Yes, we have limited petroleum resources (and ability to extract them). With China, India, and the 3rd world’s increasing demand for petroleum there is obvious case of demand exceeding supply coming upon us. And wake up, we have some of cheapest energy costs in the world. How long do you expect that to last in this global economy?
Yes, Virginia there is a global warming, decades of measurements from all over the world has confirmed it. Whether its man made or not really doesn’t matter, so don’t take it personally, just accept it and deal with it.
The overall environmental impact, cradle to grave, of electrics or hybrid electrics is higher than an efficient/comparable petroleum or alcohol fueled car. (My Toyota Corrolla gets 36 mpg, costs thousands less than a Prius, and won’t need $5,000 worth of new batteries every 125,000 miles). Battery production and disposal is a very nasty environmentally hazardous business.
Batteries must become cheaper, lighter, much easier on the environment, quicker to charge, and have longer usable lives before electric or electric hybrid vehicles make sense.
Mass transit for urban areas must be promoted that can easily be supplemented by iGO or Zip cars (monthly leasing of limited use shared cars). How does a monthly transit pass plus $15 per month (includes everything) for 5 hours of a car sound?
The far better long term solution is fuel cells (another energy storage like batteries, not a fuel burning mechanism). Fuel cells refill quickly, don’t weigh much, and don’t pollute excessively to create. This is where R & D should be going (to reduce up front cost and extend their useful life). Look at the Honda Clarity.
The same fuel cell technology could be used at home to produce hydrogen during non-peak hours and then stored for use in vehicles or for domestic needs. Hydrogen tanks are no more dangerous than gasoline or propane tanks. Solar powered hydrogen stations (that look like a big Coke machine) are already in service in Norway.
Batteries (or fuel cells) are charged from large power plants, most of which burn coal (still available in great quantities). Atmospheric emissions from coal plants are actually quite low as these big, fixed, steady operating machines, thanks to the EPA now burn very cleanly.
I’ve worked on and in nuclear power plants and am an advocate, but in the current domestic political setting it would take decades to open a new one, and of course there is always the concern for how to dispose of the waste.
But the U.S. electrical infrastructure is antiquated and overloaded. Adding more large energy generating nodes (where cooling and rail services, let alone the grid to handle it) to address our increasing demand or even to replace existing sources won’t be easy to do.
Natural gas extraction, a new technology just now coming on board, will provide over 100 years of energy domestic demand from reserves right here in the U.S. Smaller natural gas turbine plants could be more easily located, cheaper to build, with almost negligible environmental impact.
So the smartest short term move would be to convert our coal/diesel/gasoline economy to natural gas for power plants and vehicles. (We had a propane truck growing up, which was more powerful than gas, but we kids had to pump it into the tank.)
It’s always best to produce electricity close to point of use and to use “free” energy (solar, wind, wave/current, and geothermal). With on-site storage and natural gas fired peaking plants a more efficient/distributed solution will soon be available.
Geothermal in its many variations can improve heating/cooling efficiencies in buildings by up to 20 fold and by doing so reduce overall electrical demand. With solar/wind sourcing and on-site hydrogen storage, most households (houses and cars) could be energy self-sufficient.
