Prodromus

As presumed Presidential nominee Barrack Obama taught us this week, it is vitally important for everyone to inflate their tires this weekend, and on a regular basis as well.  In addition, if you can also schedule a tune-up, that would be swell.  As Obama pointed out, “There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy.  Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing.  But we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires?  And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much!”

Now I am not sure exactly what his definition is of “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling”, but that sure sounds like a lot.   The Energy Information Administration estimates that we could extract approximately 10 billion barrels of oil from ANWR alone, about 600 million barrels a year.  This is equal to just less than 10% of our total oil use in the US on a yearly basis. 

The federal government estimates the nation’s outer continental shelf might hold 85.9 billion barrels of crude, including 10.13 billion barrels off California.    Let’s call that another 600 million barrels a year just to make our numbers easy, it could be 4 or 5 times that number.

Just from those two sources, we could decrease our reliance on foreign oil by 15-20%.  If making sure your tires are inflated is equal to that amount, between the Republican solution (drilling), and the Democrat solution (inflating tires), we could lower our dependence on foreign oil by 30%-40% in 5-10 years.  That is great progress!  Way to go political leaders!

This September a human-powered sustainable dance club, called Club Watt by its owners, opens its doors in Rotterdam, Netherlands.  Club Watt proposes to power the club through human power.  This ultra-green dance club is deadly serious about taking themselves off-grid.

They create their energy through a high-tech floor that captures the movements of the dancers above and produces electricity down below.  Heavy duty coils and magnets provide the means of turning the moving floor into power.  The electricity is than stored in heavy-duty batteries and used as needed to power the Clubs’s sound system, lights, etc.  However, even with the high-tech floor, human power will only provide ~30% of the Club’s required energy.  The shortfall will be made up with solar power and a wind turbine.

What the company’s press release does not explain is that the average human only generates about one kilowatt-hour (kWh) per day.  At that rate, tapping into human energy to generate power proves to not be very efficient.  In the US, one kWH costs about a Quarter.  Obviously human energy will not be the US’s long-term solution for energy independence.

Human Power turns out be a great marketing tool for trendy companies that want to appear to look green, but in economic terms, it really does not make any sense.

If you think that this is shocking, read this.

Our monopolized electric utilities are one of the major sources of energy waste in our country.  There is a built-in system that allows them to build larger and larger power plants, passing along those costs to the consumer.  Because most utilities make a fixed percentage on their total revenue, as mandated by local state utility commissions, the only way to make additional profit is to sell you more energy!  These utilities have no built-in incentives to help consumers lower their overall energy use, as that would clearly take away from their profits.

Like many energy and pollution related matters, California has been leading the way at solving these issues.  Often derided as wacky, California has provided much needed leadership in re-thinking the energy monopoly that the utilities control.  Some measures have failed, everyone remembers the rolling blackouts earlier in the decade, however in other areas they have had very positive results.

Specific new regulations allowed utility company profits to no longer be tied to how much electricity they sell.  This is often called “decoupling”, and allows utilities to take a share of any energy savings they help consumers and businesses achieve.  Now California utilities make money when their customers save money.

So why is this a big deal?  Now the utility can make investments in increasing energy efficiency, and make a profit on the long term energy savings.   For example if the utility spends $5 million to replace all state traffic lights with new high efficient LED traffic lights, they than can profit in the $10 million yearly savings, not only in the first year, but in future years as well.  This causes energy-efficiency investments to become just as important to the utility as building a new power plant.

Sound like a good idea?  Some experts are saying that the US could reduce our overall electrical usage by almost half if adopted nationwide.  This is a realistic, and actionable, way that we can move towards energy independence.  If you agree, call or write your elected officials today and tell them that you want the public service commission in every state to allow utilities to receive the same profits on energy efficiency as they are allowed to receive on generation.

Nancy Pelosi

Our Congressional leaders sure wanted us to know that they were working hard this weekend.   In scanning just some of the headlines in various publications, they kept using the phrase, “the Senate in a rare weekend session”.  Are they trying to make us think they are actually working hard for us?  Or do they feel sorry for themselves?

It all reminds me of co-workers who send email messages to the CEO at 2AM to “impress” him with how hard they work.  Give me a break…  Our elected representatives need to be working harder for us, they need to spend less time worrying about getting re-elected, and more time worrying about our nation’s problems.  And in my opinion, the issue everyone should be focused on is energy independence.

So what was Nancy Pelosi working on this weekend?  Uh, making sure that Congress does NOT vote… Instead of dealing with the issue of offshore drilling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of well, everything, has simply decreed that she will not allow an offshore drilling vote to take place on the House floor.   So, why will she not allow a simple vote?

“What the president would like to do is to have validation for his failed policy,” said Nancy yesterday when asked that very question. “What we’re saying is, ‘Exhaust other remedies, Mr. President.’ . . .

We can debate if offshore drilling will solve our issues, but at least bring the topic up for vote.  Ignoring the problem, and hoping that other remedies just show up, is short-sighted, and anti-democratic.

Share your views here.

The new FCX-Clarify holds a lot of promise, potentially fulfilling the dream of California’s CARB that clean, hydrogen-powered cars would be zipping around the state.  However, many skeptics still say that the technology is to far ahead of its time.  They point to limited supply of hydrogen, the Clarify will only be sold in Southern California to start, and the challenges that Honda will face in scaling the production of the high-tech fuel cell carried on-board.

Let’s hope that the FCX succeeds, and helps propel the development of the next generation hydrogen vehicles.