Smart-growth planners say we need to save energy by reducing our driving. James Howard Kunstler goes so far as to say, “No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it.”
Fortunately, some brighter people have different ideas. T. Boone Pickens has proposed the Pickens Plan, which calls for substituting wind and other renewables for all electrical generation, thus freeing up natural gas (which is the source of about 22 percent of our electricity) for transportation.
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, has a slightly different plan. He would replace many of the petroleum-fueled vehicles on the road today with electric cars and light trucks.
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Both proposals emphasize electricity. Pickens thinks renewable sources of electricity can make us less oil dependent. Grove says that, because electricity is “multi-sourced, it will give us the greatest degree of energy resilience.”
Of course, both proposals call for government intervention. Pickens, who is building wind farms himself, wants the government to give him more tax credits for doing so. Grove seems to be a little less conflicted, but he wants the government to offer tax credits to new electric cars and people who retrofit existing cars to be electrically powered.
The Antiplanner opposes government intervention because subsidies could end up locking us in to technologies that are less than the best. Let’s hope more people come up with more ideas and then let the market decide between them. In any case, intervention or no intervention, it is likely that some technological solution will make far more sense than trying to cripple Americans by reducing their mobility.
Wind power is an utter fraud as an electrical generation method.
Fortunately, some brighter people have different ideas
Ad hominem attack? Isn’t that a hallmark of “Junk Scientists”?
Yes! Then everyone can get their own SUV because gas will be plentiful again! Then we can build more tollways to get ourselves out of congestion! Then when the gas runs out for real we’ll be even more screwed!
Does anyone else see the lack of reasoning? Let’s put a band-aid on right now instead of fixing the broken leg… let’s ignore the fact that cars are extremely inefficient at the present time and instead change how we generate electricity so we can devote MORE gas to the car. The car has become our nation’s “crutch”, and now we want to jump through hoops just so it can suck more gas. And yes, that’s gas that STILL has the potential to run out, and STILL is largely controlled by foreign nations who could at any time hold it back from us… so this plan would have us reduce our dependency in no way at all.
And…. when gas is “cheap” again as this plan hopes, VMT will surely spike ever higher… congestion! Oh wait – the magic private benevolent company will to come and build new tollways that cost next to nothing yet magically go everywhere anyone wants… how could I forget?
Phase II of this argument takes us into people whining about coal and nuclear energy sources. While I’d love for us to get off of foreign oil, from a geopolitical standpoint, there isn’t enough wind or solar power out there to totally sustain the way we live. We’ll definitely need more nuclear power.
aynrandgirl, In what way is wind power an utter fraud as an electrical generation method? I presume you’re notsuggesting that it is contrary to the laws of physics or that all those wind farms are just big propellors without any generators inside them. Modernising the grid with digital telemetry systems instead of the current analogue men-with-buttons-and-levers approach adresses the supply fluctuation problems that will occur if too many wind turbines feed into the existing antiquated system. All of the economic assessments can’t have been faked, especially the ones by private generating companies in countries with subsidies or tax breaks for wind turbines.
So why exactly is wind power an utter fraud as an electrical generation method?
aynrandgirl, My apologies. I meant to say …especially the ones by private generating companies in countries without subsidies or tax breaks for wind turbines.
I live in a country that can actually make that particular claim. All types of generators get treated excatly the same as all types of eletric motors in commercial use or any other industrial equipment. Same rate of sales tax, same rate of depreciation, same resource consent hoops to jump through, same everything.
Actually, come to think of it, resource consents are harder to get for wind turbines because they might spoil the view, unlike a gas turbine plant which looks just like any other factory.
Wind Power Is Still Crap: http://devilskitchen.me.uk/2008/06/wind-power-is-still-crap.html
Wind power is only crap if the premise that it should provide 100% of electricity is considered. Seeing as how exactly zero people have offered this 100% promise, one wonders why such arguments are offered in the first place.
DS
“Ad hominem attack? Isn’t that a hallmark of “Junk Scientistsâ€Â?” -D4P
Who cares what it is, guys likes Kunstler have been repeating the same “the world is running out of resources” that has been claimed repeatedly since before I was born. Kunstler and others like him aren’t interested in actual discourse nor paying attention to reality. They simply want to run around telling us the sky is falling. Surely at some point we would be better served writing what they have to say. After all, it’s going to just me another form of unrealistic doom and gloom. Kunstler’s the sort that gets a bad cut on his hand that requires stitches and actually believes it’s proof he’s going to loose his arm.
For example, Kunstler talks about CTL technology. He claims, and I quote “You can make synthetic oil from coal, but the only time this was tried on a large scale was by the Nazis under wartime conditions, using impressive amounts of slave labor.” Apparently Kunstler hasn’t heard of South Africa. And why the comment about “slave labor”. I’m not familiar with how the Germans did CTL but I suspicious that something involving that much technology would involve much if any slave labor. Or that he claims that all of suburbia is simply inefficient and will disappear. That sort of blanket statement clearly can’t be true. There exists density in suburbia. And a lot of newer buildings are 2, 4, 10 times more energy efficient than older buildings. And what is city full of? Old buildings! I wouldn’t be surprised to find that many of the protected historical districts here user more energy per capita in their a similar grouping of homes in Westminster or Parker. Either way, we know effeciency isn’t as simple as distances yet Kustler reduces it to that. But the real point is that you run across enough of these and it gets to the point where it’s not longer worth paying attention to Kunstler. There are others interested in exploring the issue; not just standing on soap box and yelling.
Is it alright for us to oppose government subsidies if for no other reason than the renewables lab blocks what would be a nice bike route for me to get from work to Golden? 🙂
Antiplanner,
I am of the belief that cellulose ethanol will be economically viable as a liquid fuel substitute within the next few years. It should be if a barrel of oil goes to $200 per barrel. Here is a working paper by two agricultural economists on the potential for corn stover for cellulose ethanol.
Please note everyone that this is not producing ethanol directly from corn, which as everyone but corn growers, Archer Daniels Midland, and the corn lobby knows, is at best a break even proposition energy wise, and which is propped up by subsidies. This is producing ethanol from the rest of the plant other than the corn itself. This idea can also be used for switchgrass, poplar, sugar cane and lots of other plant life, which greatly expands the resource base. Some think that the United States has the potential to produce the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of crude oil per year from cellulose biomass.
I also believe that this is a much more viable idea than producing $100,000 Tesla Roadsters, which have a range of over 200 miles. They are are great – that is if you can afford them.
Wind power cannot provide baseload capacity but can help with peak demand. Storing and transmission lines are probably more critical (and more likely to thwart) the Pickens Plan).
I agree with the Antiplanner on govts role. The WORST thing that can happen is for politicans to “pick” a winner. Let technology and markets carry (in my car!) the day!
I have to wonder what technologies we would be using if the 2005 energy bill didn’t give $6 billion in oil and gas subsidies. We would probably be driving less, no? Politicians have been “picking” the winner for years now.
Politicians have been “picking†the winner for years now.
Politics: who gets, who pays.
Its all about power relations. Those with power want to keep it, and game politics to keep it that way. If there were less politics, those in power would game whatever filled in the gap. That’s how the world works. Those who wish otherwise are childishly naive.
DS
Wind power is crap at every possible percentage of electricity. It’s overpriced for what you get, and what you get can’t be relied upon. It’s hugely land intensive, which should be a big red flag for any anti-sprawl greenie.
bennett says, “the 2005 energy bill didn’t give $6 billion in oil and gas subsidies. We would probably be driving less, no?”
Not necessarily, subsidies to autos/roads amount to half-a-penny per passenger mile. Subsidies to public transit are 60-cents per passenger mile, more than 120 times the 1/2 penny subsidies to drivers.
source: http://americandreamcoalition.org/ADCFS2.pdf
So, bennett, shouldn’t we just wipe out all subsidies. I’m game if you are!
http://www.ls9.com
Three years ago, Harvard geneticist George Church and Stanford biologist Chris Somerville asked themselves which natural chemical makes the most efficient fuel. Their answer? Oil.
Funded by private capital, they founded LS9, Inc. in 2005. Using synthetic biology, LS9 has modified bacteria to turn plant sugars into crude oil. This oil can be refined by existing refineries, distributed by pipeline and pumped into cars. The company is further fine-tuning its bacteria to produce pump-ready gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. One day, everyone may grow renewable oil in their garage.
Because these bacteria can turn any plant waste into crude oil, LS9’s bio oil is fully renewable and will not strain the food supply. Synthetic production also allows LS9 to engineer oil with fewer pollutants than drilled crude.
Bio oil is not a dream of the future; LS9 plans to enter commercial production by 2011. Maybe this budding technology will adapt to mass production or maybe not; but as gas prices climb daily, do not panic. The market is working. LS9 and other private companies are scrambling to meet the demand for cheap, clean, renewable energy.
http://www.valcent.net/i/misc/Vertigro/index.html
Kind of like a bio-solar panel and battery all in one.
It’s $6 billion to oil/gas subsidies, not auto/road subsidies. Source: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/electricity/energybill/2005/articles.cfm?ID=13980
Could we do away with this… That would like result in gas prices closer to $6 per gallon. Source: http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm
We’ve seen a decrease in driving at the $4 mark, I think the trend would continue if we were paying market price for gas. I forsee a day with in my lifetime where only the rich can afford gas. So yes, I want to see the market develop technologies that can give me a personal (or a mass transit) vehicle that does not run on petrol. So to answer you question, for the sake of this argument, yeah lets do away with subsidies. No one will be able to afford gas (for their car or train) and we’ll all be biking everywhere.
14:
Wind power is crap at every possible percentage of electricity. It’s overpriced for what you get, and what you get can’t be relied upon. [links added]
Quick, call T. Boone – he never got your advice. Nor did the ranchers out on the high plains, who installed turbines in the midst of their ranches & are now sharing the small footprint of the turbines with their heifers (and diversifying their income). Nor did the energy coops that have wind as part of their portfolio to help diversify. Nor did all the companies opening turbine plants in northern Colo and bringing high-paying jobs to the region. Nor did the policy-makers who see the end of single-source energy and wish to diversify away from crazy regimes. Nor did the folks looking for lower emissions. Nor did the folks who quantify health costs. Nor did…
Where were you when they sought advice?
15:
Not necessarily, subsidies to autos/roads amount to half-a-penny per passenger mile.
No.
What would the subsidy per mile be if the link you used counted state, county, and local road miles?
Thank you in advance for the revised numbers.
DS
A solid, rational, unideological discussion of electricity in general and replacing transportation fuels in particular is located at http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/jul/13/0713_Turon.
Johngalt #16…
You mean trillions and trillions of bacteria working for our gas?
Talking about slave labor… 🙂
Jokes aside, I would make a more serious insider bet that the same bio/nano technology will, in the not so distant future, enable our descendants to live 150+ years at a much higher standard of living than we currently enjoy, in spite of our never ending obsession with doomsday scenarios.
So let’s stop worrying and feeling sorry about them (eg. running out of oil and gas) and let’s at least enjoy our relatively short life. Get in your SUV, drive cross country, put a mountain bike on the rack if you like…
Where was he before the massive tax subsidies? He’s getting into wind as a pure tax play, not because it’s sensible.
Another tax play. Local power generation is pretty much nonsense unless you’re being subsidized in some way.
They did because of wind mandates, not because it’s cost effective, and because they can always get rate increases approved when their costs skyrocket (as wind mandates do) due to regulatory initiatives. Companies in real markets don’t get to raise prices just because their costs go up. Just ask GM.
They should have gone nuclear if that’s what they wanted.
My point in listing a couple of cool new technologies was to show the vast array coming to light. The government will almost certainly choose the wrong way(s) to solve the problem. Despite the temptations, they should stay out of the way. No subsidies, tax breaks, etc.
Johngalt: “My point in listing a couple of cool new technologies was to show the vast array coming to light.â€Â
And you are right. I see government meddling in technology as the interference of average wisdom rather than cumulative wisdom. If average wisdom could solve the problem, it would have probably been solved long ago. Government cannot significantly alter the course and pace of technological innovation. Even in those areas where it appears to, most often, it just promotes some sector at the expense of another sector which often contains the unexpected, non obvious, solutions. But politicians must appear to be doing something, if only to show that “they careâ€Â.
aynrandgirl, congratulations, your latest lot of objections to wind power are precisely the same as my objections to nuclear power. Your earlier objections sounded more like someone arguing against more motorways.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, has a slightly different plan. He would replace many of the petroleum-fueled vehicles on the road today with electric cars and light trucks.
Both proposals emphasize electricity. Pickens thinks renewable sources of electricity can make us less oil dependent. Grove says that, because electricity is “multi-sourced, it will give us the greatest degree of energy resilience.â€Â
And
The Antiplanner opposes government intervention because subsidies could end up locking us in to technologies that are less than the best. Let’s hope more people come up with more ideas and then let the market decide between them. In any case, intervention or no intervention, it is likely that some technological solution will make far more sense than trying to cripple Americans by reducing their mobility.
Antiplanner and the others in the discussion, I am curious why there has been no discussion of rail thus far. No, no, not light rail (or, for that matter, heavy rail or other forms of mass transit), but the Class I railroads that mostly haul freight (in the U.S. and Canada that means NS, CSX, BNSF, UP, Kansas City Southern, CN and CP). It would seem to me that electrification of some of these railroads would make sense (and in terms of reducing Diesel fuel consumption, it should be relatively easy to identify which sections of the system get the most “bang for the buck” (in terms of replacing Diesel fuel with, for example, electric power generated from nuclear and other sources) if this were to be done.
Now I am quite certain that the Class I’s would want government subsidies for electrification (since electrification is expensive) but it seems to me that from an operational perspective, it’s more practical than attempting to force the motoring public to convert to electric rubber-tired vehicles. And if only part of the rail network is electrified, then there are issues related to switching of motive power (as Amtrak has to do at Washington’s Union Station for trains headed south or coming from the south) or using locomotives that have Diesel engines for non-electrified territory but can get traction power from an overhead wire (or third rail) when those are available. This is not new technology – the Europeans, Japanese and Russians have been running large intercity railroad networks under wire for many, many years – and here in the U.S., the old Virginian Railway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginian_Railway, many images here: http://www.davesrailpix.com/vgn/vgn.htm), merged into what is now NS was electrified between Mullens, W.Va. and Roanoke, Va. because of the steep grades and heavy loads of coal that was the Virginian’s primary cargo.
Thoughts?
C P. Zilliacus,
Glad that I am able to respond to a comment from you for the first time in many months. I’ve always enjoyed reading your thoughts.
Electrifying our freight rail system is an intriguing idea. But I’m not sure what would be the objective for doing so.
If we wish to make the most cost-effective use of energy sources, doesn’t the free market ensure that? If it is economical to power trains with electricity, won’t that eventually happen through private enterprise planning?
Is the objective to reduce world dependency on Middle Eastern and Venezuela crude? It’s not clear to me that reducing the demand for petroleum in the U.S. would accomplish that. They’re the low cost producers, and will certainly not be the ones to drop out of petroleum markets if oil prices drop.
As I see it, converting private vehicles would require little public investment (less taxes). As fuel prices increase, electric vehicles will become cost effective for more and more people. Assuming that most private vehicle batteries will be charged overnight, it would seem that demand for electricity would be more manageable. I’m assuming that electric trains would be consuming electricitry during daylight hours.
I guess the part of your comment I’m really not understanding is:
“it’s more practical than attempting to force the motoring public to convert to electric rubber-tired vehicles”
Who would want to force someone to switch to either electric vehicles or electric trains?
I wouldn’t say that T.Boone is getting into wind only because of the taxes. Those help him make sure the project does alright. But given it’s size and all the yapping he’s doing I suspect where’s he’s looking to rake in the dough is in being able to quickly build out the facilities in the near future when carbon taxes or cap and trade are implemented. Those are, of course, subsidies in a another form but my hunch is he needs more than some of the current direct subsidies to make such a large project pay off.
“Quick, call T. Boone – he never got your advice. Nor did the ranchers out on the high plains, who installed turbines in the midst of their ranches & are now sharing the small footprint of the turbines with their heifers (and diversifying their income). Nor did the energy coops that have wind as part of their portfolio to help diversify. Nor did all the companies opening turbine plants in northern Colo and bringing high-paying jobs to the region. Nor did the policy-makers who see the end of single-source energy and wish to diversify away from crazy regimes. Nor did the folks looking for lower emissions. Nor did the folks who quantify health costs. Nor did…”
But Dan, none of this would be happening if it wasn’t for the DIRECT subsidies they’re getting to build these things plus the indirect ones such as renewable energy generation mandates and the extra generations costs that get thrown at consumers because of the very inefficient need to to build and maintain extra capacity and randomly fire up natural gas plants to deal with wind fluctuations. That us, an industry so heavily dependent on a variety of subsidies amounts to nothing more than make-work. That may change one day but as of now it’s nothing more than make work.
The Pickens plan won’t work. It aims to intermittently replace (at great cost) a proportion (22%) of the electricity production with renewables, which is itself only a small proportion of the energy usage (1/6th?) How this is going to magically liberate anyone from the consumption of fossil fuels is far from obvious. There is also the danger that the contribution will be doubled counted (once for the contribution to autos, and once again for the contribution to general electricity generation).
There is a much better plan out there, called the King plan. Under this excellent scheme, the emphasis is on energy reduction, doing more with less. Cars have a wide range of fuel consumptions from 10mpg to 70mpg, so why are the least efficient cars still out there? Buses have a fuel consumption of 6-8mpg, and only offer reductions in fuel consumption by running full – so express buses are provided which link neigbourhood bus stations, and people get to the bus stations by bicycle – instead of buses stopping every 200 yards in search of another bus passenger (no car does this). More buses are run during peak hours, and fewer at other times.
Food needs to have the fossil fuel stripped out of it (currently something like 10 Calories of fuel to produce 1 Calorie of food). New plastics are developed from plant material. Much more use is made of treated wood, which is an efficient carbon sink, in building and other structures. Carbon fibre is produced from non-oil sources (another carbon sink).
I commend the King plan to the house.
The Kunstler plan (living in the stone age) is rubbish. He wouldn’t do it himself for more than a short period (there’s a good reason why poor people in Asia are trying to ditch this lifestyle as fast as they can) and he shouldn’t expect anyone else to do it either.
The Most Excellent King Plan sounds a lot like Amory Lovins’ negawatts and any sort of proposal from ecological engineers/ecological economists/sustainability folks.
The Kunstler Plan is similar, but he is pessimistic that the will to enact it is there, hence the stone-age impression. I am not aware that the Lovins (Amory or Hunter) think that BAU can or will continue – we will have to re-scale.
DS
John Dewey said:
C P. Zilliacus,
Glad that I am able to respond to a comment from you for the first time in many months. I’ve always enjoyed reading your thoughts.
Thanks, John. I have missed your comments in some of the other forums.
Electrifying our freight rail system is an intriguing idea. But I’m not sure what would be the objective for doing so.
If we wish to make the most cost-effective use of energy sources, doesn’t the free market ensure that? If it is economical to power trains with electricity, won’t that eventually happen through private enterprise planning?
My take on the subject is that conversion of some parts of our Class I rail network could convert the traction power source from Diesel fuel (which is mostly refined from petroleum) to electric power (which can be generated using many different types of fuel) is in relative relatively idiot-proof.
Is the objective to reduce world dependency on Middle Eastern and Venezuela crude? It’s not clear to me that reducing the demand for petroleum in the U.S. would accomplish that. They’re the low cost producers, and will certainly not be the ones to drop out of petroleum markets if oil prices drop.
While it would be great to cut back our consumption of product that comes from Hugo Chavez in particular, that’s not really the objective I envision – but cutting Diesel consumption (regardless of source) would cut the price of Diesel for all users of same.
As I see it, converting private vehicles would require little public investment (less taxes). As fuel prices increase, electric vehicles will become cost effective for more and more people. Assuming that most private vehicle batteries will be charged overnight, it would seem that demand for electricity would be more manageable. I’m assuming that electric trains would be consuming electricitry during daylight hours.
I suppose I am skeptical of large-scale success for electric-powered motor vehicles.
You are indeed correct that trains would be consuming electric traction power at all times – including during peak-demand hours, which implies that (in most of the U.S.) additional baseload generating capacity would be needed.
I guess the part of your comment I’m really not understanding is:
“it’s more practical than attempting to force the motoring public to convert to electric rubber-tired vehiclesâ€Â
Who would want to force someone to switch to either electric vehicles or electric trains?
Many members of the “anti-auto vanguard” want to force motorists out of their cars and on to mass transit. But I suspect that these people and groups would be equally pleased with forcing people to use inconvenient electric-powered cars and would object to electric vehicle technology that was a serious alternative to gasoline and Diesel-powered motor vehicles.
“I suppose I am skeptical of large-scale success for electric-powered motor vehicles.”
You may be right to be skeptical. Hybrid vehicles are powered by electricity only part of the time. But they offer the potential for a sharp reduction in energy use. If fuel prices continue to rise, I foresee hybrids which are even more fuel efficient than those now on the road.
“Many members of the “anti-auto vanguard†want to force motorists out of their cars and on to mass transit.”
OK. I had thought you wished to do so. I’m glad to read you haven’t gone over to the other side.
I don’t expect mass transit to ever again capture a significant portion of U.S. commuters. But I think voters will remain fooled for a few more decades. From what I’ve read, the anti-automobile indoctrination during pre-adult years is widespread.
Sorry, but Mr.Kunstler is way more market based in his writing than Mr.O’Toole will ever be.
Let’s also remember that it has been the whole “highway welfare system” that has got us into this current mess.
Also if Mr.O’Toole were really as free market as he claims to be, then this blog wouldn’t exist and he would have to get real job, since real “free markets” don’t need lobbyists such as him.
Mr.Kunstler is way more market based in his writing than Mr.O’Toole will ever be.
That’s why he’s pilloried by certain ideological groups – he calls for more choice, which would shine unwanted light on certain ideological tenets.
DS
I’m not sure electrifying freight lines makes much sense. IIRC the price tag for electrifying the West Corridor, the first line scheduled to open for Fastracks in Denver, will cost $60 million for 12 miles of of overhead wires, substations and other related items needed to electrify the track. Is $5 million / mile do-able? Or would freight be even more expensive? A lot of the LRT is double tracked but it seems it would make most sense to begin with electrification on heavily trafficked freight corridors, like in and out of the Powder River Basin, which are double tracked (or even more).
One statement by texas billionaire, T. Boon Pickens, sums up the debate.
After deciding to spend $10 billion on the world’s largest wind farm, he stated, “Wind farms are being built primarily for their lucrative tax benefits and subsidies- not because of their environmental or energy benefits.â€Â
Of course a smart capitalist like Pickens will take advantage of a distorted market. Why not?