– Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own. —
The world is falling in love with plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars. President-elect Obama wants to put 1 million on the road by 2015. GM features them, particularly the Chevy Volt, in its new business plan for a debut in 2010. The EU wants them to shrink greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 by 20% from 1990 levels. This week the Chinese auto company BYD began selling the world’s first commercially-available plug-in hybrid sedan.
No matter that these cars are not widely available; that they are priced far above traditional models; that many have a short range, making them useful only for local trips; that batteries may be prone to catching fire; and that many motorists park on the street, where charging is impractical.
For some, these issues pale in importance to saving the planet from harmful emissions of carbon, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide—all of which are released from internal combustion engine vehicles. If battery powered cars reduce emissions, environmentalists argue, they should be produced and consumers should be enticed to buy them.
But whereas electric cars don’t pollute when they’re running on batteries, they’re not pollution-free. Making the lithium-ion batteries is pollution-intensive and recharging the batteries uses electricity. And most electricity generation, from coal- and gas-fired power plants, still causes pollution.
Which means that pollution from the extra electricity for car batteries has to be weighed against savings from burning less gasoline. Whether battery power can trump the internal combustion engine, which is continually getting more efficient, depends on when drivers decide to charge their future cars, as well as how the electricity is made.
A 2008 study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory projected U.S. power needs in 2030 if 25% of the car fleet used some form of battery power.
If drivers charged vehicles after 10:00 p.m., when household power consumption is at its lowest, then at most eight extra power plants would be needed for electric cars. In contrast, if drivers charged cars in early evening when household use is peaking, 160 new power plants would have to be built.
At issue here is the way that America will generate its electricity when Obama’s 1 million plug-in hybrids hit the road in 2015. Nuclear power plants do not generate harmful emissions, and are a far cleaner source of electricity than oil, natural gas, or coal. Yet America has refused to build them for fear of accidents and because of controversy about where to dispose of spent fuel. A third problem is long delays in winning government licenses for new plants.
Private companies don’t want to face litigious American consumers, trial lawyers at the ready, and so do not dare embark on nuclear power plants. Until Congress makes serious efforts to shield companies from liability, nuclear power won’t be viable. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not licensed a new nuclear power plant in over 30 years.
France, on the other hand, does have nuclear power; it generates 78% of its supply from splitting the atom, far more than America’s 19% share. Electric cars in France, therefore, if they can overcome problems of range, safety, and price, would be more environmentally friendly than their American counterparts.
Until America can resume construction of nuclear power plants, it might be that the way to energy efficiency on the road is not through the electric car but by making improvements in the way cars burn gasoline. That would be a good use of the $25 billion that Congress gave to the auto industry last year to improve efficiency.
Call it a dual-highway route to saving energy on the road.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth can be reached at dfr@hudson.org. For previous columns, click here.
The solution is already here. I suggest you travel to California and test drive a Honda Clarity.
It uses a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricty; the waste product is water.
The range of the car on a single tank of liquid hydrogen is approximately 280 miles.
It is expected once the car is in large scale production it will cost the same as a conventional 4 door saloon. A tank of hydrogen will cost roughly the same as your petrol.
I agree battery powered cars are a lame ducks but then so is the US auto industry (if not dead ducks).
Trackback
150 comments so far
Previous | 8 … | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | … 1 | Next
I don’t quite understand the shortsighted attitude that so many people seem to have toward electric cars. “Electric technology is currently limited, so we should invest in more fuel-efficient internal combustion engines.” Great, but the fact of the matter is that oil is a finite resource that is going to run out. A more efficient engine, even a 100mpg engine as has been proposed in this discussion, is not a long-term solution, it merely delays the inevitable.
As someone else previously said, electric cars are the ultimate flex fuel vehicle. You can point to coal as a source of pollution now, but your electric car doesn’t care where the energy comes from. We’re going to stop burning fossil fuels at some point by simple necessity; when that day comes, your electric car will keep running on hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, whatever, and your oil or natural gas vehicle will be done. Inevitably a costly transformation of our transportation infrastructure is going to have to take place — the only question is whether we start working on it now or we just keep putting it off and putting it off as long as possible until circumstances force us to deal with it.
Point to the current limitations of battery technology all you want, but let’s not be disingenuous here. Battery tech stalled for a hundred years after ICE won out over BEV (which was the result of cheaply available gasoline and the decision by Ford and others to mass produce ICE vehicles, making them significantly cheaper than BEVs, which continued to be manufactured on a smaller scale), and people have only really started working to improve battery tech again since the advent of laptops and cell phones. It’s quite silly to believe that we can develop a 100mpg ICE but we’ll never create a better battery than what we’ve got right now, and it’s extraordinarily shortsighted to point to nascent technologies like supercapacitors and dismiss them out of hand because we’re not ready to swap one into a Ford Focus and put it on the street today.
As far as hydrogen, I just don’t really buy it. You’re just wasting energy on a middle man. You need a great deal of electricity to create the hydrogen fuel, but you could just put that electricity directly into an electric car and be on your way. The only way hydrogen make sense to me is if battery technology really has hit an insurmountable wall — which seems to be more of an assumption made by those already opposed to BEVs than the reality of the situation.
I don’t have any specific problems with nuclear as a source of electricity, except for the fact that you are once again investing in a finite resource, and one that could run out very rapidly if adopted on the same scale as fossil fuels. It makes more sense to me to continue developing the capture and storage of solar energy — abundant, environmentally friendly, freely available, and a stable source of energy for the next five billion years. My idealistic vision of the future is a world run primarily on solar power, with electric cars that can be charged at home, at power stations, even on the street (coin-op or card-swipe outlets at every parking meter?). We’re not close to achieving that yet. It’ll take decades and billions, probably trillions of dollars. But that, to me, seems a wiser investment than a 100mpg internal combustion engine that will be rendered useless when oil is no longer available — a day that is inevitably coming whether you want it to or not. No amount of nay saying on electric (or hydrogen or anything else, for that matter) can change the fact that oil will be out of the picture within a hundred years and most likely much, much sooner than that. Betting on the internal combustion engine is like betting on the Cubs: they’re both old and familiar and you’re going to lose.
The lack of understanding of technology is frightening in this article. For a moment I thought there was in a time warp and reading how the horseless carriage will never replace the horse…especially since we need the fertilize for our gardens.
This article could sure help with the fertilizer problem.
Let’s get started.
1. Batteries are available now that have the capacity, reliability, and small size needed for the automobile. The only issue is how cheap will they be after five years of worldwide production and will China or Korea dominate their production. (Is there any product today, that isn’t orders of magnitude cheaper than when it was first introduced – personal computers, plasma TVs, compact fluorescent light).
2. The electricity for cars is available today during off peak hours from any source green or dirty (let the best source win). Battery cars can storage the surplus energy that is produced by windmills or solar today…sorry T-Boon. Chargers can be installed in any home garage (city dwellers that park on the street, may want to stay with the gas guzzler till the city puts electric parking meters on the street).
3. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are NOT the solution. They are inherently more complex. Substituting a complex and expensive fuel cell and a hydrogen storage system for a battery, can not be cost effective. Even when fuels cells became cheaper, due to mass production, you still need a massive infrastructure to deliver hydrogen to your car. If someone figures out how to make cheap hydrogen, and the expense to haul it to your neighborhood filling station, store it, transfer it to your tank. Think of the massive infrastructure to deliver gasoline to your tank today, now visualize it all replaced with hydrogen infrastructure, then just realize that you already have an electrical plug in your garage. The hydrogen economy is the petroleum industries wet dream, for what comes after gasoline gets scarce. A fuel cell car is an electric car, only more complex and expensive, if that makes sense to you…
4. The massive transfer of wealth for oil from our country to others that don’t like us very much, will be reduced when you choose electric cars. (Don’t want to use the global warming argument, rather stick to science…but it would go here.)
5. One downside, batteries take time to charge…but like my cell phone, it will charge at night when you’re not using it. Plug-in hybrids or Electric Range Extenders solve the problem of slow charge by using the existing gasoline infrastructure to run a small efficient internal combustion engine. Yes, that ads complexity, but at least it is well understood.
6. For those of you waiting to drive the Honda Clarity, remember this…there is no plan to actually produce it. (Since no one will buy it without a massive change in our infrastructure, which would have to be financed by your tax dollar). The Chevy Volt (2011) is the car of the future. A range-extender electric vehicle, it is getting 50 miles per gallon in gasoline powered mode, over 125 mpg in battery mode and the first 40 miles do not require Any gasoline. Yes, it will be expensive…for the first few years of production.
Hydrogen (for fueling combustion engines as well as fuel cells) has been the obvious CLEAN answer for fueling –for years — It gets “blocked” by fossil fuel / others efforts. When we face this fact and the REAL / HONEST facts, we will have the solution to UNILIMITED / CLEAN FUELS.
Russ
jmmx: hydrogen can be EASILY produced from solar and wind power.
hydrogen combustion engines offer all the power of gas powered IBE’s and emit zero pollution.
hydrogen is the answer for personal transportation.
and horses produce their own form of waste, unless we, not you, are prepared to go back in time, going forward is our only option and progress means trying something new like electric automobiles and clean coal and nuclear and solar and geothermal and whatever else scientists come up with
I beg to differ,
Even the modern combustion engine can only achieve 30-40% efficiency. Contrast to that the efficiency of burning that same ammount of oil in a modern plant to produce electricity and you can achieve about 80% efficiency in an electric car. Also, you need to take to account the infrastructure to take the oil to the pump at 89+ octane, it needs to be transported, reffined, etc. Whereas electricity is everywhere. combustion engines also need to be lubricated and don’t have too long a life. A lot of parts will be refitted in the years it runs also. Electric motors should be able to withstand a lot more hardship. There is only also 1 moving part. Maintenance is very easy.
I think that the solution is a decentralised energy network powered by sustainable sources. This is what the world should be shooting for. All finite resources are obviously temporary.
A few points here.
@Mark - Hydrogen fuel cell cars:
While they offer real potential, hydrogen fuel suffers from one same problem as electric: Hydrogen is produced using electricity to break down water H2O into 2H + O. So we are left with the problem the author raises about the source of energy.
But let’s face it, the Hudson Institute is paid apologist for the Nuclear industry. So no wonder she writes that Nuclear is the solution. The conservative agenda has hidden the costs of the nuclear industry while subsidizing it heavily. At the same time, Ronald Reagan, in an orgy of short-sightedness, cut the very modest support that the government was providing to the solar industry.
Simply put - if you can build an infrastructure that will meet your needs and produce no harmful byproducts, or use a technology that produces radioactive products that will last for thousands of years, which is the logical choice?
(Mr. Halls - no disrespect meant to you. I appreciate your point of view, and your experience.)
The
I have difficulty taking this pronuclear power generation arguement seriously when France is taken in the comparison to the U.S. If you need to buttress your position allow a comparison of say the European Union (roughly the same) and the U.S. for your percentages of nuclear power generation/coal fired/wind generation capacities and future projections.
Diana,
The final solution to future world energy needs will of course, be many-fold.
In place will be a mix of wind,wave,solar,bio,hydro,coal, nuclear, and last but not least, oil.
Oil will continue to be present within the mix for sometime to come because of the thousands of by-products manufactured using oil as feedstock (plastics etc).
The US should look to Europe and Asia as models and not beat itself up trying to ‘re-invent the wheel’.
Germany for example, is forging ahead with the production and installation of vast arrays of solar panels and has developed a submarine powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
The possibilities are endless, but sadly, the many ‘vested interests’ are just holding back any new enterprise.
“But whereas electric cars don’t pollute when they’re running on batteries, they’re not pollution-free.” Ucch! I won’t stoop to commenting about someone beginning a sentence with “But whereas….” How about the real issue: “Do you KNOOOW how much energy is used to recyle?” “Do ya know that it takes material to build windmills?” etc., etc. I do. And I also know that that we can make cars that wean our dependence from non-renewable, polluting petroleum. Green technology will improve, but only with investment. Nuclear energy? Great — unless something goes wrong — and it always does — and when it does with nuclear, let’s just say it’s nuclear! (By the way, not only US has committed to putting 1 million hybrids on the rd, but so have Spain and Germany! http://www.HybridsHybridsHybrids.com
This is an excellent article. It exposes two of the \”elephants in the room\” that alternative energy propulsion proponents will not address:
1. the cradle to grave costs of manufacturing batteries;
2. The latent impact of plug in hybrids.
Now don\’t get me wrong, I\’m all for improving the effiencies of automobiles, but let\’s not charge blindly into the night without a flashlight.
We must realize that it takes energy to move 3000 pounds from point a to point b and for the most part the overall energy requirement is the same regardless of the fuel source. If you don\’t get it from on-board hydrocarbon fuel it comes in the form of plug-in recharged batteries.
Really, hybrid cars are the ultimate implementation of America\’s true energy policy: NOT IN MY BACKYARD. That\’s what has been our policy for 30 years ever since Three Mile Island and the realization that we can avoid damaging our local enviroment by procuring our petroleum from overseas sources. Why drill here when we can damage someone else\’s environment? Same for hybrid plug-in cars: why should I pollute in my city, I can drive a hybrid and the pollution from the electrical generation occurs somewhere waaayy beyond my wall socket.
again, excellent article.
We can’t burn all the oils at once. Controlling the volume is a way to control the earth temperature.
In order to save ourselves, we should keep a lot of oils from now on, just in case.
Viewing from this point, the oil price will likely to go up fast.
Electrical car, in this case, is not as environmental friendly and useful as conventional gasoline car.
While I agree with most of R.L. Hails discussion, his conclusion is misinformed. Mr. Hails will be happy to know that our government has been investing heavily in keeping, and most importantly developing, talented individuals in all facets required for future nuclear plant construction in this country. Go see the website http://www.waste2glass.com. While this $690M a YEAR project is not a nuclear reactor, it follows the same nuclear guidelines. It is in essence a training ground for the extremely stringent world of nuclear design, fabrication, procurement, and construction. This project has taken numerous commercial quality vendors in the United States and invested in bringing them into a nuclear quality standard (officially ASME NQA-1). The individuals on this project, and other DOE and commercial nuclear related projects around the US, are keeping the nuclear talent pool of engineers, designers, management, and vendors, very alive and active for our country. Get some commercial plants going (there are numerous licenses in with the NRC), and the government supplied talent pool will be able to swing into action training even more folks on how the nuclear industry works.
The sun is a planet that burning, meaning that the heat will become lower or higher.
Considering that if something is burning, the flameable meterial will become less and less. Unless the type of flameable materials change, the heat will become less and less.
Petrol burning produces heat which can be a way to balance up the temperature of our planet.
Looking from this point, electrical car is not polluting, but it’s not completely environmental friendly as well.
And talking about pollution, oil is formed by fossils which were living creatures once. Considering that the foods we take in are a kind of replacement and addition to our tissues or body system, it can be said that taking out the oils and burn it is another way of not so bad ecological cycle.
What a folly this article portrays. Hybrids (preferably biodiesel burners) can recharge batteries, solar and wind power are on the way, and eventually fusion power will solve the worlds energy needs. Batteries can be shipped from electric generation areas without losing the 10% of power every 100 miles. Hydrogen is easily made at nuclear power plants from distilled water and can also be used as fuel. Fossil fuel for electric generation is the 20th century way, we are in a new era.
Electric cars are not the sole solution, but it would be a major step forward. People is saying electric cars are still producing pollution, so what is the point of deploying it? Comparing them to our conventional vehicles, the overall pollution footprint would be a lot smaller.
Once we have the eco-system of electric cars and people are starting to realize the benefits. And they will start moving away from coal power plant to more eco-friendly power plant.
This article is shortsighted, and it would be a mistake to stall the advance of electric cars.
I’m sorry. Lets all just watch Asia, because right now, they’re moving ahead with things. Japan, China, and South Korea are seemingly the only countries pulling ahead with technology - especially Japan. If the US needed to follow an example of how to move people from point A to point B, observe Japan’s method. We can bicker on all day here on whether a certain technology is viable or not; the typical case, however, in Asia, they always manage to find a way.
It’s important to consider unintended consequences.
Consider what happened when corn ethanol was expanded.
So many solutions are simply business opportunities, and little else.
Dear Diana,
Please visit this website:
http://www.betterplace.org
And please read this Stanford University’s study:
Résumé:
Wind, water and sun beat biofuels, nuclear and coal for clean energy, Stanford researcher says
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2 008-12/su-ww121008.php
Diaporama:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacob son/0810EnergySeminar.pdf
Publication (draft):
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacob son/EnergyEnvRev0908.pdf
Thanks
Andrea
Having spent forty years engineering a score of nuclear power plants, two score fossil power plants, led the first US independent spent fuel storage facility, and decades years assessing advanced energy technologies, I am dumbfounded by the dogmatic ignorance of viable options available for life sustaining electric power which are stated in these postings. Diana Furchtgott-Roth is essentially correct, the electric vehicle will fail as a mass transportation machine for the same reason that it failed in the early 20th century, puny energy density, both volumetric and mass, and competitive cost. It will have a niche market of enthusiasts. The determinative issues, for a sustainable energy policy, are the importance of global warming, GW, and the geography of oil reserves. Some scientists claim man made GW is the primary threat to survival. Others say man’s activities, e.g. the combustion product CO2, is a trivial influence on climate. Somebody is wrong.
The US is blessed with centuries of the only extant cost effective prime fuels for our base load: uranium and fossil fuels, particularly coal. No “green” technology can carry the load. There are hard technical and cost barriers to each technology. I have learned, here and elsewhere, that this truth engenders fury, not at the technology, but at capitalism, and large powerful hated corporations (e.g. I am a shill, rather than an expert Professional Engineer.) Some hate oil companies, but love ethanol (corn liquor) companies. This is odd; any human commerce can go bad. I look at the unit energy contents of corn liquor vs. gasoline, and find, just like Henry Ford, that one is superior. He bet on corn liquor and lost; he had to rework his carburetors, and seals.
Ultracapacitors must improve their energy density, and lower cost; both are formidable challenges. They will become ubiquitous as prime movers, but not main vehicular propulsion systems. The same is true, in general, for wide spread use of fuel cells, and hydrogen fueled ICEs.
Nuclear energy is a unique problem. Mankind will either learn to use it for peace, or it will kill uncountable millions. The US has used it continuously for sixty years; it is the safest energy technology in existence. And the most hated. (Our designs are fundamentally different from Chernobyl. Stalin wanted bomb fuel from his reactors; electricity was only a by-product.) Nuclear power does require educated people, with integrity, to build, and operate it. This robust talent pool no longer exists in the US. To me this is the greatest danger to our nation. We have so politicized technical issues, and demonized the experts, that we destroyed the energy engineering professions. Scores of engineering departments dropped the coursework decades ago. This nation no longer can make complex, large heavy equipment. I have rigged over 6000 tons of nuclear vessels, the largest, a 1200 ton reactor, was raised 24 stories. Why would any bright young student study this demanding, stressful work today? They do not; have not for decades. The US no longer can build a large nuclear power plant; most of the true experts are dead. This, not global warming, is the bottle neck to repowering America. The person who favored bicycles may get his wish, but he will not eat very well.