Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2013, 06:26 PM - Edit history (1)
who, for example, think in the light vehicle transportation sector, that electric cars (hybrids and esp. plug-ins) will save us. What they can't (or refuse to) grasp is that it will take about 20 years to sell enough Hybrids and Plug-ins to reach perhaps 20-25% of the entire light vehicle fleet. Achieving a 50% GHG reduction per car yields roughly a 10%-13% GHG reduction for the entire light vehicle sector.
Well, 10% - 13% reduction in 20 years is nowhere near good enough, SOON ENOUGH. Just looking at the light transportation sector, going this route, alone, we are screwed. WE need some way of producing results much quicker than that. But, many of these people turn their noses up at biofuels. But what they don't get is that - you can replace the fuel the cars burn faster than you can replace the cars that burn the fuel.
We should be aggressively investing in biomass sourced Methanol to add to the ethanol we are currently producing to get to 20% - 30% of the fuel supply as rapidly as possible (try to get to 20% of fuel supply as alcohol, from the current ~10% in tens yrs). Using cars equipped with engines that take full advantage of alcohol fuels (and thus getting as good or better mpg than with gasoline) we could get 3 times the GHG emissions reduction as is currently achieved with low compression FFVs. A 61% GHG reduction vs what DoE and EPA computes as a 19% reduction (a dubious number in itself, but that's another issue) would represent a great improvement over what we are doing now and produce results much cheaper and sooner than waiting on electric cars to be bought by one fifth of the drivers.
We certainly should continue to build electrics and encourage all who can afford them to buy them. But electrics, by themselves, won't produce enough results - soon enough - to be of much help by themselves. Unless, of course we make them so they can float and be used as boats too (a little irony).
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