Articles by David Roberts

Ford Motor Co. CEO says everything's going to be juuust fine

The kick-off discussion here at Eco:nomics was with Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally. (Which you'd know if you were following my tweeteriffic tweets!)

Last year's kick-off session was with GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who was 50 percent drunk and 100 percent entertaining -- frank, blunt, and occasionally profane. The contrast this time around could not have been more stark. Mulally, looking like Mr. Rogers in his sleeveless red sweater vest, murmured the corporate line in soothing tones, assuring us all that Ford is great, its new goal is to make great cars that get greater every year, and that the future is great, also filled with greatness.

He's got that lilting PR voice that releases your endorphins, but afterwards you can't remember a thing he said, except about how everything is great. For instance, he answered a question about California's fuel efficiency waiver with a torrent of won't-you-be-my-neighbor filler that you had to concentrate on really hard to realize that he, just like the other Big Auto executives, opposes granting it. The answer, basically, was "we don't want to have to make make cars to meet two standards, even though we're already making our cars more fuel efficient every year." Well, why not make them fuel efficient enough to meet the stronger standard? Then you only have to meet one.

Nothing Mulally said would begin to explain why Ford's valuation is tanking.

Talking about the future, it was clear that although Mulally sees some ethanol and electric cars in the mix, his true love and focus is the internal combustion engine, which he said Ford engineers could improve by 20-30 percent efficiency. He said ICEs will be the dominant vehicle technology for at least the next 10-15 years. Compact disc manufacturers are probably saying the same thing.

A couple of notable moments from the audience Q&A:

T. Boone Pickens got up and asked him about making cars that run on natural gas -- for "energy independence," you know. Mulally was polite, but basically said, um, no. That's dumb fracking idea and nobody wants those cars. It was pretty hilarious.

Another man got up and said that Ford had basically lost his whole generation. Mulally said, "I want to come up to your room later." I know the car companies are desperate, but I didn't know their executive were literally prostituting themselves!

Anyway, it was largely a nothingburger with happy talk sauce. Pretty much what you'd expect from an American auto company. Meanwhile, later in the evening I ran into Bill Gross of IdeaLab, who took me out to the parking lot to show me this:

That's the Aptera, a safety tested, super streamlined, fully electric two-seater, made entirely of carbon fiber, with a 100-mile range. (Tons more pictures here.) It will soon be available in California for $30,000. It's what car companies make when they're innovating instead of lobbying.

Your intrepid blogger heads to yet another green conference; promises to twitter some tweets

I'm at the airport, getting ready to head out to Santa Barbara for the second annual Wall Street Journal Eco:nomics conference. (Yes, flying on planes makes me a big fat hypocrite earthf*cker -- I eagerly await my NYT profile.)

The WSJ conference is interesting, mainly due to the contrasting influences of the top-notch WSJ news team and the WSJ editorial board, world headquarters for unrepentant far-right fruitcakes. So you get Al Gore and Amory Lovins, but then you also get Bjorn Lomborg and Vaclav Klaus. (Klaus gets the last word, with his session titled "Global Reality Check: From Europe to China to the U.S., how realistic is a big green push amid an imploding economy?" Anybody care to guess his answer in advance?)

In between you have an interesting mix of truly innovative and green-minded business leaders and ... business leaders primarily concerned with positioning themselves to profit from whatever happens next. Thus you get sessions like the hilariously titled, "Power Play: What will keep the lights on: nuclear energy or 'clean coal'?" Whee!

The really big news here -- and you'll want to notify all your friends and family about this ASAP -- is that I'll be twittering from the conference.

OMG! you say. OMFG! you add. Yes, it's true. I'll be delving into the brave new world of 2008, because clearly the main flaws of blogging are its excessive length, depth, and grammatical exactitude!

I don't even know enough about Twitter to tell you how to follow my twittering. But if you happen to know how, it's all going on under the name david_h_roberts.

Again: david_h_roberts. Feel the Future!

[Note from more tech-savvy editor: David's Twitter feed is here. And right below.]

What's the alternative?

Fossil fuel energy prices are down right now due to the recession suppressing demand, but the mid- and long-term trend is up. Coal, oil, natural gas -- all up. If we do nothing, energy will keep getting more expensive for Americans, and it will impact the poor disproportionately.

The progressive proposal is to price carbon, strengthen efficiency regulations, and invest in green energy and infrastructure. This will produce a short-term rise in energy prices followed by a mid- and long-term stabilization and reduction as renewables and efficiency scale up.

Conservatives react with outrage to the notion of policy that will produce an increase in energy prices, of any duration.

But ... what's their alternative? Energy prices are going up regardless. What's their solution to that problem?

I sincerely don't understand. Someone explain it to me.

There are two ways of improving the electrical grid, each with its own politics and challenges

Two years ago, nobody was talking about the nation's electricity grid; today it's so prominent in the national conversation that Barack Obama mentioned it in his inauguration speech. For energy wonk types, it's pretty amazing.

Lots of politicians and pundits are sort of waving their hands toward the grid as an energy solution, without being very specific about their goals or the policies needed to get there. To add some clarity, it's worth distinguishing two distinct grid issues, each with its own technological challenges, regulatory issues, and political implications.

To simplify matters, think of the grid like the nation's waterways. There are a few big, primary rivers -- the high-voltage, long-distance lines that compose the transmission system. Then there are thousands and thousands of smaller tributaries -- the lower voltage lines that carry electricity from the transmission system to individual homes and businesses, called the distribution system. (I guess the homes and businesses are ... lakes? Ponds? Frankly I haven't thought the metaphor through that far.)

With that distinction in mind, we can discern two grid-related subjects of interest to energy/enviro types:

The National Grid

This has to do with extending the transmission system to address two problems:

• First, there aren't many high-voltage lines that go to the places where renewable energy is most abundant (e.g., the Southwest for solar, the Midwest for wind).

• Second, right now there are (depending on how you count) anywhere from three to seven distinct regional grids that make up the national grid, and they aren't very well connected. While juice circulates relatively freely within these grids, it's difficult to get juice from one grid to another.

The wide grid refers to the effort to build a truly national transmission system: a new high-voltage backbone, with lines spanning the length and breadth of the country, able to carry electricity from anywhere it's generated to anywhere it's needed. Wide grid advocates argue that linking the entire nation together would mitigate the problem of intermittency -- the fact that sun and wind are variable (as opposed to baseload sources that can be turned on and off at will). The more intermittent energy sources are linked together, the more stable and reliable the whole system becomes.