You could devalue the U.S. dollar to 10 cents and it would not bring back much manufacturing. You can not compete with one dollar an hour labor unless house prices fall to $10,000 each.

There are lots of ways that you can deal with a trade imbalance rather than devalue your currency. Devalued currency will just make T bills have to yield more, because you are paying them back with funny money. That increases the debt, as if we did not have enough already.

Harvey:  How many man-years of labor would it take to design, manufacture and install all those retrofits?  Would we be better off making new hybrid Fits or Apteras?  I suspect that we would.

Treehugger:

Look at solar cell are slow the progresses are despite all the hype about it, double digit growth in sales but still not even 1% of electricity produced this way

100,000 tons of a bulk material is a rather small amount for international commerce, but if we made 100,000 tons/year of 100-micron thick cells using Evergreen Solar's process it would make about 77 peak gigawatts of PV.  For comparison, the US consumes an average of about 460 GW of electricity.  Once we get the process moving, these things could make enormous changes in just a few years.

I don't think the progress on bateries will be much faster than what we see on the solar today.

Engineer-Poet

Keep in mind that even in the best time the oil industru didn't grow faster thatn 10% neither anay other energy did, so I don't believe solar cell will do it because it is far harder to scale up than oil.

Firefly and A123Systems ? they have products technically speaking but they haven't proven yet that they can manufacture it in large quantity at 200$/Kwh, did they ?

E-P:

Most of the retrofit modular PHEV design man-hours have been accounted for already. I agree that many more man-hours and $$$ are required to establish highly automated factories to mass produce the retrofit kits. That is where our governments have to interfere. Many components are common to retrofit and new PHEVs and could be produced in the same automated factories.

Basically, more efforts and resourses have to be directed towards improved batteries and PHEVs/BEVs.

America has to be part of the future electrified economy. The oil and ICE economy is passé. We have to listen to Warren Buffett. Change our ways or disappear.

Solar has been growing at 15%+ for years now. Lately, it's more like 30%. Wind is similar. I'd like to see CSP growing at a rate like that. Probably will in the near future.

A grand total of 30% of installed new electricity generation last year was wind. That's rather a lot. And this year will be even bigger.

EIA information for ANWR reserves: 10 billion barrels (a 500 day supply, for off coast California: 441 million barrels (a 20 day supply) and for the Gulf: 3.5 billion barrels with production decreasing about 15% from the 2003 peak to 2006.

World oil production is close to peak if not past. We are spending about $1 million/minute on imported oil, an unsustainable transfer of wealth out of our country.

The switch to plug-in hybrids is not a sufficient response to the severity of our problems. Certainly any new car purchased should be as efficient as possible but investments in electrified mass transit and bicycles is a more effective use of capital. Flying as well as personal automobile use will be much reduced in the future.

The growth of the solar and wind energy is certainly not 30% you can have a look at the link of Enginer-Poet in his message above (though there is something strange in the Solar column). The growth can be more than 10% when the industry is small but it is not sustainable as soon as the industry reach a certain size. So in clear if the renewable energy grows at an optimistic pace of 10% (very unlikely for wind) the overall share of wind + solar will reach 15% of the total energy mix by 2030. AND THAT's AN OPTIMITIC FIGURE (don't forget that wind and solar only produce about a quarter of their peak capacity due to intermitency of the sun and wind energy, all the numbers you can read in the media about the growth of the solar are the peak capacity not the effective capacity). if you want a faster growth you need a Marshall type of plan, which is possible if it is confirmed that we oil peak in the next decade, but that is still to be seen.

Treehugger:

30% of the electric power generation capacity installed in 2007, according to the AWEA, was in wind. In 2002 this was 1%.

Just some basic history facts: Henry Ford set out too destroy the railroad industry. The trolleys that were so preminant in early citys across the nation Henry laughed as one by one the were bought out by sometimes even auto dealers just too scrap them. There are even early American pictures showing scoffing roadway signs depicting the limitations of rail and God forbid sit bext too a stranger! You can't even begin too understand what mass transit saves in lives / energy and even time! You bundle nuclear / mass transit / wind / solar / water power where possible and viable trains mandated by FEDERAL LAW as a national security directive by the president to move all (were as possibleas the most prudent of ways to move large supplies to newly designed and built depo's.If you do these with the technoligy that even just GE changing how they do the old yard locomotives is amazing!They actually take OUT the big desiel engines replace them with rechargable lead acid batterys that are recharged by engines comparable too a Ford F-250 truck! The massive weight is a benifit as it makes up for the loss of the engine and theres no more spewing of desiel engine noise etc. This is already happening right now! California shipyards are doing this at this time right now!Sorry too tractor trailer drivers but you all know as well as I do that many of you have make / made runs for years with trucks sometimes more than half empty! This could through computer networking have every space used and cutdown in much waste! A depo wouldn;t care they would be just filling the space then when full the train leaves FULL to capacity!!

[The bill establishes a competitive oil and gas leasing program for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain]

Destroying the last refuge of wildlife will keep the world in oil for an extra week. Other than making some rich SOB even richer, it does little to change the real situation.

The problem
1 ) We are seeing the end of a limited resource
2 ) Using oil is very harmful to the environment and jeopardizes our ultimate survival in a great number of ways.

Our real solution is to find a future without fossil oil (and preferably without any fossil fuels, they will all eventually show the same problems as oil).

The obvious way to go is wind and solar and we see this beginning to happen.
We also need to see several mega-projects like solar-thermal generation using dessert land, geo-thermal using the huge Yellowstone mega-volcano, extensive wave generation that double as seaport protectors, Electrical capacity storage systems (like batteries or hydro) and an extra efficient mega-grid tying these all together.

The USA must do more. It must also find, develop, build, and export energy sources to other countries, not wait for China to show up with PV cells and Lithium Batteries, and India to send over the Tata Nano.

Destroying the last refuge of wildlife will keep the world in oil for an extra week.

Yes, because all the other areas in Alaska where they've drilled for oil are barren of wildlife now, right?

I wish people would spend just five minutes thinking about the nonsense the hippies spout out before accepting it as gospel truth. Wildlife in Alaska is fine, even where they've been producing oil for 40 years.

Oklahoma, where they've been producing oil for over 100 years, is perfectly lovely. And most of that oil was produced before anyone had ever heard of environmental protection.

Open your eyes and look around, people.

What they are saying is that you do not have to drill, there are other alternatives. Leave it in the ground and change the way we do things. We can have a modern prosperous economy without drilling like mad people. This is all they are saying. They are trying to get people out of their obsessive compulsive rut. Drilling is just a way of making oil companies yet more billions of dollars.

What they are saying is that you do not have to drill, there are other alternatives.

That may be what they think, but what they say is largely lies to sucker the gullible in. We should be suspicious of anyone who has to lie to advance their agenda, shouldn't we?

A rational policy would be to drill *and* do things differently. If electric/hydrogen/moonbeam cars pan out, great, the need for oil will decline and drilling will fade out on its own. If these technologies don't come to fruition in the near term, we'll still have the oil we need to keep going until we do. Everybody wins.

Except those who make a living by lying, of course.

The reality is that our usage of oil has such huge momentum that we have to reduce slowly or we risk economic whiplash. But, we do have to hold energy prices down or we risk economic choking.

The minimal damage to the economy would come from our present energy providers (oil companies and utilities) to become our future energy providers. Unfortunately, oil companies have been extremely short-sighted in this area.

Now they may be seeing the writing on the wall and want to buy time to play catch-up. The price will be paid by us in the form of further environmental risk and a bumpier economic transition.

All those alternatives are kept from happening by the big oil addiction. California was suppose to have green power to replace fossil power plants. There was no investment, because the money people knew that there was no way you could compete with the likes of Enron. If that free market stuff worked, by 2000 the state would have been awash in huge amounts of green power and building fossil plants would have been a thing of the past.

@Matthew

We should be suspicious of anyone who has to lie to advance their agenda

Drilling for oil is also on someones agenda. They further that agenda with we-simply-have-no choice-but-to-drill-otherwise-its-back-to-the-stone-age doomsday thinking.

We will be just fine with the Alaskan oil kept below the surface. (And the wildlife will be fine if we pump it up.)

We are going to need both production and conservation through behavior and technology. Oil only comes out of the ground just so fast. So ANWR could provide a few percent of our needs for decades. That is better than nothing I guess. I would hate to see them drill off of the California coast. We had our disasters with Santa Barbara spills and blow outs. I would definitely oppose it if we have alternatives and we DO have lots of alternatives.

"investments in electrified mass transit and bicycles is a more effective use of capital. "

Yes to mass transit but the bicycle and pedestrian path is proving to be a complete bust in North America. Due to the refusal of government, insurers and law enforcement to protect this class of individuals. Insurers across the board are reacting to rapidly rising costs of medical treatment for bicyclists and pedestrians hit by motor vehicles. Drivers' display total disregard for sharing roadways with peds and bikes knowing that there are greater penalties for DUI than actually running down pedestrians.

For every driver who tentatively gets out of their vehicle to bike or walk to school, work or errands - it has taken MASSIVE investment to get them there. These investments are totally lost once the ped or cyclist is hit, or threatened by irresponsible drivers. Pedestrian and cyclist accidents are increasing at a rate 30% per year across North America and accident insurance claims are skyrocketing.

The environment movement needs to get realistic about its goals. If you want people to stop driving do more biking, walking, mass transit - legislating the safety of these alternatives MUST be a part of the program. Else, billions of climate change, behavioral modification dollars will go down the toilet as tentative drivers climb back into cars for safety and peace of mind. These two items will ALWAYS win out regardless of cost. Sustainable living INCLUDES individual security.

While it seems dumb to keep drilling for costly oil we should take notice of the fodder the oil industry has at their disposal. Given the backlash against biofuels and - a cogent view of big oil's playbook is helpful. Big oil will not release their stranglehold on energy easily. They will continue to milk the "peak" strategy to generate windfall profits until combined alternatives approach 20% market share. Then we will see a clever reversal to "no peak" oil and increased output driving down petroleum prices to compete with electrification. "No peak" will be supported by reasonable science (abiogenic oil(1.), new "finds" - and scare tactics about biofuel food riots.

The green car congress needs to counter these claims and stand solidly behind the transition from first generation biofuels to second gen biofuels (esp waste to fuel.) Support for alternatives in a broad portfolio of R&D and commercial scaling is needed. Solar and wind expansion must be strongly supported and kudos to old industries (Detroit) doing the right thing (PHEVs) will encourage faster transition to electrification.

Oil will dabble in the new energy models but not undermine their massive investments in exploration and infrastructure. New fields will be "discovered" (Bakken) and non-fossil explanations for vast resources will abound (2.) Support for biofuels, electrification, lifestyle change and responsible markets are the counter. Renewable energy leads to sustainable living and these transitional technologies must be supported with a united effort. The alternative is the non-alternative, same old players.

1.)http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/04/0405_020405_TVgases.html)
2.)http://www.geotimes.org/oct05/feature_abiogenicoil.html

A couple of observations to those who are looking toward some miraculous changes...

1) The median age of an automobile in the USA is 9.5 years (note that's median not average - average is much older)... after the useful life in the US most of these cars end up in poorer countries like Mexico and China (ever wonder what they ship back in all those millions of containers of crap Walmart buys from China?)... so the average age of vehicles in the world is now substantially greater than 10 years.

2) Despite all the gripes about "things aren't made like they used to be", a car made in 2008 is more likely to last into 2028 than a car made in 1988 was to last until today... in other words, cars on the street are getting older every year.

3) Based on the above figures, assuming the whole world woke up and "saw the light" all at the same time in 2015, and increased CAFE standards by 100% (btw - totally unrealistic), AND, despite all of the economic growth in the third world, there remains the exact same amount of cars on the road that there are today (sorry all of you Chinese who were hoping that you would one day be able to trade in your rickshaw for a taxicab)... by the year 2028 the world will STILL be using more that 75% the amount of oil that it is using today...

4) Looking at alternatives... there is an abundant (some say near-unlimited) supply of coal in the US. There is an abundant (not quite unlimited, but damn-near close enough) supply of oil shale in the US. These resources, though not cheap to tap, converted into liquid fuels for SUBSTANTIALLY less that the current market price of $120 per barrel. Industry estimates put the number at close to $30 per barrel.

5) What are the problems with using these resources? Using Coal and/or oil shale releases as much as four times as much CO2 as using crude oil.

6) IMPORTANT - What is that worth in dollars and cents? According to industry analysts, not much. Estimates range in terms of what it would cost to capture and store the excess CO2, but mid range numbers hover around $10-$15 per barrel. That would make the total cost of Coal to Liquid fuels approximately $40-$45 per barrel while emitting LESS GHGs THAN CRUDE OIL.

7) What should we learn from all this? Capitalism and the free market is a much more efficient tool than greenies think. Al Gore would agree... everyone has heard about his lavish carbon rich lifestyle and the fact that he offsets his GHGs through credits. Some find this disturbing... I think they missed the boat. In a truly free market economy, where the only limitations were a simple cap and trade or carbon tax, we would all be driving coal powered vehicles... simply because it is significantly cheaper to use the "dirty" energy source, and clean up after yourself, than to use the "clean" source of energy from the get go.

8) In conclusion, don't be visceral... think things through. I agree that this bill will never make it through the Senate, but that is not because it is wrong (note that the bill requires "CTL fuels produced result in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions not greater than those associated with gasoline"), but because the average American will not spend the time to educate themselves about the facts, and the Democrats in the Senate are too politically motivate to give a damn about the environment. So despite the fact that in the long-run a strong CTL program will be enormously beneficial to the economic, strategic, and environmental welfare of the US, the political landscape will be entirely dictated by the political pandering of the Democratic majority, and the reliance on the broad ignorance of the general populace. It is remnant of the Hillary quote on the stupid "gas tax holiday" idea (no kudos McCain) of "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists"... in other words "I'm going to rely on the stupidity of the masses and pretend this is beneficial even though I also know it's crap".

9) Post Script - I would love to see a viable clean car get off the ground. Unlike most of you, I was at the Tesla Motors opening event of their first store in Los Angeles. I applaud them, and I hope good things happen with their technology (as an aside, I think they are making some very poor investments in locking into their battery infrastructure...), but realistically, we are going to be stuck with oil/oil equivalents for 20-30 years at current supply rates, and likely significantly longer than that as well. However, from a GHG perspective, that is not necessarily the end of the world. The fact is that cleaning up vehicles is by far the most difficult and expensive way to lower our GHGs. We concentrate on vehicle emissions because of how visible it is (no offense GreenGarCongress), but in reality, total transportation - including automobiles, airplanes, trains, and heavy trucks - only makes up 14% of world wide anthropogenic GHGs. Instead of spending huge amounts of money cleaning up individual automobiles, it would be exponentially more beneficial to clean up the significantly larger emitters ie. power generation by even a small amount... Don't make the mistake of spending the nations resources on the more visible transportation sector at the expense of focus on the real problem. In the end, it would be a reasonable forecast that a Coal to Liquids mandate with a carbon capture requirement would not only make the transportation sector much cleaner from a GHG standpoint, but the creation of an economically viable carbon capture industry (without subsidies) would also likely have a spillover effect on the power generation industry, where the real GHGs are emitted, when the more mature carbon capture technology is viable for transfer. Comparatively speaking, we use 3.4 billion barrels of gasoline each year at a current "crude oil only" cost of somewhere north of $700 billion. At the same time, we use approximately 1 billion tonnes of coal each year, at a cost of around $35 per ton rate of approximately 1 MW per ton, almost exclusively on power generation costing $35 billion (one twentieth of what we spend on crude oil). Think about how foolish the suggestions to significantly increasing the cost of transportation for the sake of the environment are when compared to the comparatively cheap and centrally localized methods of reducing the nation’s carbon footprint in power generation.
I'm not saying that at some point in the distant future there won't come a time when we need to focus on the transportation sector emissions substantive source of GHG emissions, but until the "low hanging fruit" get picked, it is "penny wise - pound foolish" to focus on anything else. BTW - According to the IPCC, the increased cost of carbon capture for coal power plants would be 30-60%... peanuts compared to even a 5% increase in the costs of transportation fuels.

Quoth Matthew:

What they are saying is that you do not have to drill, there are other alternatives.

That may be what they think, but what they say is largely lies to sucker the gullible in. We should be suspicious of anyone who has to lie to advance their agenda, shouldn't we?

If we assume that the 900,000 bbl/day maximum production from ANWR would yield 50% gasoline, it would take only a 5% cut in US demand to achieve the same cut in imports.  Instead of costing money, it would almost certainly save money.  And instead of taking 10 years to come on-line, we could do it almost immediately.

The remaining oil out there is subject to diminishing returns on investment; efficiency has barely been touched.  Drilling should almost certainly be our next-to-last priority, not our first.

Coal-to-liquids should be the last priority.  IIRC, a barrel/day of tar sands costs about $100,000 in equipment; CTL costs more.  We should save the coal for our remaining electric power needs (including PHEVs) instead of wasting half of it to make liquids.

Quoth David:

there is an abundant (some say near-unlimited) supply of coal in the US.

The USA has nearly exhausted its anthracite and is going down the energy scale to lignite; coal tonnage increases, but energy is going down.  We do not have the luxury of massive CTL.

Coal is one of those items politicians point to and say see, why worry? They have to blow the tops off of whole mountains now to get at the coal cost effectively to keep it the cheapest source of fuel for power plants. It is not an endless supply. It gets harder to get, just like oil and just like oil the estimates are questionable.

Like I have said, if we are smart we will use as much renewable energy as possible now and into the future. Save the fossil fuels for later if we need them. That course of action will not make billions of dollars for those in the fossil fuel industries however.

Lowering the highway speed limit to 55 mph (as was done by President Carter I believe) would reduce highway gasoline consumption by about 10%. We don't even seem to be willing to do that much to save on fuel.

Uh, guys, where is all the new electricity going to come from? Nuclear? How many new power plants would it take? Physics says it takes so much energy to move so much mass. So exactly how does electric cars help?