Climate Climate & Energy

CPR for the electric car

Project Better Place has a new take on jumpstarting the electrification of transportation: they've raised $200 million (about enough to buy, what, three fuel cell vehicles?) to start building infrastructure for charging and battery exchange stations.

That's just a down payment. If you play Internet Nancy Drew for a sec you will quickly find out that Israel Corp, a major investor, also has a stake in oil refineries, and 45 percent of Chery, the Chinese car company that keeps threatening to build electric cars. These guys are invested in the full value chain, and dollars to donuts they're leveraging much more value from partner companies than the measly $200 million. We are talking about a $6-10 trillion industry, after all, which tends to focus the mind and get people working together.

Do yourself a favor and check out the video. The vision is a transportation system powered by wind and sun. And a software exec (CEO and founder Shai Aggassi comes from SAP) is exactly the right person for the job.

We don't have an energy problem, we have an energy storage problem. When I listen to Agassi talk about developing software to manage the charging strategies of EV's flexible and mobile loads in a way that enhances integration of intermittent resources like solar and wind into the grid, I get a little weak in the knees.

Combine that with REC's announcement that it was building a 1.5 GW fully integrated solar manufacturing plant in Singapore, and the future seems much brighter indeed. Note that 1.5 GW was about the size of the entire world market in 2006.

The combination of cheap solar and millions of big batteries on the grid can mean only good things.

Can urban planners save the earth?

A couple of weeks ago I was in Vancouver, B.C., at a conference where it seemed like everyone was talking about a new book called Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change.

Reviewing dozens of empirical studies, the book's central argument is that urban form is inextricably linked to climate. Low-density sprawl has been a principal contributor to North American climate emissions. And by the same token, smart compact development -- the kind that fosters less driving -- is essential to curbing climate change.

From the executive summary:

Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world

No, I don't mean cost, safety, waste, or proliferation -- though those are all serious problems. I mean the Achilles heel of nuclear power in the context of climate change: water.

Climate change means water shortages in many places and hotter water everywhere. Both are big problems for nukes:

... nuclear power is the most water-hungry of all energy sources, with a single reactor consuming 35-65 million litres of water each day.

The Australians, stuck in a once-in-a-1000-years drought, understandably worry about this a lot:

CBPP launches a climate equity program

You'll be glad to know The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has launched a major climate program whose goals are to ensure that:

• the increased energy prices that are an essential part of climate-change legislation do not drive more households into poverty or make poor households poorer; and
• climate-change legislation generates sufficient revenue both to protect low-income households and to address other needs related to the fight against global warming, so that it does not increase the deficit.

CBPP is a great group. But they need to understand that a central strategy for fighting the impact of higher energy prices on low-income consumers is an aggressive energy efficiency strategy to keep overall bills from rising, which I don't see in their work so far.

Research panel discourages presidential plan for U.S. nuclear-waste reprocessing

A 17-member panel of researchers from the National Academy of Sciences released a report yesterday discouraging President Bush from continuing on his quest to resume U.S. nuclear waste reprocessing. The researchers said the president’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership plan has not been adequately peer reviewed and relies on unproven technology. Instead, the panel suggested […]

Notable quotable

“I’ve been a Republican my whole life, but I’ll be doggoned if Al Gore isn’t right. Is it fair for you and me — this generation — to pollute for all the generations to come when we’re already seeing the effects — global warming, mercury, particulate matter?” — newly minted environmentalist Sammy Prim

Race to make the Earth look like the Moon

What with drought threatening large sections of the American West and South, perhaps it should not be surprising to see this article from the Chicago Tribune, "Great Lakes key front in water wars; Western, Southern states covet Midwest resource," in which the reporter warns:

With fresh water supplies dwindling in the West and South, the Great Lakes are the natural-resource equivalent of the fat pension fund, and some politicians are eager to raid it. The lakes contain nearly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water ... Water levels of the Great Lakes are down substantially, and while that may be part of the historic cycle of ups and downs, water managers argue the region must jealously guard what is here

Even New Mexico Governor and Presidential candidate Bill Richardson couldn't resist the temptation to speculate on using the lakes. Fortunately, there is a concerted attempt to protect them:

Eight Great Lakes-area states, from Minnesota to New York, and two Canadian provinces have proposed a regional water compact that would, among other things, strengthen an existing ban on major water diversions outside the Great Lakes Basin, home to 40 million Americans and Canadians

The many ways big money seeks to avoid reducing fossil fuel use

The following is a guest essay from Peter Montague, executive director of the Environmental Research Foundation. —– It now seems clear that the coal and oil industries are not going to allow the United States to curb global warming by making major investments in renewable sources of energy. These fossil fuel corporations simply have too […]

What if there were more Berkeleys?

Imagine if more cities started doing this — neutralizing the upfront costs of solar. It would stimulate competition and innovation in the solar industry (more than there already are). Pretty soon there would be large economies of scale for solar power and the price would drop (faster than it already is). More cities would be […]

In the end …

… it will be transparency — political and financial — that kills the coal industry.