THE SHORT PATH TO OIL INDEPENDENCE

[RedEarth]

October 13 , 2004-12

Copyright © 2004 Earth Policy Institute

THE SHORT PATH TO OIL INDEPENDENCE
Gas-Electric Hybrids and Wind Power Offer Winning Combination

Lester R. Brown

With the price of oil above $50 a barrel, with political instability in the Middle East on the rise, and with little slack in the world oil economy, we need a new energy strategy. Fortunately, the outline of a new strategy is emerging with two new technologies.

These technologies--gas-electric hybrid engines and advanced-design wind turbines--offer a way to wean ourselves from imported oil. If over the next decade we convert the U.S. automobile fleet to gas-electric hybrids with the efficiency of today's Toyota Prius, we could cut our gasoline use in half. No change in the number of vehicles, no change in miles driven--just doing it more efficiently.

There are now three gas-electric hybrid car models on the market: the Toyota Prius, the Honda Insight, and the hybrid version of the Honda Civic. The Prius--a midsize car on the cutting-edge of automotive technology--gets an astounding 55 mpg in combined city/highway driving. No wonder there are lists of eager buyers willing to wait six months for delivery.

Ford has just released a hybrid model of its Escape SUV. Honda is about to release a hybrid version of its popular Accord sedan. General Motors will offer hybrid versions of several of its cars beginning with the Saturn VUE in 2006, followed by the Chevy Tahoe and Chevy Malibu. Beyond this, GM has delivered 235 hybrid-powered buses to Seattle with the potential to reduce gasoline use there by up to 60 percent. Other cities slated to get hybrid buses are Philadelphia, Houston, and Portland. Hybrid engines are catching on.

With gas-electric hybrid cars now on the market, the stage is set for the second step to reduce oil dependence, the use of wind-generated electricity to power automobiles. If we add to the gas-electric hybrid a plug-in capacity and a second battery to increase its electricity storage capacity, motorists could then do their commuting, shopping, and other short-distance travel largely with electricity, saving gasoline for the occasional long trip. This could lop another 20 percent off gasoline use in addition to the initial 50 percent cut from shifting to gas-electric hybrids, for a total reduction in gasoline use of 70 percent.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update43_printable.htm

[On the Road]

1. This is a Start

The path toward completely replacing oil imports that I know of is thermal depolymerization:

"How about this for a ridiculous modern myth. There is a machine somewhere in America that can take virtually any sort of waste - offal from an abattoir, old tyres, junked computers - and turn it into high quality oil, plus pure minerals and clean water, all in a few hours. It is an invention that could change the world. Not only might it end the west's, and in particular America's, dependence on imported oil, but it has also the potential simultaneously to solve the increasingly pressing problem of waste disposal.
A fantasy along with the everlasting light bulb, the car that runs on water and the perpetual motion machine, right? Well, no.

An experimental unit that uses a technique known as the "thermal depolymerisation process" (TDP) that can recycle seven tonnes of waste a day into gas and oil has been running for three years in Philadelphia. A scaled up version is due to open in Carthage, Missouri next month. It is designed to transform 200 tonnes of guts, beaks, blood and bones a day from a nearby turkey processing plant into 10 tonnes of gas and 600 barrels of oil.

---snip

TDP is said to be 85% efficient - that is, only 15% of the energy it produces goes to fuelling the process. The initial estimate of the cost of the oil from the Missouri plant is $15 (£9) a barrel. The "lifting" price - how much it costs to get oil out of the ground - is very cheap in the Persian Gulf, around a dollar a barrel, while from Gulf of Mexico, North Sea or Alaska the "lifting" price is $8-12. So a price of $15 a barrel for this technology is high but Appel predicts his prices will come down to $10 in a few years, making them comparable with a medium-size oil exploration and production company. "The oil that comes out is very light," says Appel. "It is essentially the same mix as half fuel oil, half gasoline."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,960689,00.html

[Warpy]

2. Thermal depolymerization will be a stopgap

and a wonderful boon as it allows us to clean up our leaking, stinking landfills in the process, sources of both biomass and plastic.

However, it won't provide enough fuel for our present profligate consumption rate.

The key to becoming independent is likely to be quite complicated, with no one solution taking the place of middle eastern oil. That's the problem for simpletons like Bush. They would rather sacrifice lives in stupid wars than face complex solutions to a complex problem.

Wind, solar, coal, and other solid fuels will likely be harnessed. What we need to start doing now is taking the money out of useless programs like Star Wars and pour it into R&D for energy independence.

That is where our national security will lie. It begins at home, not overseas.

[NNadir]

3. In this calculation one would be well served to consider how much oil

is used to generate electricity.

Answer: Very, very, little.

To the extent that electricity can be used to power electrical vehicles, the energetics are very poor: Storing electricity involves huge inefficiencies and very poor environmental profiles.
Therefore wind power is useful for displacing coal, not oil.

[Kolesar]

4. My hunch is that wind is a good source of electricity for electric cars

Wind has an intermittent duty cycle, but if the car is on the charger for 23 hours/day, it will charge when there is power on the grid. I think Wind->hydrogen->automobiles is a poor solution due to conversion losses.

I don't know what the conversion losses are on the wind/electric system. I recall that converting electricity->battery->electricity is only 25% efficient.

[NNadir]

5. Such a system would require load response; not currently available

in the infrastructure but nonetheless a good idea. I do think that electric rates should fluctuate with load, since this encourages conservation and reduces the need for expensive plants requiring amortization on partial load. This is, in fact, the best application for solar - especially PV - electricity as the price reduces to provide capacity at peak load. Solar energy actually does follow load; it is most available on hot sunny days, precisely when loads are most stretched.

All that said, we do not in these times of stretched carrying capacity to waste energy - or to build heavy infrastructure of questionable environmental benefit. I am a dissident on the subject of electric cars; like the so called "hydrogen economy" they sound good on the surface, but they represent something on an energetic shell game. It is pretty clear to me that we can have carbon based automotive fuels (to the extent that we want to keep automobiles) at a much lower environmental cost than we can have metal (battery) fuels. The carbon need not come from fossil sources; it can come either from reformation of biological materials via syn gas intermediates or direct fixation of carbon dioxide.

Wind is indeed intermittant, and its availability does not always follow demand. Indeed, when the wind is blowing, generally the load is lower, as breezes usually cool. I think there are much better applications for wind energy that charging automotive batteries: One can pump water to reservoirs (where the energy is effectively stored), one can run processes like aluminum manufacture (accounting for about 3% of worldwide electrical demand), chlorine manufacture (side product hydrogen), manufacture carbon based fuels etc. Cost load linkage would definitely encourage these types of applications.