I had lunch with some local waste-tire-to-energy people this afternoon, one of whom I knew to be an ex-military guy, and something of an accomplished pilot. On the way back from the restaurant, as we were passing the local general aviation airport he said, “Oh, let me pull in here; I need to leave a door unlocked; a friend of mine needs to get into my hangar, and he doesn’t have a key.”
Seeing that I hadn’t gotten out of the car when he parked he asked, “Would you like to see the plane?”
“Sure,” I replied, more or less out of courtesy, thinking I was going to see some sort of Cessna or Piper Cub. “What kind is it?” I asked. “Oh, it’s a MiG-21.” I’ve linked to what this thing looked like, complete with rocket-launchers. My jaw was on the floor.
“This isn’t exactly carbon-neutral, Craig,” my host said with a wry smile. “And it would be wrong to say that it preserves the environment, as well. In fact, it’s designed to change the environment in a heck of a hurry.”
What an annoying time it is to be alive. I keep telling myself to join the millions of others who simply refuse to listen to the news. But no, I had to check out this video this morning in which presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann lectures Congress in great detail on carbon dioxide, insisting that there is no chance that CO2 causes climate change because it’s a natural gas.
Apparently she felt the need to trump her rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who led 30,000 people in prayer at a rally in Houston last weekend titled “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis.”
If either of these people become president, I may have to consider doing what so many others have before me: leave. Costa Rica’s very nice. Never been to New Zealand, but I have a few friends there and I hear it’s terrific; that’s a possibility too.
Glenn Doty is a vital part of Doty Windfuels, a company with a terrific future in synthetic fuels made from off-peak wind energy, water, and CO2. I’ve written about them extensively; they’ve been a wonderful client, whose business plan I frequently show to potential investors.
Of course, their industry position makes Glenn and his company a natural competitor to electric vehicles, and thus some may regard the statements he makes on the subject as suspect. Still, as a scientist, I’ve consistently seen that he maintains a total objectivity in his analysis.
In his recent comment here, he’s brought up some interesting and important fallacies in the analyses we’ve used in determining the validity of electric transportation as an eco-friendly replacement for internal combustion engines. Having said this, here are a few things to think about:
1) A significant amount of electrical energy from coal is dumped back to ground each night because the rapid ramping of coal plants is not feasible and the off-peak energy is too expensive to store. To that degree, of course, one could say that any of the energy that would go to charging EVs in that scenario would have no carbon content at all.
2) Some of the most EV-friendly parts of the world, e.g., the Pacific Northwest of the US with its massive amounts of hydro, and France with its nuclear, produce electricity 24 hours a day with very little carbon.
3) I look at this whole evolving arena in terms of decades of growth and change. Even the most optimistic among us understands that the adoption of EVs will take decades, during which the levelized cost of energy from several different flavors of renewable sources will continue to come down, which, of course, will drive higher levels of penetration. Simultaneously, aging coal plants will be decommissioned.
4) At the same time we are achieving significant penetration of EVs, I believe that we will be implementing energy storage and smart-grid technology (including V2G) at approximately the same rate, and that these items will mutually re-enforce one another, e.g., more EVs will enable a greater penetration of renewables.
In conclusion, I believe Glenn’s insight is correct, and that the DoE’s concept of applying the current grid-mix to determine the eco-value of EVs is fallacious to a certain extent. But here, I think you have four reasons that this is a bit more complicated and interesting, and that EVs do, in fact, have significant value today – and even more with each passing year.
Each week, I get several very kind and sincere requests to interview me — normally on a radio show — regarding my last book. In fact, I just got off an hour-long interview with Jim Slinsky, who has been hosting the Outdoor Talk Network for decades. He’s a terrific guy, whose program is picked up by 53 stations in 24 states; I was his 1261st show!
But when I hung up the phone from the interview and checked my email, I saw that I had received one that read:
I disagree on the need to wean ourselves off fossil fuel, and I disagree with the premise of the book: “There is no doubt that the migration to clean energy is among the most pressing issues of our time.”
However, maybe the author can change my mind. My review will be objective, but if I think the author is stating falsehoods, I will say so in a review.
If you want to take that chance, please send me a print copy for review.
Jonathan DuHamel
Well, I like a challenge, but I try not to be a total moron. So a quick Googling of this guy shows that while he is a charming and compelling writer, he was apparently born without a sense of fair play. In his piece “Your Carbon Footprint Doesn’t Matter” (you’ll have to find it yourself if you’re interested, as I’m not giving it a backlink), he carefully hand-selects and twists certain numbers, before concluding:
You can do your part; just stop driving your car. The average family car puts out 5.5 tons of CO2 annually and is theoretically responsible for a temperature rise of 0.00000000000311ºC, three one-hundred-billionths of a degree. You can be so proud.
Actually, I AM so proud. In truth, and I think you know this, Jonathan, we really can make a difference in the outcome of our civilization. Sorry; I see where you’re coming from, pal. If you want to buy my book on Amazon and chop it up, go for it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqZ90f1L7P8&w=425&h=349]
Here’s a brief discussion of a biomass-to-energy business plan that involves pelletizing babassu, which is the fruit of a palm tree, not unlike a coconut, grown for its high density of chemical energy. For biomass projects to be attractive, they need rock solid feedstock agreements, technology, and take-off agreements — and this has all three, which is the reason that I hold it in high esteem..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzoBcEzi8rk&w=420&h=345]
Here’s a short discussion of a business plan that contemplates the processing of enormous quantities of construction and demolition waste, and the generation of clean energy from the wood and other biomass it contains. I’ve spent some time getting to know the organization’s CEO over the last six months or so — quite an impressive gentleman, with a truly excellent cleantech business plan.
Did you know that paper doesn’t have to come from trees? Here’s a piece about extremely high-quality paper from bagasse (sugarcane waste) as embodied in a cleantech business plan that I think has a great deal of merit.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQyQ2_HnAHU&w=420&h=345]
Here’s a short video in which I discuss a business plan that I favor; this one contemplates the fabrication of building products from coal ash. This is of obvious importance in that we have recently discovered that coal ash is not completely benign — and it’s not going away anytime soon.
Here’ s a short presentation on hydrokinetics, in particular, a few clean energy business plans that are based on run-of-river, ocean current, wave, tidal, ocean thermal, etc. This is of particular interest to me as I go about recommending a solution for my friends in Bermuda, which doesn’t really have the land mass to support some of the other renewable energy technolgies.
Although China may be a recent arrival in the “Big Power Club,” it is a very old, and WISE culture. They have developed their nation to this point on the profound understanding that the average voter in the western world is basically a moron whose main life interest is in next week’s pay-packet. Why should you let this person have any say in the long-term strategic interests of your country?
So, they don’t. And unlike our politicians, who have to pretend they listen to highly unqualified opinions, they are free to get on with the job of running their country.
The Chinese, unlike us in the West, are running with a long-term plan, ably enacted by highly intelligent and practical visionaries (in a population of 1.3 billion, there are plenty; contrary to the popular image of China being a country of aggrestic peasants) unencumbered by democracy (read: lowest common denominator). Therefore, China knows that there is an absolute shitload of money to be made from the conversion to a sustainable world economy, and they are investing heavily in this technology. Sooner or later we will be paying big money to buy this technology from them. (We already are, but the snowball has only just got rolling.)
In the meantime, the US government has to bow down to the ossified thinking of the corporations that own it. And those of us who want to change to a sustainable economy have to tread water while the US Government oscillates between (Democrat) Tweedledum, and (Republican) Tweedledumber.
Petra Kelly (Founder of German Greens) had an interesting observation to make in an interview once: she was asked if the Greens had ever made any major mistakes. Her reply was unequivocal: yes, they had made one very big mistake; that was to waste their time going national. She said that if they had focused their energy at the local and state level, the Greens would have achieved far more, far faster, than they ever did in the national government. And therein lies the answer to the US political dilemna: let Tweedledum and Tweedledumber waste their time in Washington; but let not us Greens do the same.
“Think globallly; act locally” is the perfect mantra for us. GO TO IT GREENS!!!!!!
I had lunch with some local waste-tire-to-energy people this afternoon, one of whom I knew to be an ex-military guy, and something of an accomplished pilot. On the way back from the restaurant, as we were passing the local general aviation airport he said, “Oh, let me pull in here; I need to leave a door unlocked; a friend of mine needs to get into my hangar, and he doesn’t have a key.”
Glenn Doty is a vital part of Doty Windfuels, a company with a terrific future in synthetic fuels made from off-peak wind energy, water, and CO2. I’ve written about them extensively; they’ve been a wonderful client, 
