Re: DARPA, at least, has a clue

Morten Reistad wrote:
In article <h2bn1g$nvq$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Stephen Fuld <SFuld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:

snip

Something like the fleet fuel efficiency averages of US CAFE standards
would work pretty well.
No, they don't, or at least didn't. We have experience with these and they don't reduce gasoline consumption as much as you would think. The reason is that given higher MPG cars, the price of making a trip declines and, surprise, surprise, people drive more. They move farther away from work, make more trips, etc.

The most reliable way to decrease the usage of something is to raise its price. When gasoline was $4.00 a gallon, you couldn't buy a Toyota Prius. When it dropped to about $2.30, you couldn't sell one.

As I keep harping about, the generation of base energy in sufficient
quantities at reasonable prices is the #1 challenge for western
civilisation. Note that South America, Russia, China and India is
rapidly joining the western civilisation as we speak. We threfore
need to plan for an energy consumption at around 3 times the current
level. In oil equivalents we are using close to 180 bbls/day, of
which a tad more than 80 comes from oil and oil equivalents.

We have to be careful here not to conflate oil use, which is primarily for transportation, and other things which are primarily used for heat and electricity generation. While there is some ability to inter convert between the two it is better to talk about them separately. My proposal strictly addressed petroleum usage for transportation.

We do not have the option of tripling oil production. We probably
had peak oil in late 2006, but the peak seems to be a slowly sliding
plateau with some jagged terrain, not the immediate fall doomssaysers
have predicted.

Agreed, According tho the then relevant experts, we have been running out of oil every few years for about a century. :-( But we will certainly run out sometime.

In the short to medium term I see no other alternative than nuclear
power plants. We simply cannot spew out more coal. Most of east
Asia is already in a coal-induced haze.

I agree we need more nuclear power generation. And we need to eliminate President Carter's ban on the breeder reactors we need to substantially reduce nuclear waste. (What the French do.)

BTW, my proposal is to create a revenue neutral tax swap. Increase the tax on gasoline say 30 cents per gallon each year for the next 10 years. Take 100% of that money and refund it to the people via say a per capita refundable tax credit. This means that people will know that gas prices will go up which allows them to plan when they buy their next car, etc. It also taxes those people who use more than the average amount of gas, but these are the people who would gain the most from taking actions such as buying a more fuel efficient car. The policy rewards those who use less than the average amount of gas as they actually make money on the deal.

You are too late. Carter, or even Bush sr could have done this. Now
the oil market will do this for us, except the tax is a few dollars a
gallon and the recipients live in Saudi Arabia.

I don't think it is to late, but I agree the increased money will go to the Saudis. Note that my proposal is for a steadily increasing tax, so people will anticipate and start to reduce consumption immediately.

A slight modification, which may be useful is to make the tax on only the petroleum portion of the gas. Thus if we used say 10% bio-materials in the gas, the tax would be reduced by 10%. By doing this, we would incent the usage of things like ethanol, and we could phase out the ethanol subsidy we currently pay to farmers, thus actually reducing government expenditures.


It's a happy accident that energy policy and climate policy both push
in the direction the industry needs to go,
Not necessarily. Reducing petroleum usage favors things like electric cars and plug in hybrids, but this increases electricity demand. In the US, most electricity is generated from coal, so we have to be careful not to increase emissions due to burning more coal. (yes, I know that overall, it is still a win, but it isn't totally simplistic.) Also, people are talking about hydrogen cars, but the most common way to make hydrogen is from natural gas. This stuff is very tricky.

If we designed things right this could be a slow, silent migration
instead of the huge shifts we probably will see now. And we need to
get the nuclear industry moving again.

Agreed.


The current hybrids still think petrol, or they go all overboard with
all-electric. We don't have the batteries for this, yet. But one of
those all-electric drive trains, with added integrated combustion
engine and generator, plus some battery capacity could revolutionise
automotion.

That is called the Chevy Volt. It is called an "extended range electric". All electric drive train with plug in rechargeable batteries and the 1.4 liter engine from their European division connected to a generator. Range on batteries is projected to be 200 miles with automatic start-up of the gas engine for longer trips. Will be available, IIRC in late 2010 or 2011. But it will be more expensive than a pure gas or electric due both electric and gas engines and more expensive than a hybrid due to the need for more batteries than a hybrid.


After all, we use a significant part of time in our cars
near home, work or other places where we could charge a car; even if
that radius is down to 20 km. Having plug-ins that could handle this
driving would make a real dent in petrol consumption.

That's GM's plan.


--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)
.

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