A plan for a green, viable,
Democratic future
With George Bush rolling out a budget that cuts more than half a billion dollars from the EPA, the battle lines could not be more clearly drawn. The Republicans are the party of eat now, pay never -- burning up the environment for short term gain and leaving the ashes to our children.
For Democrats to use this issue effectively, we have to have a coherent, feasible plan that offers a real alternative to the Republicans slash-and-burn world view. If you tuned in for my diary on energy, or transportation, or hybrid vehicles, or land use planning, you'll have a pretty good idea of the basis for my plan. But there have been new developments in the last few months, and new information, that makes practical some things which once seemed impossible.
Yes, it's long. But come on in, the future's fine.
First off, I would like to thank all the people who participated in the discussion around those earlier diaries. I couldn't have done this without you. Really. You guys were terrific at pointing out my errors, catching things that I had missed, and bringing up new ideas.
I learned more from the comments than anyone could have learned from reading the diaries. Massive kudos, and may you all be blessed with fine children and many recommended diaries.
The resulting plan may sometimes seem a bit plebeian. There are no great technological leaps required. I'm not calling for an "Apollo Program" that will take us to some barely glimpsed future. But just because the buzzwords are lacking, don't mistake the results. This plan is designed to be nothing less than revolutionary.
If we as Democrats push this agenda, I believe it can help us to win seats from state houses to the capital and the White House. And if we as Democrats follow through on these initiatives, we can have an America that's cleaner, safer, and more energy independent.
An America where no president need ever again send American troops to die in order to maintain our access to foreign oil. An America that never again need ignore our call for human rights to coddle a dictator with his hands drenched in oil. An America that doesn't need to tear up its last wilderness in a search for a few drops of oil. An America where we can make moral choices, not subvert everything we claim to believe for another barrel.
The areas to be covered: personal transportation, public transportation, and electrical power production.
Cars, Sprawl, and Oil
If we could go back in time, it would be nice to restructure our cities and clamp down on the suburban sprawl which really causes a lot of our energy and transportation problems. Unfortunately, that SUV has already pulled out of the driveway. We can, and should, work to form more coherent communities in the future, and to support land use planning which doesn't support the growth of yet more sterile monoculture housing. But to address the here and now, we have to take suburbia as it sprawls and deal with it.
With the way people are sprayed haphazardly around major cities, and with a century of "my car is the external expression of what I keep in my (heart / soul / pants)," any plan that seeks to diminish the use of private transportation over the next fifteen years is doomed.
Private transportation is really the heart of our national energy problem. Oil goes in gas tanks. Only a tiny fraction of our electricity is produced from oil. The United States produced about 7.8 million barrels / day of oil in 2003 (2.8 billion barrels / year), marking a continuing decline in domestic production from a high of just over 10 million barrels / day back in 1985. Final numbers for 2004 are expected to be a bit lower, continuing the two decade long decline. The US has an estimated 21.9 billion barrels of proven reserves - enough for less than eight years at current rates. And don't think that magic new discoveries are going to raise this number. If anything, more realistic estimates are trimming our reserves. This total U.S. in-ground reserve is down 17% since 1990.
And lest some right wing friend try to persuade you that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will solve all, you need to be armed with the numbers. Here's what the DOE has to say about ANWR.
In early 2000, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), in response to a Congressional request, issued a report on potential oil reserves and production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The report, which cited a 1998 U.S. Geological Survey study of ANWR oil resources, projected that the mean resource case at 10.3 billion barrels technically recoverable.
Wait a second, ANWR would raise the US oil reserves by 50%! Doesn't that look horrible for people who don't want to drill in ANWR? To see what's behind those numbers, you need to look at the
report which will show you that there is a "a 95 percent probability that at least 5.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil are in the ANWR coastal plain." 10.3 billion represents an educated guess, with a lot of wiggle room on either side. How much of this constitutes proven reserves? Essentially none. There are other estimates which project practically no recoverable oil in ANWR. And in any case, peak production would not be reached by between 20 and 30 years from the start of development. Looking back to the DOE figures, let's check out imports
The United States averaged total net oil (crude and products) imports of an estimated 11.8 million bbl/d during January-October 2004, representing around 58% of total U.S. oil demand. Crude oil imports from Persian Gulf sources averaged 2.4 million bbl/d during that period. Overall, the top suppliers of crude oil to the United States during January-October 2004 were Canada (1.6 million bbl/d), Mexico (1.6 million bbl/d), Saudi Arabia (1.5 million bbl/d), Venezuela (1.3 million bbl/d), and Nigeria (1.1 million bbl/d).
Even if the USGS estimate is right, peak production from ANWR would equal about
3% of our consumption. We could reduce daily imports from 58% to 55%. Yeah! In 2035. Uh, okay. Only domestic production is continuing to decline in other fields, so even peak production from ANWR might not hold us even. We won't even get back to 1985 production levels. Oh, incidentally, we ruin one of the last truly wild places on Earth. Boo! Drilling ANWR will not solve the problem.
We have to make a radical change if we don't want to be beholdin' to those who have the black stuff. We need to burn much, much less oil. Oil goes in cars. We need a different kind of car.
One option that gets a lot of talk is cars that operate on hydrogen fuel cells. In essence, hydrogen fuel cells are another form of battery, a way to store energy for latter conversion into electricity. However, I've made it very clear that I'm not a fan of the hydrogen fuel cell.
My argument against hydrogen over the next fifteen years comes down to two things. First, hydrogen means having cars that tank up at fuel stations. This may seem like an advantage - after all, that's how we work now - but it offers a distinct problem when looking at how we move to a new technology. Expect a hydrogen future to look like this:
* we spend twenty years waiting for hydrogen cars to come to market
* oil companies get into the business of making hydrogen
* oil companies get government funding to put hydrogen infrastructure at their existing gas stations
* oil companies keep a near monopoly on the pricing and availability of automotive fuel
I know there are schemes on the boards that would allow for home production of hydrogen, but they're not ready yet. And that brings me to my biggest problem with hydrogen: It's not ready. Granted, many advances have been made. The concept cars get better every year, and they're this close to something that's ready for production. They only need to get that cost of manufacturing down and make a few tiny advances in material science. By 2020, they'll likely be ready for production (and ready to roll up to the nearest Exxon hydrogen station).
That's too late.
There is a very good reason for why hydrogen is at the center of Bush's energy plan: it's a big win for the oil companies. They win now, because hydrogen isn't ready to ship. So oil companies can keep pumping and selling crude till the very last drop. It's good for them later, because they're poised to catch consumers after the transition. The Union of Concerned Scientists shares some of these concerns.
None of this is to say that hydrogen fuel cells, as a technology, are evil. There's a lot of long term potential here, and we should pursue fuel cells with vigor. But there's another technology right in front of our noses - a technology that could roll out immediately - the hybrid car.
Wait! I can see you getting ready to click off this diary. You know hybrids. Maybe you're already in line for a Prius, or waiting for Ford's hybrid Escape to make it to your area. These hybrid cars are nothing to get excited about. I'm telling you, get excited, because today's hybrid cars are 90% of the way to the answer.
If you're currently making a 50 kilometer (30 mile) daily commute, you're kicking 5500 kg (2500lbs) of carbon dioxide into the air each year. If you were driving a Prius, you'd chop that number by 25%. It's a win at the pump and at the tailpipe. But take one more step, and you can do a lot better than even the Prius.
The answer? A Plug-In Hybrid
A hybrid like the Toyota Prius is a "Hybrid Electric Vehicle" (HEV). It has both a gasoline engine and an electric motor. Toyota has made a big deal of the fact that you don't have to plug in your Prius. That's because the car uses the gas engine not only as a motive source, but as the means of charging the batteries that the car uses to run the electric engine. Power from the gas engine (and some of the energy recaptured from braking) is stored in the battery pack for use by the electric engine.
The hybrid system in a car like this can make for an efficient vehicle (the Prius boasts more than 50mpg in the right conditions), but in essence it's just a gas-powered car. All its energy still originates from oil.
It doesn't have to be that way. The next step is to get rid of that "you don't have to plug it in" ad campaign and, well, plug it in. A Plug-In Hybird (PHEV or PI-HEV) still has both a standard gasoline combustion engine and an electric motor. The difference is that it's capable of running further and at higher speed on the electric motor alone. And the battery pack can be recharged, not only by the gas engine, but by plugging it into the electric grid. This means that not all of the energy in a plug-in hybrid comes from oil. Some of it comes from the grid.
Big deal? Yes, big deal.
Let's say the battery pack is not so great. In fact, let's say it's just the same as the pack used in these vehicles today, which limits the distance that the vehicle could be driven on electric alone to about 20 miles (such a vehicle is also known as an HEV 20 (warning: pdf), for the distance it can travel without using gas). How much difference could that make? A huge difference. Try a
...dependence on petroleum comes down by a whopping 75 percent, on average, in the United States.
A 75% reduction in oil usage. With technology that's here now. Without putting new infrastructure in place. Without materials science advances or radical redesign of cars.
This is not rocket science. There are even organizations who will help you convert your existing Prius to a PHEV. There's also a button on the dash of an unmodified Prius that puts it in "stealth mode," allowing it to cruise quietly on electric only power for a couple of miles. In U.S. cars, this button has been disconnected. However, you can fix that. Prius owners aren't alone in making these conversions.
"One guy I know plugs his Honda hybrid into a windmill for power," Kroushl says. "It costs him practically nothing to drive."
How's that for a sweet idea?
Granted, there's a cost. Right now, every 10 miles worth of batteries can be expected to run you about $1000. So an HEV-20 will cost about $2000 more than an equivalent generic HEV. An HEV-50, about $5000 (if you try to get above about 50 miles, the weight and space for batteries can become impractical). But those costs are likely to drop significantly with increased production of the battery packs (and if you don't believe that, then don't invest in hydrogen fuel cells, because their costs are currently two orders of magnitude higher).
PHEVs are not only ready to hit the road, they're already landing. DaimlerChrysler has started shipping a PHEV version of its Sprinter van (if you've ever seen or driven one, the most misnamed vehicle in automotive history) with a 30 kilometer all-electric range before the gas motor tips in. The research on these vehicles has none of the `sexiness' of hydrogen fuel cells, but they're well understood. Teams at UC Davis have built seven PHEVs since the 1990's.
This is doable. Now.
Look at this comparison to see what a difference a PHEV can make. For an average driver doing 18,000 total miles a year, a nice small car doing 30mpg will consume 600 gallons of gas. Plop that driver in a Prius, and she can cut down to 400 gallons per year. A nice improvement. But give that driver a PHEV, and she uses 80 gallons a year -- 87% less.
With much less expense than promoting hydrogen fuel cells as "the solution," we can start putting plug-in hybrids on the road almost immediately. By 2020, the time when fuel cell cars will just be rolling out of the drawing rooms and onto showroom floors, the majority of our vehicles can already be plug in hybrids.
Of course, there's still that other 10-30% of the energy in the average PHEV that's coming from gas. That won't last forever, and it still causes pollution.
There are several ways to go with this, and again, none of them takes an Einstein to see us through. Rather than gas engines, we could pair the electric motors in our PHEVs with engines running on biodiesel. Biodiesel can be made both less polluting than standard diesel, and can made from renewable sources. Oh, and if you already have a diesel vehicle, can I suggest you fill up with a tank full of BioWillie, a soybean-based fuel used and promoted by the red-haired stranger himself.
If not diesel, the non-electric part of our hybrid could be run from E85, composed of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. I don't want to spend too much time on the "is ethanol a power producer or waster" question. I'll just say that most calculations I've seen show sugar-based (corn) ethanol production coming out with an energy gain - though a very modest gain. But then, we're really talking about ethanol as a portable energy storage system, not a means of making energy. As an energy storage system, ethanol does pretty well. And the ethanol story doesn't end with corn. In theory, you could also produce ethanol from the cellulose of sources like switchgrass which could produce a lot more ethanol per acre with a lot less energy input than corn.
Even if we change nothing about how the conventional half of the hybrid lives, PHEVs will help right now. We should move immediately and forcefully to support the extension of this technology into the marketplace.
Critics will note that both hydrogen and PHEVs ultimately derive their power from the grid, and the grid itself means using lots of nasty energy sources - chiefly coal in the U.S. We'll deal with that in Part 3.
For now, here's my 2020 Vision Hybrid Vehicle Promotion Plan:
* Restore a $2000 tax break on any hybrid vehicle, making hybrids price-competitive with conventional cars
* Add a $1000 tax break for each ten (10) miles a vehicle can travel on electric power alone, up to a maximum of $5000 for an HEV-50.
* Promote the development of renewable biodiesel and ethanol sources, including ethanol from cellulose sources.
If we managed to sell a 100,000 vehicles under this plan, and the average vehicle included 20 miles of straight electric service, the cost would be $400 million. But that's not research, that's cutting our domestic oil consumption and pollution right here, right now. I call it a bargain. These tax breaks can be phased out over a ten year period as demand and mass-production bring PHEV costs in line with other vehicles.
If you're a fan of hydrogen fuel cells, you'll be relieved to find that Bush's new budget leaves hundreds of millions out there for the development of hydrogen cars. In fact, after all the cutting that was done, the $260 million slated for hydrogen research in 2006 was left untouched. That should tell you something.
Still to come:
Public Transportation (Part 2)
Electrical Production (Part 3)
Thanks for your time.