Malkiel

Transition to an Electric Economy

I'm not an engineer, but I gathered from my misbegotten youth reading car mags like Motor Trend and Car and Driver that automobiles will be the last energy users to shed liquid fuels, not the first. Storage battery technology doesn't have any miracles waiting in the wings for a powerplant that draws down so much energy so quickly and must be carried on board in such a small package.

The first significant place where mass power production will cut into fossil fuels will be, surprisingly, home heating oil. Storage technology works better on a massive scale and buying fossil fuels at wholesale, controlling their pollution with industrial-scale technology, storing them in cutting-edge megabatteries, and distributing them on the grid will turn out to be the more economical and least polluting way for homes to meet their heating needs in the future. Expect to see the stigma of electric heating as "expensive" go away as many oil homes convert to electric. Batteries for home storage will also work better than batteries for car powerplants, making loss of power during blackouts a thing of the past. Passive solar methods of recharging those home storage plants will also work better than recharging car power plants because the drawdown and recharge cycles all operate on a more leisurely cycle.