Plotting a Course Towards Sustainable Energy Means Bringing Many Disparate Technologies Together
In response to my bearish post the other day on vehicle-to-grid, Gary Tulie writes this terse note: A project was recently launched in the UK to install 1000 vehicle to grid capable chargers.
There is no doubt that a clean energy future will rely on the confluence of a number of different technologies, all developing and adding value to one another. We need to consider:
• Energy storage of all types helps us integrate more renewable energy–both into the grid mix at a utility scale, and in microgrids.
• Smart grid technologies help reduce the energy use associated with transportation, whether that’s petroleum or electricity. For instance, 20% of fuel used in urban areas is consumed by people looking for parking places, but soon, smart parking meters will push out messages to drivers showing them where they can find the nearest unoccupied space.
• EVs can be charged with an oversupply of solar energy during the day and with an oversupply of wind at night.
• Energy efficiency solutions of all types make all this more feasible with each passing year.
• Sustainable ag solutions reduce the energy footprint associated with food.
• When synthetic beef is ready for prime time, this will be a fabulous boon to the environment.
• V2G can help utilities deal with peak demands, but, again, I’m not sure this will ever actually happen.
The good news is that all this is coming along at the same time. It’s the reason that the whole EV enterprise makes sense, even if today they are sometimes charged with coal. Obviously that’s regrettable, but we can’t wait to develop electric transportation until the last lump of coal has been mined.
Craig,
Most of your wish list is available today ! What’s lacking is desire by the general public to adopt new energy technology as a priority.
The reasons for a lack of greater EV adoption varies, but a major negative factor is the preachy politicization of ‘clean tech’ as an extension of “green politics”.
This is unfortunate as most consumers will accept and adopt clean(er) technology when sold as simply improved or superior technology. Over the past decade consumers have been barraged by confusing messages about environmental issues and clean(er) technology. Government subsidies have helped create new industries, often for the best of motives, but equally often raising unrealistic expectations for immature technologies. Technologies like solar which display great promise but remain unsustainable without permanent government support.
Consumer resentment starts to appear when the flaws in the technology become apparent. Consumers left with solar panels purchased from long bankrupt installers which develop expensive faults, or utilities no longer purchasing surplus power at attractive rates, become disillusioned.
Craig, even experienced marketers like yourself, can’t help preaching. In your list you equate EV adoption with “synthetic Beef” !
Steak and beef consumption is very popular, identifying with prosperity and social success. 97% of Americans and nearly all the western world are meat eaters. Steak restaurants and BBQ sales are important treats for the average working family.
By equating vegetarianism with EV transport, you do great harm to the image of EV technology.
Installing 1000 or even 10,000 public EV chargers in the UK, a nation with 33 million vehicles but only 31,000 EV’s, will not help adoption. ( PIEV adoption is greater but still only 97,000).
For nearly twenty years I’ve been an EV owner, early adopter and investor in EV technology. I admire the efforts of Elon Musk and Carlos Ghosn to promote Ev sales, but EV technology was made possible and acceptable Toyota popularizing the Hybrid.
Initially, Toyota learned a bitter marketing lesson, well observed by Elon Musk. Toyota lost a great deal of money attempting to market a vehicle to a non-existent environmentally conscious market the media and government(s) and the environmental movement claimed was demanding mass produced green vehicles.
Environmentalists may have been demanding s8uch a vehicle, along with politicians eager for the green vote, but when it came to purchasing an EV the market proved non-existent !
The Prius sold poorly and had a nerdy image until Toyota deployed Hybrid Technology throughout it’s luxury Lexus range. The resulting cache lifted the sales of all Toyota hybrids despite an historic drop in fuel prices. Toyota has sold over 7 million variants of the humble Prius it’s 20 year history, thanks largely to it’s vast resources, reputation for quality, and change in marketing.
Tesla concentrated on producing an upmarket vehicle, concentrating on performance, luxury and fashionable prestige as a sales image.
In contrast, despite the massive marketing power of the Renault-Nissan consortium the Leaf has only managed to sell 300,000 units globally in 8 years. As government subsidies (or mandates) expire or are withdrawn, sales for Leaf(and all EV ‘commuter’ cars) dramatically diminish.
Hybrid sales are increasing as more models begin to deploy the technology, marketing the technologies ability to improve performance and power, not ‘green consciousness’.
(P/s “Synthetic beef” ? Yeah, right ! I can just see that becoming a mass seller….
“Synthetic beef” has been available since 2013, but imagine trying to sell a consumer the story of what they’re eating.
” Well folks, firstly we select the finest laboratory to harvest your artificial burger
from small pieces of lab-grown animal muscle tissue using 20,000 strips of muscle tissue from
myosatellite stem cells taken from a cow neck added to fetal calf serum which becomes a gel in a plastic dish. This process causes the calf serum’s nutrients to reduce, triggering starvation in the cells which react by splitting into muscle cells.
The cells are then stimulated to eventually merge into muscle fibers called myotubes which synthesize a protein. The result is a tissue strip which is then processed to resemble beef.
The final product tastes a little like low grade hamburger mince, a bit slimy, but edible if the right additives are combined to mask the flavour.
What breed of cow would you like your calves fetal stem cells from ?.”
Yeah, I just can see folks queuing up to buy “synthetic beef” . )