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Review: Ergosphere on Energy |
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Written by Arthur Smith
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Friday, 18 March 2005 |
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The Ergosphere is a blog that's been around for about a year now, touching on roughly the same energy policy topics we've been working on, with some excellent technical summaries of the issues. Thanks to a post on RealClimate for a pointer! The author's take on energy issues is a serious and technical one - one particularly interesting analysis is this discussion of the transportation problem. As he points out, actual energy at the wheels as used in transportation in the US amounts to about 180 GW average; that's an achievable number, well under peak electric capacity. There will be losses in electric vehicles too, but far less than the 60-80% losses in internal combustion engines.
How would we actually make such a switch to electric vehicles? An interesting specific proposal is "Where to Go from Here":
- Step 1: Find the will and the money. He suggests calling it a "war", and a roughly $1/gallon gas tax to raise $100 billion/year
- Step 2: Support other fuels, but only the right ones. Methanol probably better than ethanol.
- Step 3: Use non-chemical energy. I.e. electric. Promoting plug-in hybrids as a component of this.
- Step 4: Get the energy, cleanly. He unfortunately emphasizes coal here, Integrated Gasfication Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants in particular; the one example of conversion with large power increase may not be as replicable as he suggests though. The other emphasis is gas co-generation facilities.
- Step 5: Use renewables where possible. Particularly wind.
He estimates 10 years of this program would eliminate US need to import oil, and more than pay for itself. Perhaps a bit optimistic, but it's a reasonable straw-man proposal. Only registered users can write comments.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 18 March 2005 )
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