Oil

Margonelli: Next on Oprah!: Carbon Confessions and Zombie Troubles

Lisa Margonelli — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:59:00 -0400

Last week internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee apologized for the waste of time and paper he caused by inserting the slashes in web urls back in the early 90's. The CO2nfessional, Mea Carbona--this particular form of apology needs a name, because it's only a matter of cultural moments before the GREAT QUANTIFICATION begins. And when it does, we'll all be caught up in an actuarial frenzy to determine the carbon price tag of every keystroke, plastic spoon, and ice cream cone of the minutiae we call life... and apologize for them....

Margonelli: Is The Climate Legislation Worm Starting to Turn?

Lisa Margonelli — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:39:00 -0400

If you look at crude oil prices, still bobbing around in the high $60's, you might think not much happened last week. But I think we may look back 10 years from now and realize that last week the needle began to move towards dramatic changes in US energy and climate policy...

The Myth of Battery Cars

Terry Tamminen — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:31:00 -0400

As the world beats a path to Copenhagen for the December 2009 UN meeting to craft a new deal on climate change solutions, one of the biggest challenges remains our addiction to oil. About 40% of global greenhouse gases come from oil, when you include exploration, development, refining, transportation, and combusting it. A few years ago, the US government hailed corn-based ethanol as the alternative/savior, but when food prices skyrocketed because of a misguided policy to subsidize farmers (and when science showed the greenhouse gas benefits were small or non-existent), the rush was on to find another magic bullet.

Now the US government, led by Energy Secretary Steve Chu, has put on their Don Quixote armor again and is pouring lots of taxpayer dollars into batteries for cars. While I am the first to say there will be no silver bullet, only silver buckshot - - we need ALL alternatives to oil - - it's time to dump the battery-powered car in the same policy landfill as corn-based ethanol.

First, Chu admitted to Congress that it would take billions of R&D funding and many years to develop batteries that are practical for cars in everyday use. He was being optimistic, given the laws of physics - - there's only so much you can reduce the weight and charging times for batteries, not to mention the scarce and toxic materials needed to produce them. And car engineers spend lifetimes taking a few pounds out of a car to make it more fuel efficient, regardless of how it is powered. Why would we want a fleet of inefficient cars that carry around half a ton of excess luggage?

Second, this notion that battery cars require no new infrastructure is nonsense. A recent article in Science magazine highlighted the need for more powerplants, transmission lines, and home/office chargers to serve even a small % of the transportation fleet, if it was dependent on battery recharging. As an example, the Tesla battery sports car takes 37 hours to recharge with normal household current and 8 hours if you install a special high-voltage charger that costs thousands of dollars. Moreover, on a hot July day in California, if even a few hundred thousand of the state's 30 million vehicles were attached to the grid, the overloaded system would routinely blackout unless it was upgraded at the cost of billions. Battery car enthusiast Shai Agassi announced he intends to bring his battery cars to San Francisco and would build 250,000 charging stations around the Bay Area alone - - does that sound like new infrastructure to you?

Third, range matters. Yes the average commuter may only need 30 or 40 miles a day, something they can get from batteries today, but many people live in multi-family apartments and have no access to a charger on a daily basis. Many more can only afford one car and want one that can go longer distances when needed. I recently drove 150 miles to Palm Springs from Los Angeles in my hydrogen powered electric car (the hydrogen is converted to electricity by the fuel cell, which powers the same electric motor as a Tesla or any other electric car). I refueled in 7 minutes and was ready to return that afternoon. The Tesla or any other battery car available today would still be at the recharging station 30 miles short of Palm Springs, not to mention the problem of getting back in the same day.

Battery enthusiasts say we will have swapping stations, so in a few minutes you can drop off discharged batteries and pick up full charged ones. Maybe, but then every car will essentially have to have multiple sets of batteries made for it, so there are enough to go around at swapping stations awaiting the need. What does that take in terms of resources and greenhouse gas pollution in the manufacture (and ultimate disposal) of all of those batteries?

Fourth, size matters. There's a reason that battery cars so far are all small. Tesla chose the sports car because it was cool and would brand their company, but also because it is small and light which helps with range (even so, the range is far less than 200 miles). Other car companies toying with battery cars are focused on very small sedans for the same reason. Anyone who needs a larger car or truck will have a very long wait to get one powered by batteries.

Finally, how the electricity is produced will determine how clean battery power is, which is also true of hydrogen production. The need to build all of the new infrastructure, batteries (maybe multiple sets), and charging stations has to be added into that lifecycle analysis, otherwise we're making the same mistakes we made with ethanol - - a mirage of sustainability by looking only at the end use.

The bottom line is that battery cars are no more viable at this time for solving our oil addiction on a large-scale basis than corn-based ethanol. Battery enthusiasts like to bash hydrogen power for vehicles, but are unwilling to address these fundamental problems with their preferred technology any more than Congress people from corn states are willing to be honest about the lifecycle costs of ethanol.

Once we are honest about these challenges, perhaps we can move ahead with real solutions. Otherwise, Copenhagen will be a very cold place this coming December.

Margonelli: Sayonara Cash-For-Clunkers (and what could have been)

Lisa Margonelli — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:16:00 -0400

So yesterday the much discussed Cash For Clunkers ended its $2.877 billion run, moving 690,114 new cars off America's car lots and into the traffic jams. According to the Obama administration, it created or saved 21,000 jobs. So far so pat on the back. Except that each of those cars cost US taxpayers $4168 per car. And for that much money, we could have gotten a lot more. Consider this: C4C only required a fuel economy increase of 2 mpg over the original car, so the total mandated gas savings was about 38 million gallons of gas. The auto companies can raise the fuel economy of cars on the assembly line by that much at a cost of $500 per vehicle. So, we could have given our $2.87 billion to the auto companies to upgrade 5.5 million cars by 2 mpg or more, and bought ourselves a yearly fuel savings of 303 million gallons of gas...

Margonelli: Astroturf on Coal's Grave?

Lisa Margonelli — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:21:00 -0400

I know I'm supposed to be outraged that lobbying firm Bonner and Associates, acting on behalf of the (ironic tongue twister alert!) American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, has filed 13 forged letters on behalf of senior centers and the elderly with a House Committee against the Waxman Markey climate bill. And I'm also supposed to be furious that the American Petroleum Institute is trying to whip up an astroturf teabagger death panel anti Waxman Markey extravaganza by creating the illusion of "Energy Citizens" against the bill at town halls. But it makes me laugh. Who wants to be an "Energy Citizen?" Never mind call on Congress to "get it right?" Who's going to carry a loaded AR15 to such wishy washiness? Certainly not someone with a nice job in at an oil services company...

Margonelli: Oil Smuggling: Is It Time To Start Worrying Yet?

Lisa Margonelli — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:01:00 -0400

I've been waiting in vain for more information on the U.S. companies involved in buying oil smuggled out of Mexico by drug gangs. So far the money tied to U.S. firms is small potatoes. Trammo, a small firm, paid $2.4 million for hot oil, and two even smaller San Antonio firms may have paid $40K and $100K. Who, and where are the big fish? Worldwide, oil smuggling involves a lot of money and players; the people at Havocscope estimate it's worth $7.7 billion a year, which puts it well below cigarette smuggling ($50 billion) and above music piracy ($4.5 billion). See the full list here. Should we worry?

The WSJ suggests that this is a symptom of cartels fighting as enforcement shrinks the drug pie, while an industry expert wonders if Mexico will go the Nigeria route, which raises the scary possibility that successfully reducing drug trafficking could create even more instability in Mexico and in U.S. petroleum markets...

Margonelli: The Freaky Math of Plug In Hybrids

Lisa Margonelli — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:24:00 -0400

Times have changed: the once-mighty GM seems to be live blogging its "game changing" Chevy hybrid electric VOLT today, claiming its $40K price is justified by its 230 mpg EPA rating. But that number, like so many numbers associated with plug in hybrids, is less impressive than it seems. The charming dorks at Environmental Economics point out that the Volt gets 230 mpg when the trip length is exactly 51.11 miles, but for a trip of 200 miles the car gets 62.5 mpg, which is not much better than my diesel VW Golf, purchased used for around $15K. Of course, there's a lot to love about Plug In hybrids, and GM's new game, but the numbers around them are vexing...

Margonelli: Dr. Chu in China: Warnings, Money, Leapfrogs

Lisa Margonelli — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:44:00 -0400

Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are both in China today, forming a new joint research program for US/China cooperation on clean vehicles and buildings with China's Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang. (The very fact that Chu and Gang are sitting down to talk is reason for some hope: They are cut from similarly brainy optimistic technocratic cloth and before government both spent a long time at the cutting edge of private industry's research. Chu was at Bell Labs, where he won a Nobel. And Gang was at Audi's research center in Germany. Having interviewed both of them, I can easily imagine them having a beer. But if they do, there will be a leapfrog under the table, testing out its first hops...

Margonelli: 'Free' vs. Peak Oil

Lisa Margonelli — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:12:00 -0400

I haven't read Chris Anderson's new book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," but I've been following the debate over Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker review and Anderson's response. Gladwell summerizes Anderson's basic argument as: The digital age is exerting inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things "made of ideas." This revelation is not unique to Anderson. I mean, hey, it's 6:30 am and I'm blogging for free about articles I read for free for you who will read it for free and meanwhile, my "free"
gmail account is trying to sell me a "Didgeridoo for Sleep Apnea."

But underlying this copious pile of free is a steady stream of electrons that keeps our eyes and ears hooked into the ideas streaming out of our computers, TV's, stereos, and twitter-enabled smart phones. Between 2000 and 2005 according to this pdf report by Jonathan Koomey, the amount of electricity used by servers alone doubled to account for 14 power plants world wide and $7.2 billion dollars. Is there some tension between free ideas and limited energy and natural resources? Are free ideas and Peak Oil compatible? Or do they have some strange synergy?

I think so, but the unified theory of it all remains to be thought, so
I'm throwing it out to you, readers. Respond freely.

Margonelli: While We Were Sneering, China Was Seizing "Clean Coal"

Lisa Margonelli — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:15:00 -0400

Making fun of clean coal has become a cottage industry for American enviro-media types. (For a classic example, check out this snarky ad by the Coen brothers.) But while we have been snickering, China is building a clean coal plant that will go online next year, and has two more in the works. Last year alone China built 90 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants, which means that if China decides to use its massive domestic market for carbon sequestration to develop cheap technology and processes (provided that's possible) they could capture an enormous world market for the equipment in a few decades...