[MarkM]

Yes, a boost here and a boost there, but: new research shows that almost all agrofuels are worse than conventional fuels, especially if changed land-use is taken into account. Policies are already changing (EPA, California, Germany), and pretty soon only biofuels from waste will be allowed. Don't invest in ethanol or biodiesel: you'll loose.

From a US Government study (http://www.pi.energy.gov/documents/2008 ... ential.pdf):
Carbon emissions related to biofuel feedstock production is also a contentious issue. Emissions from land use changes and from diesel combustion in farm equipment, water pumping, and production of fertilizer all erode the carbon benefits of biofuels. The net carbon loss of land conversion needs to be considered and is one of the greatest sources of debate and uncertainty. Soils and plant biomass are the two largest biologically active stores of terrestrial carbon and hold about 2.7 times more carbon than the atmosphere. If land is cleared to allow for cultivation of food or energy crops, the carbon contained in the standing biomass and some of the carbon stored in the soil will be released to the atmosphere. A “carbon debt” is thus incurred when native ecosystems are converted to cropland. This carbon debt is the difference between the amount of carbon stored in standing biomass and soil before land clearing and that of the crop grown in its place. The actual carbon debt is thus highly dependent on the type of ecosystem that is being cleared and the crop that replaces it.
One study (Searchinger et al., 2008) produced estimates for this pay-back. The actual pay-back will vary between scenarios, but even under their most optimistic assumptions it was over 30 years for corn, and under their base assumptions it was well over 100 years. Another study on the issue (Fargione et al., 2008) points out that the pay-back is highly dependent on the type of land being converted and the type of crop grown in its place. Their results indicate that clearing tropical or peatland rainforest to grow palm oil or soybean incurs large carbon debts with paybacks of several hundred years, while using abandoned or marginal cropland to grow prairie grasses incurs little to no carbon debt.

[mos6507]

I don't know why you keep talking up EVs, yesplease. The only things driving EVs forward right now is government prodding related to global warming and residual momentum from last year's superspike. Consumer demand for them is low as you can see by the dropoff in hybrid sales. It's going to take sustained high gas prices to provide a real market for them.

[yesplease]

All vehicle sales are down, so I don't think singling out hybrid sales illustrates much. In fact, hybrid market share is only down by ~10+% yoy, while over the same period oil prices have dropped over 50%, so if anything the current market share of hybrids bodes well for EVs.

Anyhoo, in the context of keeping wealth in America and oil prices down, EVs are more or less the way to go. We don't have to have an EV for every home in America, just a small amount of market penetration for those who want 'em. And even with oil prices down, there are still buyers, and enough demand to warrant rebadging for sales in Europe. It really depends on the driving route in question. For fleet use or heavy traffic, even with gas at $2/gallon, something like Mitsubishi's offering is cheaper than a conventional vehicle, even w/o tax credits (at ~150k+ miles). A ~20mpg average in heavy traffic) conventional vehicle like a Yaris at ~$12k would require ~$12-15k in gasoline (over the same period, and ~$5k more in maintenance, so even if a i-Miev is $37k, which is what the low volume price is, it'll still be cheaper after ~150-200k miles. If gas is higher than $2/gallon, like in Japan, or there are incentives from the government, like in Japan and over here, then the payback period is even lower.

Like I said before, the point isn't to have every vehicle electric, at least not right off the bat, but to reduce fuel consumption in general so that oil prices don't spike again. We saw an incredibly small increase in demand compared to supply send oil way up, so small that it probably could have been averted to a large degree if CA's ZEV mandate wasn't killed. We can make the same mistakes we made in the past, or we can use EVs where it makes financial sense to use 'em, which would reduce production costs, and expand the conditions where they make financial sense. Assuming of course that oil prices stay low.

That said, I don't expect people to flock to them. I mean, we are looking at a country where people happily pay twice what a house is worth over a 30-year loan to avoid saving up and buying it outright, but there are still some people, believe it or not, who are reasonably frugal, and given this recession and the biggest change in consumer behavior in decades, there may be more in the future.

[joe1347]

I'm assuming that you meant reviving manufacturing in Mainland China - and not in the USA since we don't make any of the high-tech stuff in the USA anymore. Besides, we're too busy spending our money subsidizing banks instead of Advanced Technology like those foolish Chinese. After all, don't financial derivatives create more value for the American Economy that building real stuff that people want to buy?

[zeke]

the problem is not "dirty" energy, but dirty fuels and sloppy, gluttonous usage.

which begs the question: WHY so gluttonous?

I'm going to suggest that too many things have already BEEN manufactured. modern "economics" is predicated on never-ending growth. therefore it's not enough for you to buy a sofa made in the good ol' US of A. You must throw that sofa out within 3 years and buy another one. And again in another 3 years.

the only reason things are manufactured is so that they can be sold. seems obvious, right?

but unless there's endless consumption going on, those manufactured items will simply sit in a warehouse.

now, what self-respecting tycoon is going to be happy with THAT?

plus, the american people are MORE than happy to buy n toss their entire lives.

"This $50,000 car no longer adequately expresses my social standing, intellect and sexual prowess. I therefore need a new one" is the real pledge of allegiance.

Why you think Craigslist is coming under such fire lately?

z

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MarkM', 'Y')es, a boost here and a boost there, but: new research shows that almost all agrofuels are worse than conventional fuels, especially if changed land-use is taken into account. Policies are already changing (EPA, California, Germany), and pretty soon only biofuels from waste will be allowed. Don't invest in ethanol or biodiesel: you'll loose.

[Gazzatrone]

Tell that to the Orang Utans and Lemurs. I'm sure they'll be chuffed.

[Graeme]

Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r. James Hansen, one of our nation's leading experts on global warming, is very clear about the necessary attributes of any solution: we must stop building new coal plants immediately and start retiring existing coal plants worldwide. If we cannot virtually eliminate coal worldwide within a couple of decades, then the sum total of all of our other efforts to reduce our carbon footprint will be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

The "worldwide" requirement is critical. The best way, and for all practical purposes, probably the only way, to get other countries to abandon coal is to give them a seemingly magical new technology that is lower cost than coal, with the same 24x7 baseline power reliability, but without the CO2 emissions. Existing coal plants could be "upgraded" simply by replacing the "burner" with a the new technology.

The good news is we have such a magical power technology. The big surprise is that it isn't new. It's old. It is a fast nuclear reactor known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) that was developed by a team of hundreds of scientists working for more than 20 years at our top government national laboratory for nuclear energy (Argonne National Laboratory, at its branches in Illinois and Idaho).

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '[')b]Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r. James Hansen, one of our nation's leading experts on global warming, is very clear about the necessary attributes of any solution: we must stop building new coal plants immediately and start retiring existing coal plants worldwide. If we cannot virtually eliminate coal worldwide within a couple of decades, then the sum total of all of our other efforts to reduce our carbon footprint will be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

The "worldwide" requirement is critical. The best way, and for all practical purposes, probably the only way, to get other countries to abandon coal is to give them a seemingly magical new technology that is lower cost than coal, with the same 24x7 baseline power reliability, but without the CO2 emissions. Existing coal plants could be "upgraded" simply by replacing the "burner" with a the new technology.

The good news is we have such a magical power technology. The big surprise is that it isn't new. It's old. It is a fast nuclear reactor known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) that was developed by a team of hundreds of scientists working for more than 20 years at our top government national laboratory for nuclear energy (Argonne National Laboratory, at its branches in Illinois and Idaho).

[the48thronin]

Nuclear waste

Imagine the 'dump" that has warning signs "Do not disturb for 5000 years... ( HMM 5000 compared to 2008....) oh and that is for the low level stuff like contaminated suits .. then think about the high level waste...

"Do not disturb for 40,000 years" makes a nice picture doesn't it? Visit Barnwell South Carolina and get back to me....about that "clean power thing"

try Chem Nuclear, maybe do a web search for Home transportation nuclear division.... ( now of days called Tri State motor transport)...

edited once for spelling

[no_wuckin_ferries_mate]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('the48thronin', 'N')uclear waste

Imagine the 'dump" that has warning signs "Do not disturb for 5000 years... ( HMM 5000 compared to 2008....) oh and that is for the low level stuff like contaminated suits .. then think about the high level waste...

"Do not disturb for 40,000 years"

[Tanada]

Why do people believe the political issue of nuclear materials is a technological issue? Why do people think a salt dome that was geologically stable for millennium is suddenly going to become a mobile source of water table exchange? Answer, people would rather believe scary stories that play on their fears than the truth.

The whole point of storage in salt domes is the fact that the salt will creep until the shafts and cavities are all closed and the material is inaccessible without mining in the precise location needed to reach the stored material. This has been known to Geologists for centuries. This is a GOOD THING not a disaster as painted by an anti-nuclear hit piece.

[eastbay]

Good point Tanada. Then we'll simply place signs designed to remain in place and not decay for tens of thousands of years in whatever language will be spoken by whatever people periodically reside near all those salt domes advising them to dig elsewhere or die.

This isn't insurmountable. Worst thing that can happen is they die. Sounds like a plan we'll probably adopt. So we can have cars. And big screen TV's. And AC. And more war. For a few more years. Yeah.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'G')ood point Tanada. Then we'll simply place signs designed to remain in place and not decay for tens of thousands of years in whatever language will be spoken by whatever people periodically reside near all those salt domes advising them to dig elsewhere or die.

This isn't insurmountable. Worst thing that can happen is they die. Sounds like a plan we'll probably adopt. So we can have cars. And big screen TV's. And AC. And more war. For a few more years. Yeah.

[miraculix]

The radioactive waste issue can be best understood in terms of its actual volume.

Compared to other fossil fuel based energy, the total to be disposed of waste is minute.

numbers for UK

ten coal fired power plant 40 liters per person per year
ten nuke plants 0.84 liters per person per year

of that 840 ml only 3% is high-level radioactive, thus 25 ml p pa

For the UK a lifetime worth of waste for 60mil will neatly fit into 35 Olympic size swimming pools

Where is the problem here?

Source http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

[outcast]

Yeah one thing the anti-nuke crowds never understand is how comparitively little waste fission actually produces. Yes the onsite storage facilities in the US are filling up, but it took more than 30 years on old and inefficient (compared to modern designs) reactors to make that much.

[dunewalker]

From reading the linked article. it appears that the author, Steve Kirsch, is the one advocating nuclear power, not Dr. James Hansen. He references Hansen's views on coal, then "blends" a sort-of quote of Hansen into his own agenda...

edit: with a little more research I see that Dr. Hansen favors research into "fast-breeding" nuclear reactors that use nearly all of the nuclear material rather than the 1% that most current nuclear power plants utilize, thus addressing the waste storage issues as well as the source issues(re-use the nuclear waste already produced). He touches on this in this video interview in March 2009:

http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=2441

[ECM]

The new coal generator that was built in the main city I get power from cost an estimated $516,000,000 for 200 MW. Now, with the new climate bill we get to look at spending vastly more money for our power even though the utility purchased 120 MW of wind power for at least 10 years as part of the deal.

The current fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors is almost 30 years old on average. Natural gas still generates a lot of CO2. There is no viable renewable technology that can act as baseload. I think I would rather have nuclear with its risks vs the risk of climate armageddon.

It would be great to have entirely renewable energy but we can not plan our future around non existant technologies.

[netfind]

The biggest and most immediate improvement in our carbon footprint problem is simply to do the Pickens Plan as well as a massive switch to Brazil's style of sugar ethanol. Nat gas emits vastly lower pollution levels than the dirty oil we are burning now. And sugar ethanol is the only grown-from-the-dirt fuel we have now that has an EROEI anywhere near that of oil, coal, or nat gas; and, as with any crop, it absorbs CO2 while growing and gives it off when burned making it about carbon neutral. I have some good charts, facts, and figures on this at my energy/investing blog.

[pablonite]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('no_wuckin_ferries_mate', 'I')t was quite clear for me from the beginning that the whole climate b*shit is made up from the nuclear guys to push their agenda.