That nice.

Now when will the NRDC stop ignoring the air quality downsides of Ethanol?

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85ResptoComm.pdf

Stan:

It would be helpful to read the article in context before bashing it. The air quality side of the article was clearly secondary to the GHG side of the article, and its analysis was obviously meant as a "worst case" sort of scenario.

The subtext of the article was that PHEVs can be expected to reduce GHGs under most any circumstance, but will that be at the expense of pushing the pollution upstream, to the power plant level? If power plants become very green, this is obviously not a problem, but in a "worst case" scenario, where all new power plants are the dirtiest we can think of (conventional coal), would widespread introduction of PHEVs come back to haunt us, through the creation of worsening air quality?

The answer this study suggests is no. Even with fairly high PHEV penetration and usage (20% of all vehicle miles powered by grid electricity), the consumption of all that extra coal-fired electricity will still not worsen our air quality. This is because even though modern cars are rather non-polluting, they still emit enough to be noticeable, so reducing the amount of gasoline consumed still has enough benefits to outweigh the cost of some increase in coal consumption.

As an aside, I find your remark about "job justification creep" and our increasingly strict air quality regulations to be rather misdirected. Forty years of advances in atmospheric science sound like a plausible enough source for the revised pollution criteria. To make a comparison, the results of forty years of biomedical research seem to contain reasons enough to justify the fact that our medical treatments are not the same as they were back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

KJD: let us know what you think of the Vectrix. Not just the ride but your impressions of its quality. That would be great!

This summary is great -- especially because it includes a table that is not in the study's own Executive Summary: the matrix that shows the worst-case (low PHEV penetration and high-CO2 grid still delivers 162 million metric tons of CO2/year, while the best-case (high PHEV penetration and a much cleaner grid) will result in 612 million metric tons/year.

Here's CalCars' overall take on the report:

The EPRI-NRDC studies finally give an environmental stamp of approval to PHEVs. Scientist have confirmed that unlike gasoline cars, plug-ins will get cleaner as they get older -- because our power grid is getting cleaner.

For people looking for the most effective way to end our addiction to oil, PHEVs have made sense because carmakers can build them now, with today's technology and using today's infrastructure. But they've needed definitive proof that PHEVs won't increase pollution. The main study shows that under all nine scenarios for both rates of market penetration of PHEVs and the evolving power grid's characteristics (capacity/carbon intensity), PHEVs will vastly reduce greenhouse gases for the next 40 years. In the second study, for the next 20 years, even if, worst-case, we still use lots of coal, nationwide air quality for other emissions will also improve.

Three more points: Both reports match up well with previous studies. They reinforces the Pacific National Lab's January 2007 findings that we won't have to build new power plants for cars that charge at night. And we're gratified that General Motors recognizes sees this study as validation of its decision to evolve to the electrification of transportation.

BTW, the studies are huge -- If you want to spend a worthwhile hour on this, at the URL cited, read the press release, then get the Executive Summary for part 1 (9 pages, 8 charts & tables) and the Frequently Asked Questions that covers both reports (7 pages, 24 questions).

-- Felix Kramer, Founder, The California Cars Initiative

NRDC is the ultimate late comer to technology. They were still pushing natural gas power as late as 2005 with price forecasts that were off be almost 100%!

I met a senior member of them in early 2006 and he never even heard of cellulotic ethanol, then three months latter he was talking it up like crazy on a radio interview!

There are 29 Nukes in the pipeline in the USA

Link?

Man, the trolls are out today. Stan Peterson trolls:

By the 2030 time frame the Global warming nonsense will have died

And the Kit P trolls:

So how much could I save on energy bills with a PHEV with a 20 mile range? About $1/day

It would be more interesting with you around if you'd at least try to make your falsehoods more subtle than gross arithmetic errors.

E-P, how about if you replace the average 25 mpg vehicle with a Corolla and you commute 20 miles a day?

Speaking of smoke, did you get a whiff of what E-P was blowing. He might think it is cheating, but I took the numbers out of the report. I multiplied by the price I pay for gasoline and subtracted price I pay for electricity. I did not consider the added costs of a PHEV which would most likely negate any savings at all.

Increasing ghg from 'old coal' by 11% came straight from the report.

The list of nuclear power plants in the 'pipeline' is not about 33. The PTC for the first 6 and is the same that wind power gets. Each nuke plants pays its own cost for spent fuel disposal and decommissioning.

Here is a link to a list: http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=344

What may not be apparent form this list, is that most of these nuke plants will be merchant plants run by companies that also own CCGT. The reason this is relevant is that the mix of electric generation will likely be such that ghg emissions have significantly reduced to the point where the cost of a PHEV can not be justified unless the price of gasoline doubles In which case, biofuels will be very economical.

Maybe E-P does not consider himself a troll when he ignores the price of electricity, the fuel economy of a sticker price comparable POV to a PHEV, and the most likely energy sources.

The source for the comment of 29 Nukes in the pipeline is the Nuclear Regualtory Commision, NRC web pages. Look on their licening page. And the economics are all for the Nuclear plants building pre-approved, pre-certified comnbined construction and operating licensed plants, with predictable and fixed price plants, 36 months from first concrete to first power, is impeccably the cheapest power and its not even close.

The source for the "outrageous statement" that the auto fleet has been getting more efficient at the rate of 5.1% per year compounded is ...TA DA... this very Green Car Congress web site. Use the search button. Just remember the original 42 hp beetle without any airbags, bumpers, side impact, or crush contro; or any pollution control or catlaytic converters, got all of 16 mpg. Today that is terrible mileage for a full size Big Cadillac.

The source for the eeath of the GHG statement is the IPCC TAR IV report itself. They said Methane, CH4, (1/4 of the GHG proposed GHG threat) is no longer rising and now declining slightly; Haloflorocarbons, are declining for a longer time now, now removing another 10% of the potential driving problem that could be assigned ot GHGs. Nitrous oxide from plantlife is a comaparative constant for a long timenow and also stabilized. So the GHG "problem" is reduced to two gasses only, and is an H20 and CO2 problem only. Good bye GHGs.

The rate of CO2 rise is slowing. So 35% of the total possible driving force due to GHGs has been conquered already. Then the Current IPCC TAR IV shrunk the total GHG threat another 12-15%.

More significantly, the IPCC removed 12-15% of the total driving force from GHGs and assigned it to more intense light and direct solar radiation.

They ALSO said that when they understand the effect of solar wind on the cloud formation, (Dr Svensmark's work being tested at CERN) which is much larger in potential impact, that the IPCC will assign the appropraite value to that cause. Just like in teh IPCC TAR IV the IPCC will remove it from the CO2 default, probably in the IPCC TAR V due before 2012.

The earlier IPCC TAR III report said the cloud effect can be substantial and account for maybe 80% or even all of the measured Global Warming. Since then GW has appeared to stabilize in the last decade, when Dr. Mann's tree ring hockey stick statistical errors are disregarded, and measures of warmng from satelittes or direct measures are used.

This is probably the case as the Sun's increased output cycle has crested and turned down in the last decade since 1998.

The source for the comment of 29 Nukes in the pipeline is the Nuclear Regualtory Commision, NRC web pages.

Felix,

Welcome to this this post. Your pioneering work along with good Dr. Andy Frank is worth thousands of these "studies" that study not much at all.

I look forward to the diversification and substitutes your work offers to solving the transportation application dilemma.

The Electrification of Ground Transport is coming thanks to your efforts and the maturing of battery technology that is enabling it.

It seems altogether too often, that many here just would prefer to curse the world, imply conspiracies, and blame the innocent, rather than roll up their sleeves and go to work like you have done.

My point that many miss, is just because we don't need to build more electrical generating plant capacity to accommodate an off-peak PHEV charging application, that does NOT MEAN that MORE FUEL will not be consumed, in those existing Plants.

Somehow there is a disconnect; people know that an idling car uses much less fuel than a car pulling a heavy trailer up a steep hill. They somehow do not recognize the same thing occurs in a electric power plant. There is a vast difference in "no-load" operation and "full load" generation.

The economics of electric generation is much, much better for nuclear than for any fossil under full load operation. Historically, Nuclear is cheaper to operate but more expensive to build. Thanks to professional NIMBYs and critics of Fission power, of which I am an Original one, added costs as construction competence was questioned, as it merited.

This served to create a situation where the capital costs of Nukes and it unpredictability, eventually dwarfed the much higher operating cost for fossil fuels for a fossil generation plant.

After ordering 100 plants, looking at the attractive generating and operating economics of Nukes, only to be sabotaged by building costs, the utilities gave up.

Ironically, Three Mile Island answered the problems that genuine critics had, such as myself.

a) Apollo type assessments for plant reliability were finally undertaken.
b) The regulation was divorced from promotion when the NRC was spun off into a separate agency apart from the AEC.
c) Someone really conducted an experiment to measure the effects of a Loss of Coolant accident and not a paper study. (FINALLY!!!).

Now I understand that no one wanted to build a $5 Billion dollar Plant. And then just destroy it to see if the safety systems really worked; but that is what TMI really did, and what we wanted and needed. Despite the stupidest operation imaginable, they couldn't harm anyone other than destroy the core of the Plant and all the safety systems were indeed proved to work.

Unlike the Solar or Wind advocates that dream of getting to a low of $.06 per KWH for these sources; Nukes with predictable capital construction costs can generate electricity at $.024 per KWH. Coal costs from $.033 to $.055 per KWH depending on load factor. The more fuel they burn, the worse their costs are after capital costs are quickly amortized.

The Point of this discussion is this fact.

Coal will shrink as a generating choice and PHEVs will drive many coal plants into oblivion. That fact is wholly unrecognized in this "study".

If PHEVs come on as we both expect; the utilities will respond by building much MORE Nuclear generation. Using any projection of the present electrical generation mix is entirely wrong and incompetent. By analogy, if you drive only a few thousand miles per year, then you don't really care if you have a gas guzzler. If you drive 25,000-50,000 miles per year you certainly do care, and that is the situation for the Utilities. Just as You might purchase a more fuel efficient car then. Many Utilities WILL decide to retire or semi-retire their old coal guzzling plants early, choosing to build more economical and profitable Nukes.

I would comfortably go so far as to say with PHEVs, to level the load factor, 50+ % of the then electrical demand will be nuclear.

Then the reduced CO2 output won't be 612 megaton reduction, but from 100% or 1224 megatons reduction, (at 40% electrical Nuclear); to 150% or 1530 megatons greater reduction(at 50% Nuclear), mix of electrical generation.

All of Mankind's CO2 contribution to the atmosphere is but a few thousand megatons, so this one reduction is 35-50% of the entire worlds anthropogenic issue of CO2.

The IPCC will likely alter CO2 to but 10% of its present attributed driving force for global warming in IPCC TAR V. (So a non harmful predicted change of a few tenths of a degree Centigrade, would become a change of a insignificant one tenth of teh problem, or a few hundredth of a degree change with a then impossible doubling of CO2 levels.

In any case all the other GHGs are already in control. CO2 will have been stabilized by this one change in technology. No on eis discussing "controlling" H20 atmsopheric levels.

The adoption of the PHEV and its direct consequences, in the US alone solves the CO2 "problem", worldwide.
Of course the US auto fleet is not any longer an isolated case. The US, Japan, Korea, the EU, and China will be building common auto designs and PHEVs in but a few more years. Indeed, except for far tougher safety and auto pollution emissions standards in the USA, they do so today, essentially. So the PHEV autos of the rest of the world will be making their reduction contributions also. You should know that the rest of the world is going nuclear in a big way,even as we are ramping up. 251 Nuclear generating plants are being built outside the US, to provide power and will "refuel" those future foreign PHEVs.

For the person stating concerns with the ramp up of 29 Nuclear plants based on four established international designs. Thank you for the list of sites and likely types.

Certainly some may not be built. But thi is but two years of potential orders. There will be additional ones in 2009, 2010 and beyond. I know of two more here in Arizona as two more of the originally planned six at Palo Verse are under consideration to add to the three in existence.

But they are "in the pipeline" at defined sites, with pre-selected plant architectures, and site selection already accomplished.

As to the economics. The comparison for the economics of fission versus fossil was clear in the '60s and '70s when the present Nuclear plants were ordered. Even before the big run up in fossil prices from 20 cents a gallon fro gasoline, and the accumulating pollution emission requirements, Nukes were cheaper even then. That's why so many were being ordered.

It was only when a plant that was thought to take five years to build, and ended up taking ten or fifteen years did the economics change. As regulations changed, and changed agasin, plants had to be rebuilt several times before they even ran once. Frankly, in addition to principled critiques, like Patrick Moore or myself, there were members of our environmental organizations that knew interminable lawsuits, hashing and rehashing the same issues and generally stalling, would bankrupt the Utilities and it did. That and mobilizing unthinking mobs of "greenshirts" know-nothings shoutuibg "No NUKES!" helped to end rational discussion.

The Advanced Passive 1000 is the T-W design and by far the most popular due to its thermal efficiency over the BWR.

The earlier Advanced BWR, ABWR and the Economically Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, ES BWR follow on is the GE-Hitachi design. The AP 1000 and earlier AP600 are pre-certified, the ESBWR will soon be pre-certified. The other foreign designs are in process for pre-certification. Hundreds of engineering man years have been invested in checking, improving and approving these "standard designs". Thanks to the genuine efforts of the Bush administration in creating the Combined Construction and Operating License approach, the economics of Nuclear power have been stabilized and more importantly made predictable.

Utilities accepting standardized design concepts, together with the efforts of the four principal nuclear plant builders worlwide, to invest in GEN III+ plants and meet the "standardized design" tougher safety requirements, the world has a source for lots of clean passively-safe, and predictably priced, nuclear generation.

This work has completely altered the economics for the Utilities. The Utilities can now buy a fixed price plant.

The vendors offer those terms, now.

The Utilities know that it has been accepted by the regulators, and will be on-line 36 months after first concrete is poured and they won't pay for any overage. Environmental organization stalling own't be as easy to do either.

All they need to do is elect to chose to build a pre-certified and pre-approved standard-design nuclear plant; unlike the one-off custom plants that used to be the norm to purchase. (That was how progress used to be made, each successive plant slightly better than what came before.)

All of the proposed US plants are PWRs or ESBWR from Toshiba-Westinghouse and Hitachi-GE except for three. The French are certifying their old Framatome nuclear designs raising other safety levels to Gen III+ standards, and there are three plants in among the proposed 29 to likely use that design. The French are in the process of getting pre-approved, pre-certified and will then be among the world's standardized designs.

All designs have many passive features that operate with minimal operator control required. All are several amgnitudes of safety measureably safer than what is running today. The GE ESBWR for example, does not need a single operator command for three days as it shuts itself down completely.

It is re-invigorating and solving the electrical generation issue. The other genuine progress is the painstakingly difficult re-construction of the International cooperative effort to fund and build the $12 billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER.

This ITER is the last, (and expensive), fusion physics-oriented experiment. It's also the first full reactor-sized fusion reactor capable of generating as much as 750 Megawatts of thermal power created by Fusion and making much more power than it takes to run.

Having the USA rejoin the ITER effort after the Clintonians dropped out, insures Fusion power will come and be here when we need it. It almost certainly provides a Fusion follow on to this GEN III+ era of fission plants being discussed, here. Fusion will provide an inexhaustible and genuine answer to the Energy problems without the necessity of breeders and high temperature un-tested closer-to-the-limit fission designs. It should, but won't silence the Peakist "End-of-worlders" who somehow think a KWH from oil is distingusiable from any other KWH, and endowed with some mystical life-giving quality.

I believe Stan's advocacy of nuclear and other needlessly provocative stances in the comment section has diverted attention from what I believe to be the key failing of this study: the lack of mention of the contribution of wind and solar as well as other renewables to the generation mix. Why can the Danes generate 20% of their electricity from wind today when the US has better wind resources and still only generates less than 1% of its electricity by wind? Solar will get cheaper and will shave peak demand. Storage of renewable energy will improve dramatically.

The chief failing of the study is the notion that coal and only coal (and not that it ignores nuclear) will be the main primary energy for electricity.

I have not made my mind up about nuclear yet in the context of reducing GHG emissions and energy security but I am so sure that we can use solar and wind to reduce our demand for non-renewables to a fraction of what it is today.