to test the practicality of an environmentally clean electric car. The state will offer tax incentives to purchasers, and the new company, with a $200 million investment to start, will begin construction of facilities to recharge the cars and replace empty batteries quickly.

The idea, said Shai Agassi, 39, the software entrepreneur behind the new company, is to sell electric car transportation on the model of the cellphone. Purchasers get subsidized hardware — the car — and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cellphone plan, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline.

Mr. Agassi and his investors are convinced that the cost of running such a car will be significantly cheaper than a model using gasoline (currently $6.28 a gallon here.)

“With $100 a barrel oil, we’ve crossed a historic threshold where electricity and batteries provide a cheaper alternative for consumers,” Mr. Agassi said. “You buy a car to go an infinite distance, and we need to create the same feeling for an electric car — that you can fill it up when you stop or sleep and go an infinite distance.”

Mr. Agassi’s company, Project Better Place of Palo Alto, Calif., will provide the lithium-ion batteries, which will be able to go 124 miles per charge, and the infrastructure necessary to keep the cars going — whether parking meter-like plugs on city streets or service stations along highways, where, in a structure like a car wash, exhausted batteries will be removed and fresh ones inserted.

Renault and Nissan will provide the cars. The chairman of both companies, Carlos Ghosn, is scheduled to attend the announcements on Monday. Other companies are developing electric cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt, but the project here is a major step for Renault, which clearly believes that there is a commercial future in electric cars.

Israel, where the round-trip commute between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is only 75 miles, is considered a good place to test the idea, which Mr. Agassi, Renault and Nissan hope to copy in small countries like Denmark and crowded cities like London, Paris, Singapore and New York. London, which has a congestion area tax for cars, lets electric cars enter downtown and park free.

Project Better Place’s major investor, Idan Ofer, 52, has put up $100 million for the project and is its board chairman. He will remain chairman of Israel Corporation Ltd., a major owner and operator of shipping companies and refineries. “What’s driving me is a much wider outlook than Israel,” Mr. Ofer said. “If it were just Israel, I’d be cannibalizing my refinery business. I’m not so concerned about the refineries, but building a world-class company. If Israel will ever produce a Nokia, it will be this.”

Mr. Ofer has his eye on China, with its increasing car penetration, oil consumption and environmental pollution, where he has interest from a Chinese car company, Chery, for a similar joint venture.

Renault will offer a small number of electric models of existing vehicles, like the Megane sedan, at prices roughly comparable to gasoline models. The batteries will come from Mr. Agassi. The tax breaks for “clean” electric vehicles, which Israel promises to keep until at least 2015, will make the cars cheaper to consumers than gasoline-engine cars. “You’ll be able to get a nice, high-end car at a price roughly half that of the gasoline model today,” Mr. Agassi said.

He contends that operating expenses will be half of those for gasoline-driven vehicles, especially in Europe and Israel, where gasoline taxes are high. The company, and the consumers who use it, will normally recharge their batteries at night, when the electricity is cheapest, and they expect the batteries to have a life of 7,000 charges, though Mr. Agassi says he is counting on only 1,500 charges, which is roughly 150,000 miles, the life of the average car.

“Because the price of gasoline fluctuates so much during the life of a car, it’s hard to predict the cost basis for driving,” Mr. Agassi said. “But electricity fluctuates less, and you can buy it in advance, so I can give you a guaranteed price per mile, cheaper than the price of gas today.”

Mr. Agassi predicts that a few thousand electric cars will be on Israeli roads in 2009 and 100,000 by the end of 2010; Israel has two million cars on the road, and about 10 percent are replaced each year.

Mr. Agassi suggested this model for the electric car — concentrating on infrastructure rather than on car production — at a 2006 meeting of the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institution, which Mr. Peres attended. He was enthralled by the idea.

Mr. Peres, who is sometimes dismissed as a dreamer by more cynical Israelis, has in the past embraced and helped to develop some successful notions — like Israel’s nuclear weapons program. He is a strong believer in Israel’s mission to better the world, he says, and not simply sell arms to it. Israel is the 11th-largest arms exporter, as measured by dollar sales, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr. Peres, who knew Mr. Agassi’s father, said in an interview that after hearing Shai Agassi speak: “I called him in and said, ‘Shai, now what?’ I said that now is the time for him to implement his idea, and I spoke to our prime minister and other officials and convinced them that this is a great opportunity.”

“Oil is becoming the greatest problem of our time,” Mr. Peres said in an interview in his office. Not only does it pollute, but “it also supports terror and violence from Venezuela to Iran.”

“Israel can’t become a major industrial country, but it can become a daring world laboratory and a pilot plant for new ideas, like the electric car,” he said.

Mr. Peres sees this project as part of his “green vision” for Israel, arguing that what the nation may lose in tax revenue it will save in oil. He also supports a larger investment in solar power, saying that “the Saudis don’t control the sun.”

Mr. Ofer wants profits, but also thinks the project will help the environment, especially in developing countries. “China is on a very dangerous march from bicycles to cars without any notion of what they’re doing to this planet in terms of air,” he said.

And in Mumbai, he said, “you can’t even see the sky.”

James D. Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, is a modest investor in the project.

“Israel is a perfect test tube” for the electric car, he said. “The beauty of this is that you have a real place where you can get real human reactions. In Israel they can control the externalities and give it a chance to flourish or fail. It needs to be tested, and Agassi is to be commended for testing it and the Israeli government for trying it.”

NYT

Smaller areas, can implement this idea in a hub type system.

Light rail can transport from system to system.

Funding of pure research will become applied, as it always does, by innovators and entrepreneurs, but only if people will buy it, which is usually a pocketbook decision.

I have to butt in here.

In 1945, two dirty bombs were dropped on Japan. This was a terrible human event and I am not here to argue one way or the other about the whys and wherefores.

However, for those people not killed BY THE BLAST, or so close to the blast that they died from radiation sickness within a few days, the long-term survival rates are remarkably high. And the rate of cancers, while higher than the general human population, is not nearly as high as we have been led to believe by all the anti-nuke propagandists (BigOil).

Yes, oil is the most God-awful, flexible, cheap, high-energy, best-thing-to-happen substance on the planet.

Only we are running out of it, and the last remaining supplies are in places of the world that require an army to hold on to.

Time for a new strategy, IMHO.

The environmental impact of wind turbines is way, way overstated IMHO. Europe is already head and shoulders ahead of the US in harnessing wind energy. The East Coast is making strides in catching up and it's long overdue.......

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...d=moreheadlines

Wind Farm No Threat to Cape Cod, Report Says
Project Is Deemed Safe for Environment

By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 17, 2009; Page A11

A plan to build a $1.2 billion, privately run wind farm off the Cape Cod shore cleared a major hurdle yesterday when the Interior Department deemed it environmentally safe.

The 800-page report by Interior's Minerals Management Service said the 24 square-mile wind farm in Nantucket Sound would pose little or no threat to wildlife and fish. Barring any further objections from lawmakers, a final "record of decision" for the project will be issued in 30 days.

An elated Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associates, the project's developer, said Massachusetts was "one major step closer to becoming home to America's first offshore wind farm and becoming a global leader in the production of offshore renewable energy."

Randall B. Luthi, the director of Interior's Minerals Management Service, said the final decision would come from President-elect Barack Obama's administration. "It is up to them to decide," he said.

The project, which has been the subject of a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign, could present Obama with a sticky political problem early on.

Obama has made alternative energy a cornerstone of his plan to revive the economy, and he reiterated that stance yesterday with a visit to an Ohio factory that makes parts for wind turbines. But one of his closest friends in Congress, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the Cape Wind project.

"I do not believe that this action by the Interior Department will be sustained," Kennedy said in a statement. "By taking this action, the Interior Department has virtually assured years of continued public conflict and contentious litigation."

Another Obama political ally, Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D), has strongly supported the project, and Cape Wind officials said they were "very encouraged" by comments that Obama made yesterday about wind energy.

Cape Wind has drawn fierce debate since it was proposed in 2001.

The 130-turbine facility would be built on Horseshoe Shoal, about nine miles from Martha's Vineyard. Connected to the Northeast power grid by cables buried under the ocean floor, the facility would produce as much as 468 megawatts, or about 75 percent of the electricity demand for all of Cape Cod, the Vineyard and Nantucket.

Environmentalists have been split on the plan, enticed by the prospect of green energy but wary of a firm profiting from a commercial enterprise built in public waters.

Glenn Wattley, head of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, said federal officials were rushing the approval. "It's like they're cramming this thing in before the Bush administration leaves town, before all of these issues are appropriately looked at," he said.

The only problem with electric cars has always been battery efficiency. So far, the only thing they would be good for is commuting. (Which is a big chunk of transportation.They are not practical for long hauls. Then you have the weight, and of course collision problems.

I will say.... I have always thought of electric cars as "new" generation. I was surprised to find out we have enough excess capacity at night to supply all cars.

We need smart grid technology to be able to charge at a "Filling station" to be able to charge away form home. But who is going to wait 2 hours to charge their car?

Until we come up with higher capacity batteries, I don't think buyers will buy an electric commuting car, as well as a vehicle for everything else.

At this stage of the game, I would be happy to see cars marketed as primary electric, with small engines to get you by. Like many of the hybrids, but taken to the next step.

I agree with your point about the bombs dropped.

One number that is clear is the number of people that have died from the generation of nuclear power. That one is a big fat zero.

One thing to consider about Europe...... they don't have many options. France makes 80% of their power form nuke.... because they have no coal.


I don't give much consideration to environmental impacts of wind generation. I don't have a problem with wind. I have no idea of a real number, but let's just guess 50% of our supply could come from wind.

The only problem is that the wind dies. In Texas not too long ago, where the wind "never" dies, they lost 1700MW of generation at peak load from that very thing happening. They had rolling brown outs to compensate.

One thing people do not take into account is that electricity is not like gravity. The only reason it is always on, is because of our incredibly high reliability rates. "Harvesting" energy, is not the same as "generating" electricity 24/7/365.

There are interesting projects though to run an air compressor during times when the power is not needed, then using the air to drive the turbine during times of no wind. We are talking ginormous tanks though. We will see if can be done economically.

The Fat Man and Little Boy bombs were firecrackers compared to what we have detonated around the world since. Hydrogen bombs many many times more powerful and deadly have been detonated in the ocean and under and above ground. This is insane and I don't care what anyone says we may well have poisoned ourselves and our children's children for God knows how long.

I consider these substances in their highly enriched state to be a threat to all life on earth. I believe we will one day look back with horror we ever contemplated their use as weapons or as energy sources. As soon as we have the technology to safely do so I believe the wise among us will advocate they be transported off the earth and thrown into the Sun.

In the mean time we have been hoodwinked by those who seek to make money regardless of consequences. We will always have such people with us, and while it would be fitting to transport them with the waste into the Sun as well I cannot sink to that level. The reality is these power plants exist and until we can develop an alternate energy source we will have to try and live with them. I agree that all nuclear materials should be guarded round the clock like Fort Knox and the cost added to any calculations on future proposals comparing nuclear energy to other fuels.

Just my opinion.

We could have done that a long time ago. The possibility of rocket failure and spreading radioactive waste over 1000 square miles is the only thing holding it back.

Telecommuting should be treated like an alternative energy.

Have you ever heard any numbers on fuel savings if everyone that could, did telecommute?

I agree with TRoU about the use of nuclear energy. We don't have the ability to store or rid ourselves of the waste we currently have. Until we successfully secure that waste, it's not a realistic option to me.

I'm not an engineer, or a physicist, so I can't speak to that with 100% certainty, but until someone can put that process into something a college graduate can understand, I'm going to err on the side of caution when it comes to nuclear energy.

I believe telecommuting should be viewed as alternative energy as well Bill. Companies should be able to obtain the equipment needed to do that, in the same way they would be able to get equipment to employ someone who was blind for example.

In metro areas, the infrastructure for electric cars is available.

As I understand it, some locations have no ownership of the cars, they have "check out" locations where the electric cars are stored, so that you can "check one out" as if it were a library book. They are too small too take outside of the city, on the expressway, so people don't have incentive to steal them. I believe this is how they handle bicycles in China?

If they were available near light rail stations, people would use them, and this would use, would lead to improvements to the technology, if some competition were injected into the system via user choice.

That is pretty cool.

Let me ask you this. Do you think electricity can supply all of our transportation needs?

What is the reason you like electricity? Meaning global warming, foreign oil, cleaner air....

I still don't know about long range vehicles. Trucks, trains, delivery vehicles, planes all need to keep moving.

Do you have a point you would be happy with if "X" amounts of our current fuel use could be transfered to electric?

Bio deisel from algae seems interesting. Perhaps bio deisel for transport fleets, and electric for personal???

There are existing designs based on quick-change batteries. Now, you would pull into a service station and swap out your dead battery for a recharged one. Less time than filling up a tank.




Although H bombs pack more power, they produce hardly any radiation. That is because they depend on fusion - the fission core is merely used as a trigger to ignite the Deuterium warhead. Fusion power will be much safer and practically infinite, because deuterium is found in seawater.

Fusion, you will recall, is the technology that is always 20 years away.

I can only imagine

I believe that the majority of jobs deal in information processing and exchange. That makes them possible telecommuting jobs.

I'm not a physicist, but I'm guessing that electricity is the most efficient way of transferring and converting energy. If not, it's probably photonics.

I'm pretty sure that every vehicle on the ground will eventually be electromagnetic. I can't imagine electric air-travel on a mass scale, but it has been done for RPVs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft

We're probably getting a little off-topic talking about storing, transfer, and converting energy. If this thread was only meant to be about supply, there is no such thing as a raw supply of electricity unless you can harness lightning. Anytime we are talking electric, we are talking about storing, transfer, and converting energy.

There is no reason for a person to drive their SUV 100 miles round trip for the purposes of sitting at a computer terminal. As for meetings, big-screen teleconferencing is so life-like that you forget you are not there in person after about 3 minutes.

The problem with electricity is storage. Essentially quick charge of high capacity batteries. Once we master the battery and can quick charge large capacity batteries we will have electric vehicles all over the place. Batteries heat up during charge because it is an electro-chemical process. It also takes time. It cannot be instantaneous like putting an electro-static charge on a plate or a non-electrolytic capacitor. Conversion from electric current into stored ions in lead acid or other chemicals such as Hydrogen cells takes time and produces heat. The faster the charge the hotter it gets. So, too fast a charge would explode or "boil" the battery over.

The idea of replacing batteries at quick-charge stations is novel but would likely be cumbersome and I could see all sorts of "insurance" and other problems with exchanging such an item millions of times a day. A hybrid idea seems best for now, but once the concept of quick charge high capacity storage is solved then everything will change if Big Oil will allow it to.

At some point, big oil will not have a say. We will simply get tired of paying more as the supply dwindles.

I was going to say the same about changing batteries. I don't see that happening. Better hybrids I think would be a good fit for now. The only problem with electric cars is the batteries. That a tall hurdle to over come right now. A little bit of efficiency gain is not going to be enough. It will take a leap in technology.

You are correct. Electricity is the best, most cost effective way to transmit energy.

You are not off topic. Storing, transferring, and converting energy is the heart of the new energy source debate. The problem with alternative energy debate is most folks just look at supply. We a have all sorts of ways to generate an electric charge. Doing that on a mass scale, then transmitting and converting to something useful, at an affordable cost is a whole different discussion.

Picken's plan works great for his bank account. It would not work great for us.

Best place to store off-peak electricity in the battery of your plug-in hybrid.

We don't need to store energy at night.If we are going to 100% solar and wind in 10 years that the Genius Gore suggests, we need something to store energy for when the Sun sets and the wind dies.

One cool thing though are the new solar thermal designs. We have one prototype being built. Use solar energy to heat sodium, store it in a tank, and generate steam at night for a conventional turbine.

We do have enough excess generation at night though to charge all cars.

There are a number of home-heating designs that utilize the fact that the temperature of the earth is a constant 57 degrees F once you get down about 10 feet. Thus, air can be circulated through this natural heat exchanger to (help) heat in the winter and cool in the summer.

Oh, and the native Americans in Arizona build their houses out of thick-walled adobe, and they designed their roofs to keep the hot sun off their (small) windows.

A nation that built itself on the rules of cheap energy will have to re-educate itself.

My Dad worked for s small railroad called the Illinois Terminal. They had light rail passenger service using electric trolley cars that ran from city to city throughout central Illinois and into St Louis. They ran on an hourly schedule. Travel on these "inurbans" was nearly as rapid in the 40s & 50s as today driving on interstates between cities (w/o parking hassles). Electric trains run off the power grid. It's very clean transportation.

Russia still has an extensive network of "electric trains." I hope they don't trash them like the US did in the 60s.

Over Xmas vacation my daughter and I took a free ride on Bill Richardson's "railrunner" between Albuquerque and Sante Fe. That line has just opened and NM is promoting ridership. The view of the Sandia mountains along the route is spectacular. The railrunner is diesel/electric but mili for mile its a lot cheaper and cleaner than I-24.

I'm not hearing much about the stimulus package including money for light rail. It would be wonderful to have light rail from eastern IA into Chicago.

My boys great uncle Eugene helped invent that system.

Kinda cool if you ask me.

The ones I remember were reddish orange and they looked more like street cars, but with those arched windows.

Here's a picture of the railrunner in NM.

I kinda figured you weren't referring to the one in the picture, but I just liked that one better.

Did you see the link to the Illinois Terminal Society?

Warms ya once when ya cut it and again when ya burn it.

Whadday do when there are no trees left, because republicans cut em all down?
There will be no trees and no ammo, then whatddday do with the guns and the matches?

My parents took me from Decatur to St. Louis once on the Streamliner when it was a bright and shiny new train.

The Streamliner


Can we have interurban rail transit back?

Yes we can!

There was the era of the foot. Man walked from continent to continent. It took generations, but foot was all they had, and they were hunters and gatherers.

It was replaced by the era of the horse, and armies conquered continents in a ruler's lifetime.

It was replaced by the era of the sailing ship, and oceans were crossed in a ruler's lifetime.

It was replaced by the era of the locomotive, and coast to coast movement of goods took a few days.

It was replaced by the era of the car, and America grew into a suburban and exurban country. The jet plane made travel by train undesirable and relegated it to moving cargo, because cargo never complained about the crappy condition of 150 year old track.

So, sure, you can have it BACK, because BACK is the direction you are suggesting.

I suggest going FORWARD, to smaller, more efficient cars, because there is no way on earth that our exurban residents can get to that rail transit without one, and as long as he/she is driving to the station, why not continue to the destination?

Bill Bradley, who would have made a GREAT LEADER, said to Deborah Solomon of NYT:

"...We fought two wars on oil in the last 15 years, and yet we are not willing to fight against oil dependence. If we simply had the same gas-mileage average as Europe does, about 43 miles per gallon, we would import no oil from OPEC. Zero..."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...750C0A9619C8B63

I grieved over having to trade in my 3 cylinder GEO Metro that got 43 MPG because the undercarriage was biodegrading.

HOWEVER

Do you have any idea how long it would take Detroit to retool its assembly lines from making gas guzzling SUVs, RAM pickups, "minivans," motorhomes, muscle cars, and other sundry Belchfire 88 models to econocars? And how is such politically possible with a credit crunch, UAW with a world class sense of entitlement, and CEO grifters bellying up to the corporate welfare trough? Such might take a Soviet style command economy. Homeland security is already working on gulags "from sea to shining sea." That will help to bring down the costs of labor.

Then again we could retool parts of the auto industry that is laying idle to make bright shiny new trains.

In post Peak oil economy owning a car may be a luxury for rich and ostentatious-----until someone steals it.

I hope that Barack can find a job for Bill Richardson in his administration.

Look at this handiwork at building infrastructure.

The Railrunner

Already happening. Fiat bought a 35% interest in Chrysler. They are going to make Fiats here in Detroit.

GM makes some of the best small cars in the world. But they make them in other countries. Surely they could make them here.

Seriously, rail transport is totally impractical. We have built a road network over the past 100 years, the value of which is incalculable. We no longer live walking distance to the RR station. Those days are gone.

Fiats? One of the worst cars ever made!

I had seen these on This Old House, Soar panels for homes no longer needed...Now Solar roof tiles!

Here is some Q & A:SUNSLATES FAQ

The roof needs replaced on my old garage.

Just a thought.

Istoodforu,

On this old house the guys garage had a small room that he managed his whole system for house and garage from. I do not know how much space but I do know that many states will be bolstering their energy grants with money from economic stimulus package.

Iowa Program:
The Alternate Energy Revolving Loan Program (AERLP) is managed for the State by the Energy Center. This zero interest financing program encourages the construction of renewable energy production facilities in Iowa.

I looked and something of that beauty from Omaha to Lincoln NE and KC,MO would be beautiful.
I think light rail for city commute would be wonderful.

This would make for an interesting debate. Should we start another thread?

Be my guest.