Plugin Hybrids even closer

Byoliveridley

I tend to be a bad news blogger, so when some good news comes along, I really should mention it…  A plugin hybrid (PHEV) is a gasoline car with a battery that can be charged. So, you go 30 miles or so on battery power before switching to gasoline, and plug the cars in at night so that they will be ready to go again the next morning. The average American commute is 16 miles (one way), so the amount of gas used for work and back for me will be reduced from around 1.2 gallons (assuming about 28 mpg city for my current car) to around 0.1 gallons. Think about that!

The good thing about these batteries is that they seem to be built with ruggedness (10 year, 150,000 miles) in mind.

The Energy Blog: A123Systems Announces Li-ion Automotive Batteries

A123Systems today introduced its 32-series Nanophosphate™ Lithium Ion cells, specifically designed for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) use. These batteries leverage the company’s existing low-cost, high-volume manufacturing techniques to offer the electric drive industry a new level of price-performance.

Hope they work as advertised. My next car is definitely a PHEV.

Meanwhile, America’s most experienced, most accomplished and most sensible presidential candidate gives a truly forward looking speech on energy policy, and nobody notices. I guess he’s just not good looking enough.

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  • Climate Talks Sputter

    Byoliveridley

    China, India and the other developing nations are upset that commitments to provide financial and technological help made during a U.N. conference in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 have not translated into anything more tangible.

    Mr. Meyer estimated that the United States, Europe and other industrial nations need to come up with $150 billion a year in assistance by 2020 to help develop clean energy technology for developing countries, reduce deforestation that contributes to rising temperatures, and help vulnerable nations adapt to changes attributed to greenhouse gases.

    G-8 Nations Fail to Agree on Climate Change Plan – NYTimes.com

    Yes, it is true, North America and Europe are responsible for a bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions currently in the atmosphere and need to do the bulk of the work. But it would also behoove India and China to make the right noises. There is no sense that we’re in this together, that we will all be affected, and India and China even more so

    Leadership is lacking, the US needs to take a first big step and start things of.

    Update

    The G8 has agreed to sign on to a limit on warming of 2°C rise in global temperature. Well, how do you get there without reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, which we apparently can’t agree to do? It’s like saying you need to go a 100km more on a road trip, but refusing to agree to fill gas.

    There is a chicken and egg problem here. The famously resistant to change US system is working through a climate bill. The world is waiting to see what will happen, but the version of the bill passed by Congress is not strong enough to avert a 2°C rise unless China and India are as aggressive and there is massive technological shift away from fossil fuels. The US system is waiting for signals from the world, reasoning they don’t want to act first and unilaterally. It’s all nice game theory for people watching from the sidelines, but life’s a little more serious…

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    You breathe in toxic chemicals too.

    Byoliveridley

    Behind a frigging pay wall, as usual! Kelly et al. argue in Science that hydrophobicity, the tendency to favor oil over water (to break it down to the simplest explanation) is not the only factor that explains biomagnification. The underlying theory used to be that compounds that can dissolve in water would swiftly degrade (either chemically or biologically) and not be of any concern to humans. Compounds like dioxins, PCB’s, DDT, etc. accumulated in fat tissue of aquatic animals and these were the compounds that would biomagnify through ingestion (eating!). Kelly et al. uncover another pathway that probably made every scientist go “D’uh”! – Apparently, chemicals animals breathe in can also bioaccumulate if they are not cleared efficiently by the lungs. So, air breathing cows, chickens and pigs can also cause significant bioaccumulation of certain compounds. Which ones? I guess you’ll have to pay to find out more, but this Scientific American article adds some context. Turns out, it is about 10000 chemicals, not all of them known to be harmful, but because they were never suspect, their metabolism is unknown.

    Well, if anything, it will keep the biomonitoring folks busy for a while!

    Chemical Consequences — 317 (5835): 165g — Science

    Global regulators of commercial chemicals apply a scientific paradigm that relates the biomagnification potential of the chemical in food webs to the chemical’s hydrophobicity. However, Kelly et al. (p. 236; see the news story by Kaiser) show that current methods fail to recognize the food web biomagnification potential of certain chemicals. Certain chemicals do not biomagnify in most aquatic food chains, but biomagnify to a high degree in air-breathing animals, including humans, because of low respiratory elimination. Thus, additional criteria for evaluating biomagnification and toxicity in chemicals that biomagnify are required.

  • Value a forest, cool a planet

    Byoliveridley

    Cutting forests is the third-largest source of climate-warming carbon emissions today, larger than the emissions produced by either the US or China. Including them in a "carbon market" is a tempting solution.

    It comes down to this: Today, trees are worth more dead than alive. This despite the fact that they stash away billions of tons of carbon in their soil and themselves and constantly inhale more carbon from the atmosphere. They also help regulate the earth's climate in other ways, influencing rainfall patterns far away, including in the US. And they contain unique plant and animal life, the economic value of which is only beginning to be understood.

    Yet no dollar figure is placed on these vital services. Instead, tropical forests are cut down in favor of enterprises such as palm oil plantations or cattle grazing, endeavours that make money here and now. It’s easy to see why rain forests continue to disappear at an alarming rate.

    A report to the British government this month suggests that the way to recognize the true value of forests is by including them in carbon markets. Polluters around the world could earn credits to offset their own carbon emissions by paying for forest preservation.

    via Value a forest, cool a planet | csmonitor.com

    A carbon sink needs to be valued as much as a carbon source. Making this really happen is of course very difficult, needing accurate forest cover mappings (now available), and strict enforcement in countries that may be hard to monitor.

    The moral hazard of giving people money to do “nothing” of course is something conservatives will not like, but the trees are not doing “nothing”. Paying people for stewardship is not wrong. There would be an opportunity to change an extractive subsistence based economy into a service economy, with sustainable tourism, shade grown coffee, local guards and forest officers, etc.

    I like this idea very much. Carbon offset markets have gotten a bad name recently, but a larger scale program is necessary.

  • Nissan goes electric

    Byoliveridley

    Nissan Shows Off Its Electric Car, the Leaf – NYTimes.com

    What, no Canada? But still,  an electric hatchback, hits all my buttons and dings all my dongs! I only hope to keep my current, explosion powered hatchback long enough to not buy one ever again. Price, of course, will be a consideration. The good news is that Nissan is considering leasing the battery instead of people having to buy it up front, a great idea, not as great as the battery instant replace model from Shai Agassi and Better Place, but one that lessens the battery buying burden.

    The future is electric.

  • California takes coals out of the fire

    Byoliveridley

    Seriously, for every bit of bad news you read in the New York Times about coal, you read a good news story about the LA Times about coal!

    State acts to limit use of coal power – Los Angeles Times

    The California Energy Commission on Wednesday imposed new rules that effectively forbid the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and all other municipal utilities in the state from signing new contracts with coal-fired power plants. The move, together with identical regulations imposed on private utilities in January, is a significant step toward reducing the contribution of California, the world’s sixth largest economy, to global warming.

    This is important because California is a huge market and is imposing its market power wisely. It will buy coal power if sequestration actually works.

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    Grad student measures hazardous levels of air pollution at cigar show

    Byoliveridley

    Sure makes my graduate work in air quality seem a little tame!

    The man behind the subterfuge (Researcher 2, male) was Ryan David Kennedy, 34, a scrappy Canadian graduate student with crooked glasses who is studying the impact of tobacco on air quality.He crossed the border at Buffalo on Monday morning and on Tuesday crashed the giant cigar party and trade show sponsored by the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

    At a Cigar Show, an Air-Quality Scientist Under Deep, Smoky Cover – New York Times

    Well, what did he find? Particulate matter readings four times higher than “hazardous”. Sometimes I think of strapping on a sampler and going to the local bar just out of curiosity. I can leave the bar if it gets smoky, the bartenders and wait staff can’t. I don’t see why this is not a clear case of hazardous working conditions leading to an immediate indoor smoking ban.  but what do I know, I’m just a scientist!

    Happy Thanksgiving.

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3 Comments

  1. It’s a move in the right direction, but one also needs to take into account how the electricity used to charge the car is generated. If it’s coming from a coal-burning plant then there are still plenty of GHG emissions in the equation.

  3. That was a big concern for me too. That is why I use wind energy to fill up my plug-in Prius. So I reduce my carbon emissions with clean energy and not coal. It is just a small step in the right direction, but one I hope most will be willing to take.

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