On Friday, Matt Yglesias made the point that only socialist state control seems capable of creating a robust nuclear power industry. After all, the only countries building nuke plants these days are the ones where governments are making the decisions. David Frum replied with a series of wildly overbroad assertions ranging from false to highly misleading, with no evidence or links to support them. (Nuclear power has an impressive effect on conservative error-to-word ratios.) Matt replied in turn, and in doing so echoed a familiar misunderstanding:

That said, obviously you need a certain amount electricity that can be relied upon irrespective of how windy it is or whether the sun is shining. So I’d happily see the nuclear share of the pie grow at the expense of coal and oil as the provider of that baseload electricity.

This notion has really grabbed the public imagination. It's become conventional wisdom that the grid can only incorporate a limited amount of renewable energy; ergo, we need coal and nuclear power plants for "baseload" electricity. Clean energy skeptics wave the word "baseload" around like a talisman.

There's far less to the claim than meets the eye, though. As Amory Lovins points out, it's a category error: baseload is a characteristic of aggregated demand, not of any particular kind of supply. He distills the counter-argument:

Baseload: The electricity system doesn’t rely on any plant’s ability to run continuously; rather, all plants together supply the grid, and the grid serves all loads. That’s necessary because no kind of power plant can run all the time, as Stewart says they must do to meet steady loads. I repeat: there is not and has never been a need for any particular plant or kind of plant to run all the time, and none can. All power plants fail, varying only in their failures’ size, duration, frequency, predictability, and cause. Solar cells’ and windpower’s variation with night and weather is no different from the intermittence of coal and nuclear plants, except that it affects less capacity at once, more briefly, far more predictably, and is no harder and probably easier and cheaper to manage. In short, the ability to serve steady loads is a statistical attribute of all plants on the grid, not an operational requirement for one plant. Variability (predictable failure) and intermittence (unpredictable failure) must be managed by diversifying type and location, forecasting, and integrating with other resources. Utilities do this every day, balancing diverse resources to meet fluctuating demand and offset outages. Even with a largely (or probably a wholly) renewable grid, this is not a significant problem or cost, either in theory or in practice—as illustrated by areas that are already 30-40% wind-powered.

Right now our power system might be characterized as Security Through Oversupply. We've built enough power plants to create the maximum level of power we might ever need at a given point in time; but since "peak load" times are relatively brief, most of the time dozens and dozens of large power plants are cycled down, sitting idle. As population and per-capita power use rise, the size of peak load is rising as well. The STO response is to build more plants.

The alternative will be Resilience Through Diversity: just-in-time, just-enough power from multiple, redundant, diverse sources spread over large geographical areas, managed by a reliable, intelligent power grid incorporating distributed storage. Peak load will be shaved by load spreading and efficiency; failures will be localized and self-healing rather than cascading and catastrophic; intelligence will replace brute power.

Utilities face, imminently, some very large investment decisions. Should they invest in nuclear and "clean coal" power because they will "have to" have some baseload power on the grid in 10-15 years when the plants are completed? No. For the next decade it will be a huge challenge just to get to the level of renewables integrated in Spanish and Italian grids today (30-40 percent). In the ensuing time, an enormous amount of money and engineering will go into grid resilience and intelligence. It is far too early to predict what level of renewables will be "impossible," but whatever that level turns out to be, it is certainly far distant.

This is the green pitch to utilities: Rather than spending the next decade or two building nuke and CCS plants, with all the attendant management hassles, public opposition, lawsuits, and cost overruns, why not spend it reducing demand, creating a more resilient grid, and diversifying the generation portfolio? The former is just a more expensive version of what exists now. The latter is a revolution, a platform for innovation that will make the internet look like, um, the electricity industry.

A pitch isn't enough, though. For a fusty industry like utilities, revolution is to be resisted, not celebrated. The key is not just asking utilities to use full cost accounting, but to start building such accounting into markets via regulation, legislation, and large-scale investment. Once the financial and legal incentives are correctly aligned, even utilities -- slow and regulator-dependent as they are -- will respond. Until then, until they really start trying, we shouldn't trust them about what parts of the old system are "necessary" in the new.

(For a longer and more detailed response to the "baseload" shibboleth, see Lovins' "Four Nuclear Myths" [PDF].)

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Once upon a time, some serious people used to believe that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) might have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a practical and affordable climate strategy in our lifetime.  Those very sincere people were used by the car companies and Bush Administration as part of a strategy to oppose or delay the introduction of more viable alternative fuel strategies, in particular electric cars — see, for instance, the movie “Who killed the electric car?”

That isn’t to say pure EVs were slam dunks as successful mass-market consumer vehicles, particularly with the technology of the 1980s and even 1990s.  HFCVs, however, required multiple technological (and other) miracles to succeed and every plausible competitor, including EVs, to fail first (see “Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective“ and “The car of the perpetual future” — The Economist agrees with Climate Progress on hydrogen“).  That is but one reason the absurdly expensive infrastructure will never be built — nor has any independent group ever proposed a plausible scenario under which the infrastructure would be built.  And that’s the fundamental hydrogen cars will not be practical or a cost-effective climate strategy in your lifetime.

Under the leadership of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California briefly flirted with a serious investment in hydrogen cars and infrastructure — the Hydrogen Highway.  A driving force for that alliterative but ill-fated effort was Terry Tamminen, who “headed California’s Environmental Protection Agency and was Cabinet Secretary and Chief Policy Advisor” to Schwarzenegger, who is now “the Cullman Senior Fellow for Climate Change and Director of the Climate Policy Program at the New America Foundation” and author of a recent but outdated attack, “The Myth of Battery Cars” debunked below.

The California legislature in particular sped away from the Hydrogen Highway effort once it became clear that both the fueling station and the cars were insanely expensive and not terribly practical (see “California Hydrogen Highway R.I.P.“)

Today, with rapidly advancing battery and related technology, we know that pure EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are a core climate solution since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline (or hydrogen), even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“).  That is why pretty much every car company in the world will be introducing one or more models of PHEVs or EVs in the next 2 to 4 years, but we still don’t have a single commercial HFCV anywhere near production (see L.A. Times: “Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won’t work in cars.” Duh.).

In particular, a renewable-energy-based hydrogen fueling system capable of handling even half the cars and light trucks on the road would cost many hundreds of billions of dollars.  And it would have a cost of avoided carbon dioxide of more than $600 a metric ton, which is more than a factor of ten higher than most other strategies being considered today.  Also, the total well-to-wheels efficiency with which a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle might utilize renewable electricity is roughly 20% (although that number could rise to 25% or a little higher with the kind of multiple technology breakthroughs required to enable a hydrogen economy).  The well-to-wheels efficiency of charging an onboard battery and then discharging it to run an electric motor in a PHEV or EV, however, is 80% (and could be higher in the future)—four times more efficient than current hydrogen fuel cell vehicle pathways.

If you care about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, vehicle efficiency is certainly the top strategy (along with technologies to minimize or avoid car-based transportation), but EVs and PHEVs are going to be the cornerstone alternative fuel vehicle technology.  That’s why is it so surprising that Tamminen — Director of the Climate Policy Program at the New America Foundation — would attack them.  The rest of this post is a guest debunking by my friend Felix Kramer, founder of Calcars.org and author of previous guest posts such as “Everything you could want to know about the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle announcements at the 2009 Detroit auto show.”

Rebutting Mr. Tamminen’s Battery Electric Car ‘Myths’
By Felix Kramer

We at The California Cars Initiative (and our colleagues at Plug In America and elsewhere), were surprised to see the strong critique of plug-in vehicles at the website of the influential and usually eminently reasonable New America Foundation. In his posting, “The Myth of Battery Cars” NAF Senior Fellow Terry Tamminen, who serves as its Director of its Climate Policy Program, starts off saying “it’s time to dump the battery-powered car in the same policy landfill as corn-based ethanol, and he concludes with “battery cars are no more viable at this time for solving our oil addiction on a large-scale basis than corn-based ethanol.”

In between he cites multiple objections and analyses many of which are uniformed or misinformed. His approach is both surprising and not unexpected.

On the surprising side, he knows better. In his years at Environment Now! and then as head of the California Environmental Protection Agency, he saw how the objections to electric vehicles (EVs) gradually fell away, and how plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) emerged as a new solution that provides a practical near-term transition for the automotive fleet. We welcomed him at the launching meeting of Plug In Bay Area in August 2006 http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/501.html where he endorsed PHEVs as “our immediate future” (in contrast to other longer-term solutions). And in his popular 2006 book, “Lives Per Gallon,” he mentions EVs two dozen times. Recounting the story of the gutting of California’s Zero Emissions (ZEV) Mandate, he cited their “value and practicality.”

On the expected side, while publicly embracing “silver buckshot” — ecumenically pursue all solutions — Tamminen has always seen the future as hydrogen-powered. In California, he succeeded Alan Lloyd as the chief cheerleader for a “Hydrogen Highway” infrastructure, and for a massive skew in government regulations and support for fuel-cell vehicles over plug-ins. Since leaving state government, he’s made the case in Canada and many other countries. Now the vehemence of his article is reflective of his remaining consistent to his vision, even as one-time allies at federal and California elected officials and energy/transportation agencies, and advocates such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Institute, have acknowledged that this solution remains a decade away and that we can get there quicker with plug-ins.

To take his points in order:

1. Batteries will always be too heavy; materials are scarce and toxic. This sounds like a comment from before 2006. Batteries are improving steadily in “energy density” and cost — by 7-15% a year, with occasional faster leaps as technologies shift. Automaker and battery makers have concluded that the supposed “lithium shortage” doesn’t exist. Nickel-metal hydride and lithium batteries are approved for landfill (not toxic) and can be recycled. The battery and motor of an EV is not always heavier than the larger engine and gas tank while you benefit from up to four times greater efficiency of an electric motor over and internal combustion engine.

2. We’ll need a giant new infrastructure; charging takes too long; we’ll get overloads and blackouts unless we spend billions of dollars to upgrade the power grid. Plug-in hybrids need no new infrastructure. According to a study from the Pacific National Lab, today’s grid has capacity to recharge 84% of today’s cars if they all plugged at night. This applies to all-electric vehicles charging at night as well, which will be true for most vehicles used as families’ second cars. Price signals will disincentivize daytime charging on late summer afternoons when the grid is at capacity. And the Tesla Roadster’s high-power charger takes under four, not eight hours to recharge http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/faqs.php .

3. Range matters: yes, most average commutes are 30-40 miles/day, but cars need to be able to drive 300 miles between refills. And people who live in apartments don’t have access to a charger. PHEVS l have that range by definition: when the battery is depleted the engine powers the car for hundreds of miles. The forthcoming Chevy Volt 40-mile electric range matches the drive cycle of 78% of vehicles. Tamminen has forgotten his approving quotation (page 152 of Lives Per Gallon) of Ed Begley, Jr. saying “The detractors of electric vehicles are right. Given their limited range, they can only meet the needs of 90 percent of the population.” The first buyers of plug-in cars may be drivers with garages, but the charging infrastructure is starting to arrive: The New York Times Real Estate Section reports that building management company executives say they want to be ready for the coming wave of customer demand to charge in their high-rise apartments: http://www.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 08/ 30/ realestate/ 30posting.html .

4. Only small, light cars can be battery powered. While it is true that until recently, most EVs were small and underpowered, the coming wave of luxury sports cars has proven that EVs can outperform gasoline cars. The vehicles continue to be designed to be as aerodynamic as possible because that makes sense for any vehicle however it’s powered. And Tamminen gets the size issue exactly wrong. The larger vehicles have plenty of room for batteries and, and they’re the gas-gulpers. IF you switch around the usual way of looking at miles per gallon into gallons per mile, this becomes obvious. Our 50 MPG Priuses converted to 100 MPG PHEVS use 1 gallon per hundred miles instead of 2–saving 1 gallon. A 15 MPG truck that becomes a 45 MPG PHEV saves over 5 gallons per hundred miles. That’s why CalCars is now focusing largely on pickups, SUVs and trucks, including conversions of already-built vehicles.

5. Plug-in cars are only as clean as the electricity they run on. This is true, but on today’s national grid (50% coal), an electric mile produces only half the CO2 of a gasoline mile. Tamminen acknowledges this is true for hydrogen as well…not entirely, since some hydrogen (an energy carrier, not a source) comes from reforming natural gas, which is still high in CO2. For hydrogen made electrically from water, multiple studies have shown the original electricity used to make the fuel carries a vehicle three to four times further if it’s put directly into a battery rather than cycled through hydrolysis, fuel transportation, compression, and fuel cells before they get to the electric motor that powers the car. If we ever get hydrogen created directly from the sun and algae, we’ll still be decades away from having a full infrastructure for its use.

6. Plug-in advocates aren’t looking at the cost of the entire infrastructure, just at the end use. Tamminen forgets about the ability of PHEVs and many EVs to come to the market with no new infrastructure. In contrast to this, all the hydrogen vehicles he so strongly supports need a new infrastructure, and it’s largely because of that fact that Energy Secretary Steve Chu and may others have concluded that even if multiple technical and cost issues involving hydrogen and fuel cells are solved, other solutions that are much closer are more deserving of support and incentives. Some day we might have hydrogen providing the range extension fuel for PHEVs, but even cellulosic ethanol is generally seen as arriving far sooner than hydrogen.

The biggest refutation of Tamminen comes from the growing stampede among national governments and automakers to bring plug-in cars to market. They are starting with substantial tax incentives until costs decline with economies of scale — but the gap needed to bridge is in the $5-$10,000 range, one-tenth or less the amount needed to subsidize Tamminen’s preferred hydrogen cars.

Good resources for this subject include: the CalCars FAQ, the page in Internal Combustion Engine Conversions http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html and the Plug In America FAQ

For more debunking, see Terry Tamminen is “mythtaken.”

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A Tesla Roadster gets a boost from a SolarCity charging station in SalinasPhoto courtesy SolarCityYou can't get more California greenin' than this.

Peter Rive can charge up his Tesla Roadster electric sports car in his San Francisco garage with carbon-free electricity supplied by a solar array on his roof. Then, if he's in the mood for a road trip, he can drive to Los Angeles, stopping at a solar-powered charging station along the way to top off the battery.

The free charging stations on the "solar highway" -- aka the 101 -- were recently installed by SolarCity, the Silicon Valley rooftop solar company Rive founded with his brother Lyndon. (The electric-blue Roadster sitting in his garage was made by his cousin Elon Musk's startup, Tesla Motors.)

So what's a solar company doing installing highway charging stations for six-figure sports cars driven by people with seven-figure salaries?

In part, it's a result of SolarCity's connection to Tesla and grants the electric carmaker received from the state of California to demo charging stations. It makes for great PR, of course, but the bigger picture here is how the emerging electric vehicle industry will drive (sorry) the adoption of residential and commercial photovoltaic systems.

"It's our feeling that if we really want to make a difference, we have to start changing our infrastructure," says Lyndon Rive, SolarCity's chief executive. "Combine EV with PV, and we can really lead a clean lifestyle." (Jargon watch: That's "EV" for electric vehicles, and "PV" for photovoltaic solar energy.)

It's also good for business.

SolarCity earlier this month completed the acquisition of SolSource Energy, a Los Angeles company that installs electric car charging stations in homes and at businesses. So far, SolarCity has installed about 100 charging stations for Tesla customers but expects those numbers to skyrocket once automakers start introducing electric cars to the mass market over the next few years.

"That business does have potential for humongous growth," says Rive. "We've only deployed about 65,000 solar systems in the U.S., but you're talking about hundreds of thousands of electric cars over the next five years."

And once you have an EV in your garage, it makes more economic sense to put PV on the roof to supply the electricity. When you're getting free fuel from the sun for your car, you accelerate return on investment for the solar array. And, of course, you'll need a bigger solar system, which means bigger profits for installers like SolarCity.

"If you sell 50,000 cars and get 50 percent adoption rate for PV, it's very significant," notes Rive. "A lot of customers who have just bought an EV decide to get a solar system as well or vice a versa."

And when employees start arriving at work expecting to plug in before they log on, companies will have another compelling reason to go solar.

As electric cars go mass market in places like California, PG&E, Southern California Edison and other utilities will likely ramp up efforts to install distributed solar systems to ease the load on the electricity grid and avoid having to build fossil fuel power plants to meet peak demand.

That evolving solar ecosystem can be seen at Peter Rive's home on a steep San Francisco street with a view of the downtown skyline. On the roof sits a three-kilowatt solar panel array. Although Rive, Solarcity's chief operating officer, just recently took delivery of his Tesla Roadster, he planned for the car's electricity consumption when he installed solar panels and upgraded his home's electrical system a year and a half ago. (Something you, Grist readers, should consider if you are contemplating going solar and may buy an electric car one day.)

"This is the equivalent load of an air conditioner," says Rive, nodding at his new toy.

The fast-charge station is a square box attached to the wall by the garage. Installation, adds London Rive, "runs between $2,000 and $6,000," depending on whether an electric system upgrade is needed. The system can charge a depleted battery in about three-and-a-half hours.

"It's sort of like your cell phone -- you use it during the day and plug it in at night and forget about it," says Rive, taking the heavy-duty cord with a nozzle-like attachment and plugging it into the Roadster's charge port.

The solar system's control panel shows that the rooftop panels are generating more electricity at the moment than the house is consuming. "I generate enough solar during the day to offset my commute," Rive says.

Whether Tesla owners will abandon their private jets or flying first class in favor of driving their Roadsters up and down the California coast is another matter. But the way SolarCity has designed its charging station network points to the future convergence between the roof and the road.

Four of the five fast-charging stations the company built are located at branches of Rabobank, a Dutch-owned bank with 91 branches in California, many of them located along the 101 corridor. The single solar-powered charging station -- there are plans to solarize three others -- draws its electricity from a 30-kilowatt array previously installed by SolarCity at the bank's Santa Maria branch on the central coast.

The charging stations currently are only compatible with Tesla's vehicles, but will eventually add a port to charge other electric cars. (Better Place, Coulomb Technologies and Ecotality are among other startups with plans to electrify the interstate.)

"You don't want solar to be a stand-alone unit," says Lyndon Rive. "By the time you stop to use this corridor, it's been feeding electricity to the grid all day long. But when you plug in your car, it will use less than those panels produced during the day."

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Millions of people come and go from New York’s iconic Empire State Building every year. The 102 floors bristle with keyboard-clicking, ballpoint-wielding, paper-shredding cubicle dwellers, none of which would appear out of place in an episode of “The Office”. But something very different is happening on the fifth floor - - a magical workplace that may soon transform the entire skyline of a big city near you.

At the recent Clinton Global Initiative conference (CGI) in New York, I caught up with Marc Porat of Serious Materials (www.seriousmaterials.com). He’s part of a team working on the Empire State Building, doing a retrofit of windows, insulation, and electric motors that will cut the energy consumption - - and the carbon footprint - - by nearly 40%. Old radiators on brick walls were transmitting much of the heat outside, so just by adding insulation between the two, the energy needed to warm the interior drops by half. Replacing windows with an energy-saving model keeps warmth inside during winter and heat outside during summer. But how can you replace thousands of old windows when people have to work near them every day?

“We have a workshop on the fifth floor,” Marc told me. “Every day we rebuild fifty windows and every night, after the workers have gone home, we pull fifty old ones out and put the rebuilt ones in their place.” With 6500 windows, the project will take half a year, but not a single office work day will be lost to the remodeling project. This clever workaround is the key to getting more skyscrapers to join the energy-saving revolution, as I learned from another CGI hallway conversation.

A JP Morgan Chase banker told me they approached several major real estate owners about financing such retrofits and were told that tenants (notably big law firms) demanded huge “inconvenience fees” to give owners access to install energy-efficient light fixtures, not to mention outright refusal to allow any displacement for something like replacing windows. The workaround project at the Empire State Building solves that problem.

As for the lighting, what if you could cut energy consumption by up to 80% with a new bulb instead of a new fixture? That’s what Lighting Science Group (www.laminaceramics.com) has engineered - - LED bulbs that screw in or plug into existing fixtures, saving big upfront costs and tenant displacement. Up to now, such bulbs cost upwards of $100 each, but Lighting Science cut that cost for some of the most popular types to well under ten bucks. The energy savings pays for the retrofit in months and no one is inconvenienced.

That’s what all of these stories have in common - - profitable ways to cut carbon. The Empire State Building project will be repaid in 3.1 years from savings on energy bills. The guy from JP Morgan Chase said all of their branches are being built or remodeled with the highest efficiency materials, lighting, and electrical appliances that will slash operating costs 30%. The recently announced retrofit of Chicago’s Sears Tower will save 80% of that building’s energy consumption.

There’s a long-term benefit to this trend too. A lot of work is going into perfecting electric cars (battery or hydrogen fuel cell powered) as a means to fight climate change, but the grid is at the breaking point already and can’t handle parking lots full of plugged-in cars. But if buildings cut energy consumption somewhere between 40 and 80%, think of all the extra infrastructure serving those structures - - many with parking garages already - - that could then be used to recharge batteries or electrolyze water to make hydrogen.

The Empire State Building is one of America’s oldest skyscrapers, but is proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks. The real question is not “what is happening on the fifth floor?”, but “why hasn’t every building owner done the same thing?”

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Jay Leno's electric slide began long before the "Green Car Challenge."Photo: Alan Light via FlickrOn his new show, which launched Monday night, Jay Leno will flaunt to the world his crush on electric cars.

Leno's show will feature the "Green Car Challenge," wherein celeb guests race against each other in specially built Ford electric cars for the best lap times on a specially built race track. The first guest in the hot seat will be Drew Barrymore (an obvious guest to kick things off, since we all know she likes riding in cars with boys), when she appears on the show Friday, Sept. 18.

Ford is pumped about this primetime opportunity to plug its Focus BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle), which is due out in 2011, and is eager to show that unlike some Detroit automakers, it didn't kill the electric car. Instead, Ford wants the public to know how fun! fun! fun! it is to drive electric cars and dispel any myths that they'll leave you and your family stranded in a bad part of town at night far, far away from any recharging stations. These all-electric cars, unlike hybrids, will be totally reliant on lithium-ion batteries and will be able to zoom around for 100 miles on a single charge.

No word yet on whether NASCAR driver and all-around-badass-green Leilani Munter will be invited by Leno for an electrifying spin around the track this season.

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Solar Roadways

A while back I mentioned Solar Roadways, a clean-energy idea that appears kind of kooky, at least on the surface. (See what I did there?) The notion is to replace paved surfaces with rugged, specially built solar panels.

The Solar Road Panels would contain not just solar panels but LED lighting (to enable real-time communication with drivers), heating units (to prevent icing), high-voltage power transmission lines, and even electric-vehicle recharging stations. It's transportation, power, and grid infrastructure in the same place.

At the limit, if all paved surfaces in the U.S. were replaced with 15% efficiency solar panels, the resulting distributed power network could provide three times the electricity the nation consumes, with zero carbon emissions and no additional power grid infrastructure. (Yes, I'm aware manufacturing, installing, and maintaining it would generate emissions, as with any infrastructure project.)

So crazy it just might work? Apparently the Dept. of Transportation thinks so: Solar Roadways has received a $100,000 contract from DOT to build a prototype:

The Solar Roadways will collect solar energy to power businesses and homes via structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon, to be placed in parking lots and roadways in lieu of petroleum-based asphalt surfaces.

The Solar Road Panels will contain embedded LEDs which "paint" the road lines from beneath to provide safer nighttime driving, as well as to give up to the minute instructions (via the road) to drivers (i.e. "detour ahead"). The road will be able to sense wildlife on the road and can warn drivers to "slow down". There will also be embedded heating elements in the surface to prevent snow and ice buildup, providing for safer winter driving. This feature packed system will become an intelligent highway that will double as a secure, intelligent, decentralized, self-healing power grid which will enable a gradual weaning from fossil fuels.

... Fully electric vehicles will be able to recharge along the roadway and in parking lots, finally making electric cars practical for long trips.

It is estimated that is will take roughly five billion (a stimulus package in itself) 12' by 12' Solar Road Panels to cover the asphalt surfaces in the U.S. alone, allowing us to produce three times more power than we've ever used as a nation - almost enough to power the entire world.

There are some cost estimates on the site. They argue that roadways could be solarized for roughly the same net cost we'd pay for power plants, grid infrastructure, and asphalt.

As usual with large-scale, visionary ideas like this, it's difficult to agree on a cost-benefit analysis. The costs are mostly quantifiable -- multiply cost of panel by 5 billion, etc. -- but the benefits are not. Many are speculative or unpredictable, many are avoided costs. What are the benefits of not building coal plants and grid infrastructure? Not paying for accidents from ice and wildlife? Not having centralized, brittle power infrastructure?

New infrastructure does not merely replace old infrastructure; it provides a platform for new kinds of innovation. Who knows what would grow out of massively distributed power, a national smart grid, or an electrified vehicle fleet? What would it mean to have an overabundance of clean electricity?

Decisions about projects of such scope can't be made with a mathematical formula. There are irreducible elements of aspiration and faith, values and ethics, fear and desire -- just as there were in America's decisions to wage war, guarantee health care for seniors and the poor, go to the moon, or extend broadband internet access. Conservatives and Blue Dogs tell us we can't afford it, presuming a shared understanding of what it's worth.

Think not just about solar roadways, but more generally about the goal of clean, abundant energy, economic renewal, and a livable climate. What's that worth? And why do the Blue Dogs get to decide?

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Recently, there has been some blog chatter about my comments on the future of lithium ion batteries -- my goal here is to clarify my stance.

I do believe that these batteries have been over-hyped in terms of technology available today. However, little focus was given to my statement that Khosla Ventures is backing the technology because the "lithium-ion markets are here today. We're investing because there are great markets."

So what kinds of technology are we investing in? I think the traditional approach to lithium ion battery making, such as A123, is going to be competing in an overheated, nearly-commoditized market and will probably not (I guess never say never!) get down the cost curve in the next 5 years. (Longer-term forecasts are futile because so-called experts can make anything they want up -- we all know long term we will be on fusion power.)

A number of incremental improvements are underway, but they will at best offer a 2X improvement in price performance. A123 may be a best-in-class battery, but it lost out in the GM Volt race to the LGChem battery, which at the pack level delivers less than 50 KWhr/kg. (Actually, 8KWhr deliverable power, since the battery is cycled to less than 50% of nominal capacity, and a 182kg pack weight, including all the safety systems!) At the pack level, per usable KWh, the costs per KWh including safety systems and packaging are far higher than the $1000/KWhr bandied about and the $250/KWhr that will make batteries truly competitive -- and many of these system-level costs will be difficult to reduce without radical changes in the battery cell design and manufacturing approach.

Indeed, the manufacturing processes used for Li batteries for automobiles are quickly becoming mature. They represent improvements, but not radical changes, to techniques used in batteries for consumer electronics. We cannot expect significant increases in performance absent fundamentally new approaches. One thing to look at is the closeness in performance among many electrochemistries -- it is precisely because the battery cells are made in much the same way. This generation of cells will address perhaps 10% of the cars by 2020, according to some believable forecast -- not insignificant, but not profound, either. Plenty of billion-dollar market caps can be built within this 10%.

Two fundamental problems limit the cost trajectory of these traditional batteries. First, liquid, flammable electrolytes and their related problems cause large "safety" tradeoffs. Hence our investment in Seeo, which is taking a high-risk (mostly because it is so novel) approach to solid electrolytes. They have made far more progress than I would have expected.

Second, the actual capacities of existing battery cells are still fall far below their theoretical values, for the active materials in widespread use (Mn and PO4-based cathodes). That tells us that in order to get to the theoretical values, we need to execute higher-risk, but higher-payoff, cell designs and manufacturing technologies which unlock their full potential and reduce the cost of production. This is what Sakti3 is trying to do with solid-state batteries, with good success.

Selecting manufacturing processes that have been used successfully in lab-scale demonstration, in pursuit of "world's best," will not work for automotive markets. What is needed is scalable, low-cost manufacturing technology. Without that, the role of lithium ion batteries as a meaningful tool of carbon reduction will remain fairly limited (though market caps will continue to be high, especially after the A123 IPO, which is expected soon).

These are the types of approaches that have the potential to truly be disruptive and address the markets that really affect overall carbon emissions of cars, especially in emerging economies. Even more disruptive approaches that we have not invested in today may be on the horizon. If EESTOR-like approaches work (I am somewhat skeptical of this particular company, though I believe new science similar to that proposed in its patents is possible), then so much the better. But there is very little visibility today on these radical approaches. I would say these are in the domain of a hope and a prayer.

New manufacturing technologies and chemistries hold out more hope than the traditional style of lithium battery. Of course even the existing players like A123 will not stop where they are, and some of them will try innovative, maybe radically innovative approaches. Even the old lead-acid battery suppliers like Firefly and other lead acid battery makers are making a play to reach electric-car specifications.

What appears more predictable is that traditional bulk cell approaches are not likely to yield the cost equations to make for rapid penetration. If they are successful, it is more likely because oil went to $200 per barrel than any "performance" on the part of these batteries. $200 oil is a different ballgame that may make even cruder lithium ion batteries viable economically.

The key problem is, costs have to come down, or oil prices have to shoot up, for most traditional battery ventures to make big winners of entrepreneurs and their investors. But new technical approaches that change the cost and safety equation (with significant new technology risk) will make the battery technologies competitive even if oil prices stay below $100/barrel. That is what we look for in investments -- more technical risk now, less market risk later, and bigger breakthroughs for society. We are dealing with much harder science and technology, so we will see much higher rate of failure, but the wins will be bigger.

We will likely ship a billion new cars worldwide in the next 15 or so years. The key question is not whether hybrid or EV cars/batteries will be successful financially (they probably will), but rather what it will take to get 80% of these billion cars to be low-carbon cars. The most important thing to remember is economic gravity: the cheapest thing ends up winning. Our hope is to win that battle over the long term, because it will take these breakthroughs to change the overall carbon trajectory for passenger cars.

With electric cars, there is yet another major risk: in the foreseeable term, China/India and even the US will be "plugging into a lump of coal" for years to come. And though renewable electricity from wind and solar is a good goal for these cars, it will likely be much more costly (about 5X higher currently in India where a new coal plant costs 4c/KWh), so economic gravity again dictates high-carbon electricity to power these expensive electric cars. Another breakthrough is needed there.

Back in 1990, everybody assumed the digital world would be interactive TV ... before the Internet came from left field, from an unlikely instigator: the web browser. Right now, it's too early to tell what the instigator will be for energy. In the interim, I see plenty of money to be made in both batteries and biofuels, but it will take more than current biofuels and current batteries to make the car world low-carbon. It will require a Black Swan of automotive propulsion.

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If the Texas company EEStor is running a scam, it's a frakking brilliant one. For years the otherwise tight-lipped outfit has been promising a capacitor that can quickly charge, quickly discharge, and hold enormous amounts of energy -- on all accounts, performance far beyond any battery on the market, or even contemplated. If it performs as promised, the EESU (Electrical Energy Storage Unit) will revolutionize the electric vehicle market. It will enable cost-effective, high-capacity storage for renewable electricity sources. It can radically increase the utility of portable electronics. It would be an honest-to-god game changer.

It sounds too good to be true, and quite a few people think it is. But the company has passed some initial tests; it has signed an exclusive contract with Lockheed Martin; electric car company ZENN is ready to put EESUs in vehicles and begin selling them in short order.

And now, there's a leaked interview with EEStor CEO Dick Weir (who never talks to the media, and who doesn't appear aware the interview will be published; journalist Tyler Hamilton, one of the few to have interviewed him, vouchsafes that it's his voice) in which he claims that he'll have a pre-production prototype EESU done by the end of the year.

If this is a bluff, it is one of the ballsier, more elaborate bluffs the cleantech world has ever seen.

Here are a few of the remarkable things Weir says, as related by Hamilton:

* On EEStor's value: “If we make an EESU ... God only knows what we'll be valued then.”

* He has two patents on grid-load levelling. “You can put 45 percent more electricity on the grid and do nothing more than put our batteries on there. ... that electricity could supply the electricity to the electric vehicle market as it emerges ... we make wind and solar real ... you can make a wind farm operate like a coal-fired plant and it's really cost-effective.”

* On storage for PCs and handhelds. “We can take a battery for a cell phone and give you three to five times more energy storage that would never degrade on you and you can charge in seconds.”

* How quick to market for EESU electric car? “Need is always a wonderful thing, and the need is very high for our technology ... there's nothing corrosive, harmful or explosive in our technology ... there's nothing, there's no chemistry part of our product. It's all solid state ... I think also ZENN is going to happen very, very quickly ... people will want that electric car. They'll be able to test it, don't get me wrong, but they'll be able to pass those tests quickly because we've got the UL.”

* On EESU status: “I'm already out there putting EESUs together and I'm still in June. I'm ahead of schedule.” Says ZENN will get pre-production prototypes by the end of this year. “Once I do that, all hell is going to break loose for ZENN as well as EEStor.”

* Ending note: “We've done our homework, and you'll see the results when we get into 2010 ... you'll see a very effective and constant ramp-up to our production capabilities.”

I wouldn't invest in this company, but I can probably spare a little hope.

More on EEStor:

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Five months ago, Tesla Motors appeared to be following in the footsteps of other American automakers. Lay-offs, a dearth of financing, and a spring recall of 70 percent of delivered Roadsters prompted speculation that Tesla might soon be the next casualty of the economic downturn.

But Tesla proved just too cool to fail. In May, German automaker Daimler injected $50 million in the "we're this close to profitability we promise" EV maker for a 10 percent stake and a deal for Tesla to supply the batteries for the test series of Daimler's smart electric drive. And then in June, Uncle Sam followed suit with $465 million in Department of Energy loans to Tesla to produce and manufacture the new Model S sedan. The loans will also finance the construction of a LEED-certified assembly plant in California, which will manufacture components for the Model S as well as the smart ed.

Rolling in cash and brimming with plans, Tesla turned this newfound financial confidence into a string of retail stores -- don't call them dealerships -- that have more in common with Prada boutiques than your local used-car lots. The red Tesla marquee graces exposed brick in New York, Los Angeles, Menlo Park, London, and Seattle with stores coming soon to Chicago, Miami, D.C., Toronto, Munich, and Monaco.

And as the Washington wine flowed and trays of tiny hors d'oeuvres were passed among the Polo-clad attendants at the Seattle opening, I couldn't help but ask, Seattle? Really?

"Good question," laughed Colette Niazmand, senior manager of marketing at Tesla. "Seattle is certainly not a traditional sports-car market, but when we were marketing the Roadster a couple of years ago, we saw a high concentration of reservations for the vehicle in the Seattle area. There are a lot of early adopters and entrepreneurs in Seattle who understand tech and saw the appeal of the Roadster."

Apparently that's an understatement. With more than 30 of the $101,500 Roadsters zooming around Lake Washington and more on the way, the Seattle area boasts one of the highest concentrations of Roadsters outside California. Though it may be untraditional, Seattle has provided a burgeoning market for luxury EVs.

However, the Roadster's clean lines and flashy colors can't take all the credit for the spread of EVs in the Seattle area. Effective July 26 (coincidentally the public opening of the Seattle Tesla store), Washington state now joins New Jersey, Connecticut, and Arizona in waiving 100 percent of sales, luxury, and use taxes on EVs as well as on infrastructure to support electric vehicles like home charging stations [PDF]. Including the federal tax incentive of $7,500 on electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, Tesla hastens to point out that for Washington buyers, the purchase of a Roadster represents a significant savings over an internal combustion vehicle with a similar sticker price.

For those in the market now for a $100,000 "car with a conscience," Tesla is literally the only game in town. Rivals Fisker and Dodge have announced plans to launch the Karma and the Circuit as early as 2010, but neither has a production model on the road. However, Tesla's presence in Seattle doesn't mean that prospective buyers can stop by the showroom on Westlake Ave. and drive out with their very own Roadster: "The wait-list is four months," said Niazmand.

Want a peek at driving in a Roadster? Check out Grist's video: "Three minutes in a Tesla." The car boasts acceleration of 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, torque of over 13,000 rpms, and minimum charging time of 3.5 hours plugged into a 220 V/70 amp outlet. Tesla also claims that the car can go 244 miles per charge, but owners have reported distances of closer to 200 miles between charges.

The Seattle Tesla store is open by appointment only; check the website for details.

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Major car companies are starting to vote on their choice for the "car and fuel of the future" with big bets on manufacturing capacity.  The winner, no surprise, is going to be highly efficient plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles (see, for instance, "Everything you could want to know about plug-in and EV announcements at Detroit auto show").

Plug-ins and EVs are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy, and far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline or any alternative fuel, especially hydrogen, even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see "Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence").

No surprise, then, that Toyota is planning on a major rollout of its plug in:

Toyota Motor Corp plans to start mass producing plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2012, with a projected first-year output of about 20,000 to 30,000 units, the Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday.

We also have some details on the cost and all-electric range of the Toyota plug in:

Toyota wants to price its plug-in hybrids at a comparable price to Mitsubishi Motors Corp's all-electric car, which debuts this month to fleet customers in Japan at 4.59 million yen ($47,800) before government subsidies, the Nikkei said, without citing sources....

Toyota's plug-ins will be able to run 20-30 km (12.4-18.6 miles) on battery power alone at full charge, the paper said.

It always bears repeating that after the battery charge is exhausted, the car will revert to being a highly fuel-efficient "conventional" hybrid that runs on gasoline.

Toyota appears to be making a shrewder decision on the all-electric range than GM, which says it is giving the Chevy Volt a too-large 40-mile capacity (see "Has GM overdesigned the Volt: Is a 40-mile all electric range too much?" and "CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid").

Ford had made clear in its restructuring plan last year that the future fuel is electrons (see "Whose bailout plan is best: Ford drops hydrogen while GM remains confused about ethanol"):

The next major step in Ford's plan is to increase over time the volume of electrified vehicles, as battery costs improve and as the transition from Hybrids to Plug-in Hybrids to Battery Electric Vehicles occurs.

Now Reuters reports:

Ford plans to introduce a battery-powered commercial van in 2010, a battery-powered small car the following year and a plug-in hybrid to challenge General Motors Corp's highly touted Volt starting in 2012.

Those plans put utilities and battery companies "at the center of the universe" for automakers, [Ford CEO Alan] Mulally said.

Ford, the first of the U.S. automakers to roll out a hybrid, has made a renewed commitment to the technology a centerpiece of its turnaround plans....

Within a decade, automakers and utility companies expect to make commonplace two-way communication between vehicles and an interactive utility power grid that will solidify their cooperation.

Utilities are expected to install millions of "smart meters" at homes that would signal the car's computer when the power grid is strained, and power expensive, so charging can be suspended.

For now, the goal is simply to convince motorists to plug in, said Nancy Gioia, Ford's director of hybrid vehicle programs.

Gioia projects that "from 10 to 25 percent" of Ford's production by 2020 will be some type of electrified vehicle.

General Motors, of course, has long been touting its efforts to electrified vehicles:

GM, now operating under a federally funded bankruptcy, has also pledged to have more plug-in hybrids and even pure electric vehicles for city driving in the future....

Britta Gross, GM's director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization, would not offer a percentage for plug-ins and other types of electric cars, but said GM would "do the heavy lifting" trying to meet the moonshot-like goal set by President Barack Obama to have 1 million plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads by 2015.

Finally, we can move beyond the rhetorical hype about what low-carbon alternative fuel vehicles American consumers might be driving in the foreseeable future, and on to the manufacturing and practical reality of plug-ins and EVs.

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A BrightSource Energy solar thermal project.Photo: BrightSource EnergyDrive around the San Francisco Bay Area and you can see the emerging corporate infrastructure of the new green economy.

In a downtown Oakland office tower, you'll find the headquarters of BrightSource Energy, a solar thermal power-plant developer that has scored contacts to build more than 2,600 megawatts' worth of solar farms. Off Highway 101 in the Silicon Valley suburb of San Carlos, Tesla Motors is developing its next electric car. Down the road in Palo Alto, Shai Agassi's Better Place is designing regional electric-car charging networks and battery-swapping stations for Australia, Canada, Denmark, Israel, and the United States.

Backing those companies is VantagePoint Venture Partners. The venture capital firm is making big bets on green tech by funding nearly two dozen startups involved in everything from LED lighting to algae biofuels to water to the smart grid. Given VantagePoint's vantage on the emerging green economy, I paid a visit to the firm's headquarters in decidedly unglamorous San Bruno (known to most Bay Area residents as the home of the long-term airport parking lot) to chat with CEO Alan Salzman.

VantagePoint CEO Alan Salzman.A veteran VC who currently manages nearly $5 billion in investments, Salzman, 55, had recently returned from Copenhagen, where he attended the World Business Summit on Climate Change. That alone should tell you how much Silicon Valley has changed in recent years. VCs didn't used to jet off to Scandinavian capitals to talk policy with international bureaucrats.

The game was, as Salzman explained, relatively simple. "We and most of the Valley had an attitude toward Washington: 'We won't ask for anything; therefore you'll leave us alone.' It worked pretty well."

That, of course, is the part of Silicon Valley's enduring foundation myth that tends to gloss over the defense dollars and government R&D that provided the seed capital that transformed Santa Clara Valley into Silicon Valley. And tech emissaries have for years periodically flown East to lobby for foreign-worker visa programs and other government goodies.

But back then a Google could go from garage to global powerhouse without too much thought about Washington policymakers. Not any more. The fortunes of VantagePoint's portfolio of green tech companies will, to varying degrees, rise and fall with regulatory policy.

"I think as we approach the energy sector and industries with a high degree of regulation, such as anything to do with a utility, building codes, and transportation, we have no alternative but to engage in the political process because those areas are highly politicized," says Salzman, sporting chinos and a white polo shirt with the VantagePoint logo.

Tesla Model S sedan.Tesla, for instance, last month scored a $465 million Department of Energy loan guarantee that will let the electric automaker build its next car, the Model S sedan. BrightSource, meanwhile, has applied for a DOE loan guarantee to help finance its first solar power plant.

And Silicon Valley lobbied hard for a change in the tax code that allows renewable energy companies the option to take as cash a 30 percent investment tax credit. (The Wall Street investment banks that once bankrolled such projects by tapping the tax credit have become as endangered as the California pika that's scrambling up Sierra mountaintops to escape global warming.)

Salzman argues that Silicon Valley needs a seat in Washington not just to protect its economic interests but also to ensure that regulators make the right choices when it comes to renewable energy and other technology-driven policies.
 
“We think there’s a real need, a real void in some ways, in Washington for the understanding of the role of the innovator,” he says. “We worry a great deal that policy is being made without a realization of what’s doable from a technology viewpoint. If you’re setting standards and you don’t have a clear view where we are on the technology evolution, you’re at great risk of making terrible policies that address yesterday’s problems”
 
VantagePoint, according to Salzman, targets industries most ripe for transformation to address tomorrow’s problems and then places bets on startups it thinks can accelerate that process. And for the next decade or two that means clean tech -- energy, transportation, and water.

“That’s where the large important new companies are going to come from, primarily,” he says. “There will still be the Facebooks of the world, but I think you can’t today name the leading solar thermal company -- well, I can as it’s our company -- but most people can’t. Can you name the leading LED lighting companies today or the Cisco of green building materials?”

Just don't get him started on Detroit.

“For half the cost of what we gave to GM and Chrysler, we could have created huge domestic industries around batteries and electric drive trains and given our guys jobs in Detroit and Alabama instead of propping up a dying industry so the Chinese can build the electric car industry.”
 
“The Prius is now in its third generation,” he adds. “So GM spots Toyota, the best car company in the world, a 12-year head start and then comes out with a competitive product that’s going to be priced at two times. So you wonder who came out with that as a winning strategy.”
 
“If a startup showed up here and said, ‘Right, we’ll spot the best company in the world a 12-year leap and we’re going to come out with a comparable product at twice the price,’ it wouldn’t be a long meeting."

While Salzman thinks no "Google of the grid" will emerge, owing to the complexity of the electricity distribution system, that may not be the case with large-scale solar thermal energy. (Solar thermal farms generate power by using mirrors to focus the sun's heat on liquid-filled boilers to create steam to drive turbines.)

Electricity is a commodity and whoever can sell the cheapest electrons wins, he argues.

"You might prefer Bing over Google, but nobody says, ‘I'm really tired of those 10-cent-a-kilowatt-hour electrons, I'm going to go for those 12-cent-a-kilowatt-hour electrons to have a mix,'" he says. "It really is winner take all."

Of course, in highly regulated energy markets, the winner also will be determined by those companies that successfully navigate a Byzantine licensing process and get their power plants in production to begin to achieve economies of scale.

While he's an evangelist for the transformative powers of green tech, Salzman is no tree hugger out to change the American way of consumption.

"We don't think the American way of life wants to have less," says Salzman. "If you want to drive a big, frickin' SUV that holds 14 people, knock yourself out. But do it in a way that doesn't put CO2 in the atmosphere or the other carcinogens coming out the back. Do it in a way that you're using electrons that are safe and harmless and make those electrons using sunshine, wind, and renewable energy. Then who cares what you're driving? Let someone haul their soccer team around if it doesn't cause harm -- why wouldn't you?"

Read past Green State columns by Todd Woody.

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Electric cars powered by the burning of biomass would "average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol" according to a recent study, and climate science guru James Hansen has declared implementation of biomass crucial to combating climate change, but those endorsements won't make a bit of difference if few bio-electricity plants are built due to pollution and sustainability concerns.

At least that's the state of play here in Massachusetts, where 5 biomass plants are proposed and face big hurdles. Two are further along than the rest: Russell Biomass proposes a 50 MW plant along the Westfield River in the south-central part of the state, and Pioneer Renewable Energy is proposing a 47 MW plant just east of Greenfield, Mass., near the Vermont border.

Western Massachusetts is an environmentally-minded region rich with wood resources (it's 70% trees), yet each proposal has attracted notable grassroots opposition, and for some good reasons. Russell's proposal is being opposed due to disputes over siting, pollution, and large water withdrawals from the Westfield, as outlined by Concerned Citizens of Russell. The Greenfield plant is opposed by a broad coalition of individuals, 450 of which packed a zoning board hearing recently, on pollution, trucking, and sustainabiiity questions.

In 2002 Massachusetts adopted a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to encourage the generation of clean, renewable electricity in the state using indigenous resources such as wind, solar, and biomass. Under this legislation, Massachusetts must generate 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2025. Which explains the state's enthusiastic support for these projects.

A resource assessment performed as part of the Massachusetts Sustainable Forest Bioenergy Initiative found that there is enough sustainable, harvestable wood within the state to meet the needs of a 150 MW facility. In their words, "Early studies indicate that as much as 4 million tons of woody biomass could be produced annually in Massachusetts, mostly from forests and forest products industries. Utilizing only half that volume for the production of electricity would represent an estimated 150 MW of renewable generation, and substantial rural economic development associated with the fuel supply."

So by their own math, 5 plants at 50 MW would exceed the sustainable wood supply. Presumably wood would also be imported? Another point of confusion for many citizens is if trees fix carbon, why do we want to burn so many for energy? While these questions could be adequately answered or at least attempted, the state has done itself no favors in terms of providing answers, and worse, recently put its foot in its mouth: asked at a recent hearing, a state forester admitted that they lack a definition or a sense of what "sustainable harvest" would look like.

The state also stumbled by approving Pioneer's Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) review without requiring an environmental impact report on the effects of the operation. Certainly, an examination of air pollution, particulates, trucking, and sustainable supply should be undertaken: so says a citizens' group that has now served the secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs with an intent to sue on this issue.

The proposals would be more palatable at least if they planned to capture heat for district heating or industrial use, but despite some rhetoric from the project proponets seemingly indicating a willingness, the reality appears to be that these plants will be focused solely on producing electricity, putting them at a very low efficiency rating (20 percent by many estimates vs 80 percent for combined heat and power) in terms of getting full value from the available BTUs of the feedstock. In the words of one opponent, "use the resource wisely or not at all."

Certainly biomass can be done right, generating both heat and power and at a community scale. A hospital in the city of Northampton, between Russell and Greenfield, has a biomass plant, but the scale is much more appropriate.

And that's what it boils down to in cases like this too often. Too much money is at stake to create sensible, appropriate projects, "renewable" or not, when there are shareholders to pay.

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Can't wait until 2010 for the Chevy Volt (or Coda or Fisker Karma or Chrysler Circuit)? Check out these electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles that are either on the market now or will be by the end of 2009.

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Open one of those minimalist black boxes that contain a shiny new iPod and you're greeted by five words -- "Designed by Apple in California." In much smaller print would be the phrase "Made in China."

Will Americans warm to a Chinese-built car when they can buy a domestic EV like the Chevy Volt for a similar price?Courtesy Coda AutomotiveThat, in a nutshell, describes the strategy of the latest entrant in the electric car sweepstakes: Santa Monica-based Coda Automotive. At a defunct Wilshire Boulevard Jaguar dealership on Wednesday, the startup emerged from stealth mode and CEO Kevin Czinger literally pulled the cover off the Coda, a $45,000 battery-powered sedan set to go on sale next year in California. Coda is an offshoot of Miles Electric Vehicles, a maker of low-speed "neighborhood electric" runabouts.

The Coda sedan, which resembles a previous-generation Honda Civic, is a highway-ready, 80 mph five-seater that will travel 90 to 120 miles on a charge, according to the company.

And it is likely to be the first Chinese-made car to hit American roads. The car's 333-volt lithium ion battery pack comes from the Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co., a huge state-owned corporation that supplies batteries to Apple and other consumer electronics companies. Coda has established a joint venture with Tianjin Lishen to design and sell batteries for transportation and utility storage. The sedan's design, brand and intellectual property will be owned by Coda, but it will be manufactured and assembled in China by Hafei, a state-owned automobile and aircraft manufacturer.

"We asked whether we wanted to be in the manufacturing and mass assembly business, and we said in terms of capital and know-how, it doesn't make sense for us to do that," said Czinger in the sparse former Jaguar showroom where the floor-to-ceiling window shades were kept drawn. "Instead of building a large manufacturing organization and spending a lot of capital on building manufacturing capacity, we wanted to have speed to market, we wanted to have affordability."

Coda will own 40 percent of the Tianjin Lishen battery joint venture in China and 60 percent of the operation outside that country. (Czinger said Coda has also formed an alliance with a U.S. battery maker, whom he declined to identify, and applied for a federal loan guarantee to build a factory in the United States.)

It's very much early days in the nascent electric car market, but the California-China business model embraced by Coda may be a prelude to the future as the automotive center of gravity shifts "East" from Detroit. That the first Chinese-made car to hit the Great American Highway will be electric speaks volumes about where the auto industry is heading.

China offers a steady supply of batteries and low-cost manufacturing while Southern California long has been a design Mecca for major automakers seeking to tap Angelenos' car-crazy zeitgeist. It's no accident that venture capital-backed EV startups like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive have set up shop in the Golden State.

Those two companies have targeted the nosebleed end of the EV market, making sleek and sexy six-figure models that can induce drooling car lust in even non-gearheads.

Coda, like Norwegian electric carmaker Think, on the other hand, is staking its claim on the middle market -- and therein lies the Coda conundrum. The Coda sedan may be "an all-electric car for everyone," as Czinger puts it, but its sticker price is closer to BMW territory than Toyota's. Even after state and federal incentives, it'll still cost you in the mid-thirties for a car that could easily be lost in the supermarket parking lot amid look-alike Korean and Japanese commuter boxes.

Tesla Motors isn't going after middle class buyers with its incredibly expensive (and cool looking!) Model S, due out in 2012.Courtesy Tesla MotorsThe Coda may offer impressive technology, but it does not spark the gotta-have-it palpitations of Tesla's upcoming Model S sedan, a low-slung head-turner with a projected base price $14,000 more than the Coda. Nor does it stand out from the pack like the forthcoming Chevy Volt electric hybrid that is supposed to sell for roughly the same price as the Coda.

In an interview Czinger, a veteran of Goldman Sachs and online grocer Webvan, said Coda deliberately chose mild over wild, designing the car around a chassis currently in production in China so that it could focus on perfecting the battery system and drive train.

"We think commercializing an automotive-grade battery system will create a revolution," said Czinger. "The next version of the car will look much different. It will use different materials and have different aerodynamics whose form is appropriate for an electric car."

I took a short spin around Santa Monica in a prototype driven by a Coda product manager that still sported the Hafei logo on the steering wheel. As you would expect with an electric vehicle, it ran quietly and accelerated quick off the mark as power was instantaneously transferred to the wheels.

The car sported power windows, a navigation system and other features, but the fit and finish looked a bit rough-hewn and plastic fantastic. An automotive writer sitting in the back complained about the stitching in the faux-leather seats. Coda execs said the production model will feature an upgraded interior and such goodies as satellite radio, iPod dock, electronic stability control and a roadside assistance emergency button.

Any Chinese-built car to hit the U.S. market would face challenges with consumers concerned about quality, much as Korean automakers had a hard road to drive in the 1980s. Czinger said a team of Coda engineers is stationed at Hafei's assembly plant to oversee quality control.

The first Codas will be sold to fleet operators in mid-2010, with consumer sales set to begin in the third quarter. The company expects to sell 2,700 cars by the end of the year and ramp up production to 20,000 in 2011. By then the Coda will face competition from a slew of electric cars expected to hit showrooms, including the Volt and electric versions of Renault-Nissan sedans and SUVs. The Tesla Model S is supposed to go to market in 2012.

While those manufacturers will only offer ever-changing price targets for their electric cars, Czinger says the Coda's $45,000 sticker is not vaporware. "I'm giving you a price that's based on an actual bill of materials," he said.

Oh, and one more thing: You can have your Coda in any color you want ... as long as it's silver. Czinger has not decided yet whether to offer a full palette on a car that comes with no options other than a home fast-charging station.

--

Watch a promotional video for the Coda Sedan below:

Read more Green State columns by Todd Woody.

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The more you talk to Shai Agassi, the more the Steve Jobs comparison seems apt.

Shai AgassiCourtesy Better PlaceLike his fellow Silicon Valley impresario, Agassi, the founder of electric car infrastructure startup Better Place, is as much a green-tech visionary as entrepreneur bent on cashing in on the "Next Big Thing." Just as Jobs elegantly married hardware and software to create the iPod and iPhone and disrupted the telecommunication-entertainment industrial complex, Agassi aims to do the same with transportation.

In case you missed the spate of national magazine stories on the former software executive and his company, Better Place has signed deals with governments in Israel, Denmark, Australia, California, Hawaii and Canada to build a web of electric car charging spots and battery-swapping stations.

Agassi aims to crack the chicken-and-egg electric vehicle dilemma by deploying the infrastructure that will give automakers the confidence to make carbon-free cars by the tens of millions while allaying drivers' "range anxiety" that they'll run out of juice on the way to grandma's house. Better Place will own your car's battery and sell you electricity by the mile (or kilometer) like your mobile phone company sells you minutes.

Better Place is not the only company pushing that model, but no competitor has raised as much money -- more than $200 million so far -- or signed deals with national governments to electrify their roadways.

Then there's the Agassi factor.

If Steve Jobs is a distant, "cult of personality" figure, making semi-annual pronouncements before the party faithful in a never-changing uniform of running shoes, jeans and turtleneck, Agassi is the Gen X enviro-evangelist in a sharply cut black suit, appearing before audiences large and small to sell the story of making the world a better place through electric transportation.

I sat down with Agassi recently to get an update on Better Place's progress and delve into just how the company plans to make money off a capital-intensive venture that will depend on an emerging EV ecosystem of carmakers, battery manufacturers and utilities, not to mention government policymakers.

Slight and dark-haired with a penetrating gaze, Agassi possesses Jobs' supreme charismatic self-confidence -- "The internal combustion engine is dead," he tells me matter-of-factly -- and parries every question with a ready set of facts and figures. We met at Fortune Magazine's Brainstorm Green conference in Southern California a few weeks before the scheduled May 13 unveiling of Better Place's prototype battery switching station in Japan. (Why Japan? "They paid for it," he says. "Japan is the most robust manufacturing and they fear being wrong" on electric cars.)

Think of Better Place's battery switching station as the electric version of gas station. Most of the time Better Place subscribers will top off their batteries at home or at battery charging posts -- about the size of a parking meter -- scattered around cities and suburbs. For trips that exceed a car's range, they'll pull into a switching station where a robot will unlatch a panel underneath the vehicle and remove the battery pack, install a fresh battery and close and lock the panel. Total time: About 40 seconds. The depleted battery is then recharged so it's ready for the next customer. Each Better Place station will cost about half million dollars and will maintain a store of 10 batteries.

"We've done tests where we've swapped the battery 200 times a day on a car," Agassi says. "It feels like a car wash more than anything else."

For $25 million, according to Agassi, Better Place could electrify the West Coast's Interstate 5 corridor.

So far, Renault-Nissan is the only automaker that has pledged to manufacture an electric car with a battery pack configuration compatible with the Better Place switching station. No worries, says Agassi, noting that in Israel -- the first country that will deploy a nationwide Better Place network -- the company has already taken more than 20,000 orders for electric Renaults. He says that's enough to break even on Better Place's initial $200 million investment in 100 switching stations and 100,000 charging posts. At somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 cars, Better Place turns a profit, according to Agassi, who notes that there are about 2 million cars on the road in Israeli and that about 200,000 cars were sold there in 2008.

Israel, a relatively tiny country, is one thing. But the suburbanized and continent-wide United States will require a much bigger investment in infrastructure. Agassi estimates that to do the initial build out of the San Francisco Bay Area, he'll need Northern Californians to buy between 40,000 and 50,000 electric vehicles -- no small number. When Better Place announced the $1 billion Bay Area deal with the mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland last year, no automaker had committed to providing the electric cars, though Renault-Nissan has pledged to begin putting EVs in mass production by 2012.

A demonstration of what a Better Place charging station looks like. Watch the video at the bottom of this article for a demonstration of the company's battery-swapping stations.Courtesy Better PlaceAgassi says he expects Better Place to earn between $4,000 and $5,000 in annual battery subscription fees per car. That would be the equivalent of buying $76 to $100 worth of gasoline a week, which seems on the high side for even a suburban commuter given current gasoline prices. That's also far more than what Better Place's initial urban customers likely pay for gas. Of course, the wild card is the price of gas. If it goes back up to $4 or more per gallon, Better Place's numbers start to look more reasonable.

There are plenty of critics who question whether Better Place can raise the billions needed to build just the infrastructure for the deals the company has signed so far. Others doubt that automakers and battery manufacturers will adopt standardized technology to enable, for instance, the widespread use of Better Place switching stations.

None of which, of course, fazes Agassi. He says Better Place has the cash to build the Israel network and Denmark -- next up with a 2011 roll out -- is financed as well. He's hoping to tap stimulus package funds to help pay for Hawaii's network.

"Somewhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of cars, electric vehicles are cheaper to make than gas-powered cars," he said earlier in the day, pacing the Brainstorm Green conference stage Oprah-like. "Somewhere between now and then we get to [the equivalent of] zero dollars a barrel of oil."

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Below, a Better Place promotional video:

Watch another promotional video on the Better Place website.

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Like many other urban places, Seattle will welcome an electric vehicle network to the Emerald City.

In a nonexclusive partnership with Nissan North America, the city of Seattle will promote the development of electric-charging infrastructure.

"The city is committed to creating an environment that is kind to EVs," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D).

However, the agreement between the manufacturer and the municipality does not go so far as to commit to any specifics. Instead, Nissan will take the lead in establishing local working groups to evaluate sites for possible charging stations. The city will in turn "consider" adopting those suggestions.

The announcement of the partnership also revealed the city's plans to mandate residential permits for EV home charging stations. This news was met with surprise from Plug In America director Dan Davids. "I charge my EV in an old dryer outlet in my garage," he said. "I don't know anything about a permit."

Permitting issues aside, the concept EV that Nissan intends to introduce in the Seattle area in 2010 will charge on a standard 220-volt line and go 100 miles on a four-hour charge, said Mark Perry, director of product planning and strategy for Nissan North America.

When pressed for details on the number of vehicles Nissan hopes to bring to the Seattle market or the amount of charging stations to expect or even how the permitting process will work, Perry responded, "it's day one of the partnership. Give us some time to figure it out."

Nissan-Renault has formed similar partnerships with the countries of Israel, Denmark, Portugal, Monaco, the U.K., France, Switzerland, Ireland, China, and Hong Kong. In the U.S., Nissan's Seattle partnership will further its campaign to dominate the West Coast EV scene with other projects in Oregon, California, and Arizona.

Since 2008, many countries and urban areas have begun to adopt electric vehicle networks. Better Place projects are the most well-known, but as in the case with Seattle's EV network, auto manufacturers have made parternships with municipalities to establish EV-friendly communities. Nissan does it a lot.

Nissan North America will offer its electric vehicles on the mass market starting in 2012.

In other green auto news ...

• Fiat of Fiat-Chrysler-Italian-savior-of-the-American-auto-industry fame is actually the world's leading producer of natural-gas engines. The automaker hopes to sell 120,000 natural-gas vehicles in Europe this year, and with T. Boone Pickens' very enthusiastic blessing, Fiat hopes to bring the technology to the U.S.

• Screw the economy, people want hybrids ... in Japan.

• Norway considers a proposal to start banning sales of fossil-fuel powered cars in 2015.

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