– 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).
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Natures Blemish
To make convenience and make it feel good,
we take away from Mother to make it easy and understood…
To get fuel to power, keep warm and pass the time,
we extract black blood of a life gone-by, of a life gone-by…
The birds still sing and their song is unchanged
The only new addition to the sounds of the air is so called music, and the things we shape like birds and put there…
When the sky is clear we trim the grass to make it appealing, if only we could, we’d decorate the blue ceiling…
Mother will let us as she may, for only but a time, as she bares our curse until that great day…
We rape, burn, and pollute her to make it our ease, the only way to escape with comfort it seems…
The time is not full, Her promise to God is not yet complete - She waits until our last resource, and herb from the ground is gone, and vines crawl over D.C.
Marty Costello 4/18/94
The comedian and satirist George Carlin once said that future space explorers will discover earth and notice a thin black line. They will call it the Humanity Period. He goes on to say that if Mother Nature wanted to She would shake us off the planet like a “flea on a dog’s back.” Natures Blemish.
Diana, We can always burn clean coal but we have to first get the power companies to up-grade their plants. Also, consider re-newables as mentioned here. Have you looked at the cancer clusters around nuclear power plants?
When Tesla told JP Morgan about his free energy machines, Morgan said yeah but how do we meter it? We can’t do that! There’s too much money to be made! Oh yeah, and war over! And, pollute over!
It’s over for fossel fuels! We’re witnessing new a energy revolution and new ethic on our carbon foot-prints. Look at the CO2 in the air since the Industrail revolution. Don’t you think that we have had a negative impact on spaceship earth? Compare the diameter of the planet to the fraction of breathable air vertically. Small layer hey?
get your electricity from clean sources, aka wind, solar…if you don’t live in s state with a renewable portfolio, demand that your energy be “clean energy”; if your state doesn’t have wind resources, then you definitely have solar, geothermal, etc….it will still be less costly than shipping wyo. coal around the whole country on trains….this is the most inefficient way to transport energy…..put solar panels on buildings, windmills in backyards, except for NIMBYs there are all sorts of solutions, smaller neighborhood nuclear plants are even viable now…..france is entirely run on nuclear energy….americans are small minded in the important ways, yet can’t forget other silly things, such as three mile three decades ago……it should come as no surprise at all when we are a third world country….
More ‘can’t do’s’ hey Ben. Listen to this BS from Ben.
“As always seems to be the case, the latest electric hybrid fad is very short sighted. Does the public understand that these battery systems seem like a great idea now, it may not be such a great idea when the out of warranty pack has to be replace for a cost of around $10,000 (manufactures cost). Or the increase in insurance costs to cover the replacement of these items in accidents. This pales compared to the cost of the environmental cleanup of the thousand or millions of these batteries ending up in junkyards after the serviceable live of these cars has ended…….let’s hope the so called experts slow the rush down and for once….do it right the first time.
Posted by Ben Davis ”
Ben Oh Ben, short sighted fad you think. You are kidding yourself. Google the major companies and you will see that there is now a race on to build these machines. This is no fad. Governments around the world are publicly and secretly trying to win this race.
Where do you get a ridiculous figure of $10,000. That’s ridiculous. If the cars aren’t affordable, no-one will buy them. Costs may be up now, but wait until this is mainstream. Remember when video, dvds, & flat sreen tv’s first came out. Now there a dime a dozen. Supply and demand is an amazing thing. Demand goes up , price comes down.
To the question of insurance. Have you ever noticed in any country in the world that the costs of things tend to mirror the average wage increases or decreases. Insurance will always be made affordable to the average earner, that’s just how the industry works. If it didn’t there would not be an insurance industry.
As for your fear of batteries becoming a pollutant. Have you ever heard of recycling, it’s a massive industry. Everything that we use these days can be reused in some way, and wouldn’t storing old batteries be a hell of a lot better than storing nuclear waste that never brakes down, and wrecks everything it touches. I know what I would rather have in my backyard.
So ,are there any more issues that you need solving?
Why couln,t California, blessed with an abundance of sunshine, be developed as a model state where electric cars can get their power from solar energy driven power plants? Why no word from the expert on this opportunity?
Being a former economist for the American Petroleum Institute, it’s no wonder that Ms. Furchtgott-Roth attacks both electric cars and trial lawyers.
http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fu seaction=staff_bio&eid=FurchDian
While nuclear power is an option, there’s good reason why the American public is very wary of building new plants. Unlike coal-powered plants, the cost of failure at a nuclear plant can be catastrophic with very long-term effects. Also,I think we all know how nuclear power companies can’t be trusted to tell the truth about their plants.
It’s much easier to find a clean source of electricity than a clean one for oil. Progress… What a concept!
Mark,
Where does hydrogen comes from??? Natural gas with CO2 as a byproduct. Please, try school again.
Before there are reliable fusion plants to supply relatively “clean” electricity there will be no relief in sight (especially with the …. american lifestyle that requires two vehicles per household). So sell your beach properties until you can and get ready for some real “fun”.
No one said Electric cars would resolve all of the problems in the world, so your arguments are against a straw man you set up. It’s obvious that using less petroleum would result in less green house gas and less dependency on foreign oil. It’s a shame that this push did not happen earlier, maybe the oil crunch of 2008 would not have has as negative impact on our economy as it did.
CORRECTION OF QUOTE ATTRIBUTION
Quote posted 21 December:
“’In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…The real enemy, then, is humanity itself….Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…’
- The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome”
CORRECTION: the attribution should read “Club of Rome,” not “Council of Rome.”
COUNCIL OF ROME
The Council of Rome — and by inference, the Catholic Church — has NOTHING to do with this global warming/”invented enemy” quote posted on 21 December. The “Council of Rome” was convened in the 4th century and was a meeting of western Catholic Church officials to determine what historical scriptures “the universal Catholic Church accepts and what she must shun.”
CLUB OF ROME
“The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the CLUB OF ROME” is the correct source of this quote. It is the title of a now out-of-print 1991 publication authored by Club of Rome members Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider. The “Club of Rome” is an international think tank organized by an Italian industrialist in the late 1960’s. http://www.clubofrome.org
As always seems to be the case, the latest electric hybrid fad is very short sighted. Does the public understand that these battery systems seem like a great idea now, it may not be such a great idea when the out of warranty pack has to be replace for a cost of around $10,000 (manufactures cost). Or the increase in insurance costs to cover the replacement of these items in accidents. This pales compared to the cost of the environmental cleanup of the thousand or millions of these batteries ending up in junkyards after the serviceable live of these cars has ended…….let’s hope the so called experts slow the rush down and for once….do it right the first time.
I’m so glad someone raised the issue of “where does the electricity come from?” As far as hydrogen cars go - I want to know how the hydrogen and oxygen are collected/generated? It sounds like electricity will be required. Solar power required panels that typically have a modest lifespan - and I wonder what toxic chemicals are needed to make them. Wind power has potential, but we have to deal with the environmentalists fussing over migratory birds. I suspect the ultimate answer involves a little bit of everything, and a whole lot of conservation. Drive around the neighborhood and look at all the street lights, porch lights, and (this time of year) Christmas lights. We have TVs in every room of the house. We pay money to go to the gym but refuse to use reel lawnmowers. The ultimate answer is going to required major lifestyle changes for everyone.
Diana
BTW, have you sold your oil stocks yet?? You better start doing it before the inevitable oil crash coming up! Oil prices is heading down to $20 a barrel now… Dont laugh… Also, you should have urged us not to return to buying SUVs and PickUps no matter how low oil prices is and will be… You are an economist for heaven’s sake!! You know better than to bury your head in the sands !! Silence is deafening and please be quiet about electric cars !! Also please stop lying to us!! Alrighty!?
Diana
What is really great about electric cars? The electric motor does not idle and spin when you dont need it.. When you stop at the intersection, train crossing, bumper to bumper traffic, coasting the electric motor stop spinning much similar to your electric drill, saw, or sewing machine.. They dont keep spinning whenever you dont need it.. So for gasoline engines, they cannot shut down at all and they keep spinning non stop until you get off the car. This is where the energy savings comes in play.. I suggest that you bone up a little in mechanics or something like that… alright, girl?
Buy a clue!
So it seems the main stream has finally wrapped their head around the fact that electric cars need to get energy from somewhere. So now there is interest in hydrogen. Hydrogen, unlike batteries, gets energy with no pollution via magic.
Hydrogen is everywhere but it is not pure. To separate the hydrogen a process known as electrolysis. I hate to burst that bubble but electrolysis uses… electricity!! welcome back to square one!
So the discussion could be more accurately aimed at whether we want local power production, (internal combustion engine) or external power production (electricity/hydrogen).
Firstly, internal combustion is dirty and reduces air quality. So does most power production but at least it’s not it’s not in the town centre. Basically the same reason people don’t eat breakfast in the toilet. Separating the dirty things from the everyday things means at very least it’s out of sight, out of mind and out of our respiratory system.
Next we get the advantage of being portable. So we start with electric/hydrogen cars powered by dirty coal and gas. Since we are pooling our power usage it means that as we start putting renewable power sources into the grid, the vehicles are getting greener as well.
So there is no silver bullet. Electric/Hydrogen cars are a good step in the right direction. They set us up so that in the future any gains in efficiency in generation is automatically passed on to personal transport. It’s not the answer to climate change but it’s a part of the answer of how to remove our dependence on fossil fuels, which in turn is part of the answer to climate change.
-Pete
Battery powered cars do have their drawbacks, however they are not alone in their imperfections. Let us take a look at the two popular alternatives:
Hydrogen
While the technology is undoubtably out there, hydrogen as a automotive fuel poses a few problems. Firstly, in the same way as lithium ion batteries, they are not pollution free. Current hydrogen fuel cells use platinum as a catalyst - a very rare precious metal, the mining of which is energy intensive and environmentaly unfriendly. The magic of hydrogen is that it produces water as a waste product, however the hydrogen is first produced by the electrolysis of water - another energy intesive process which, along with the energy needed to compress hydrogen gas, brings the fuel cell’s energy efficiency down to 24%. Compare this to batteries, which run at about 69% efficiency, and the impact of a hydrogen economy on future energy consumption becomes all too clear.
3rd generation Biofuels
The problems with biofuels as we are currently using them are numerous and well publicised. It may be foolish however, to discount all biofuels as a potentially sustainable fuel source. The benefit of biofuels is that they only emit as much carbon as they removed from the atmosphere during growth (they are carbon neutral). Algae can yield oil at up to 50% dry mass (hi-oil corn produces only 6.3%). This algae can be grown in vats in otherwise inhostpitable conditions thus avoiding land use conflicts and enabling self sufficiency of supply. Cellulose, the biproduct of bio-oil production, can also be use to produce bioplastics, reducing our dependance on oil even further. Whilst it it still relatively expensive, the the instability of oil supply and cost may make this an increasingly attractive option.
The fundamental environmental issue with battery power and hydrogen fuel is undoubtably the issue of electicity production.
It is interesting that the only solution put forward here is nuclear energy. As brad pointed out, uranium is neither a sustainable nor clean fuel. To compare the US to France is forgetting the huge amount of energy and capital required to build a nuclear power infrastructure. Energy and capital that France invested at the very beginning and that the US has already invested in other forms of electricity generation. To re-invest now it would seem much more sensible to do so in truely sustainable and cleaner technologies. The US has a vast land mass and an incredible array of renewable resources to exploit. Any anyway, wind power is far more economically viable than nuclear. Go build a windmill and drive to work with a cleaner conscience.
For those who support Uranium it is not renewable, it’s limited, it’s a contaminant that we cannot clean up. Go to Chenobel if you dare(Google it).
For those who support Ethanol or any other so called Biofuel(nice green name), it is a limited resource and the price will only go up. Ethanol is derived from plants that are grown on some of the most productive land in the world, and we all know land is limited especially with increasing drought in most parts of the world, and increasing populations dependant on this land for fuel.
Did you know that the richer Western nations are now buying up vast racks of land in the poorer continents to grow their food because of this problem. Why do you think these nations hate the West and are killing each over over a patch of sand.
Did you know that the last remaining Rainforests(i.e. habitat of worlds bio-diversity and where medicines are found)are being slashed and burned at such a great rate because of the introduction of biofuels (Google ‘The Amazon Destruction’). At the rate these forests are falling your kids won’t even know what a rainforest is, and animals will only be found in zoos and on street corners dancing for a dollar. ‘Biofuel’ what a joke.
Do you not understand that most people are only peddling solutions that have a limited supply and not renewables because they stand to make a dollar out of it? The dollar they make comes from your collective pocket. The things they plunder and destroy are yours. If they use renewables(wind/solar/wave/thermal technology) we will still pay anyway one way or the other, but at least we will then have something left to spend our dollars on.
If you keep plundering poorer nations, do you think that they will just sit by and watch you enjoy it. I don’t think so. Do you all want to live like an Englishman in Zimbabwe?
To suggest to not move towards ‘renewable energy’ is the idea only of a greedy fool. The fact is ‘renewable energy’ is a renewable profit, a cash cow, a money tree, and at the same time it benefits us all.
Diana, thank you for a well-reasoned article. Too many of our energy policy decisions are made from the assumptions of man-made global warming. CO2 comprises a very small part (0.02%) of the atmosphere, whereas water vapor exerts a much greater influence on climate. Count me as unimpressed and unconvinced with the AGW alarmists!
As you said, France is a leader in nuclear power production and spent-fuel recycling which diminishes the “waste” to a fraction of its original volume. Nukes are 24/7/365 producers whereas wind and solar are not and require backup storage to extend their availability.
Power must be generated somehow, it doesn’t just exist, and the most efficient source for the most number of consumers will (or ought to) win out. BTW, France has yet to send a man to the moon - we have the technology to match their nuclear advances but do we have the political will?
All of this seems to based on the false premise of Man-made
Global Warming/Climate Change/now Global Cooling on the false hypothesis that CO2 is capable of doing all of the above.
So, if the need to avoid CO2 production is removed from the “energy problem”,a good portion of it goes away and so does the opportunity to tax us and the excuse for more nuclear.
I want these decisions to be based on reality and not some mad scam thought up by globalists.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…The real enemy, then, is humanity itself….Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…”
- The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.