Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) introduced a bill Friday that would pay for 109,500 electric vehicles, though the cost of that program isn’t known yet. “This, to me, would be a very productive thing and . . . likely to produce jobs and revitalize an industry,” Connolly said.

In December, Rep. José E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) announced an “e-Drive” bill that would give $2 billion to the Energy Department and Postal Service to convert 20,000 mail trucks into electric vehicles.

I have always liked the idea of electric cars. I have written a number of essays around that theme, primarily because electric vehicles could in theory be adequate replacements for internal combustion engines as supplies of fossil fuels deplete. Imagine that our electric grid eventually moves more toward renewable energy, and electric vehicles could be a much greener solution than the majority of the vehicles we have on the road today.

But note that I use words like “theory” and “imagine” to describe this idealistic future. I firmly believe that we need to have a look at the data from time to time to make sure that our idealism isn’t in direct contrast to reality. Unfortunately, in this case it might be.

Study: Electric cars not as green as you think

The environmental benefits of electric cars are being questioned in Germany by a surprising actor: the green movement. But those risks don’t apply in the U.S., the American electric-car lobby asserts.

Today, the German plants that deliver marginal electricity are fueled by coal. That is the main problem, according to the study. The research adds that to produce the same amount of energy, coal emits more carbon dioxide than even gasoline.

“The irony is that you don’t need a lot more electricity for electric cars,” Raddatz, said. “But the problem is that if they cause these peaks, we would have to have power plants that would be ready to start (as) the massive charging starts.”

An electric car with a lithium ion battery powered by electricity from an old coal power plant could emit more than 200g of carbon dioxide per km, compared with current average gasoline car of 160g of carbon dioxide per km in Europe, according to the study. The European Union goal for 2020 is 95g of carbon dioxide per km.

I have been thinking about this a lot, as I have recently seen some electric car/combustion engine comparisons in a report that is about to come out. I won’t divulge much about the report, but when it comes out I will link to it. But I will provide a quote from the soon-to-be-released report:

New Zealand energy consultant Steve Goldthorpe estimates that if the entire New Zealand vehicle fleet were replaced with electric cars, the amount of electricity New Zealand needed to generate to power this fleet would be increased by about 60%. Only a small percentage of this electricity could be produced sustainably; the balance would probably have to be generated by burning coal.

I think this is where idealism clashes with reality. As I pointed out in The Nuclear Comeback, over the previous 10 years electricity demand increased by an average of 66 million megawatt hours per year. That is without adding electric cars to the mix. The growth rate for renewable energy over the past 5 years or so has only been about 10 million megawatt hours (although last year saw an impressive 20 million). Still, this is a far cry from just keeping up with normal demand growth.

So the idealistic side of me sees renewable electricity continuing to grow, and powering a fleet of green electric cars. The side of me that looks at the data says that in reality, a rapid ramp-up of electric cars will have to be driven by non-renewables because renewable energy growth won’t be able to keep up. I wouldn’t personally have a problem with a nuclear-driven electric fleet, but I don’t think that’s the vision many have for future electric vehicles.

I am not factoring in the possibility that conservation of electricity can help close that gap. On that I remain hopeful, but our history is one of ever increasing consumption.

K.R. Sridhar shows 60 Minutes the heart of the Bloom Box- stacks of thin fuel cells. He says that two of them would be enough to provide energy for the average American home.

What Is That Box in Your Backyard?

That is the question you may be hearing pretty soon. Bloom Energy a company based in Sunnyvale, California, has created a power plant roughly the size of a refrigerator. They are hoping that every home in America will have its own Bloom Box cheaply producing clean energy within ten years.

In their opinion, the Bloom Box will revolutionize energy with its “power plant in a box.” K.R. Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy, appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes to describe his company’s device. On Wednesday, Mr. Sridhar is expected to make a major public announcement in Silicon Valley unveiling the Bloom Box.

The Bloom Box is a collection of fuel cells, similar to skinny batteries that rely on a mixture of oxygen and fuel to create electricity. Better yet, it has no emissions.

How does it really work?

Although all the details haven’t been disclosed, the Bloom Box seems to operate using a solid-oxide fuel cell technology. The building blocks of Bloom Box are rows of fuel cells.

Front and back images of the fuel cells in the Bloom Box, the green and black inks are two solvents designed by Sridhar to chemically convert fuel into energy.

These cells are made of ordinary beach sand baked into diskette-sized ceramic squares which are painted with black and green ink. The ink is the “secret sauce” created by Sridhar –a former rocket scientist-which has the capability of cleanly transforming fuel into electricity.

Each fuel cell has the potential to power one light bulb. The fuel cells are sandwiched with cheap metal alloy plates and stacked into brick-sized towers.

The fuel cell stacks are housed in a unit roughly the size of a refrigerator. Oxygen is drawn into one side of the unit, and fossil or renewable fuel is fed into the other side. Fuel and oxygen combine within the cell and produce a chemical reaction that creates energy. Its creator claims that this creation arises without burning, combustion, or the necessity of power lines.

It would take roughly 64 stacks of fuel cells to power a small business like Starbucks.

Sridhar developed the Bloom Box concept after creating a device for NASA designed to produce oxygen on Mars. NASA scrapped the venture, but Sridhar tweaked his project by feeding oxygen into his fuel cells rather than using them to create oxygen. Nearly $400 million and 10 years later Sridhar has the Bloom Box.

Are these boxes really the wave of the future?

It is probably too early to tell. On a corporate level, the Bloom Boxes are already functioning on a limited basis Sridhar claims. Google was their first customer. FedEx, Walmart, Staples, and Ebay have also shelled out approximately $700,000 to $800,000 per box.

The boxes purchased by the corporate giants require fuel, such as natural gas, but half as much as they normally would require.

Ebay installed five Bloom Boxes nine months ago, and they fuel about 15 percent of its San Jose campus, said CEO John Donahoe in the 60 Minutes interview. “It’s been very successful thus far.  They have done what they said they would do” Mr. Donahoe says, adding that the company has saved $100,000 in electricity costs already.

The Bloom Box is designed to replace the existing power grid. But making the Bloom Box practical on a consumer level is a whole other matter.

Michael Kanellos is hopeful that Bloom Boxes can work on the consumer level, but skeptical.

Michael Kanellos, editor of Greentech Media, which covers the clean energy market, warns that “people have been trying to develop fuel cells since the 1830’s. But they’re not easy. They’re like the divas of industrial equipment. You have to put platinum inside there. You have to put zirconium.”

Cost is a huge factor. “It needs to be cheaper than wind. It needs to be cheaper than solar.” Kanellos says. “Cost is always a concern with fuel cells, as is round-the-clock, 24-7 functionality.”

Sridhar says he eventually wants to deliver Bloom Boxes to consumers “for under $3,000.”

For now, however, the company has shrouded itself in secrecy. Outside of the 60 Minutes interview, Sridhar has refused to meet with the press. Even their website bloomenergy.com posts little more than a cryptic video without divulging much if anything about the corporation.

The Bloom Energy “secret society” strategy has been designed either to hide serious flaws or to heighten the buzz.

Sridhar seems ebullient as he looks to the future. “I want a Bloom Box next to the [White House] organic vegetable garden,” he says on 60 Minutes.

The U.S. retained its lead with the most wind power capacity, followed by Germany, China and Spain. (Courtesy GWEC)

The Global Wind Energy Council, a group largely responsible for tracking wind energy around the world, published these statistics earlier today. The results of their research indicate that wind energy increased 31% globally from 120.5 GW to almost 157.9 GW in 2009.

China’s focus on wind energy results from its stated dedication toward reducing CO2 emissions that are produced from more traditional fuel sources, while meeting the demands of its ever growing energy and economic needs.

China’s increase in its wind energy capabilities accounted for more than one third of the 39.1% increases around the world.

“The continued rapid growth of wind power despite the financial crisis and economic downturn is testament to the inherent attractiveness of the technology, which is clean, reliable and quick to install,” according to Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the GWEC.

The largest contingency of wind energy sits in the European Union which collectively produces 76.1 GW of wind power per year. Spain was at the forefront of Europe’s 2009 wind energy developers by increasing their production 2.45 GW which reflected 6.6% of the world’s growth.

China leads the list of the top 10 countries with newly installed wind power in 2009. (Courtesy GWEC)

The United States remains the largest individual producer of wind energy with about 35 GW, nearly a 10 GW increase from a year prior. The domestic increase in wind energy came as a surprise to financial analysts who predicted that the recession would force the U.S. to cut its existing wind plants. Rather than scaling back, the United States was the second largest developer of new wind energy last year.

Diane Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, attributed the surprising trend to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under the Act, $68 billion dollars was apportioned to various renewable energy sources. However, Bode cautioned, “U.S. wind turbine manufacturing is down compared to last year’s levels, and needs long-term policy certainty and market pull in order to grow.”

If the 2009 trends continue, China will be the largest developer of wind energy in a few years. Their present goal is to produce 150 GW annually by the year 2020. That is a greater quantity of wind power than the world collectively produced at the start of last year. While their target may sound highly ambitious, at their current rate of growth, China will reach its wind energy goal well before the end of the decade.

The Economics of Alternative Energy Sources and Globalization: The Road Ahead

Here is the link directly to my presentation:

An Overview of Global Energy Issues

Here are several of my slides, which give a flavor of my presentation:

The primary thrust of my message is that we are looking at a potentially serious energy crisis in the not too distant future as oil begins to deplete faster than renewables can fill the void. Globally, India and China will have a huge influence over the oil markets, driving prices eventually higher than where they were last summer. Times will continue to be very difficult for U.S. refiners as more refineries are built close to the source of the oil, but there will be occasional bursts of profitability. The last two slides talk about the platform that my new company is building.

The conference was heavily oriented toward agriculture, and there was a lot of discussion about the role for biofuels in agriculture. There were a number of high profile speakers, including Harry Baumes, an Associate Director at the USDA. I had the opportunity to speak with Harry one on one at dinner one night, where we primarily discussed U.S. ethanol policies.

There are so many ways to achieve renewable energy.

According to a study conducted by the environmental group Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREG), clean energy will create more jobs than coal. By 2030, there will have been 2.7 million more jobs created than if countries were to stay on their current paths of burning coal and other fossil fuels for energy. These findings are the ammunition needed to urge countries around the world to agree to a new United Nations pact in which the nations combat global environmental issues. They are using employment as a way of steering people towards the pact.

“A switch from coal to renewable electricity generation will not just avoid 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, but will create 2.7 million more jobs by 2030 than if we continue business as usual,” the report said.

If strong policies for renewables pan out, it is projected that the number of jobs in power would rise by 2 million to 11.3 million by 2030 which would be helped by a large increase in renewable energy jobs: 6.9 million from 1.9 million. That same study found that if governments were to stay on coal as their predominant energy provider, there would be a loss of half a million jobs resulting in about 8.6 million jobs in energy.

Although the cost of labor would rise for companies that use these renewable energies, their cost of production would be reduced, so there would actually be more money made. In the wind industry alone, the report suggested, there could be as many as 2.03 million people employed by 2030, up from half a million in 2010.

The report also suggested that for the first time in 2008, the European Union and the United States produced more energy from renewable sources than from conventional sources such as nuclear, gas, coal, and oil. This has environmental proponents happy. With this study, more attention will be paid to renewable energies from an environmental perspective, but also, more importantly to governments, from an economical perspective.

There are so many ways to achieve renewable energy. California is trying to develop their own plethora or renewable energy.

The utility companies want there to be flexibility in the bills because of numerous cases. First off, they want the option to import renewable energy from out of state so that they can meet the 33% bill. Furthermore, they want the opportunity to extend the 2020 deadline if they’re going to miss it. Their argument is that the markets can’t plan that far in the future and it is unfair to the utility companies to demand there be this reached deadline.

The fight is coming in from all parts. The environmentalists are worried that if the lawmakers allow this flexibility, it will prevent real change from occurring environmentally speaking and no good will come from it. Consumers are concerned that the cost of California residents’ energy bills will skyrocket. Furthermore, they’re trying to prevent these utility companies from getting the energy from elsewhere because they want to create jobs in California.

People are concerned that if the utility companies are allowed to import their energy, what will happen is that there will be no economic growth in California, only green growth, and the goal is for there to be a mix of both.

There’s also the issue of funding it. It could require as much as $115 billion to reach the 33% goal by 2020. This makes it increasingly difficult for utility companies to reach it, especially since its being suggested that they won’t even reach the 20% by 2010 as tehy were supposed to do. Instead, it may take as long as 2013 or 2014.

There are also discussions of using hydroelectric plants, but environmentalists are firmly against some aspects of it. They are looking into creating run-of-the-river plants where they divert water into the turbines to create electricity, but don’t block the entire river with a huge dam. This would please environmentalists as well as provide for more energy.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed a great interest in trying to turn California into a firm green energy producing state. With the economy shaky there, it would be incredibly beneficial for the state to have this flow of renewable energy. Most importantly, the environment would get a break from the constant release of emissions.

Nouriel Roubini is a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business.

Nouriel Roubini, one of the earliest voices to speak out on the shaky economic underpinnings of our financial system and resulting economic crisis in which we now find ourselves entangled, opined in the New York Times that within the first half of this century, the U.S. Dollar will no longer be the dominant reserve currency of choice.  This will have far reaching effects on our nation both domestically and abroad for the coming Century.

As Dr. Roubini states,

Today, the United States is running huge budget and trade deficits, and is relying on the kindness of restless foreign creditors who are starting to feel uneasy about accumulating even more dollar assets. The resulting downfall of the dollar may be only a matter of time.

Continuing that,

If China and other countries were to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar – and they eventually will – the United States would suffer. We have reaped significant financial benefits from having the dollar as the reserve currency. In particular, the strong market for the dollar allows Americans to borrow at better rates. We have thus been able to finance larger deficits for longer and at lower interest rates, as foreign demand has kept Treasury yields low. We have been able to issue debt in our own currency rather than a foreign one, thus shifting the losses of a fall in the value of the dollar to our creditors. Having commodities priced in dollars has also meant that a fall in the dollar’s value doesn’t lead to a rise in the price of imports.

While this inconvenient truth of deteriorating U.S. currency leverage bears much semblence in size, scope and complexity to the inconvenient truth of global warming, there is in fact a single solution that will simultaneously confront and help solve both of these problems.  Dr. Roubini reveals this solution by concluding,

Now that the dollar’s position is no longer so secure, we need to shift our priorities. This will entail investing in our crumbling infrastructure, alternative and renewable resources and productive human capital – rather than in unnecessary housing and toxic financial innovation. This will be the only way to slow down the decline of the dollar, and sustain our influence in global affairs.

We couldn’t agree more with Dr. Roubini and we think the moment to make our national priority shift is now.  While the Stimulus Package (ARRA) enacted by Congress and the Obama Administration earlier this year was a significant step in spurring renewable energy and energy efficiency investment, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, now moving forward after several weeks of intense negotiations among the 57-member House Energy and Commerce Committee, is our best chance to set a new national paradigm in how we supply and use our energy resources.  And it’s not just super-intelligent economists who see this critical need – a sweeping majority of Americans understand what it will take to address global warming, despite a few remaining members of Congress who are out of touch on the issue and continue to try holding us back.  Why would we want to let so much potential for new green jobs, economic growth and cleaner environment go to waste?

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that while American leadership has been asleep at the wheel the past several years to advance clean energy technologies, China already made a bid (proudly with NRDC’s assistance) to beat us at advancing technological solutions (see here and here) to solve global warming.  In the spirit of healthy and fair competition among both nations towards meeting our critical climate goal (at least 80% by 2050), we gladly continue to fuel both sides toward greater innovation and investment in clean energy.

Small island nations, such as Trinidad and Tobago, can "simply dissapear" due to rising temperatures, warned Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Attending the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, along with U.S. President Barack Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters on Saturday that if climate change is not dealt with properly “some island states will simply disappear.”

Chu called the potential for disastrous hurricanes and rising oceans caused by an increase in temperatures “very, very, scary.” Climate change is “a demonstrable fact,” he said.

He cited “very, very convincing evidence” that climate change “was caused predominantly by greenhouse gas emissions.”

Polar ice is melting “considerably faster than anyone predicted” just a decade ago, he said.

Obama, during his address to the summit in the island’s capital, Port-of-Spain, on Friday, was also extremely vocal about climate change, and the need to develop sources of renewable energy.

In order to combat the effects of climate change, such as those Mr. Chu alluded to regarding islands beginning to ‘disappear’, the President proposed the creation of a new Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas “that can forge progress to a more secure and sustainable future.”

Trinidad and Tobago is one of the wealthiest Caribbean countries and lies just 11 miles off the coast of Venezuela. The island is quite small – slightly less than the state of Delaware.

“It’s a partnership that will harness the vision and determination of countries like Mexico and Brazil that have already done outstanding work in this area to promote renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Obama.

“Each country will bring its own unique resources and needs, so we will ensure that each country can maximize its strengths as we promote efficiency and improve our infrastructure, share technologies, support investments in renewable sources of energy. And in doing so, we can create the jobs of the future, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and make this hemisphere a model for cooperation,” he said.

Obama said that the threat of climate change is a real one and needs to be dealt with collectively. “The dangers of climate change are part of a broad range of threats to our citizens,” he said.

“We must come together to find new ways to produce and use energy so that we can create jobs and protect our planet,” he said.