Having laid out my views in part I, let me turn to the actual data regarding hybrids -- both from an environmental and economic perspective.
How do carbon emissions per mile driven compare for various cars? The Volt is expected to be "less than $30,000" with a 1.0L engine. Compare this to the Corolla, with a 1.8Lengine (peak hp of 126; 31 mpg) and a price of $14,400. It's worth noting that this is in the optimistic, no-gasoline-use scenario for the Volt, computed below along with carbon emissions for the Volt running on cellulosic ethanol and gasoline, and emissions for comparable-sized ICE cars. Questions on the Volt's actual usage patterns remain: how many people will recharge everyday? What percentage of total miles will be on the grid, and what percentage on gasoline?
| 2010 | 2017 | 2017 (with 50% increase in ICE mpg efficiency) | ||||
| Car | CO2 Emissions -- grams/ mile | Monthly Cost (Car+Fuel) | CO2 Emissions -- grams/ mile | Monthly Cost (Car+Fuel) | CO2 Emissions -- grams/ mile | Monthly Cost (Car+Fuel) |
| Toyota Prius | 238 | $490 | 238 | $490 | 159 | $468 |
| GM Volt On Electricity | 144 | $623 | 144 | $623 | 144 | $623 |
| GM Volt Cellul. E85 | - | - | 55 | $641 | 37 | $628 |
| GM Volt Gasoline Only | 219 | $661 | 219 | $661 | 146 | $641 |
| GM Volt Gas+Elec (1:1) | 182 | $642 | 181 | $642 | 145 | $632 |
| Toyota Corolla (ICE Engine) | 353 | $385 | 353 | $385 | 235 | $353 |
| Toyota Corolla (Hypothetical FFV version) | 282 (Corn E85) | $387 | 88 (Cellul. E85) | $355 | 58 (Cellul. E85) | $334 |
Note: A hypothetical "plug-in Prius" with a Volt-sized 16kWh battery would probably cost more than the Volt. Hence the above comparison of a plug-in Volt and a hybrid Prius is unfair to the GM Volt. The monthly cost includes the monthly amortized cost of purchase (7.5 percent loan -- completely financed over 5 years) + cost of fuel (1,000 miles/month). Battery cost of $7,600 (at $400kWh + $1,200 control) in 2010 and $4,000 ($200kWh + $800 control) in 2017 is included in the Volt purchase price of $30,000 -- these battery cost estimates are 40-60 percent lower than current estimates of $700-1000kWh and automaker margin is not included. Fuel cost assumptions of $0.11c/kWh electricity (U.S. average per EIA) and 5 miles per kwh for the Volt, $3.00 gasoline cost to consumers (roughly just the material cost of "oil" in gasoline at $100 oil price, before taxes -- actual costs are likely to be higher for consumers if oil prices stay high), $2.25 per gallon corn E85 to consumers before taxes ($1.75 production cost per gallon), and $1.50 per gallon cellulosic E85 (based on $1.00 production cost before taxes) in 2017. A 25 percent mileage discount is used with ethanol (equal to current average EPA de-rating for E85). Does not include expected improvement on E85 mileage relative to gasoline or the carbon emissions from battery manufacturing, which are likely to make Prius and battery numbers about 10-20 percent worse on carbon emissions. None of the costs account for subsides or taxes, which we assume will be zero or equal for all technologies by 2017. No vehicle attribute changes are assumed.
The numbers are necessarily estimates, and apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult. Notably, they do not include the carbon emissions for battery manufacture amortized over the assumed 100,000-mile life of the battery. In addition, speculation persists that the GM Volt battery will be leased to consumers -- and that the $30,000 price tag is not inclusive of any leasing costs. I suspect these errors are material, and make the electric numbers look materially better than they are. (Can somebody provide a source for a reasonable estimate?)
The assumptions behind this table are as follows: the Volt gets 5 miles/kwh. Given U.S. electrical grid emissions of approximately 1.35lbs per kWh (EIA estimates), that gives us a per-mile emissions level of roughly 0.32 lbs/mile (after adjusting for an electrical roundtrip storage efficiency at 85 percent for the battery, and assuming it is running on battery alone) or about 144 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. On gasoline alone (assuming no battery charging from electricity) the same car's emissions would be 219 grams per mile.
Using only cellulosic ethanol, the same car would have 75 percent lower emissions, or 55 grams per mile (assuming trucks, etc., supplying biomass, and transportation still running on fossil fuel). We have modeled gasoline emissions for tank-to-wheels to be 80 percent of that from well-to-wheels emissions (roughly what the EIA uses). Any help in refining these numbers would be appreciated.
The percentage of coal in the U.S. grid is expected to go up, not down. Contrary to most forecasts, I think we can do better than that and limit coal-powered electricity to the point where its percentage will decline (we have investments to make renewable grid electricity cheaper than next-gen IGCC coal plants), but the decline will be gradual given typical power plant lifespans. Despite what we might wish for -- driving on solar or wind power -- the reality is likely to be different. For those of you who want to compute solar PV panels on your roof, its effective cost is between $0.25 (Low-cost panels in sunny Arizona?) to $0.50 (Foggy Seattle?) per kWh, depending upon your cost and the location of the panels. In a few locations wind might be cost-effective, but that would be for a small minority of car owners.
What about the cost of driving a mile? When we get to the incremental clean-grid costs, renewable electricity is expected to cost about $0.10-0.15c/kWh (prior to taxes; $0.06-0.10 per kWh delivered to utilities) delivered to the consumer at any large scale, or about $0.02-0.03 per mile from a vehicle of the Volt class. A production cost of $1.00 per gallon of biofuel (I suspect lower costs are likely in 10-15 years) will likely result in a $1.50 consumer price point (prior to any taxes, which vary by state), so one would have to get 50mpg (very doable; essentially the GM Volt gas-only mileage) in a flex-fuel car to get a similar variable cost per mile driven.
Yes, I do expect -- within the decade -- a good flex-fuel engine to get the same mileage on biofuels as it does on gasoline (for example, an ethanol-capable engine running at a compression ratio of 16 -- ethanol's higher octane rating means that today's engines are not optimized for it). That will increase ethanol mileage by another 25 percent, which is not figured into our monthly cost reduction calculations. I should be clear that all numbers are necessarily approximations, probably to within 25 percent.
Screwing up environment not so great for economy, studies find
EPA affirms California’s right to set tougher automobile emissions standards
Daimler launches first German hybrid car
Comments View as Flat
Charles Barton Posted 3:46 am
15 Jan 2008
Mining the soli
Pardon me for ranting but Greens are anti-environmental idiots. Don't you bozos know anything about soil conservation? Here you have a scheme to mine the soil in order to provide fuel for cars. Do you think that soil is renewable, if you remove minerals from it and do not return them? Don't you Greens know anything at all about soil conservation? Do you understand nothing about organic farming? Do you understand why American farmers have to use fertilizers?
Charles Barton
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sunflower Posted 4:00 am
15 Jan 2008
Fate or free will ?
Because Cassandra can see the future she can not change the future. She is a slave to fashion. She will buy a plug-in Prius as soon as it becomes available.
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odograph Posted 4:20 am
15 Jan 2008
false comparison
This is something I have been on about forever. I admit that the comparison between hybrids and "equivalents" is popular. I admit that your corolla to volt comparison is similar to corolla versus prius comparisons of the past.
But I've always held that those don't matter. We are not a poor nation of corolla drivers. We are an affluent nation. We already spend an average of $28K on a new car.
For me personally, the base model prius ($22K in 2005 and slightly more now) was a steal. It was well less than what my neighbors paid for their cars, cheaper on fuel (and cheaper on insurance and maintenance).
Really, when an average American buyer faces the Volt, they will be making this kind of choice: Do I want to choose luxury or speed over efficiency? Or is efficiency the value I should request for my $28K (or $30K).
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Vinod Khosla Posted 4:20 am
15 Jan 2008
Biomass, Soil Carbon, Biodiversity, Land and more
To see my answers on the question "Where will biomass come from" and "what will it do to water, biodiversity and soil carbon" please come back next week. We will propose ways to improve biodiversity, reduce fertilizer input (when growing row crops in rotation with biomass crops), actually increase soil carbon content on strictly rainfed crops. Range and Coskata have already reduced water use to 75% below that of corn ethanol. The four criteria for a good fuel are "CLAW"
C- cost below gasoline
L- low to no land use; use of degraded lands to restore their biodiversity and carbon/microorganism ecosystem.
A- Air quality or carbon emissions
W- Water use
Hope fully I can answer all three next week in a three part series.
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odograph Posted 4:26 am
15 Jan 2008
BTW
I guess the shortest way to frame my question is, given the average $28K price on new cars, how are you going to move people down to Corollas?
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A Siegel Posted 4:33 am
15 Jan 2008
Apples to Apples?
Why is legitimate to compare a Corolla to a Prius or a prospective Volt?
Have you sat in both a Corolla and a Prius?
Did you note any difference in terms of comfort levels? In terms of features?
Does the normal Corolla have Bluetooth built-in? GPS, standard? A rear-view camera? A system for real-time feedback as to car performance?
And, how about leg room and space? Ever sat in the back seat of a Corolla or a Prius (both?)?
Now, there is a reasoned discussion to be had, but adopting misleading platforms to make your comparison undermines any confidence that we can have in the other things that you assert.
Blogging regularly at Energy Smart to Energize America .
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JMG Posted 4:54 am
15 Jan 2008
Nontransferable smarts
I just finished reading JK Galbraith's excellent book "A Short History of Financial Euphoria" and one of his key take home messages (besides the four most expensive words in the English language being "This time it's different") is that a root cause common to many gross blunders is the widely held belief that possession of large sums of money is an indication of great or broad intelligence, intelligence that is broadly transferable to areas that have nothing to do with the one in which the fortune was acquired.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:07 am
15 Jan 2008
Organic efficiency
It would be possible to restore burnt out farm land with organic fertilizer and grow fuel crops at the same time, building the soil up, instead of tearing it down. You are comparing devestated land to productive land. The proper comparison is healthy organic soil to chemically farmed soil. We all agree soil ought to be restored as a carbon sink
But every bit of carbon removed would still be burned and released in cars. That is very inefficient and it prevents that carbon from being acumulayed in the soil. A fraction of 1% of the energy in liquid fuel is used to transport the weight of the passengers in a conventional internal combustion vehicle.
With food production, a tiny fraction of the carbon is released, in human and animal respiration and waste. The waste can be reclaimed.
And additional sunlight energy conversion due to live organic soil optimizing growth can result in more carbon sink activity AND excess fuel. I would suggest biogas from extra biomass and organic waste. Not ethanol to burn in ICEs.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 5:17 am
15 Jan 2008
Wrong comparison Vinod
Coal powered plugin hybrids compared to ethanol powered cars.
We are advocating plugins powered by solar and other renewables. Of course none of this will happen overnight, it can take 10 to 20 years.
Biogas is the better biofuel, it comes from waste and has the byproduct of organic soil amendment and fertilizer, and clean water. Ethanol uses water. Biogas saves it. With less irrigation load due to organic soil.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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apsmith Posted 5:43 am
15 Jan 2008
Put the Tata Nano in that table!
Let's see, $2500 selling price, 50 mpg, so the CO2 numbers are about the same as the Prius; I believe that puts the 2010 cost numbers for the Nano at under $100/month.
So, forget Corollas, let's switch everybody to Nano's!
Oh yeah, sure, the Nano isn't as nice a car as the Corolla.
But, same goes here - the Corolla isn't as nice a car as the Prius, as A Siegel points out. Put a Camry on there if you want to compare apples to apples.
Also, 12000 miles/year is probably on the low side - the average household drives some 21,000 miles/year (but that's with 1.9 cars); people buy fuel-efficient cars for commuting or even for things like taxi service, which would tend to have even higher milage numbers than the average. And the 100,000 mile limit on the Prius battery is bogus - many Prius owners have driven 150-250,000 miles without having any battery problems at all. And... $3.00/gallon seems an underestimate for future oil price, and the numbers given for ethanol pricing seem very optimistic (is that with no subsidies???)
So, really, this comparison table is pretty worthless. Three-digit accuracy when half the numbers could be off by 50% to 150% or more.
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Vinod Khosla Posted 5:54 am
15 Jan 2008
Response to A. Siegel
Assuming a Corrolla at $14.4K + $5,000 (for a "hybrid premium) and getting 40MPG.
2010 Gasoline: 273 grams per mile, $464 per month
2017 Gasoline: 273 grams per mile, $464 per month
2017 gasoline - 50% efficiency increase in ICE: 182 grams per mile, $439 per month
By the way, changing the coal powered grid to renewable is atleast 30-50 years even if we were all willing to pay more for electricity. See "the future" in Part III tomorrow.
And no, I don't respond to people who think all consumers should be made to spend all their money of inefficiency or drive Nano's. I don't have any idea how to change consumer behavior except through policy and I do favor much higher CAFE standards, high carbon prices, and public transportation if we could get people to use it. I suspect the grams of carbon per mile on the underutilized San Jose, Ca public transit system is also very high! Anybody calculate total public transit passenger miles divided by their carbon emissions?
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odograph Posted 6:13 am
15 Jan 2008
New Math
$28K average new car price - $23K prius = $5k hybrid savings.
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jcwinnie Posted 6:19 am
15 Jan 2008
One Thing Missing from the Chart
A column that list mega-joules of energy. It could be difficult, which may be why it is missing, but it would be useful to know the energy demands for each of the choices.
Speaking of choices, only the hypothetical Chevy Volt offers 100 gms CO/2 equivalent per km or less in 2010. None are 50 or below for 2017. This is inadequate, but won't much matter if we are unable to stop GHG from coal-fired electric power plants.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:35 am
15 Jan 2008
New Report
Speaking of which there's this report by the British Royal Society that was published yesterday:
Sustainable Biofuels: Prospects and Challenges
One review mentioned that:
Should be an interesting read.
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:00 am
15 Jan 2008
And other fun Reads
NYT: Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops
Science: How Green are Biofuels?
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:21 am
15 Jan 2008
A few observations
So lets see,
Khosla is comparing a mass produced smaller budget car, to a low production heavier luxury car. (Probably a stickshift/economy model if he really knows how to play the numbers)
And surprisingly missing are any mention of other engine technologies like diesels.
_
From this premise Khosla makes a couple assumptions:
- Ethanol will cost no more than gasoline in the next 2 years
- Near-term Ethanol will reduce greenhouse emissions
- The DOE GREET Model is complete and honest representation of the aggregate emissions of biofuels production.
I don't believe any of those assumptions are correct.Permalink
grygy Posted 7:38 am
15 Jan 2008
Grams CO2 per mile for electric cars
Vinod, you cited US average lbs/kWh to get the grams per mile under electric propulsion, but let's talk actual buyers and actual off-peak marginal emissions, not national averages.
To tackle the second issue first, emissions per kWh will always be less at night, when the cars are generally plugged in, than during the peak or on average. So plugging in a Volt at night if you have an "average electric utility" generates less emissions than the US EIA average cited (probably by 20-40%, depending on the season). To get an idea of how much more efficient the marginal power plants are at night you can check on-peak and off-peak wholesale power prices, and that ratio will be approximately equal to the efficiency ratio.
The trickier issue is that the majority of VOLT and Prius drivers are indeed affluent, and they happen to live in states that have low-carbon electricity sources - the average for CA where you live is about 0.6 lbs/kWh rather than 1.34 for the US average, and up in Gristland (OR and WA) it's less than 0.3, though the latter is mainly from hydropower which is basically NEVER on the margin because it's an energy-limited resource. For the entire Left coast you can almost always assume natural gas at the margin, with heat rates of between 6000 and 9000 (million BTU's per MWH) except during heat waves. Sorry, I don't have the calc to lbs C/kWh for those, but they are both significantly less than the national average.
My point is, your grams per mile is between 1.2 and 3 times too high for the electric propulsion modes, and that unfairly downplays the environmental benefits of plug-ins and all-electrics.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:41 am
15 Jan 2008
Vinod, some NYC subway numbers
Total electricity used by NYC subways in one year: 1.8 billion kilowatt/hours
As best as I can tell, the number of miles for 2000: 350 million miles (see page 36)
Total number of passenger miles for 2000 (same reference): 8.344 billion
So it seems that, again subject to more research, the NYC subway gets about 5 kwh per mile, but gets about .21 kwh per passenger mile, about what the GM Volt gets with one passenger in it.
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odograph Posted 7:42 am
15 Jan 2008
average
"Khosla is comparing a mass produced smaller budget car, to a low production heavier luxury car. (Probably a stickshift/economy model if he really knows how to play the numbers)"
On the other hand, when I talk about the average new car, I am talking about the average case.
I think corolla buyers are a small slice of the total market, and it is kind of an appeal to a hypothetical "rational" market to imply that we are all really corolla drivers.
If that was true, the freeway out there would be wall to wall with them, and there would certainly be no corollas with the "S" option!
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grygy Posted 7:42 am
15 Jan 2008
State by state lbs CO2 per kWh
Sorry, forgot to include this in my post...
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ftproot/environment/e-supdoc-u.p ...
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Nickz Posted 7:54 am
15 Jan 2008
Capital costs are badly overstated!
You can't amortize a vehicle with a 15 year life over 5 years, just because your loan is for 5 years. You have to amortize the cost over the life of the vehicle, or subtract the salvage/resale value.
This analysis badly, badly overstates capital costs. That alone invalidates it.
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Nickz Posted 7:58 am
15 Jan 2008
Electricity at night is greener AND also cheaper
The 2005 energy act requires that time of day pricing be available by now. For instance, see www.thewattspot.com
Electricity from 1-5 am is about 2 cents per KWH.
Further, the 2 biggest problems wind has are night time troughs in consumption, and intermittency. Charging mostly at night, and dynamically schedulable charging answers both of those, so EV's greatly encourage wind.
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:41 am
15 Jan 2008
And more transit kilowatt/hour per mile
According to APTA's power efficiency page (approximate):
Cable Cars: 8 kilowatt/hour per mile
Commuter Rail: 10 kilowatt/hour per mile, plus 3 miles per diesel gallon
Heavy Rail(basically, subways): 6 kilowatt/hour per mile
Light Rail: 8 kilowatt/hour per mile
If you divide total passenger miles for subways (national total) by total subway vehicle miles(national), using apta data, you come up with about 22 people miles per 1 vehicle miles, in other words, 22 people are riding a subway train, on average, which yields a national average of about .273 kwh per mile per person, or .256 kwh per mile per person if you divide the 3.683 billion kwh total for heavy rail by the 14.354 billion passenger miles.
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apsmith Posted 1:37 pm
15 Jan 2008
So what is this anyway?
What is Khosla aiming for on Grist with these posts? By making somewhat provocative statements that ignore basic important issues and make spurious comparisons, what is he trying to accomplish? Was this intended as a vehicle for garnering support for ethanol from Grist readers? It's hard to believe it was serious, these posts don't even seem very well thought-out - I mean, can he seriously expect people to just swallow a line about technologies that don't exist being so much better than something that's been in production for over 10 years, so we should wait for the new tech or something?
So what's the real purpose behind these posts - maybe Dave Roberts or Joe Romm can explain?
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amazingdrx Posted 2:33 pm
15 Jan 2008
Self delusion
He fell for the mass delusion around fuel farming and invested a butload of cash and his personal credibility. He has to convince himself he is right.
We are chipping away at his assumptions.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:18 am
16 Jan 2008
You appear to have three main arguments
1) Corn ethanol is being unjustly maligned ("Corn ethanol, which has been heavily maligned in the mainstream media...")
I'm guessing that you support corn ethanol because it has gotten Detroit to put ethanol resistant rubber in many of its cars thus helping to pave the way for cellulosic should it ever become economically and environmentally viable. The debate about corn ethanol's environmental footprint is over. Environmentalists have been grumbling about the Gulf of Mexico dead zone and pointing out the unsustainable nature of using soil as a dumping ground for millions of tons of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers to grow hybridized corn for many years. Science has also now weighed in and has found it more destructive than fossil fuels for multiple independent reasons (nitrous oxide, food displacement, and carbon sink destruction as a result of food displacement to name a few).
http://gristmill.grist.org/images/admin/crayon2.JPG
2) Hybrid car technology won't penetrate the market fast enough and that is why we should promote ethanol
This argument has merit only if we produce biofuels that are less destructive than fossil fuels. To date we have failed to produce such a fuel. Your entire argument hinges on this and since we don't know the cost or environmental impacts of biofuels of the future (cellulosic), we really can't debate them at this time. It is like debating fusion or hydrogen.
3) Cellulosic will power cars of the future
It might, it might not. The market and consumer demands should decide how far cellulosic ethanol will penetrate the market, not me, not corporate interests, not government interference on behalf of corporate interests. We are not using it now simply because consumers would refuse to buy it because it would cost so much. The debate on cellulosic awaits its arrival on the market.
Commenters are responding as if there were actually a thing called cellulosic ethanol being burned in cars. There would be little opposition from the environmental camp if cellulosic were affordable and (unlike existing biofuels) less environmentally damaging than fossil fuel. We don't know any of that yet. Cellulosic ethanol does not exist in a commercially viable format.
Your chart compares a Prius and a Corolla to five fictional car configurations. The Volt is no more of a reality than cellulosic ethanol. Nobody knows the cost or performance of either and neither may ever materialize as a commercially viable product. The debate stops before it begins because all you have are educated guesses piled on top of other educated guesses that will for the most part fail to materialize because nobody has ever predicted this much of the future with this kind of precision. If angels don't exist, why bother to discuss how many might fit on the head of a pin? I'm also curious why you didn't use existing real world Prius plug-in data. There are hundreds of them on the road right now and more showing up every day. Your analysis reminds me of the ones I saw many years ago supporting the hydrogen economy. Sure looked good on paper for a decade or two!
Well, if you account for the latest studies on nitrogen oxide (up to 50% worse) and leakage effects (up to 300% worse), today's ethanol powered cars are by far worse than conventional cars using fossil fuels. And we can't toss in cellulosic every time the argument sags because there is no commercially viable cellulosic ethanol. That debate has to wait for the arrival of the fuel before it reveals is true economic and environmental costs as opposed to the calculated hypothetical ones. And as I mentioned before, somebody needs to present a credible argument as to why sugarcane will not dominate future ethanol markets (with its attendant carbon sink usurpation) instead of cellulosic.
Again, if we don't get the carbon out of our grid, it won't matter what car we drive. Replacing the liquid fuel in conventional cars will not take advantage of a clean grid, which is moot in any case considering that existing ethanol fuels are worse than fossil fuels and commercially and envrionmentally viable cellulosic does not exist.
I've seen articles claiming some taxi batteries have hit 250,000 miles.
Your study is based largely on estimates and what you consider reasonable. Estimates and reasonableness are both highly relative and highly subject to researcher bias. For example, an MIT study that compared all known net energy studies for corn ethanol, which show wildly varying results, found that all answers were right, only the assumptions varied. By the way, assigning probabilities to the assumptions found that corn ethanol is probably a net energy wash.
There is no such thing as commercially viable cellulosic ethanol. Should it eventually become affordable it will at that point start to flush out the environmental impacts of producing it, and those impacts are unknown. For example, growing cellulosic grasses on cornfields will displace the missing food crop to other carbon sinks. You can't make it illegal for farmers to grow whatever they want on their fields. They will grow whatever makes the most money, as they are doing today.
Assuming the ethanol came from tropical cane ethanol instead, you would find an increase in GHG because of carbon sink destruction, but as of today it is actually corn ethanol and we all know how that measures up. They all displace a food crop to somewhere else where carbon sinks are put into the atmosphere to make way for those food crops. There are 3 billion people on the way.
If that prediction pans out the game is over, as I have said before. We have to find ways to clean up the grid or die trying. The only way out is to become far more energy efficient so that we can make do with renewable sources of energy that the laws of nature dictate are going to be more expensive than simply pumping or digging energy dense fossil fuels out of holes in the ground.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Nucbuddy Posted 1:32 am
16 Jan 2008
Windpower's other, other problem
Nickz wrote: the 2 biggest problems wind has are night time troughs in consumption, and intermittency.
What about the fatality problem?
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amazingdrx Posted 1:42 am
16 Jan 2008
Fatality problem
In the case of wind, it is an imaginary problem.
In the caee of nuclear power it is a well documented, real problem. Over a thousand new nuclear contamination related genetic diseases identified since the nuclear age began.
Then there are the yellowcake mining related cancers. And the Chernobyl deaths.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:50 am
16 Jan 2008
Heh
Well also if you want to count these as "Nuclear Related Deaths"
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:13 am
16 Jan 2008
Hey, stop bashing Bush
Sure, he is the guy who was in charge of protecting America when the twin towers went down. But, he still deserves respect as the leader of the Republican party (the one that has driven our country into record debt, embroiled us in a worthless war that is making terrorists faster than he can kill them, created legislation that compromises our constitutional civil liberties, delayed action on global warming, degraded the separation of church and state, reinstated the gag rule, gutted the roadless wilderness legislation, exacerbated wealth disparity with tax cuts, and further degraded America's working middle class income, among other things).
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Nickz Posted 2:59 am
17 Jan 2008
Fatality problem with Wind?!?!?!?!?!
Nucbuddy asks "What about the fatality problem?"
I can't imagine what he means. Wind effectively has no human fatalities. Sure, a sky diver managed to kill himself in Germany landing on one, and some drivers have had accidents because they were looking at wind turbines instead of at the road, but....
Now, there have been significant raptor deaths at one California location, significant bat deaths at one Virginia location (IIRC), and miscellanous bird/bat deaths elsewhere, but these environmental impacts are tiny compared to the harm caused by CO2. Heck, the radiation released by coal alone is worse, not to mention sulfur, mercury, etc. All the major environmental and bird advocacy organizations agree (Audobon, Sierra, etc) - they're strong advocates of wind.
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Nickz Posted 3:10 am
17 Jan 2008
Biod, the Volt is real!
Biodiversivist said: "The Volt is no more of a reality than cellulosic ethanol. Nobody knows the cost or performance of either and neither may ever materialize as a commercially viable product. "
Not really. The batteries are here (the cells are in very large scale commercial production, only the packaging is new), and all of the rest of the car is existing tech. Really, the Volt is very straightforward, and GM has staked it's reputation on it. Even Chris Paine (director of Who Killed the EV) agrees that it's real. It's cost isn't absolutely clear, but it's very likely to be the same cost (under $30K) as the average US light vehicle.
Cellulosic is an entirely different thing. Evidence for it depends on proprietary, secret info, for which VK asks us to take his word for it - you shouldn't compare the two.
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:18 am
17 Jan 2008
Forget CO2, Modern Wind just isn't a threat
...Compared to anything else that kills birds.
http://greyfalcon.net/windstudy
http://renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=48393
And almost all the deaths come from 3 California windfarms
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11935&pag ...
using outdated small blades and towers that look like the eifel tower.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11935&pag ...
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11935&pag ...
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Nucbuddy Posted 11:34 pm
18 Jan 2008
Nuclear vs. windpower fatalities per unit energy
Amazingdrx wrote: In the caee of nuclear power [the fatality problem] is a well documented, real problem.
Could you please quantify that in relation to units of energy produced?
Amazingdrx wrote: [There have been] over a thousand new nuclear contamination related genetic diseases identified since the nuclear age began.
Could you please explain what a nuclear contamination related genetic disease is, and list at least one such?
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