147 comments on A Tale of Two Speeches--OPEC's Demand Side Fear Is Very Real
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147 comments on A Tale of Two Speeches--OPEC's Demand Side Fear Is Very Real
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When plug-in hybrids are proposed as a solution, it is responsible to discuss the massive amounts of coal and natural gas they consume - more in terms of barrel equivalent than the amount of oil consumed by conventional cars, because there is loss when coal and natural gas are converted to electricity, and there is loss when electricity is distributed.
Plug-in hybrids do not mean using less fuel. They mean trading oil for even more coal and natural gas.
Coal and natural gas have their own problems.
Natural gas production in America peaked thirty years ago, and in North America peaked recently. Importing natural gas from overseas requires liquefying the gas. This wastes 30% of its energy and makes for boats that can explode with incredible force.
Coal is far dirtier than oil, and any major transition from oil to coal may spark "peak coal" in our lifetimes.
Anyway, the problem with cars isn't what fuel they use. The problem is that the act of propelling one person 30 miles to work in a 2,000 pound box at 70mph is unsustainable, dirty, increasingly expensive, and destroys the natural world.
We can't assume that the lifestyle made popular by cheap oil energy will continue unchanged when oil is gone.
The allure of the glittering life of cheap oil is wearing thin. For example, once it was fun to dream about, and finally be able to purchase a cute little British sports car and drive the back roads, through the unspoiled wilderness of the Western USA -- etc., supply your own dream ("See the USA/ In your Chevrolet").
Maybe it's just that I'm getting older, but now the forests all are decimated, the roads are crowded, the restaurants are all the same, and a $300 hotel room awaits you at the end of the road -- I would rather stay home, and I do.
It seems a shame that people can't moderate their behavior and build a rational society for the benefit of everyone-- we all seem to have to stampede to collapse before something new can emerge.
It looks like Nate Hagens will have something to say about that at the ASPO conference; I hope the speech will be available on line, since I won't be able to go to Ireland.
Pure ICE vs. hybrid vs. EV vehicle overall Efficiency:
The answer on EV vs. ICE efficiency for plug-in hybrids depends on a lot of factors but my understanding is that it generally favors the EV side, depending on how much is from "plug-in".
This issue is very much in Engineer-Poet's camp and one resource is his now fairly static site, the Ergosphere as well as his posts here. From the EV side of the argument: Debunking the Myth of EVs and Smokestacks and PDF of same.
An older (2000) CA report "Fuel Cycle Energy Conversion Efficiency Analysis" pdf.
The Wikis Hybrid electric vehicle and Battery electric vehicle address the issue and provide a lot of links.
It partially depends where you live. In Ontario, electricity is nuclear and hydroelectric power for the most part, with fossil fuels only accounting for 36% of it.
But even if it were all coal or oil, back-of-the-envelope calculations seem to indicate that high efficiency coal turbines are more efficient (given higher combustion temperatures) than internal combustion engines.
A quick internet search reveals efficiencies of 45-59% being possible for coal plants (Wiki,e8.org). Even with losses for electricity transmission, rectification etc, this seems like a good deal compared with an average 20% efficient internal combustion engine. Possibly 10-20% better than a prius (36% efficient?), even after losses.
PHEVs don't seem like they're a SOLUTION per se, but they seem to be a decent silver BB.
You're right that our lifestyle won't continue as-is, but tiny Smart-car sized PHEVs will probably be part of how we adapt.
According to this, an all-electric car is about twice as efficient as a Prius, assuming a 60% efficient modern cogenerating electric plant, which would make it somewhere around 100mpg based on well-to-wheel energy consumption. One would expect a plug-in hybrid to be fairly similar, at least when running solely on electric.
Thanks. Note that the "double" is for natural gas fired plants. Still, even coal-generated electricity would be more efficient then gas, if not as convenient.
I worked this out a while ago, and keep reposting it as it keeps coming up. Turns out its really not the silver bullet some claim.
California gets half our electricity from natural gas. Assuming NG electricity is not so valid for the USA as a whole but maybe Tesla plans to market in silicon valley. For now.
Anyways the efficiency of gasoline powered cars don't matter if there is no gasoline.
I plan to charge all these EVs during the day with solar panels. How do you plan to fuel all those hybrids?
RobertInSantaBarbara
I haven`t escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
True.
Most vehicle use is during the day. Its tough to charge your EV during the day.
Most schemes I read plan to charge these EVs during the night on wasted capacity (coal plants don't shut down quickly so often are left wasting power overnight). And that was what I originally wrote the above for.
Solar has severe drawbacks for charging at night.
If I got to make the decision I'd go for nuke and wind.
Most vehicles are driven to work during the day and left in the company parking lot for eight hours. Google already has solar powered recharging stations for employees with PHEVs.
RobertInSantaBarbara
I haven`t escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
robert2734's comment is good. The thing is, the average vehicle is parked 23 hours of the day, and 90% of the time it's offstreet.
It's just a question of putting a connection at that parking space. It's done in Canada & Minnesota at parking meters & garages for engine pre-heating.
Mostly true, but mostly beside the point.
When discussing massive numbers of electric cars, the typical concern is the additional generating capacity that would have to be added to power them. When adding new generating capacity, what matters is the efficiency of new generating plants, not the average efficiency of the decades-old ones that make up the grid now. Accordingly, the relevant efficiencies to consider really are the higher ones.
Moreover, electric vehicles are qualitatively better than gas-powered vehicles in the sense that they're much less constrained by fuel type. Peak oil is often described as not an energy crisis but a liquid fuels crisis; without that reliance on liquid fuels, electric vehicles are fundamentally different in peak oil terms.
With whatever's convenient, since they're not at all picky about fuel type.
One of the benefits of wide-spread plug-in vehicles would be a wide-spread network of batteries hooked up to the grid. Those would be exceptionally useful for smoothing out wind and solar PV generation more cheaply and efficiently than by adding pumped storage.
No disagreement here. Like I said, it all comes down to how you charge these EVs.
We are going to have to parallel deployment of large ev fleets with huge investments in elec generation and grid capacity.
My fear is this is going to come too little and too late.
"We are going to have to parallel deployment of large ev fleets with huge investments in elec generation and grid capacity. My fear is this is going to come too little and too late."
We won't need new generation and grid capacity for night time charging for at least 10 years, and wind can easily grow to the size needed in that time.
VW already has a 1L/100km car - it only carries 2 people in tandom. A Prius will never be a fuel efficient car as it's big and heavy and designed to go fast. It's got a monster engine that is running at such a tiny fraction of full throttle and has to operate over such a wide range of RPMs that it'll never be efficient.
The only real option is a 4hp IC/heat/turbine engine which generates the average power necessary for a car. That also generates a continous source of heat which is necessary for those of us outside la-la land where we have fall - winter and spring and -30C weather.
Parallel hybrids are useless with only marginal gains over a small IC car (and the gains are really only in the city driving - driving which is most easily avoided).
In short a parallel hybrid is a solution to a non-existant problem; it's just for people who wish to appear green and refuse to accept that radical reduction in energy use and change in lifestyle is necessary.
Oh, man, this made me actually laugh out loud. I take it you don't own a Prius, nor have ever driven one.
Big? Well, it's classified as a mid-sized car. So, not big, and not small. Compared to other mid-sized cars, at ~2700 lbs. it weighs anywhere from 500 to 1,000 lbs. less than other cars in its class. Granted, 2700 lbs. does not make it a potato chip, but then I'm less likely to get squashed by a Ford F-350. That 'monster' engine you refer to is a 1.5L four cylinder. That eliminates the 'fast' part right away. With the electric assist, it can get out of it's own way, but I'm not about to race for pinks anytime soon.
It's unfair to compare a 2 person VW test vehicle to a mid-sized production car that can carry four plus their luggage. I'm averaging about 50mpg in my Prius. Efficiency is not a destination, but a sliding scale. The Prius isn't perfect, but it's more than twice as efficient as my last car.
. . and please elaborate how a 4hp engine of any type will move anything heavier than a small motorbike.
"Plug-in hybrids do not mean using less fuel. They mean trading oil for even more coal and natural gas."
No, they don't. PHEV's fit very, very nicely with wind power, and will work just fine with solar if need be.
Yes of course, but wind and solar are intermittent, and since nobody's ever used them as the primary energy source for a society, we don't know yet how well they scale up. There are promising stories coming out of the wind and solar fields, but as fields they are still so tiny that it's hard to say.
"since nobody's ever used them as the primary energy source for a society, we don't know yet how well they scale up."
That's not really a serious argument, it's just a vague concern. There's nothing mysterious about wind or solar. Their engineering characteristics are very well known, and there's not reason to think they won't work.
Please note that we'll have many decades to phase out fossil fuels, and we'll have nuclear, wave, geothermal, biomass, etc to balance things out.
Of course wind and solar "work." People have used wind for hundreds of years to grind cereals into flour. Where they may not "work" is as the primary energy source for industrialized society. Nobody can really say if they can, because nobody ever tried. It's naive to assume that they will scale up just fast enough to replace the energy loss from declining fossil fuel, simply because we'd like them to.
It is a very serious concern that the exotic materials and simple metals required for high-efficiency wind and solar have never been produced by electric power before. All these things have only ever been produced with coal and oil power. We simply do not know whether it is possible for wind and solar to cover the energy cost of even their own maintenance and production.
"Where they may not "work" is as the primary energy source for industrialized society. Nobody can really say if they can, because nobody ever tried."
Not really. As I said, their operating/engineering characteristics are well know. It's straightforward to project how they'll work.
"It's naive to assume that they will scale up just fast enough to replace the energy loss from declining fossil fuel, simply because we'd like them to."
Not at all. Wind is here: it was 20% of new US generation in 2006, with 2.5 GW of new capacity. It's a straightforward manufacturing exercise to scale it up to the roughly 25-50GW per year that's needed, and the roughly $75B scale is not all that large or difficult. Nuclear could also do the job, if needed, and solar is right behind. We have decades to do it in, with many different technologies as alternatives. Relatively easy, and very low risk.
"It is a very serious concern that the exotic materials and simple metals required for high-efficiency wind and solar have never been produced by electric power before. "
Sure they have. Manufacturing is powered by electricity, not by coal or oil. At the moment steel needs coal, but we have many decades to find substitutes: they've never been needed before, that's all. Actually, the straightforward substitution is aluminum for steel.
"We simply do not know whether it is possible for wind and solar to cover the energy cost of even their own maintenance and production."
Sure we do. Wind has an E-ROI of 40-80. Solar is 20-50, depending on technology. That's what E-ROI means: they only need a tiny fraction of their own output for their own manufacture.
Sorry Nick its hard to believe anything you have said.
20% of new generation, so what, you will need to cover the whole of California if you want to approach what is generated by other means.
Solar needs Old Sol, its a joke. Coal power plants have millions of years of sun in their bunkers.
Nuclear is dirty in refining the Uranium and waste storage, the ore is finite maybe as finite as oil.
I surmise the reason nuclear power plants are not being built is that as the oil supply declines there will be no profit in it.
If you had $10 billion would you build an N plant?
What WOULD you spend your $10 billion on?
Manufacturing powered by electricity? Go ask a farmer what he relies on for power, manufacturing is made possible by feeding the populace and the transport of man, machine and raw materials to and from.
Steel from the ore stage needs much more than coal for manufacture, even recycling is not possible without oil.
"Sure we do. Wind has an E-ROI of 40-80. Solar is 20-50, depending on technology. That's what E-ROI means: they only need a tiny fraction of their own output for their own manufacture".
I nearly choked on this..........I don't take a great deal of notice of charts and figures used in other posts and I don't use them myself, common sense is my best guide but I would just love you to give me an example of your claim.
I'll bet you solar panels and wind turbines cannot be manufactured without oil.
I'll bet solar panels and wind turbines can't be manufactured with power supplied by itself.
I'd like to be proved wrong though.
"I don't take a great deal of notice of charts and figures used in other posts and I don't use them myself, common sense is my best guide"
I think this is your difficulty. Without learning numbers and doing calculations your "common sense" is just a compilation of other people's opinions, part information, part misinformation. You need to start learning basic quantitative energy stuff to inform your intuition...
Yep as I thought, typical of you, nothing to back up your figures plucked out of your imagination, so you get on a high horse and personal attack.
"You need to start learning basic quantitative energy stuff to inform your intuition..."
Why do I need? To be able to converse with your superior intellect or what?
As I said charts and figures here are used by posters to proclaim their personal legitimacy, most of the time I'm supposed to accept that they are correct, who knows if they are or not so I use common sense, I don't even have to be smart to use it.
The feeling I get is a lot of people here troll the internet for figures and generally make them fit the argument they are espousing.
I'm still waiting for your example.
Confirmation Bias
Some posters are more prone to this than others. I sometimes wonder if Nick's optimism towards EVs is a symptom of this.
"I sometimes wonder if Nick's optimism towards EVs is a symptom of this."
Not really. I looked at the numbers, and EV's clearly worked out.
I suppose it might help if I tell you some things I'm not optimistic about - those are climate change and species extinction. I have no confidence that we'll move quickly enough to prevent disastrous effects on our environment: rising sea levels, and ocean acidification. Species extinctions seem to be accelerating, and climate change is one of the drivers (along with habitat loss).
You certainly have looked at the numbers. I don't refute that.
It just seems you take the numbers at face value or more. You show no skepticism towards any marketing material or press releases.
When GM claims 2010 for the volt you think Jan 1 2010. I note that GM is now claiming "late 2010" and think that date is from some pointy haired exec and expect the volt to be 2011 at the earliest (possibly much later)
You claim triumphantly that HEV sales are 2.3% of the market and doubling every 18 months. Yeah true, but 2.5% of just the US and doubling from such a tiny number of sales is not a difficult feat.
You add up enough of these optimistic numbers and you can easily confirm the idea that EVs or PHEVs are here, viable, and a significant wedge.
In the end we are not far apart. I think these vehicles are coming, maybe 5 years later than you think, and not nearly the wedge you believe them to be.
Heck, if Ace's graph is right, even your optimistic view isn't going to happen in time to prevent a collapse.
"It just seems you take the numbers at face value or more. You show no skepticism towards any marketing material or press releases."
Not at all, I just know how to evaluate what they're saying. Take a look at gm-volt.com for more info.
I'll continue tomorrow...
Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday?!? Of course I've seen gm-volt.com
And I disagree, you are not objectively evaluating what you are reading. Like I said before, it stinks of confirmation bias.
For example a couple of weeks ago you were trumpeting that GM had selected the batteries for the volt, and it was only a matter of months till it hit the road. I checked gm-volt and sure enough, they had only accepted one of the contestants for the competition to determine the supplier for the production battery packs. And the battery pack delivered for the competition was only a fraction of what is called for in the production vehicle.
You just want to believe so badly your mind just isn't processing the data objectively.
"Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday?!? Of course I've seen gm-volt.com"
No insult intended. I simply think if you read gm-volt carefully you'll find it very encouraging.
" a couple of weeks ago you were trumpeting that GM had selected the batteries for the volt, and it was only a matter of months till it hit the road. "
I'm not sure what you're referring to, as I'm pretty sure I never said something quite like that, as I've been aware that GM hasn't announced a winner, and has said quite clearly that they won't until next summer. What I might've said was that a prototype was expected to be available within months, which is what both contestants have said.
"they had only accepted one of the contestants for the competition to determine the supplier for the production battery packs."
Actually, they simply promoted one of the contestants to "tier one" supplier status, which means that they work directly with them.
"the battery pack delivered for the competition was only a fraction of what is called for in the production vehicle."
I'm not sure what you're referring to. No battery pack has been delivered, AFAIK.
"You just want to believe so badly your mind just isn't processing the data objectively."
No, the information, and my interpretation, is pretty straightforward. A PHEV like this is a straightforward engineering exercise, and a new car takes 3-4 years to bring to production. GM started last year, and expects to start production in 2010, and produce about 60,000/year in 2010/2011.
Here's my take: GM was never enthusistic about EV's, and only produced the EV-1 half-heartedly, and scrapped it ASAP.
Since then they have stated publicly that 1) that was their biggest mistake in recent history, 2) they accept the idea of near-term peak oil, and 3) that their longterm existence depends on moving away from oil.
GM is acutely aware of the damage to their reputation from the EV-1, and the PR and sales advantage the Prius has given Toyota. They have put their reputation on the line in pushing for the Volt, and hope to use it to regain a competitive advantage.
There are three key questions here: is GM sincere, are the batteries adequate, and is GM realistic in their production
timeframe?
I think I've answered the first. It seems clear to me that the batteries are capable - it's certainly possible that there will be a glitch that will delay things, but that seems unlikely. It's important to note that GM has created redundancy with this competition, and that there are plenty of other potential suppliers as well. The worst that could happen is that neither of these work out (which is relatively unlikely), and that might add a year to GM's schedule. Finally, GM has it's flaws, but they really do know how to build a new car. The scheduling info they've given is consistent with my knowledge about production timing with other new vehicles, and I see no reason to doubt it.
You have to keep in mind the vicious competition between GM and Toyota (as well as Honda, and others). GM is hoping to beat the plug-in Prius by a matter of months, and they're pulling out all the stops to do so.
There will be several plug-ins in 2009 and 2010, including the Saturn Vue, the Volt, a likely Honda, and probably others operating in stealth mode.
"When GM claims 2010 for the volt you think Jan 1 2010."
No, I never said that. I have said that I think GM hopes to introduce the Volt ASAP - see my other note.
"You claim triumphantly that HEV sales are 2.3% of the market and doubling every 18 months."
That was a reply to someone who stated that sales were 1%. 2.3% is significantly greater, and the growth rate is important.
"Yeah true, but 2.5% of just the US and doubling from such a tiny number of sales is not a difficult feat."
Not really. Just a few years ago such a number was scoffed at by skeptics.
"You add up enough of these optimistic numbers and you can easily confirm the idea that EVs or PHEVs are here, viable, and a significant wedge."
Ah, well, they are. The numbers are real, and so are the EV/PHEV's.
"In the end we are not far apart. I think these vehicles are coming, maybe 5 years later than you think, and not nearly the wedge you believe them to be."
Well, I have no question that the impact of PHEV/EV's won't be as fast as we would like. We're looking at a difficult transition, just not certain doom.
"Heck, if Ace's graph is right, even your optimistic view isn't going to happen in time to prevent a collapse."
Well, Ace's graph seems a bit pessimistic to me. Also, it appears likely that US oil production will stabilize and slowly climb, CTL and biofuels will contribute a modest but noticeable amount, and vehicle efficiency and PHEV/EV's will contribute a large and increasing amount: PHEV's could be 50% of light vehicle sales in 10 years, quite easily, and there could be 30M PHEV's on the road, reducing light vehicle fuel consumption by 20%, a contribution which would grow further quite quickly.
Heck, we could reduce US oil consumption by 20% in 6 months with relatively painless and effective conservation measures - horrors, we might have to carpool....
Any figures are better than no figures, though.
Someone's common sense may or may not be right, but it can't be checked; figures are much better for communication simply because of how many ways they can be independently verified (e.g., check the reliability and authenticity of the source, check whether different sources agree, even check by directly measuring yourself).
Figures are what got us the computer you're writing on; one man's "common sense" is what got us an invasion of Iraq. Don't expect those of us who prefer figures to abandon them lightly.
No - to be credible. Unfortunately, your common sense - no matter how persuasive it may be to you - is nothing more than an opinion to anyone else.
More than that, really - common sense and intuition are built up by the things we deal with on an everyday basis, and for anything we don't deal with on an everyday basis - like wind turbine energetics, or science and engineering in general - common sense and intuition are demonstrably ineffective. So much so that in certain areas - quantum mechanics is notorious for this - students are warned in advance that their intuitions will lead them astray. And yet QM is one of the most rigorously tested theories in all of science; our intuitions are just wrong when we try to apply them outside the scope in which they were built.
That's not to say intuition and common sense aren't useful - they're extremely valuable for pointing us in the general direction. But only the general direction - details come from numbers.
So do you take for granted all the figures and graphs you see printed here?
You of course use common sense? If so we are not so different.
If not we are worlds apart.
Quantam mechanics is a fascinating field and I have read quite a few books discussing qm, string theory and particle theory, however it does not relate to what we are concerned about here but I think I understand the analogy you make.
If I came across as insinuating my common sense and or intuition is perfect I apologise.
Yes, but only as the beginning of my decision-making process.
Figures and graphs are numerical data, so I evaluate them numerically - I check their sources, check the reliability of those sources, check their agreement with other sources, and so on. Intuition is excellent for pointing out areas where figures or graphs need to be checked because they are likely to be wrong.
Likely.
Sometimes when intuition says a figure is wrong, it's the intuition that's wrong. That's great, it means I learn something, but it also means that "my intuition says no" is not a reliable reason for believing a set of numbers to be incorrect. And if I don't consider my intuition reliable enough, I'm certainly not going to consider anyone else's intuition reliable enough for that.
Intuition is a powerful and valuable internal voice, but it's at its best when it's just that - internal. It'll point you at the answer - usually - but digging it out requires more careful analysis.
"typical of you, nothing to back up your figures plucked out of your imagination"
I didn't mean to insult you: I gave you numbers, you said numbers weren't important, I replied that they were, and that you should learn some basic energy numbers so that you know that for yourself. That's not an insult, it's just the truth. Further, it's not unreasonable for me to suggest that you do some of the work in researching details, rather than just asking me to provide it all.
Nevertheless, you asked for backup. Here's an example:
"Wind has an E-ROI of 40-80."
Take a look at this Oil Drum article, keeping in mind that current wind turbines are 1.5MW to 5MW, so they're off the right end of Figure 2: EROI vs. wind turbine power rating.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/17/18478/085
Nick
A perfect example of what I said about figures and graphs.
They are biased to suit the argument being espoused.
Did you read all the comments on the article?
I think a true indication of EROI would be if they used wind turbine energy to manufacture and erect another wind turbine.
I doubt it could ever be done so in my opinion the EROI is meaningless.
"A perfect example of what I said about figures and graphs.
They are biased to suit the argument being espoused."
You've lost me there. I didn't see significant disagreement with the wind E-ROI figures in the comments.
"Did you read all the comments on the article? "
Sure.
"I think a true indication of EROI would be if they used wind turbine energy to manufacture and erect another wind turbine."
Sure, and it certainly can be done.
"I doubt it could ever be done so in my opinion the EROI is meaningless."
Ummm...why do you think so, specifically?
The political winds are blowing against coal. Capitalists have begun to become fearful about investing in new coal plants because they fear tougher emissions regulations and a carbon tax. For example, TXU scaled back its coal electric plans in Texas, About 30 requests to build nuclear power plants are about to get filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The capitalists are thinking that non-fossil fuels energy sources are safer bets for investments that will last many decades.
Therefore I do not see electric cars as necessarily meaning more coal electric plants.