Articles by Joseph Romm

Automakers want to delay the transition to electric vehicles

The following is a guest essay by Marc Geller, who blogs at Plugs and Cars, serves on the board of directors of the Electric Auto Association, cofounded Plug In America and DontCrush.com, and appeared in Who Killed The Electric Car.

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The IEEE Spectrum Magazine for November 2007 touts on its cover: "Battery or Fuel-Cell Cars? A California Cabal Will Decide." Interesting choice of headlines. Surely a strong argument can be made that something approaching a cabal turned a practical electric-cars-on-the-road mandate into a research and development program for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Carmakers are desirous of delaying the inevitable but problematic move to electric drive. Oil companies shut out of electric markets are exploring biofuels and hydrogen as potential markets they could control. Academics awash in government and corporate grants analyse and research biofuels and hydrogen. The problem with electric is it is here now. Proven, ready to market. No significant need for research. Batteries could always use a nudge, but the 100-plus-mile battery has existed for over a decade. Price needs to come down by a factor of two at most, not a factor of 100. Economies of scale, baby!

Facts are facts. Not five years ago we had thousands (about 6,000, to be exact) of battery electrics as daily drivers for consumers like you and me and utility fleets like PG&E and SCE. Thanks to Plug In America's predecessor DontCrush.com, about 1000 of those cars still drive today on the original batteries using existing electric infrastructure. Their owners love them, and when one appears on the used car market it sells for more than the $42,000 original MSRP.

China is prepared to make a climate deal

Potentially a very big deal -- The Independent reports "China 'will agree to cut its carbon emissions'":

China, now the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, will eventually agree to cut its soaring carbon dioxide emissions, one of the country's leading environmentalists forecast yesterday -- but only on the basis of a deal with the United States and the rest of the developed world.

When is eventually?

The Chinese would be very unlikely to set their own unilateral target for reducing CO2, said Professor C S Kiang, the founding dean of the College of Environmental Science at the University of Beijing. But they would join in the next, post-2012 stage of the Kyoto protocol, the international climate change treaty, and seek to reduce their emissions to a definite figure, as long as this was part of a global agreement that involved all countries acting together -- including the US -- and the transfer to China of modern energy technology, he said.

Now, Kiang says, all the world needs is a new U.S. President:

How to keep wind power soaring

If you are interested in how wind power can continue to soar, be sure to read an excellent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: "Using the Federal Production Tax Credit to Build a Durable Market for Wind Power in the United States" (PDF).

The authors conclude:

... our analysis suggests that a longer-term extension of the federal PTC may provide a number of benefits, including accelerated wind deployment, reductions in installed wind project costs, and increased domestic wind turbine and component manufacturing. At the same time, we also identify several PTC design considerations, beyond the duration of any extension, that may deserve consideration by Congress.

Thanks to Hal L. for sending this my way.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

OPEC nations demand that petroleum-consuming countries maintain current thirst for oil

NPR's Marketplace called me today for comments on this bizarre Financial Times article: "Opec to seek assurances on oil demand."

Apparently these absurdly rich countries -- with projected revenues of $658 billion this year -- who are selling their product at nearly $100 a barrel, are threatening not to invest in new production unless the consuming countries promise to maintain demand. Seriously! No, seriously:

Opec will this week seek assurances from some of the world's biggest oil consumers that they will maintain their demand as the members of the oil cartel come under intense pressure to boost investment in production capacity.

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, which is saying a lot considering who our president is. First off, who exactly can speak for the consuming nations and make a binding promise to keep up demand in the face of record-breaking prices? Nobody. This is capitalism. If high prices lead to fuel-switching, how could, say, President Bush, promise to stop it -- especially since he has already promised to encourage fuel switching?

Second, as I blogged recently, pretty much every producing country, except Saudi Arabia, is producing flat out. Yet demand keeps going up even at these prices. If OPEC is really worried about demand destruction, then they should want to invest in as much new production as quickly as possible. Indeed, the IEA predicted back in July that the world will see "increasing market tightness beyond 2010, with OPEC spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012."

Third, IEA projects global oil demand will "expand by 1.9 million barrels a day, or 2.2% a year on average, reaching 95.8 million barrels a day by 2012, up from 86.13 million barrels a day this year." OPEC would be crazy not to invest in as much new supply as they could to meet this demand. Where is a better place for their money -- holding dollars?

So what is the real motive behind this bizarre threat? And how is the normally dependable Financial Times confused?