nerfer

Cash-For-Clunkers Reveals Weakness Among Detroit Brands

I'd rather send my money to Japan than to OPEC. (About the same amount of money over the lifetime of a small car, but only one recipient wants to blow us up. And no, we can't drill our own oil to solve the problem, we don't have anywhere near enough of the <$80/barrel stuff.)

I always said I'd buy American when they produced a reasonably priced car that got at least 40 mpg. Finally Ford makes the Fusion hybrid which does essentially that, so next time I'm in the car market, I'll definitely look at Ford. (Their Escape Hybrid isn't bad either).

Geothermal Is Getting Red Hot, Part I

Davewmart - I would think they would typically use a closed-loop system for hot water pipes to houses, ie. transfer the heat from the well water to the water piped to residences, but it's not the same water. I'm not sure if radioactive materials would get transferred as well, but I would think it would be pretty minimal.

Chevy Volt Claims 230 Miles Per Gallon in City Driving

market ace - either you're being sarcastic or you don't understand the Volt. When charged, it will go 40 miles on electric power, after that the gas engine needs to run to charge the batteries, but the car continues to run as normal.
The Prius (without aftermarket kits, as sold today) is not a plug-in, so all the power comes from the gas tank, directly or indirectly. A plug-in hybrid like the Volt allows additional energy to be stored from the electric grid, which is more effiicient and reduces our economic dependency on unstable and unfriendly oil producing countries.
The Prius can be converted to be a plug-in for several thousand dollars, and then it can run for many miles on all-electric energy.

Crude Oil Supply and the Future: Putting Arguments in Proper Perspective

Dennis Atuanya, thanks for laying out the facts and pointing out the speculations. Whether or not a person accepts all of the peak oil scenarios, it is clear we have seen the end of cheap oil

Jer13xxx - Why bring that up? Climate models are not part of this discussion. Energy security is, and relying on petroleum supply staying like it has will surely lead to economic/national security problems. It would be interesting to see how cap & tax would affect that.

Pickens: World’s Biggest Wind Farm No Longer on Drawing Board

It's not that simple. The transmission grid can't handle changes in supply and demand (wind dies down in one part of the state but picks up in another), or for moving from one section of the country to another. Converting plants is very expensive, basically you need to build new plants. Doesn't come out to a generation cost of zero in my book.


On Jul 09 12:21 AM nakedjaybird wrote:

> Someone should check to see how many counties in the US DO NOT already
> have transmission lines running across them already...DUH!!!!!
> Hey, convert the gas and coal plants to wind and solar and all the
> transmission stuff is already there.......DUH AGAIN!
> And the generation cost will be almost ZERO...... HAT TRICK DUH!!!!!

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

F. Banks:
For claiming to be a Picken's expert, it's apparent you haven't read his website for awhile. Windmills are not out, they are there to replace/supplement the national electric grid. This frees up natural gas for trucks and long-haul vehicles (in-city and commuting cars can be electric powered). Wind and gas have both been part of his plan for a couple years now and that hasn't changed (I read about it well before his commercials were aired).

What is your proposal for not keeping our economy under the reins of unstable and unfriendly countries? We can't drill our way out of this problem, and we can't take over another oil-producing country.

On Jul 10 10:12 AM Ferdinand E. Banks wrote:

> in the world cap on at the time, and declared this a loser. Ditto
> on his wind corridor from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border,
> which it seems that he has now decided against. Now its talk about
> large amounts of natural gas being used as motor fuel. According
> to some people on this site, this should be a major component in
> a national energy policy.
>

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

Red Raider,
I agree with most of your post, but nuclear is not at all obvious. Uranium is a limited resource, and what do we do with the waste? Nuclear has never been cost-effective unless the government pays for building the plant.
There is no one solution, and limited nuclear may be useful, but we need to do what is practical for each location. I think geothermal is a vastly underestimated resource, particularly for all of the mountain/west states. Unlike solar and wind, it operates 24/7.

On Jul 10 10:27 AM Red Raider wrote:
>
> The obvious answer is nuclear in the long term, natural gas in the
> near term.

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

Fuel cells are not zero CO2. Their operation is, but not generation of hydrogen (most of which comes from natural gas today). The fuel cells are expensive (6 figures is standard for something that could power a car), the storage and transportation of H2 is still problematic. We'd need multiple practical breakthroughs before we could start making a manufacturable car. We can't wait 10-20 years for that to happen.
Plus, on an EROEI perspective, it makes more sense to store electricity in a battery than to turn the electricity into hydrogen, transport the hydrogen, put it thru a fuel cell and get back some of the original electricity to power the car.
I was once a fuel cell believer, but became educated and realized there are better alternatives.

On Jul 10 09:45 AM Longinvestor wrote:
>
> Letting cars alone use gasoline and converting semi's and trains
> to hydrogen makes more technical sense to me. The little drop in
> CO2 emissions with natural gas is not going to get any of my investment
> money. I would prefer to use wind and solar power to make hydrogen
> &amp; oxygen gases. These stored gases would then run zero CO2
> emission fuel cells 24/7 per the recent MIT invention.
> web.mit.edu/newsoffice...
>

How High Will the Price of Oil Go?

Thanks for the feedback.
Range doesn't concern me so much. Most people commute less than 40 miles a day, and electric vehicles easily go double that distance. Recharge conveniently at home for pennies per mile (but upfront costs are more significant, as you mention). Have a hybrid or rent a car for your long trips & save money overall.
Tata is also experimenting with making an electric version of their small car, or a car powered by compressed air (probably noisy to refill). But the Nano is just too small and too slow for common American tastes, a used small car would be more attractive.
Fuel-cell vehicles (hydrogen) are a complete boondoggle, at this time, IMO.

Some of the established manufacturer's EV plans:
www.bloomberg.com/apps...
In China, Chery is an automaker to watch (may actually partner with Chevy), they have a proposed $15K electric car. Some more about China's auto plans:
evworld.com/news.cfm?n...

Living4Dividends wrote:
"I am not impressed by the US's lineup of EV. All are expensive like the Volt. I don't know about China's EV offering. Still 20,000 seems like a lot of money for a vehicle that only goes a short distance. The Tata Nano is $2500 for the fully loaded Indian version. Let's say the world model, with airbags & western safety features costs $5000. That is an inefficient car with superb gas mileage. "

How High Will the Price of Oil Go?

The $40K Chevy Volt is not the single face of our EV future. Many other companies (many small new ones, some new faces from China and elsewhere) are coming up with new innovative ideas for half the price of a Volt. The tricky part is getting past the safety crash test hurdles (several million dollars that a startup doesn't have), so more than a few are designed with 3 wheels to be classified as motorcycles. In 2011-2012 there will be a real change in options to the consumer, and the big car companies may never be the same, if they survive that long.

How High Will the Price of Oil Go?

I'm not so optimistic about oil substitutes. They'll take years to come online, and any disruption (like a 6-month slump in oil prices) will likely derail investments & cause the process to start over again. Ethanol was going to be the savior, but people became fixated on corn, which is the worst source of ethanol. Our green options are natural gas (a la Picken's plan), cellulosic ethanol, & electric vehicles (which can be charged overnight on the existing power grid for the first few million vehicles, after that we need to do something).
Coal unfortunately will be part of our future because it is there and it's cheap (as long as mountaintop removal and stream dumping is legal), but it's the worst option environmentally.
Geothermal (for electric grid, EVs) is an overlooked opportunity - green power, available 24/7 (for certain parts of the country). California could have all the EVs they want if they expand geothermal. That frees up natural gas for long-haul transportation.

But oil itself has a limited lifespan as a transportation fuel. I think we've already seen the peak in production. OPEC couldn't increase production in the first half of 2008 because they were at max production. With $60/barrel in a recession, when the economy starts coming back the price of oil will increase even faster. $100/barrel will be the low end in 2010, and it only goes up from there, only tempered by its braking effect on the economic recovery.

Geopolitical Energy: Centered on the Caspian Sea (Part 2 of 2)

Fitzman, I haven't read the book, altho it definitely sounds interesting, so I don't know the timeline of talks with the Taliban. I'm sure funding for Afghanistan dropped significantly after the Russia pull-out however, and we couldn't ignore the terrorist aspect after 9/11. For the years in between I need more information.

WRT Iranian nukes, it's probably a combination of motivations. Close neighbors (including Israel and Shiite-run countries) are definitely part of it, but upsetting the U.S. would be a good side-affect for them.

Mythbuster - We will still use fossil fuels in the future, but the idea that the U.S. can support its current rate of use by North American supplies (let alone just U.S. supplies) is a dangerous fallacy. Efficiency and conservation are the first two steps we should take for immediate improvement, then renewables, including geothermal and improving the grid to handle varying loads of wind power. Recharge electric cars overnight. Battery R&D. These are things to improve the American economy, not thinking that drilling is our only solution.

Lithium Unicorns and Alternative Energy Storage

Sounds like good news for Firefly, a spin-off of Caterpillar that makes a lightweight lead-acid based battery with better life cycle. (Apparently they're still working on a deal for a battery manufacturer to produce these batteries, but it sounds quite promising).

It would be good to get actual numbers on the cost of extracting lithium from spodumene other than that just one source claiming "very expensive".

Personally, I'm still looking at velomobiles (human-powered vehicles) for my next daily use vehicle, and keep the Prius (with NiMH battery) for longer trips.

Geopolitical Energy: Centered on the Caspian Sea (Part 2 of 2)

Good article, good food for thought. But I disagree on the Talibans - I think they were considered our friends while they were fighting Russia (there is the line of thought that the bankruptcy of U.S.S.R. from low oil prices during the Reagan years and their military defeat in Afghanistan is what allowed Poland and the Communist Bloc countries to break free of Russia). Once we no longer needed the Taliban to fight Russia, we lost interest (see Charlie Wilson's war), in the subsequent vacuum they joined up with Al Qaeda and bin Laden. They always treated their women and history badly, but only after 9/11 did we agree they were really terrorists and actually enemies.

Oil Won't Stay Down for Long

I agree with txpenguin.

There was some speculation on the top side in the summer, but the supply/demand fundamentals still probably justified $100-$120/barrel at that time. But since it takes a long time to ramp up or down production, there's overshoot and undershoot when demand changes suddenly. Sub-$40/barrel is not sustainable, too many suppliers would get out of the market (like Canadian tar sands, which provides about 20% of U.S. imports and Venezuelan heavy crude, which also supplies the U.S.). We're seeing the end of availability of cheap oil, and only a real depression would cause oil prices to go below $30/barrel for more than a few weeks. I bet in six months oil is safely above $50 provided the economy doesn't worsen any further, and above $70 with a modest recovery.