Infrastructure, schminfrastructure

Recently plenty of electric car enthusiasts, environmentalists and all other folks turned up in the Canberra rain and cold for the first ever National Electric Car Festival, organized by the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.

For me it was an incredible event - a chance to meet and talk with figures from the landscape of EV's in Australia, and to see a new reality of clean, fuss-free and efficient personal transport.

In the picture I'm standing next to the 1915 Detroit Electric, one of two that were on show, and of many that tooled around the streets of Australia nearly a hundred years ago.

Do we need infrastructure for electric vehicles to take hold and begin to provide great clean transport for Aussies? Clearly not, seeing these vehicles - the demonstrations of ingenuity and relevance going back over the past century puts the lie to the idea that special preparations are needed before we can start with EV's here.

However to capitalize on all the promise of clean air, efficient transport and smarter energy that EV's are part of then there are lots of other great innovations which work alongside EV's.

I spent a bit of time chatting to Ben Keneally, Head of Marketing and External Affairs for Better Place Australia, at the Better Place stand. Ben assured me that the distinctive blue Better Place charging bollard was no mere concept mockup, but a real prototype.

If we don't need infrastructure to bring on electric cars, why Better Place?

Well, here's my take on it: electric cars are inevitable, and good job too since we need them to help save the planet. Early adopters, tech geeks and those concerned about the environment are queueing up to buy EV's and for the most part this vanguard is happy to just plug their new wheels into the fast-charging 240V AC outlets we have in Australia.

But if we have EV's and don't have a Better Place then we're losing out on a raft of other great benefits that can come with pure electric personal transport.

As Ben explained Better Place is really in the business of being a demand side energy management company. An EV driver is a energy demanding kind of person. And for all of the great convenience, efficiency and utility that running cars on electricity can give, you need the partnership between the two.

So what are these benefits?

Before I start - let me just say that this is not a feature report or a sales pitch for Better Place. Although I definitely want to see them succeed, I don't pretend to know what they offer and what they don't. But more importantly, here I want to talk about what companies like them could bring to the EV party, in the ideal world.

What a great EV oriented demand side energy company do for the new cadre of electric motorists can be summed up thusly: just-in-time energy inventory.

JIT is the efficient practice that made industry giants out of companies like Dell. Its closely allied to Lean Manufacturing which made Toyota king of the hill in vehicle manufacturing. Its tenets are own and hold only what you need, just when you need it. Eliminate waste wherever possible.

When I fill up my current dinosaur burning Prius with petrol, I am carrying around enough fuel to drive to Sydney. It sloshes around in my petrol tank and does no-one any good, weighing the car down and actually costing me in energy to transport it, and in the opportunity cost of owning the fuel when I don't need it. And then a month or more later when I finally get through all that petrol, I go and fill it back up to full again.

When you think about it like that it is incredibly wasteful. If I took the approach of only filling up at the gas station when I actually needed it, and put the balance of the money into my mortgage instead I'd save thousands.

So why do I waste thousands of dollars this way? Why does everyone? Because with petrol you have all of the inconvenience of driving in to a petrol station, and waiting in line to fill up before queueing to pay. I don't want to repeat that charade any more than I have to so I pay thousands over all the years for the convenience of being able to carry around a lot more petrol than I need.

With electricity you get all that convenience for free - if you have a Better Place around to make it possible. Smart charging points, micro-energy accounting, energy market aware charging policies, and smart grids: all things that make for EV's that can take an active role in their own energy use. Vehicles that work for us, to our command, charging up just as needed, when its best saving us money, at the same time as saving the environment.

Just-in-time energy for transport is the promise of demand side EV power management, and companies like Better Place are stepping in to fill a great opportunity in this niche, by supplying the charging points, battery swap facilities and other paraphenalia that people and corporate entities might want to cater for the EV revolution.

But above all the physical manifestation of this sort of hardware infrastructure is the software infrastructure: all the business solutions that need to be in place so I can buy automatically $0.85 worth of electricity while I'm parked in the supermarket carpark.

We don't need infrastructure to have EV's - but we'd be mad not to get infrastructure to make EV's be the best they can be.

I like the convenience that I now enjoy with buying songs from iTunes over the internet: I look forward to that coming to my personal transport, and me not having to do anything special to enjoy it - certainly not queueing up in a dirty malodorous petrol station.

A slow grass roots movement

Its starting to feel like the battles have all been won.

We have a President of the USA who is listening to scientists and informed advisors, and who as a result is leading the way to a greener future - and a major plank of Obama's platform is electric vehicles.

Here in Australia the politico's aren't arguing about whether to have a green policy, its just which one, and who is greener than who.

In 2010, a whole slew of car manufacturers will be delivering new zero emission electric vehicle models - and the factories and supply chains for these are rumbling along as I write this.

What I think is most exciting is that all of this is mirrored by a beginning groundswell of us ordinary humans, eagerly waiting to get our hands on these cleaner more hi-tech electric cars.

But one very important thing should not be lost sight of with this change: it will be a slow-burning revolution. There'll be no overnight toppling of the old regime of internally-combusting dinosaur-burning auto's.

As we've already seen with the Prius, the rate of supply of batteries and other components has meant that the demand for the high-miler has typically outstripped supply.

When EV's come on the market, even if prices are initially inflated, there will be far fewer units available than eager drivers waiting to buy one. The auto-makers are busy testing the waters with every market research tool they have, but still caution and costs of tooling factories will mean that production capacity will be initially low, and waiting lists for the new cars will be long.

And yet, its funny - when I talk to ordinary folks around about EV's there is occasionally a very defensive reaction.

Its almost as though the arrival of electric vehicles is expected to be like going to digital television: an overnight government mandated changeover where new-fangled equipment will be forced on sometimes unwilling citizens along with assurances that its all for the best.

Well, it is all for the best.

But there is no overnight thing, and there's no mandate either.

For those that love their gas-guzzler, I'd love to say please consider driving something greener - but the reality is, that big old bus is not going to be supplanted by an EV because the green and bleeding-edge technology loving crowd will be grabbing all the EV's that come down the line.

A couple of weekends ago I was at the foundation meeting of the Brisbane branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.

And it was a fascinating group.

One third roughly were the green-tech crowd I mentioned - in fact there was quite the contingent of software engineers (like me), along with a few other types of engineers. Another third were solid green and star-gazing types, familiar with promoting the low carbon agenda.

All of us in those two-thirds (barring a few with electric cycles and so on) were in the "wannabe" category when it came to electric vehicles. For us in this sector of the electric green-swell the belief is that it's all a brand new wave.

Then there were the other third: electric vehicle grey-beards and sages of back-yard engineering who have been designing, building and driving around in their own electric vehicles for decades. This inventive entrepreneurial vanguard have been waiting so long for this revolution you could forgive them for being a bit tetchy.

Outside the meeting was parked a Honda City converted to electric over 14 years ago.

Since arriving back in Australia from Silicon Valley in December last year this was the first electric vehicle I had seen.

In less than 2 weeks I'll be flying down to Canberra for the AEVA's National Electric Vehicle festival - the first of its kind.

There I'll be seeing dozens of electric vehicles. From the ultra-fast, ultra-desirable Tesla, to the home-grown sports cars of Australia's EV innovators and hardware hackers.

From these firsts, we're going to see a slow dawning of a new age of zero emissions vehicles.

The electric vehicle revolution is slowly happening. I'm hoping its not too tardy to turn around rising levels of pollution, and the economic damage of oil.

How long then before gas-guzzlers are the same kind of curiosity that electric cars are today?

I'm picking it will take a decade for it to be an overnight success.

Our Governator has the Cahoolies

Just in case you haven't heard, that legendary cigar chomping tough guy, Hummer driver and California Governor, has sent a sculpture of bulls testicles to lawmakers in a wry attempt to suggest greater fiscal and legislative courage was needed to make unpopular decisions in tough economic times.

Governor Schwarzennegger has however not been making the really hard decisions, when it comes to putting the bite on the heavy hitting oilmen who so far have been getting a free ride on taxation, and enjoy massive state sponsored benefits.

I was reading about all of this, after receiving an interesting email from Doug Korthof:

Sleazy California politicians join corrupt regulators in proposing new handouts to Big Oil, this time allowing new offshore oil drilling. This is the WRONG way to go, we need to leave all oil, especially exotic and expensive oil, IN THE GROUND, not pay subsidies to help drill it up and burn it.

Chevron admitted to the California Coastal Commission that they dump their "drilling spoils" in the Ocean because "it's too toxic to barge to land, we'd need an air resources permit". Now, they are asking for new drilling, and new threats to the Ocean, instead of paying their fair share of taxes.

(thanks Doug) and it occurred to me that we have a tough decision maker right here in Queensland that could show the Governator what it means to have the Cahoolies.

What I'm talking about is Premier Anna Bligh's excellent policy of abolishing fuel subsidies. These subsidies, like such subsidies everwhere go into the pockets of the fuel companies and fail to help the farmers and the bushies.

I sent Premier Anna Bligh MP a letter - which is only very slightly tongue-in-cheek - commending her administration on the policy, and suggesting that she tell her fellow state politician in the northern hemisphere how we roll up our sleeves down under.

Here's the text of the letter, faxed recently:

Anna Bligh MP

Premier of Queensland

PO Box 15185

City East Queensland 4002

Dear Ms Bligh

Your government is to be commended on its stand on fuel subsidies.

Removing these subsidies is not, as some have tried to say, a new tax, but a removal of an iniquitous burden on the tax-payers of Queensland, and an end to a system that rewarded wasteful and greedy behavior, whilst failing to help regional Queensland.

Additionally for too long those who maintained wasteful and negligent practices with regard to their own motor vehicles, have been subsidised by those of us who mindful of the environment and our energy security try to reduce usage of fossil fuels. The end to the subsidy is welcomed by those of us that want to see clean air for our children to breathe and a reduction in the hemorrhage of cash to foreign oil producing nations.

As a Software Engineer I recently returned to Brisbane from working in California's Silicon Valley.

As a Brisbane resident, rate-payer and voter, I am proud of the initiatives our state is promoting in these very difficult economic circumstances. Its a chance to make far-sighted reform for long term good. While Queensland works to define itself as the Smart State, these new measures of removing the fuel subsidy are world beating, and are to a standard of independence from industry influence, and courageous right-thinking that the Governor of California ought to aspire.

I would like to suggest that the Bligh Government send Governor Schwarzennegger a statement of support for his planned new tax regime, as his administration struggles to address terrible budgetary problems in the State of California. It might be appropriate to remind him of the previously planned tax on oil production which according the Los Angeles times:

How embarrassing is it for California to be hanging out there alone? That outstanding anti-tax crusader, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in 2007 raised her state’s tax to 25% of the value of extracted oil and gas. ... At the current world benchmark price of about $70, the 6% tax contemplated by Proposition 87 would have generated more than $1 billion a year

Instead of raising these much needed taxes it seems independence from industry influence requires a fortitude that is lacking, as California's watchdogs:

dismissed assurances from the Schwarzenegger administration that his panel's
independence would not be eroded. ...

"You've taken the position of destroying several decades of work by this commission," he told Sheehy, pointing out that it was established in
the late 1930s after an oil scandal had snared state officials.

It would be a great thing for Queensland to show its international credentials by reaching out to another state as it too struggles to manage energy policy in the face of public opinion, industry pressure and challenging financial circumstances.

Again I would like to congratulate your government on this policy, and hope it continues to show its world beating standards in governance and independence while also demonstrating good fiscal management in these difficult economic times.

I'm sure someone at the Premier's office fell of their chair with surprise at actually receiving a positive message regarding the fuel policy.

But its time we started paying the actual cost of the black gold. The fact that there is a federal tax does not in anyway construe this new policy of removing the state subsidy as a "new tax".

That removal of the subsidy is somehow a tax is a bizarre construction, straight from the spin-merchants hired by vested interests. Those vested interests want to keep up their unsustainable practices, filling our air with tail-pipe emissions, and they want our tax dollars to pay for it.

Bravo for a Premier with the cahoolies to say no!

Clean Vehicle Adoption - VHS & BetaMax all over again?

One of the things that drives me crazy about clean vehicle debates is the binary nature of the dialogue: hydrogen or electric? Plug-in hybrid & range-extended or flex-fuel?

Sides are forming, straw men are being thrown up, and in the technology of the new clean green car it looks like a VHS versus BetaMax argument all over again.

When new technologies come on-line the supposed way things happen is that the best tech wins as the relative merits are discovered by an unsung army of innovative consumer investigators who compare the offerings and vote with their wallets.

Innovators in small numbers buy the new technology just because its new. These folks love trying out new stuff, and don't mind if it doesn't work perfectly.

Then the early adopters get on the bandwagon - they can see that the new tech actually provides a pragmatic solution to their real world need, and are willing to spend a bit extra in time and cash to find out how. There's lots more numbers of these trend-setters, and a key difference (at least according to the theory) is that they'll send out the message via journalism, blogging, and the whole range of public expression.

You can see from the diagram how the rest of the population takeup follows on from these ground-breaking types. In the ideal cleaner world, at any rate.

But in the case of VHS and BetaMax the best product didn't win. It was a case of marketing, politics, vested interests, sides being taken and sheer chance.

So how do the folks out there make their choices? What makes a technology debate finally settle to where it seems like it was always meant to be that way? What will Joe Sixpack do? What car will he choose?

Those lining up behind Hydrogen as a solution are running the argument that Joe Sixpack is on their side, and therefore manufacturers and governments should focus on the hydrogen highway. The argument goes that Joe and his friends will choose the hydrogen cars, because they look like that SUV he already has.

Of course the Honda FCX Clarity is a big four door car. And it looks like a valid choice. Hydrogen filling stations, SUV's with gas pedals: its not a hard sacrifice for Joe Sixpack to make.

But its actual on-road cost is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can only lease them, and then with a insurance bill that reflects the units actual value. It will be 5-10 years before the investments in hydrogen technology research produce a vehicle that can be mass produced.

And Honda has now committed to electrification as the way forward, with plans to produce a range of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, including electric motorcycles.

Toyota, Mitsubish, Nissan, GM and most major manufacturers have now switched to electrification as their key strategy for clean vehicles with plans for either all electric or plug-in hybrid/range-extended vehicles starting from 2010.

But doesn't Joe Sixpack get a wallet vote here? How do these manufacturers know they've chosen VHS or BetaMax?

As much as I hate to say it I don't think the noble consumer vote is going to carry much sway here, since our decisions are going to be mostly made for us by pricing - hydrogen cars are way to expensive to produce.

At present if you live California or Iceland you can refill the hydrogen fuel cell that supplies electricity to your electrically powered vehicle. But in Australia, and most of the rest of the world, where hydrogen is still a commercial gas for industry, produced in relatively small quantities from fossil fuels, pulling into the local hydrogen station is at least 10 years away.

Yes, hydrogen can be produced from water using electricity - but then why not just use the electricity?

Why do we have to build out a collection of hydrogen filling stations just to act as middle-men? Are we trying to keep Joe Sixpack happy here, or is it actually ExxonMobil?

I have cheap electricity already coming out of a socket in my garage, so explain to me again why I should drive somewhere, and queue up so I can pay someone for it?

And what the manufacturers and governments are realizing is that it will not be a reality for the early and late adopters in their very large numbers, for ten years at least.

Another compelling argument for going straight to electricity over using hydrogen as an electricity middle-man is the Smart Grid.

Its certain that the Smart Grid will be a necessary innovation to both enable new efficient energy consumption strategies for consumers, and to manage the growth of solar, wind and other alternative electric power sources. The way we get power at present is that each turbine and generator that is bought online at the local power station to meet a days peaking usage results in a big step up in power availability. Its like power is sprayed out over the consuming public from a fire-hose, and another fire engine just backed up to pump out more.

Its a hit-and-miss operation, where the amounts we choose to use bear little relation to the generation capacity power authorities have to produce. A SmartGrid allows a feed back loop where intelligent management of capacity and consumption makes the consumers partners in the process - instead of a firehose, we get to channel more like what we need.

Also the SmartGrid enables balancing and management of clean energies at the times they're produced - on windy days, or sunny days for example.

When we see large scale take up of clean vehicles that don't use oil to power them, an amazing by product will be the free electricity no longer needed by the refineries - one analyst at least says that this amount of electricity would power the equivalent electric vehicles of the petroleum that would have been produced. This changing face of electricity production and usage in the face of climate change initiatives and a new greener high-tech economy will necessarily require a smart grid to manage it.

So we're going to have to get a SmartGrid - where does Hydrogen fit into that? Answer, nowhere that I can see.

Electric vehicles can use the SmartGrid to charge at off peak times, and even take an active part in buffering the SmartGrid. Hydrogen doesn't work that way, and the Joe Sixpack consumer model hydrogen gas station is even worse of a fit.

Nevertheless, common-sense and the good of mankind have never been good enough reasons to do the right thing.

And its certain that adoption of cleaner vehicles will be slow going.

If you follow the "Crossing the Chasm" theory of technology adoption, there is a big gulf between those true-believing converts in the early adoption camp, and their reticent counterparts in the early adoption majority.

But this is yet another win for electric vehicles, in my view. Electric cars are the ideal chasm bridging technology, because they provide a way to "sharpen the wedge".

Hydrogen has a big hump to get over with its requirements for new fuel cell technology, hydrogen filling stations, cryogenic storage and a laundry list of high-tech advances.

But with electric vehicles, ordinary folks are building them out of spare bits and pieces in their garages. The technology is really nothing new. That innovative spirit that has us rolling up our sleeves and tinkering in the shed will give traction to the already burgeoning grass roots electric car movement.

Also making the take up slope less of a hike is the the time-saving and budget-conscious aspects of electric vehicle ownership. I don't have to do anything new with my electric car - just park it and plug it in. The socket is right there, where I park my car - its a no-brainer. No more finding time to get to the gas station, or adding up those 4c per liter savings vouchers.

Don't get me wrong - its not that I don't think hydrogen has a future. It definitely has a future, especially in fleet and heavy vehicle usage.

But to get over the hump of clean vehicle adoption before we all choke on our collective soot, we can start with an easy curve to climb.

2010 will be the year when we see these new cars arrive in numbers sufficient to make a difference. Zero tail-pipe emissions is a really good difference to be able make, especially around our schools, our cities, and our local environment.

It will be exciting to finally have the chance to be part of that difference.

The Answer Man

How do we save the world as it teeters on the brink of an energy crisis and a climate change catastrophe?

Many governments now are scrambling to put together a coherent set of answers: some sort of plan to address this question.

I recently read a slim volume by investigative journalist and author Edwin Black which steps up to provide such answers.

"The Plan" is nothing less than a no-holds-barred manifesto of energy security politics. It reads as a apocalypse survival plan, detailing week by week how western civilization might save themselves when the black gold stops flowing, and anarchy rules our streets.

From my perspective - not being a politician looking for a policy - the most eye-opening part of the book was the coverage of the fragility of oil supply. The book opens with this important background, before it gets into the survivalist stuff.

Oil has over a century ago stopped being a commodity - it no more follows supply and demand or any other market place rules than nuclear weaponry. Oil is a political issue.

Enter the IEA. This is an organization dedicated to protecting nations who join it from the impact of oil supply loss. Set up after the oil shocks of the 70's, the IEA member nations recognize that loss of even a fraction of supply would lead to an apocalypse - the signatories agree to help each other in the event of such a calamity by immediately executing a three-pronged action:

• stockdraw - releasing strategic reserves
• surge production - increase of supply from internal oil sources
• demand restraint - reducing oil consumption

This material is compelling reading. It puts a lot of what I already knew about the Oil Shocks of the 1970's and later into chilling perspective.

But doesn't this sound like a plan?

It would if the first two items would address a tiny part of the impact of an oil shock. Even a drop in oil supply to the USA of 5% would trigger the stock draw - raiding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The month or so that the SPR would last is nowhere near enough time to enable demand restraint. Anything that had not been already prepared would be overwhelmed by chaos before it got off the drawing boards.

And surge production - the USA is already using and drying up its own oil wells. If the 5% drop is more widespread than just the USA then the chances of other countries being willing or able to surge supply enough to get the USA out of the fat-fire are near zero.

But the big flaw is demand restraint.

Demand restraint? Are you kidding?

If there's one thing that will get an American president shaking in his boots, its trying to get US citizens to restrain their gas guzzling ways. And a century of GM marketing teaching them that success is the same as a big car is going to take a long time to turn around.

New Zealand responded with great restraint during the Oil Shock times by instituting carless days.

USA has no plan and no ability to do anything like carless days, even though its obligations through its membership of the IEA decrees that it should.

But do we really have to worry about another oil shock?

Black shows why we should expect it as a virtual inevitability. He covers a range of threats from military, through economic, to pragmatic which will likely realize the substantial ruination of oil supply.

It won't take much.

After Hurricane Katrina hit the continental USA and took a number of refineries offline, the availability there dropped by 5% - this is the figure sufficient to trigger releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

A drop of 7% is enough to precipitate an international crisis, and trigger obligations under the IEA membership.

Losing 10% of oil supply in the USA is unthinkable: so "off the charts that we can't model it" according to one of Black's sources.

This is because the USA has already hit its Peak Oil - its been many decades since those cocky Texas oilmen were supplying anything more than a trickle of the black gold gushing into the USA's unquenchable gullet.

Around 60% of the oil used in the USA is imported. But what is more interesting is that due to Oil Market intricacies, while it would appear that most of that oil comes from friendly countries such as Canada - the true picture is that USA is far more exposed to the middle-eastern oil markets than raw import source percentages would suggest.

But even looking at raw figures, Saudi Arabia supplies over 10% of US oil.

This fact alone leaves the super-power critically vulnerable. Its why twice during his presidency as Black describes, George Bush went cap in hand to the Saudis asking for price breaks. The volatile nations of the middle-east have the the international oil market in the palm of their hand.

The remainder of The Plan presents a range of energy initiatives that would allow a shattered country to try to survive the impact of an oil apocalypse:

• upfitting vehicles to CNG, and other alternative energy sources
• using sugar cane and other sustainable ethanol programs
• stopping corn ethanol production - it uses more petroleum products than it produces
• hydrogen and electric vehicles
• moving off oil fired heating

Of course Blacks point is that if the Plan is instituted now, instead of waiting for the disaster then maybe we can pull back from the precipice.

Hydrogen Update

This is an update on an earlier blog article about Edwin Blacks book "Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives".

Mr Black responded to my offer of commentary - his comments are in red below.

Where as for hydrogen:
A 2008 report from the National Research Council estimated it would take $200 million from government and industry over the next 15 years to commercialize hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to the point they could be competitive with gas vehicles.(Reported by reuters)

These are just politicized numbers. Last year, I drove a GM hydrogen car that used water dispensed from a Shell station to create the fuel.

The problems of practical transport using hydrogen are well known - see this article in Popular Mechanics for an even handed analysis.

Hydrogen has its hands as dirty as oil, since it is traditionally made from natural gas, a fossil fuel. Companies mentioned by Black in his chapter on hydrogen, such as Linde, and Air Liquide are now leading members of the National Hydrogen Association, along with guess who: General Motors and Shell.

A common feedstock is not natural gas but pure water.

There are 3 main ways to make hydrogen--reform it from natural gas as some wish so they can use existing infrasture, electrolyze it from water like the Shell station in Santa Monica ( I favor), or use bacterial generation which still being perfected to yield higher amounts.

Hydrogen could be synthesized from your hat--it is in 99% of the universe.

Hydrogen futurists such as Dr Alan Lloyd were pivotal in killing off the California zero emissions mandate. The ZEV laws brought in by the California Air Resources Board to fight chronic smog had led to a huge flurry of electric vehicle activity in California. In the period where Lloyd was the Chairman of the California Air Resources Board and Secretary of the California EPA the electric vehicle innovation and recharge point infrastructure rollout was crushed literally, and replaced with a highly touted hydrogen program.

I know Lloyd. He was not a hydrogen futurist. The hydrogen fuel cell was invented in 1838.

Lloyd was also Chairman of the California Fuel Cell partnership. He vehemently denied that this was a conflict of interest.

Of course proponents of hydrogen with vested interests ranging from pet research to major investment, are ready with all sorts of arguments against the view that electric is superior to hydrogen for transport. Even if they're not all Lloyds with a cash register tune playing in their ears, their views are based on theory.

Remember Sarah--the hydrogen car is just an electric car with the electricity generated from as hydrogen reaction. Now you can generate electricity from a battery, from on-board hydrogen, or a squirrel in a cage--just the end product is all the same--electricity out of the fuel combination to run the wheels. Batteries are a dirty business. It is brown green, not green green. Water is clean. It only takes a zap of electricity to electrolyze it. In Vegas that is done with solar.

Electric Vehicle Update

In October the Australian Electric Vehicle Association has its first ever field day. Yours truly will be there and I plan to report on the event.

The guys from the AEVA have been building and driving electric vehicles, approved for driving on our roads now for decades.

I agree with Mr Black that hydrogen can be generated cleanly, and I hope some day soon that it will.

I believe that avoiding the Oil Apocalypse will take a broad ranging response - a response from all of us. And an effective robust response will involve a range of technologies.

We have to start now - and we can start with non-oil burning technologies that we have on our roads right now - and for me electric vehicles are the most exciting reality, but of course CNG and LPG will play a role, as will biodiesel.

I'm sure that the current success and innovation in electric vehicles will pave the way for a viable hydrogen powered car, since as Mr Black says, hydrogen is essentially another way to power an electric vehicle.

I look forward to seeing a hydrogen vehicle on our shores as soon as possible.

In the meantime, come and join me at the AEVA's electric vehicle open day!

Fighting green car FUD

Its amazing to me that the FUD spread by big oil and big autos around climate change and green car technologies actually continues to get recycled.  I'm talking about the bogus claim that electric cars are not green because they only use power from dirty coal fired power stations.

We've been through this stuff before when the tobacco industry tried to convince everyone that their product was not a toxic killer.

Filter cigarettes are lighter, and therefore OK to keep smoking, they said via pseudo-scientific sounding mouthpieces.  Anything to convince their public not to give up the fatal but profitable tobacco product.

Now no-one that still smokes cigarettes are in any doubt what the product is doing to their health, with all packets covered with grisly depictions of the medical hazards, and the net of legislation tightening to restrict its use even further.

Does anyone doubt that we have a crisis with climate change now?  I think there are no doubts here in Australia.

David Jones, the acting head of the National Climate Centre of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, says the recent heatwave conditions in south-eastern Australia, were related to climate change.

In this heatwave temperatures went up beyond 40 degrees celsius (104 fahrenheit) across 3 states. In Melbourne, Victoria the local morgue filled with victims of the heat.

"People will need to get used to these sort of heatwaves. As the climate heats up though this century, they are going to become much more common." says Jones.  The Bureau of Meteorology has a good summary of the reality of Global Warming and our role in it.

But incredibly we've still not learned to critically examine the claims of well-funded private sector "studies" when they support the exact line pedalled by big corporations.

The first of the FUD was the "Prius is less green than the Hummer" story.  This was back when folks were still laughing up their sleeves about climate change, and loved to seize on any chance to get one over the "greener than thou" Prius.

The story rested entirely on a "study" done by market research company CNW which never had any supporting science.  Most of their "research" was phone enquiries.

David Friedman, research director of the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says “This study has been completely contradicted by studies from MIT, Argonne National Labs and Carnegie Mellon’s Lifecycle Assessment Group. The reality is hybrids can significantly cut global warming pollution, reduce energy use, and save drivers thousands at the pump” (quoted in a recent article).

The latest FUD is this line that electric cars don't reduce pollution because they just use electric power generated by coal fired power stations. Incredibly this hogwash is getting traction amongst car fanciers here in Australia.

Here is the reality: if electric cars were introduced tomorrow across the USA, without any change to the way electricity is currently produced, a 27% reduction in pollutants would result.  This is from a Department of Energy Study - not from a market research firm.

Why is this so?

There are two main reasons - pretty obvious really:

• not all electric power is from coal fired power stations, already some power comes from clean sources such as hydro-electricity; and 
  
• electric cars are more efficient per trip than petrol cars
  

So there are immediate upfront gains.

But the real story comes from long term benefits.  There is no feasible plan to clean up the pollution coming from a billion exhaust pipes.  But there are plenty of ways to clean up the pollution coming from power stations.  

Carbon sequestration is science fiction right now.  As far as I know it is not currently possible to run a clean coal fired power station, despite the hopes for it.  Same as hydrogen fuel cells, and clean diesels.

But we have a range of other clean power generation options, and every saving made there is a saving in clean transportation when vehicles are electric.  This is real and available now.

There is no magic filter, to make our smoking exhaust habit healthy and clean.

But we can switch to non-polluting electric cars.  Lets stop believing the FUD.

We have lots more to worry about with climate change than the beach getting closer.  We are killing our world.

Lets start doing something about it.

The new new economy

In the heyday of the Internet boom, startups were wooing normally sage and conservative investors with crazy on-line get-rich-quick- schemes, all in the name of the New Economy.

"See, its ok that we're not going to make any profit, and that we're going to burn a million bucks a month hiring geeks and paying for their parties and nerf weaponry, because - hey - its the New Economy. You don't need to actually monetize this stuff because everyone can see that this new web-enabled tom-foolery-powered service of ours is going skyward!"

There's a lot to be said about all that, like how it was marketing guys from Harvard and vulture capitalists from Wall Street, that really pushed the bubble skyward, not the geeks who just wanted to write code.

But I don't want to get distracted by the history of the New Economy because I'm only bringing up that old ancient history - so last decade - to make a comparison. A comparison with the New New Economy: Energy.

If you thought the dot.com era was crazy, get ready to suspend disbelief and put away your financial sensibilities all over again, because a new cadre of oddball entrepreneurs are coming to Silicon Valley.

The really really irritating thing is that we do desperately need innovation on the energy front.

But there is a lot more chaff than wheat in these biodiesel, fuel-cell, solar, wind and other schemes - and the average joe, the man on the Clapham omnibus, and the investor are going to have a tough time seeing through it.

Remember post-9/11 when there was a need to do something about terrorism, and a million fly-by-night companies and consultants sprung up to dip in the money pot? But there were not just those private sector types; there were also bureaucrats, and public-sector pencil-pushers in newly set up organizations; all because money was being thrown around and someone had to be there to scoop it up. Now this is tax-payers money I'm talking about, as well as investors money.

The same tax-payers waiting in huge long lines at the airport to have our bags searched and take our shoes off in some bizarre ritual designed to make us feel something is being done.

In the New New Economy there will be:

• Wacky schemes touted as "breakthroughs" designed to scoop up investment cash and venture capital
• Think-tanks, studies and websites that are actually FUD campaigns from PR companies paid by vested corporate interests, in Old Economy energy sectors like oil, coal and rubber
• Jumped up government organizations, full of idealism but with no power to do anything except generate press-statements
• Cynical government organizations, full of fat-cat bureaucrats who have just rotated out of some corporation
• Some genuine useful and profitable enterprises working with energy technologies that we already know to work well

What? No amazing new breakthroughs that genuinely advance energy technology?

See - its like this. All our energy comes from one place - a big nuclear reactor 93 million miles away. Its called the sun.

From the time before there were people and cars, the sun was putting energy into the Earth that wound up getting stored as coal and oil, but there's only a very small amount of that stuff.

The Sun has been storing it for millions of years.

We've been using it for a hundred years, and its close to gone.

Of course there's geothermal and similar energy sources, but when we talk about fuel, we're on track to use it all up in the next 10 years or so. Maybe you don't believe that, maybe we'll all start driving Prius cars, and maybe the Tooth Fairy is real - maybe it will last 50 years.

That doesn't really matter, because it will all be gone in our lifetimes.

No more oil, no more petrol, for you or I.

And it'll take the sun another bunch of a million years to make more.

Our lifetimes? Great - lets wait until then to develop alternative energy.

Uhhh - except by then it will be too late.

Government and big business already had half-a-century of warnings that we needed to do something.

The first warning signs were back in 1973 when there was a global oil crisis. Here's an excerpt from that linked article, by Brian Trumbore:

When OPEC announced the sharp price rise, the shock waves were immediate. Industrial democracies, accustomed to uninterrupted sources of cheap, imported oil, were suddenly at the mercy of a modern Arab nationalism, standing up to American oil companies that had once held their countries in a vise grip. Many of these "new" Arabs were Harvard educated and familiar with the ways of the West, and to many Americans it was impossible to understand how their standard of living was now being held hostage to obscure border clashes in strange parts of the world.

Later in the 70's more of the "new" Arabs flexing their power over the decadent west, led New Zealand (where I was living at the time) to introduce Carless Days, in an attempt to stem the haemorrhage of petro-dollars. In the USA we began to hear phrases like "strategic reserve" and "energy security".

If you had this sticker on your windscreen, no car for you on Thursday. Get a ride from your friend that has a "Friday" sticker, and then swap the next day.

This stuff affected peoples lives. But big oil, the auto industry, the technologists - what did they do after this big wakeup call? Produce cars that use more petrol, not less.

To find out about the rank bastardry of these companies read:

• Plug-in Hybrids, the Cars that will Recharge America by Sherry Boschert
• Car Mania: A Critical History of Transport by Winifred Wolf and Gus Fagan

Both books talk about how National City Lines, a bus company, was setup by Standard Oil of California, General Motors and Firestone tyres in 1936 to scrap the electric public transit system of California. In 1940 by lobbying the government and using financial muscle they achieved this in Fresno, San Jose and Stockton, using their subsidiary Pacific City Lines. In 1944 they followed up by gutting the electric transit system in Los Angeles.

Two weeks ago I went on a trip to Monterey for my 3rd wedding anniversary, and we stayed in the lovely Old St Angela Guest House overlooking Monterey Bay. Sitting in the old brocaded lounge room, I spoke with an elderley gentlemen who recalled those days in Los Angeles.

He had a look of amazement and betrayal on his face, when he talked about how Standard Oil, Firestone tyres and General Motors had gotten away with this.

San Francisco still has its street cars, and these are as ever popular and effective a service as they always were. Why did those companies do what they did? For profit.

So the 1970's came and went and big autos and big oil just went right back to doing what they have always done. Profiting at our expense, and at the expense of our futures.

Now that we're staring down the barrel of a new energy crisis, what do you think those corporate guys are going to do?

More of the same.

They want a system where they control trucks delivering some product to a gas station and lots of obedient consumers queueing up to fork over their cash. They want cars to keep on being sold and folks to keep buying tyres to go on them.

So what can we rely on?

What is the real answer, if we can't rely the answer to come out of a bowser at a gas station?

The final answer is not going to be one magic product that solves everything. There is no magic bullet.

There is no scientific discovery just about to pop out of a test-tube at the HQ of Exxon-Mobil.

The final answer will be a locality-based energy blend of the following:

• Electric power reticulated by conventional and DC smart-grids, and generated by:
  • nuclear power stations, because the air you're breathing from the local coal plant is exposing you to more radioactivity than any of the hundreds of nuclear plants that are quietly and safely powering the USA right now
  • hydro-electric
  • wind
  • hi-energy solar
  • sanitised coal-fired plants, in cases where absolutely nothing else is possible
• and to a much lesser degree, bio-fuels and alternative fuels

Because the key to solving this new crisis, and the key simultaneously to tapping into the New New Economy is not to think about "what do we put in our tanks?".

The June 21st-27th 2008 edition of The Economist magazine, a dry publication of conservative British money-men, has a 14 page article on "The Future of Energy". It makes for interesting reading. When I received the paper copy in the mail I was amazed to see how frankly they were approaching the whole issue, and very very interested to see who they were predicting would be striking it rich in this new energy boom.

The old guard Standard Oil, Exxon-Mobile etc - they don't rate much of a mention.

Its the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the new innovators that The Economist is looking to for taking the lead.

From The Economist:

You don't hear much about the hydrogen economy these days. Nor fuel cells. The buzz-phrase is "plug-in hybrid".

Climate change, has hit all of our consciousnesses now. If Katrina wasn't enough - and you're not watching the international press to learn of environment disasters overseas - then pick up the "City of Moutain View - Water Quality '07" report and read the front page headline: "Drought Declared".

Governor Schwarzenegger declared the first statewide drought in 17 years. March and April 2008 were among the driest in California's recorded history.

Ordinary people are now caring deeply about climate change and looking for answers - they're buying fuel efficient cars, for that reason as well as for reasons of financial economy.

They've heard the FUD about Hummer vs Prius and said "Are you kidding? Buy a gas guzzler when petrol is at these crazy prices?".

Here's the changes ahead:

Electric vehicles

• 90% of private journeys in vehicles will be made in an all electric vehicle (either private vehicles or public transit systems)
• All motor-vehicle manufacturers still in business, will have performance and prestige vehicles that are electric powered and zero emission
  
• Alternative fuel vehicles will be a small and unpopular minority amongst consumers
• They will be seen as a backward, noisy, inconvenient and low-prestige option to the electric vehicle
• Electric cars will be refuelled by points at cafe's, supermarkets, company car parks - everywhere you see wireless internet offered now, free recharge points will be available
• Electric cars will "top up" via solar panels that add another 10% or more to the time between refuelling stops
• Compared with this convenience, the new fuel cells, and bio-fuels will be a very low-brow, beta-max option

Alternative Fuels

• Other vehicles, such as long-haul trade vehicles; and a few passenger trips will be made in vehicles powered by alternative fuels
• fuels will be different state-to-state, county-to-county, due to cost driven factors such as local by-product availablity, for example sugar cane wastes; and costs of reticulation, storage and transport
• there will in general be no large scale production and reticulation of fuels by big companies
• Instead ethanol, and diesel substitutes such as pure vegetable oil will be supplied by an eclectic bunch of localized smaller and larger businesses capitalizing on supply of by-products in their area, for example corn husks, or timber mill waste
• These businesses will employ local labour and talent to meet the demand, instead of all the profits of the transport industry going to oil and petroleum monopolists
• aviation and defence will become far and away the biggest users of fossil fuels but both of these will be at a fraction of their current levels for a range of reasons

So there it is. My little bit of a futurism for the day.

Roll on the New New Economy.