Articles by Gar Lipow

Upgrade freight rail: Save 12 percent of oil, 4 percent of emissions, and jumpstart renewable grid

On the theory that many people who encounter Alan Drake's own words on greening freight end up overwhelmed by the details, I have presented a very simplified version of Drake's proposal with my own opinions. This is a deliberate attempt to focus on the most important points, and then steer people to read the whole thing. [Update: The Washington Monthly has a long article on this as well.] Obviously the disagreement with Drake, as well as the political analysis at the end, is my own judgment. In addition Drake does not know me, though we've corresponded briefly, and he has no responsibility for anything I wrote.

Grist has discussed Alan Drake's proposal for greening freight before, but somehow it's always mentioned in passing and without real recognition that it's such a game changer. By switching 85 percent of long-haul trucking to rail, we could reduce U.S. oil use by about 12 percent and total U.S. emissions by about 4 percent.

In addition, it would add long-distance power transmission across the lines of regional grids, creating a true U.S. national grid to share power from coast to coast and from north to south, and it would add-high speed passenger travel. Since it would depend almost entirely on existing rail rights-of-way, the environmental impact is small compared to transmission projects and transit projects that use new rights-of-way.

Drake starts with the fact that long-distance freight trucking consumes about half as much oil as passenger transport, and that unlike passenger transport, we have an existing heavy rail system that can move goods with about eight times the energy efficiency of trucking. That system already reaches most destinations where we want to move goods. If we switched to rail, we would still need to use trucks to move goods to and from freight yards, but containerization makes that simple.

That is the good news. The bad news is that our existing rail system won't let us make this switch on a large scale. Today's freight rail operates near capacity now, and existing rail freight is slow and unreliable as compared to trucking.

Drake proposes that we upgrade our system, add various new controls and infrastructure, build second tracks besides existing rail runs, and electrify the most heavily trafficked routes, which allows trains to run at higher speeds, giving a capacity boost over and above that provided by additional tracks. These modifications provide vastly improved capacity, speed, and reliability, and they reduce energy requirements per freight-ton. Moreover, this transformation requires only standard technology in use today throughout the world.

Small solar needs long-distance transmission as much as big wind

Average cost for new wind capacity in 2007 was per $1,710 per KW, according to the Annual Report on Wind Power 2007 [PDF]. Some of the largest new wind farms had costs as low as $1,240 per KW, while the smallest ones tallied costs as high as $2,600 per KW.

Further, large new wind farms got more use from each KW than small ones -- as much 40 percent capacity utilization for big farms on the best sites vs. a 33 percent to 35 percent average. Since capital costs and capacity utilization overwhelmingly determine wind costs, big wind is simply less expensive than small wind.

More evidence that burden sharing is the same up and down stream

We can auction carbon permits or levy carbon fees/taxes upstream (at the mine mouth or well head, or on import or refining) or downstream, where fuel is actually burned. The main argument for levying downstream is that it will distribute the burden of who pays differently than levying upstream, because the fossil fuel industry won't be able to pass all of the fee or tax along. Most other arguments for downstream emissions pricing depend on that as a premise.

In my last post I pointed out that a gasoline tax, which is levied about as far upstream as possible, still ends up with about half the cost pushed back (PDF) to the producers. Since that thread has grown very long, I want to point out that general economic theory holds that where a consumption tax is levied generally does not affect tax incidence. To translate that from economic jargon: even if the store writes the check to the government, the customer still pays a lot of the cost. If the customer had to write the check to the government, the store would have to lower prices to make up for some (but not all) of the payment by the customer.

VRB's long-life flow battery was a reliable electricity storage alternative for renewable energy

VRB Power applied for insolvency in November [PDF]. A combination of a bad economy and a product that was more suited for future markets than today's electricity generators dealt VRB the final blow. This is bad news for the green energy community.

VRB built flow batteries -- utility scale batteries that could last for over 10,000 full charges and discharges. Cost was from $650 per kWh for small-scale systems to as a little as $300 per kWh for large-scale systems.

Admittedly the latter price was for larger systems than anyone ever ordered. It was the perfect utility-scale battery: too heavy for automobile use, but rugged and tolerant of cold, heat, and shocks. It required minimal operations and maintenance.

Even at current costs, these flow batteries could have played a key role in an energy grid based on variable sources. In today's world, it found a niche market at UPS for remote systems where maintenance was difficult, and for telecom use. Unfortunately its greater reliability could not make up for its higher cost. It was an excellent product, unfortunately mostly suited to a electric system that does not yet exist.

We can only hope the battery does not end up in patent hell -- owned by somebody who neither licenses it nor develops it themselves.