"There are alternatives, such as battery-electric, plug-in-hybrid and hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles, whose energy can be derived from wind or solar power."

How many wind or solar power plants would be needed to produce enought energy to power one car? Because of the small amount of power produced by one solar panel, I'm not sure that this would be a good solution from an environmental point of view. Just a few years ago, the production of a solar panel required more energy than it would produce during its whole lifetime. And do we really want vast fields of solar panels and wind farms instead of forests?

@Andrichrose -

please provide a link to the Oxford city study. As it is, I don't believe your claim.

Donkeys and carts; that's the ticket!

I am puzzled by such a strong response from the ALA and NRDC. NRDC talks about potential greenhouse reductions. What on earth does that mean?

On the other hand, the NRDC seems to acknowledge that ethanol won't improve air quality. I think this is the key issue in any event. These are alternative fuels, not green fuels. Whether or not they decrease greenhouse emissions is unclear. A recent study concluded that biodiesel would actually increase greenhouse emissions, mainly because of the significant releases of nitrogen. Might the same logic apply to ethanol?

Frankly, I am not particularly concerned with the air pollution effects from ethanol because I don't think it will ever provide for a signficant amount of fuel demand. Keep this is mind. Ethanol is using up 25% of the corn crop but is only providing 3% of our liquid fuel needs.

The primary focus should be on increased efficiency and conservation garnered from smaller and more advanced vehicles, changes in land use patterns, more ubiquitous mass transit, and carbon and/or gasoline taxes. Biofuels are largely a fantasy pushed by politicians and others who don't want to face reality; we must cut back on the use of liquid fuels, regardless of the source.

Farm fields will NOT be replaced by solar/wind farms.
1st, you can farm right around windmills, they do not shade the crops.
2nd, solar's advantage is that it can be used at the end source, so why would we setup solar in rural areas with little electrical usage? We have PLENTY of buildings with a whole lot of nothing on top. All these building do is absorb heat and increase AC costs. We also have a practically unlimited amount of parking lots that would actually benefit from a little shade overhead from the panels. Plus, if we move to EV's, as most predict, you can plug in while your parked.

It seems to me that many have conflated CO2 emissions and their associated global warming effects with smog producing emissions and the health effects of burning fuel in densely populated environments.

We won't need to replace the entire car fleet though.
Looking ahead, it will be too expensive for a lot of people to have ANY type of car, whether gas or electric. I would predict in 10 years, we'll have half the cars on the road, and many of them will be electric commuter vehicles. You don't like mass transit or can't work from home? Well you're gonna pay a bunch for the privelage of driving a car every day.

How do you power a BEV world? Solar is nice but its a intermittent sources of energy. In a BEV transport system cars are going to be driving around at day or parked by plug-less streets, at night the people will plug in their cars at home, content with the belief that their cars reduce emission. Big problem: the sun not up! What do you think is charging the BEV at night? Smog belching coal! Hydrogen would solve the problem by storing the solar electric energy, but with the price of fuel cells and radical means of storage needed hydrogen cars are not likely to be around any time soon. H2EVgo for ~$1million, BEV ~$100K but an E85 ICEV goes for $15-40K or just $300 more then a Gasoline ICEV. Reducing global warming and increasing air-quality are definite goals, but preparing for and dealing with Peak Oil is a whole other problem. Ethanol made from cellulosic agriculture waste could replace 15-30% of our gasoline demand and could do it now invisibly, this would reduce global warming (by producing a carbon net neutral fuel) but (according to this study) do nothing for our air quality in general, so what? The benefits out weigh its disadvantages: it can be implemented now invisibly, it would reduce global warming, but it does nothing for general air quality, so we should just chuck it and keep with gasoline until a perfect solution appears??? Come on people be realistic, we need to implement as many different energy plans now and have them fight it out over the next few Post-Peak Oil decades until the winners appear. In the end its will probably be hydrogen powering most cars (or maybe even Zinc instead of hydrogen), with biomass and fermentation products like ethanol finding there niche in other things (likes race cars, power tools, small airplanes, jets, plastics, asphalt, and basically the other 50-40% of the oil market that no one notices) until then it’s a piecemeal transition economy where anything goes.

Your kidding, right Stan?
The law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted.

In a solar panel, the sun energy is converted to electricity, as OPPOSED to converting it to heat energy as asphalt shingles do.

"It is the net energy removed by a Solar Cell, that leaves the residual to be re-radiated as the lower Albedo, that could be a problem. This would only aggravate warming the Globe even more due to the Solar warming. If they have scared you enough that you lose sleep over that microscopic 'warming', then Solar Energy should be the worst anathema."

Stan,
Currently, yes. However, if we use two stage solar thermal or high temp photovoltaic concentrator systems then the effect will be far less pronounced. The first stage is electric generation whether it be turbines, or photovoltaic cells. The second stage uses excess/waste heat for various purposes. Piping in seawater and using the waste heat as part of a desalination (and chemical/seasalt production) system is one of the many possibilities.
__On a smaller scale, running copper/aluminum water pipes on the underside of rooftop photovoltaic setups for hot water, or at least preheat the tap water before reaching the water heater, may be another way to offset the decreased albedo.

Mark:

Where would one obtain, let alone keep, a donkey and cart in a suburban home? There's little things called zoning regulations that prevent the owning of such livestock. Your suggestion is absolutely absurd.

This is Green CAR Congress. That means sustainable personal mobility. Increasing mass transit may be doable in some localities, but the lack of affordable housing close to employment, suburb-to-suburb commuting, low population density, and other factors prevent it being being practical at scales seen in Europe (which has a much more dense urban population).

Rafael ,
Got the info from the EV.uk website , must admit did not believe
myself , so I checked it through a friend who works in the air quality
study group here at the European research centre here in northern
Italy and he had seen the study and confirmed its findings as being
more or less accurate , in fact recent tests in and around Milan have
come up with in some cases worse results than the Oxford study.

and blessed are the cheesemakers!