One of my many heroes, Ed Markey, had this to say in the Washington Post [actually, I favor a gas tax to incentivize carpooling, etc, with the tax money rebated to all in the form of a check, like cap and dividend, but I agree with Markey that we can do a lot with techno fixes:
The Post's editorial board seems to think that we must punish consumers to cut America's oil dependence and carbon pollution ["$7 a gallon?," editorial, March 5]. I fundamentally disagree.

This Story
$7 a gallon?
Reader response: Rep. Markey’s view
America’s oil dependence already punishes us enough, whether through volatile gas prices or the political and environmental volatility that results from buying and burning oil. Last year, America sent $250 billion overseas to buy oil, much of it to countries that do not like us very much. That is nearly half of our trade deficit. The editorial said that the Waxman-Markey bill “wouldn’t do all that much to slash American oil consumption in the near future.” But according to the Energy Information Agency, the bill would cut projected U.S. oil use by more than 600,000 barrels per day by 2020 (about the same as our current combined imports from Russia and Libya) and more than 1.2 million barrels per day by 2030 (nearly all of our current imports from Venezuela).

Congressional Democrats believe that the solution to our oil dependence and carbon pollution should be comprehensive. Increased fuel efficiency, cleaner renewable fuels and a new clean-energy policy established by the Waxman-Markey bill could enable America to finally tell Middle Eastern oil suppliers that we don’t need their oil any more than we need their sand.

Edward J. Markey, Washington

The writer, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming

You may have seen some Senators calling for a “time out” on global warming/climate crisis legislation. That is a sure sign that they are losing. If I were losing at any game, I would ask for a time out to stall. Maybe something would happen and the game would be discontinued ! Hooray, I don’t have to admit defeat. So, NO TIME OUT. Get to work, you Senators! The House has already done its work, the Waxman Markey bill. Come up with SOMETHING ! How about that Cap and Dividend bill put together by Republican Susan Collins from Maine and Democrat Maria Cantwell from Washington state. I like it. Auction the CO2 allowances, and rebate the money to the people, equal shares for everyone who has a SS number. What could be simpler? It’s only 14 pages. Write to your senators with your ideas.

You may have heard about the recent “dust up” about whether there was an overstatement of the ice melt in the Himalayas. There was. So, it will be corrected. The ice is still melting. In fact, the most ice is in Greenland and Antarctica. That melts, and we are going to be doing more swimming !
Here is an article on the topic.
Reporting this week in the journal Nature, researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol describe how analysis of millions of NASA satellite measurements* from both of these vast ice sheets shows that the most profound ice loss is a result of glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea.

The authors conclude that this ‘dynamic thinning’ of glaciers now reaches all latitudes in Greenland, has intensified on key Antarctic coastlines, is penetrating far into the ice sheets’ interior and is spreading as ice shelves thin by ocean-driven melt. Ice shelf collapse has triggered particularly strong thinning that has endured for decades.

I work for the federal gov’t in EPA, and I just learned that President Obama has ordered that fed gov’t must reduce its energy use by 28% by 2020. Great. Then we found out that of all the energy used for offices, labs, Army, etc. 60% is used for mobility needs other than fleet vehicles. 70% of that 60% is jet fuel. So, the biggest thing we could do to reduce gov’t energy use is to either fly our jets less or install more efficient jet engines in the fuel tanker airplanes, which are the least efficient. Interesting. It makes my efforts to turn out the lights in other people’s offices at the end of the day in perspective.

Interview With an EV Owner: Adventure
Posted by: Crossroads Curator on February 25, 2010 at 9:51AM PST

courtesy Charlie Garlow

Charlie Garlow, a Sierra Club member from Silver Spring, Maryland owns a three-wheel electric motorcycle. Garlow is planning this summer to hitch a solar trailer to it and drive across the country with his dog Rex to raise awareness for EVs and renewable energy. His journey will probably launch after the EV drag race in June at the Mason Dixon Dragway in Hagerstown. Follow his progress on his website FunRunintheSun.org and his blog. This is the second of three interviews with EV owners. Read the first one here.
How did you get this electric motorcycle?

It’s a little tricky. There are not a lot of three-wheel electric motorcycles for sale. But there is a company out in Oregon that is now manufacturing the bodies — or shells, frames — so that you can put it together yourself and you can put into it your own electric motor that you buy from them or separately. I bought a separate motor because I wanted more power. Mine is considerably modified from the original BugE.

Can you describe this vehicle?

It’s got two direction wheels in the front and one drive wheel in the rear and a body structure that is arrow dynamically streamlined that makes it slick to the wind. It looks kind of interesting, frankly.

What’s the range?

If you have lead acid batteries in there, it’ll probably go about 30 or 40 miles on a charge. If you put in lithium ion batteries, as I’m attempting to do, it’ll have a 100-mile range or more.

And your adventure will be powered by solar?

My intention is to have a trailer to be pulled behind it with solar panels on top of it. It will also have extra lithium ion batteries underneath the panel to give it extra weight or ballast to hold this thing down. I have six 80 watt Sharp PV polycrystalline solar panels, but I am open to an upgrade!

Have you always been this passionate about EVs and renewable energy?

I’ve always been interested in reducing my carbon footprint. For the last 20 years I’ve been involved in electric vehicles. I’ve owned a series of EVs. One was a sedan — a 1981 Dodge Neon. I had a 1997 Chevy pick-up truck made by General Motors at their factory. And now I’m working on this three wheel motorcycle. I feel a bit like Toad of Toad Hall — that animated cartoon from years back who always wanted to buy the latest contraption that would take him around.

Let’s say I’m a typical middle class American and I want an EV. What’s your advice?

There are a number of second-hand, cheaper electric vehicles, whether they’re motorcycles or cars or trucks. They’re on sale on eBay or Craigslist and you can find them through various electric vehicle associations. There are electric vehicle clubs. If you have enough money to buy a new electric vehicle, Nissan is coming out with the Leaf all-electric vehicle sometime in 2011. The Volt is an electric hybrid, which is a pretty good idea. It’s pure electric for the first 40 miles, which then kicks in your gasoline engine. By that process you can go 100 or 150 miles per gallon. The Volt’s supposed to be sold this fall. And there are a lot of other companies that are getting on board.

What do you think about when you see gas prices?

Gas prices are way too low in this country. We need to tax gas so that it’s $5 a gallon like it is in Japan or $7 a gallon like it is in Europe. That would be more of an incentive for us to think about electric vehicles. I think a lot more people would look at it and say, “This is a great idea.” In fact, it’s already a great idea. If you get yourself an electric vehicle, your cost for fuel — your electricity — is one-quarter the cost of gasoline, presuming gas is about $2.50 a gallon. When we had $4 a gallon the summer before last, we had a lot more people asking about electric vehicles. And maintenance costs! There are no oil changes, there’s no muffler to be replaced….

All of those costs to maintaining a gas engine, which is basically an explosion going on in your car — no wonder the thing falls apart — don’t happen. Think about your power drill you keep down in the basement. When was the last time you had to overhaul its engine, or change the oil, or flush the radiator? Never!

As a tanker driver in Iraq, U.S. Army veteran Robin Eckstein saw firsthand the risk that fossil-fuel dependence posed to American troops. She drove a water truck in convoys with fuel tankers, and every trip outside the secure zone at Baghdad International Airport meant a potential meeting with sniper fire or improvised explosive devices.

But field stations in the surrounding area depended on that fuel for their vehicles and equipment that ran off generators.

“It was a logistical nightmare that they have to wait for us, because, frankly, we were slow, we were poorly equipped, and we were trying to get through Baghdad to get to them,” said Eckstein, 33. “Otherwise they can’t operate.

“If they had solar panels to charge their laptops and other equipment, they wouldn’t need our slow-moving vehicles coming out to them. They would be more efficient. We would be putting less American lives at risk.”

Eckstein, who finished her service with the National Guard in 2007, has also come to see the larger threat that fossil fuels and climate change pose to the military. Climate change causes droughts and natural disasters around the world, which in turn drives instability, mass migrations, and conflict—and the U.S. military will increasingly be called on to respond.

The Pentagon agrees. The recently released Department of Defense Quadrennial Review, which assesses threats and priorities for the military, states: “Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”

Says Eckstein, “As long as the U.S. military is the 911 for the world, every time there’s a natural disaster, we are going to be there. Unfortunately, climate disruption just speeds that up.”

Ultimately, promoting national security means doing something about climate change, Eckstein argues. That’s why she joined up with Operation Free, a coalition of veterans that’s traveling the country in support of a national clean-energy bill.

Eckstein is currently on her second multi-state trip with Operation Free, which is organized by the Truman National Security Project and other progressive veterans’ groups. The warm responses the first time around convinced her to do it again.

“Normally people see [climate] as a left issue, but it’s a bipartisan issue,” she said. “Everyone wants our nation to be secure. The fact that they’re willing to listen to us as veterans, and that they understand it, they get it, makes me very hopeful we’re going to be able to make this change and take back our energy future.”

Eckstein says the Pentagon already gets it and has plans to increase fuel efficiency and use more rechargeable energy devices in combat zones. Now the rest of the country needs to get it too: Supporting the troops means consuming less oil.

“It’s hard to find an issue in the United States that has such an impact on national security,” said Matt Victoriano, a former Marine who served in Iraq and another member of Operation Free. “It’s evident to everyone that our dependence on foreign oil is fueling terrorist insurgencies, and we’re paying for it through our military. We’re funding both sides of a war, which is pretty ridiculous.”

The U.S. spent $66 billion on oil from Saudi Arabia alone in 2008, he said. Saudi Arabia was the top source of funding for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks that year, according to the government’s top financial counter-terrorism official.

“There’s no positive outcome to continuing on our path,” said Patrick Bellon, an Army veteran on the tour. “So we can listen to old men who make a ton of money who are calculating that maybe they won’t be around when [oil] runs out. Or we can look out for the next generation. That’s the only question in my mind.”

In mid-2007, a Keystone Center nuclear report (PDF), funded in part by the nuclear industry estimated capital costs for nuclear of $3600 to $4000/kW including interest. The report notes, “the power isn’t cheap: 8.3 to 11.1 cents per kilo-watt hour.” In December 2007, retail electricity prices in this country averaged 8.9 cents per kwh.

Mid-2007 has already become the good old days for affordable nuclear power. Jim Harding, who was on the Keystone Center panel and was responsible for its economic analysis, e-mailed me in May that his current “reasonable estimate for levelized cost range … is 12 to 17 cents per kilowatt hour lifetime, and 1.7 times that number [20 to 29 cents per kilowatt-hour] in first year of commercial operation.”

At the end of August, 2007 Tulsa World reported that American Electric Power Co. CEO Michael Morris was not planning to build any new nuclear power plants. He was quoted as saying, “I’m not convinced we’ll see a new nuclear station before probably the 2020 timeline,” citing “realistic” costs of about $4,000 per kilowatt.

So much for being a near-term, cost-effective solution to our climate problem. But if $4,000 per kilowatt was starting to price nuclear out of the marketplace, imagine what prices 50 percent to 100 percent higher will do.

In October 2007, Florida Power and Light, “a leader in nuclear power generation,” presented its detailed cost estimate for new nukes to the Florida Public Service Commission. It concluded that two units totaling 2,200 megawatts would cost from $5,500 to $8,100 per kilowatt — $12 billion to $18 billion total! (These are the actual costs, not adjusted for inflation.)

Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of FPL, said, “If our cost estimates are even close to being right, the cost of a two-unit plant will be on the order of magnitude of $13 to $14 billion. That’s bigger than the total market capitalization of many companies in the U.S. utility industry and 50 percent or more of the market capitalization of all companies in our industry with the exception of Exelon … This is a huge bet for any CEO to take to his or her board.”

An October 2007 Moody’s Investors Service report, “New Nuclear Generation in the United States,” concluded, “Moody’s believes the all-in cost of a nuclear generating facility could come in at between $5,000 - $6,000/kw.”

In January 2008, MidAmerican Nuclear Energy Co said that prices were so high, it was ending its pursuit of a nuclear power plant in Payette County, Idaho, after spending $13 million researching its economic feasibility. Company President Bill Fehrman said in a letter, “Consumers expect reasonably priced energy, and the company’s due diligence process has led to the conclusion that it does not make economic sense to pursue the project at this time.”

MidAmerican is a company owned by famed investor Warren Buffet. When Buffet pulls the plug on a potential investment after spending $13 million analyzing the deal, it should give everyone pause.

Let’s take a look at one more example. Earlier this year, Progress Energy informed state regulators that the twin 1,100-megawatt plants it intends to build in Florida would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.” That would be more than $6,400 per kilowatt. But wait, that’s not all. As reported by the St. Petersburg Times, “The utility said its 200 mile, 10-county transmission project will cost $3-billion more.” If we factor that cost in, the price would be $7,700 a kilowatt.

Amazingly, the utility won’t even stand behind the exorbitant tripled cost for the plant. In its filing with state regulators, Progress Energy warned that its new $17 billion estimate for its planned nuclear facility is “nonbinding” and “subject to change over time.”

And it gets even better (by I which I mean, worse) for Florida ratepayers. Florida passed a law that allows utilities to recoup some costs while a nuclear plant is under construction. How much? About $9 a month starting as early as next year! Yes, the lucky customers of Progress Energy get to each pay more than $100 a year for years and years and years before they even get one kilowatt-hour from these plants.

This would seem to be the exact opposite of the old claim for the nuclear industry, “Too cheap to meter.” Now it’s so expensive the company raises your rates before the power even gets to the meter!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund

These are our friends from University of Delaware.
U.S. researchers unveiled a vehicle Thursday, 2/18/2010, that could earn money for its driver instead of guzzling it up in gasoline and maintenance costs.
The converted Toyota Scion xB, shown at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the first all-electric car to be linked to a power grid and serve as a cash cow.
“This is the first vehicle that’s ever been paid to participate in the grid—the first proof-of-concept vehicle,” Ken Huber, who oversees technological development at wholesale electricity coordinator PJM Interconnection, told AFP.
The presentation of the box-like, unassuming-looking Scion was the researchers’ way of introducing the “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) concept as it begins to gain momentum in the United States and around the world.
V2G projects with hybrid cars that use electricity and gas to store energy in their batteries and feed it back into the power grid are up and running in the United States, and the drive now is to produce all-electric vehicles to plug into the power grid.
“This makes the car useful not only when it’s being driven, but also when it’s parked, as long as you remember to plug it in,” said Willett Kempton, who is leading a V2G project at the University of Delaware.
A V2G car is linked via an Internet-over-powerline connection that sends a signal from inside the car’s computer to an aggregator’s server. The aggregator acts as the middleman between the car owner and power grid management companies, which are constantly trying to keep electricity output at a constant level.
When the grid needs more power due to a surge in demand, power companies usually draw from traditional power plants, which in the United States are often coal-fired and leave a large carbon footprint.
When V2G becomes more widespread, the power could be drawn from millions of vehicles plugged into sockets in home garages or from commercial fleets, such as the U.S. Postal Service’s vans, for a much smaller footprint than that of the power plants.
Grid management companies like PJM Interconnection currently pay around $30 an hour when taking power from a car.
V2G is still a new concept, but it is gaining ground in the United States and Europe.
“Ten years ago, this was just a plan. Today, it’s a real project, and in 10 years, we’ll be producing tens of megawatts of power this way,” said Kempton, adding that V2G will readily find applications in countries that are rapidly ramping up reliance on wind and solar energy, such as Denmark and Britain.
Huber said he will be meeting in the coming weeks in Paris with heads of European grid management companies about V2G.
“We’re going to try to determine how we can work together on this. It’s a technology that is very good at meeting a need we have, and there’s growing interest among auto companies to develop V2G vehicles,” he added.
AC Propulsion of California has designed an electric drive system for V2G, and car manufacturers including Renault/Nissan, Mitsubishi, and BMW are producing all-electric vehicles with an eye on the V2G market.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

If Michelle Obama can lead us to bipartisan harmony with her Healthier America initiative ["Michelle Obama: 'Let's move' on childhood obesity," Style, Feb. 10], I hope she can lead our children to more healthful habits. I wonder whether she is being too timid, though, when she said that “this isn’t about inches or pounds.” Why not, in a fight against obesity? If “one in three children . . . is overweight or obese,” those kids need to shed pounds and inches.

And why is the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports cutting the focus on push-ups and sit-ups as good things to do? Strenuous exercises such as these are great at helping you look and feel better about yourself while also helping you shed pounds and inches.

Since obesity drains $147 billion from our economy every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is past time to get serious.

Charlie Garlow, Silver Spring
See the Stay Fit section of this web site for more info.

What happened to all those federal loan guarantees that would make it easy for utilities to get a loan and then charge customers AFTER the nuke was built, when electricity was actually being PROVIDED?????
Florida ratepayers have filed a lawsuit against Progress Energy Florida for charging its customers for the planned construction of two nuclear reactors even as the company CEO expressed doubts about the project’s future.

Progress Energy Inc. customers are paying construction costs for two reactors proposed for Levy County, which is along the Gulf of Mexico. The company has collected about $200 million in advance of the project, which Citizens for Ratepayers Rights claims is unconstitutional.

The Florida Legislature in 2006 allowed utilities to collect funds in the form of electricity rate increases to pay upfront costs of new nuclear construction. The Florida Public Service Commission approved cost recovery for Progress Energy’s and Florida Power & Light Co.’s new reactor construction last October (E&ENews PM Oct. 16, 2009).

Progress Energy has estimated building the two reactors at Levy County will cost about $17 billion, although that price is likely to grow, given project delays. The reactor the company plans to use, the Westinghouse AP1000, is drawing scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which asked Westinghouse to redesign a shielding wall before the agency can continue reviewing the reactor’s design certification.
“We tried everything to get someone to listen — the Governor, House, Senate, PSC, Attorney General — anyone that would help stop the madness of allowing $17 billion to be collected by Progress with no requirement that any service be provided nor the nuclear plant even be built at all,” said Suzan Franks, founder of Citizens for Ratepayers Rights, in a statement.