Reply #7: With gas over $4 a gallon, people's buying habits are going to change

[kristopher]

Wind is already 39% of new installed generation, and that is with lackluster government policy support. It will take decades for renewable to fully supplant coal, but it isn't going to take decades to start taking advantage of the synergy between electric drive and load balancing for renewables. The main obstacle to this point for renewables has been the cost the renewables themselves - but wind has now dropped to competitive levels - and the cost of load balancing and dispatchability in a system dominated by greater intermittency. We now have cost effective answers to that obstacle also, so given the advancing price of carbon fuels, I think that at this point massive penetration of the market is only restrained by manufacturing capability. There is presently a three year wait on turbines and it is increasing. Manufacturers are trying to ramp up, but they can't move fast enough. As an international example, China just raised their goal from 20 GW by 2020 to 100 GW by 2020.

And I believe that switching to plug in EVs, even in the present grid configuration, produces a significant reduction in carbon emissions because of the tremendous inefficiencies of the internal combustion engine. I don't think there are any firm numbers on this because of the variation in local fuel mixes for the grid electricity and uncertainty over rate of market penetration for the EVs and renewables.

Finally another factor you'd want to include in your forecasts would be increased CAFE and Zero Emissions standards; both of which are policy tools induce the introduction of electric vehicles.