The November just past proved that, no matter the confidence of the thousand-year right, political power in this country is still in the hands of the people. But this time, I'm not talking about political power. I talking about the other kind. Energy. Motive force. Watts.
In the debate over how best to develop the energy we need to free the US from our dependence on oil, there have been many suggestions. The Bush administration has pushed both "clean coal" and nuclear power as the means of ditching our petroleum addition. But even if the suggestion is for more wind and solar power, there's one big problem -- oil is used to power cars, not power plants. We could build a nuclear plant on every block, and it won't save one drop of oil. Not until we figure out some way to entangle the electrical system and the transportation system. Somehow, we have to start putting electricity in our tanks -- whether that's in the form of batteries or hydrogen or something even more exotic like ultra-capacitors -- before we can shake free of oil.
But, with oil used for transportation amounting to 40% of all the energy consumed in this country, once we start powering our cars from electricity, then we'll need a power boom, right? Then we can justify more coal being burned, or more nuclear plants built, to cover all the juice we'll draw for vehicles.
Only a study conducted by the DOE says otherwise. We already have the power we need to change our transportation fleet to electricity.
If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country’s 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.
This is not the only factor that's pushing the idea of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) to the front of the energy discussion. PHEV's have the advantages of electric vehicles on short trips, drawing all the power from the electric grid. And they have the advantages of an ordinary car on long trips, able to run on the gas / diesel infrastructure that's already out there. The idea is not new. Andy Frank, of UC Davis, has been building PHEVs for more than a decade, showing that it's possible to get more than 100 mpg from ordinary cars converted into PHEVs. Purpose-built vehicles have averaged over 200mpg.
Kits are now available to transform a Toyota Prius into a PHEV. By the end of next year, GM may introduce a PHEV version of the Saturn Vue SUV.
Plug-in hybrids can be done now, with the technology and the infrastructure we have now. There is no requirement for a breakthrough in materials science, or a multi-billion dollar investment in hydrogen infrastructure. The battery packs are expensive, but they're dropping rapidly. And yes, PHEVs do mean keeping a hydrocarbon infrastructure in place, but with demand cut to about 20% of what it is today, we could fuel PHEVs with biofuels without taking extraordinary measures. Every advance we make in ethanol or biodiesel works as well for PHEVs as it does for ordinary cars. Every advance in battery technology that would help to support pure electric cars also supports PHEVs. And every advance we make in cleaning up our electrical grid, which would help hydrogen and pure electric solutions, also helps PHEVs.
In previous iterations of the Daily Kos community generated energy plan, Energize America, there has been a deliberate effort to stay "technology neutral." As we move toward version 6 of the EA plan I'm hopeful that we can leave neutrality behind and support PHEVs as the favored means of addressing our need for oil. More than that, we should call on the new Democratic congress to do all that it can to see that government vehicles are transitioned to PHEVs as quickly as possible. PHEVs deserve a much higher portion of research budgets and much greater support than they are currently receiving.
While the Bush administration continues to push hydrogen fuel cells, and many automakers continue to make advances in that area, there's reason to believe that a hydrogen economy may never make sense.
In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.
Pushing fuel cells only allows the automotive industry to continue making vehicles as they always have, while waiting for all the pieces to fall in place for hydrogen. Which could be never.