I think this is a point that's worth making here and at some length: "presum[ing that] battery technology improves" is setting yourself up for failure.
In truth, there have only been a few noteworthy improvements in battery tech during Ryan and my lifetimes: longer-lived NiCd and NiMH batteries; some improvement in alkaline batteries; and the popularization of lithium batteries. But look closer and you'll realize that most of these aren't actually battery innovations, per se: they're benefits of the microprocessor revolution. Cheap, smart charging circuitry allowed us to avoid memory effects; to balance load across cells; and to monitor lithium cells' temperature and voltage as they charge so that they don't catch fire (well... usually), thereby finally making lithium a viable option for consumer electronics. Those are all important developments, but at this point we've wrung about as much as we can out of charging our batteries more cleverly.
None of this has done much to improve the fundamental energy storage densities of the underlying chemistries. These have been known for a long time now, and nothing is going to change them -- nor are there any more promising elements like lithium waiting to be tamed (well, none that aren't radioactive, anyway). The glacial pace of improvement in battery technology really can't be overemphasized. The lead-acid battery was developed in 1859, for pete's sake. It's really heavy relative to the energy it stores, can produce explosive fumes if overcharged, and sometimes requires the addition of distilled water. Yet it's still the best battery technology we have for supplying the high current necessary to turn over an engine. A century and a half and we haven't come up with anything better!
It may seem like batteries have improved dramatically -- consider the lifespan of an iPod Nano versus a portable cassette player. But this is misleading. In fact it's a byproduct of more energy-efficient technologies. Which isn't to dismiss energy effiency! But electric motors are already extremely efficient. And when it comes to vehicles, we're unfortunately dealing with hard physical limits related to how much energy it takes to move a car. So long as we're committed to EVs being able to perform like and drive safely near gasoline-powered cars, we will find ourselves with less room for improvement than people would like to think.
I don't mean to be a downer, but it's difficult to overstate what a serious problem this is, or for how long it's been one. Hydrocarbons are an unbelievably efficient way to store energy when compared to electrochemical cells, and I seriously doubt anything will change that. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong. But smart people have been working on the battery problem for decades and decades, propelled by the lure of the financial bonanza that a breakthrough would represent. And while they've made impressive improvements, none come anywhere close to competing with gasoline's energy density. We're still an order of magnitude away.
There's a lot of optimism on both the center-left and the right that all we really need to do to tackle the problem of global warming/peak oil is throw a hell of a lot of money at the problem, and presto! A new technology will arise that will obviate the need for any lifestyle change more obnoxious than keeping the house size to 3,000 square feet. But as I've said to liberals in re: other problems, the fact that there is a problem does not imply that there is a solution. Yes, we found petroleum to replace whale oil. This does not therefore mean, as night follows day, that we will find something to replace petroleum. We will find something to replace petroleum if there is something that can replace petroleum. There might not be. And if there is something, Tom's post implies that it probably isn't going to be hyper-efficient electric cars, which might at any rate merely shift the anxiety from petroleum supplies to lithium.
Hydrogen looks more promising in many ways. On the other hand, finding a way to make the stuff cheaply out of clean energy is necessary, but not sufficient, to solve our problems. You also have to build a distribution network, and make it so the highly pressurized hydrogen doesn't set your car on fire. This is a massive task. Think how long it took from the emergence of the internal combustion engine in the 1890s, to being reasonably certain of finding a gas station wherever you happened to be driving: decades, even as automobile use exploded.
Could we clone whales in vats and then go back to whale oil?
There is a bigger problem with hydrogen, that never seems to get discussed. It stores relatively little energy per weight, and it has to be compressed. Compressing it gas into a 10,000 psi tank takes more than half the energy that is available. That is a whooper of a looser right there.
I am not as pessimistic as Megan. I think there is a ok of promise in technologies that synthesize hydrocarbons (like gasoline) from atmospheric CO2, water, and nuclear power. It makes hydrocarbon power carbon neutral without requiring huge infrastructure changes.
One of us might be missing the point. If you can easily break water down into hydrogen, you don't need to have gas lines with explosive hydrogen. You just need to have water lines. Hey wait, we have those already.
So if you have a tank in your car filled with water that solar power (maybe aided by gasoline?) breaks water down into hydrogen you're performing the process near the moment of combustion.
I have no idea if this is physical possible/efficient. And it may be better to convert the hydrogen elsewhere and pump it to your car's storage tank rather than having 10 million little hydrogen converters on the road. But if we could do it like I suggest then it would seem to imply a safer way of doing things. You're not storing the hydrogen, just burning it up at the moment of creation.
Can it be done on a small scale? My neighbor did it with his car - he used the current from the alternator to separate hydrogen from a container of water that he then burned along with the gasoline in his car. No idea how efficient it was, he did melt a hole in his pvc water container after driving 60 miles in the sun/desert. But it supposedly worked. I only say supposedly because I don't think this garage mechanic has a way of measuring if his car was actually burning the hydrogen or just humming along on gasoline while the water was being boiled into evaporation.
MIT claims they also just discovered a different catalyst for the electrolysis of water. http://www.edn.com/blog/1700000170/post/640031664.html
This is also interesting, using bacteria to create artificial gasoline:
http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Technology_Update1&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=70847
Megan wrote: "Some scientists in Germany say they've found an easier way to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen, possibly opening the way for solar-powered hydrogen production."
The scientists are actually at Princeton and in Australia. I read the article.
This sounds right to me (regarding batteries). This issue was the a big part of a robotics conference I attended last year. The consensus was that there probably wasn't going to be big breakthroughs in switching to primarily electical power trains. Ultra cap and li battery we're seen as the most likely avenue. Hydrogen fuel cells had big heat dissipation issues. The speaker from Lawerence Tech on batteries and fuel cells was very good, unfortunately I think I disposed of his card when I cleaned my desk last week.
Hydrogen, I was told that getting hydrogen is cheap and easy, it can be extracted from fossil fuels through chemical processes.
Hydrogen is a great idea on paper. It stores a lot of energy per unit weight, and it burns cleanly, or can easily run fuel cells.
Unfortunately, in practice it's well, impractical. It's an incredible PITA to store or transport; it's very leaky and non-dense, even for a gas (because of the tiny molecules?). You either have to chill or compress or both, and in either case there went the weight and density benefits over batteries (once you factor in the sturdy/insulated tank) and you've wasted a bunch of power into the bargain.
Even if we had a dirt-cheap source of hydrogen (and currently, the cheapest is natural gas!), the sensible economic solution is probably to convert it to some sort of propane or gasoline-like fuel by linking in some carbons - the processes for this are relatively well understood.
Tom Lee's comments are pretty dumb. First, he really has no basis for asserting that batteries are not likely to improve significantly in the foreseeable future. There has been dramatic progress just over the past 10 years. Auto companies and startups are investing billions of dollars to develop better batteries for electric vehicles. New materials and nanotechnology suggest that energy densities much higher than those provided by current batteries are feasible.
Second, we already have batteries good enough to allow rechargeable electric and PHEV vehicles to substitute for most existing conventional vehicles. Even first-generation PHEVs (e.g., the Chevy Volt) will be able to travel around 40 miles on battery power alone between charges. This is sufficient to cover 75% of all current daily commutes. The big obstacles to large-scale adoption of electric/PHEV vehicles in the near future are price and production, not basic technology.
One of the great strengths of PHEVs is that they allow for a gradual transition away from oil as a fuel for motor vehicles. They don't require a huge upfront investment in new infrastructure (e.g., a large network of hydrogen filling stations) or a super-advanced battery capable of storing as much energy as a full tank of gasoline.
I wondered about the battery thing, too. I have just come back to model planes after a nearly 15-year absence, and the changes are huge in just that short time. Of course, that's on a pretty small scale.
I saw on the TV that Obama is going to "fast-track alternative energy", which is, by definition, the solution. I'm sold.
Megan, not that you made it, but so many are still mistakenly thinking of hydrogen as an energy source, rather than a battery. You don't find free, collectible hydrogen in nature any more than you can dig fully charged batteries out of the ground.
Yes, water is not hard to come by, but splitting hydrogen from water uses electric energy, and running the hydrogen back through a fuel cell generates ... almost as much electric energy. Less the energy spent compressing and shipping the hydrogen.
Right now there is no viable large non-hydrocarbon source of energy other than nuclear. All the alternatives are waiting for a deus ex machina to raise their efficiency two orders of magnitude.
Any energy policy that does not start actually building reactors as fast as possible may as well be offering unicorn rides.
There are different sorts of batteries with different uses. Lead-acid batteries might be just fine for portable power, but clearly inappropriate for storing, say, solar power for a cloudy day. But you know what might be a good battery for that? Big tanks of hydrogen and oxygen. Excess sun: break down water into H2+O2. Excess demand: combine H2+O2 and get water. And it could be a closed loop, so once you pump in the initial water, you just keep reusing it.
Instead of trying to generate free hydrogen, why don't we explore ways to synthesize hydrocarbons? There is nothing else that is going to match the energy density and portability of hydrocarbons.
Meghan- You said "But as I've said to liberals in re: other problems, the fact that there is a problem does not imply that there is a solution. Yes, we found petroleum to replace whale oil. This does not therefore mean, as night follows day, that we will find something to replace petroleum." I think the odds that we will find something to replace petroleum is very high, and while it does not follow logically- based on the history of innovation I think it is more than likely. This does not mean that any particular replacement is likely at all- and I agree with you that it is probably not a good idea for the government to be choosing winners and losers on this one.
Not a bad comments section for once.
At least most here recognize there are two huge problems. One we need to generate or collect the energy. Two, we need to deliver it in a useful form. Oil and coal and nat gas are easy to collect and deliver.
We've been digging and pumping highly efficient batteries out of the ground for the last 100 years, now we need to find a way to replace those batteries.
Mixner: if you click through you'll see that I was referring to the viability of using EVs for carsharing fleets. That would require much greater ranges or much faster charging times for our batteries.
My point is not that plug-in hybrids won't be an important development or that the technology shouldn't be pursued. Rather, my point was that battery technology, although always improving, has come a depressingly small way over the past two centuries, especially compared to other technologies. There is currently no reason to expect that batteries will approach hydrocarbons' energy densities, which means we're going to be stuck using fossil fuels for at least some ground transportation applications for the foreseeable future.
For those excited about hydrogen, I recommend this article. The author has an agenda, but the physical fundamentals he cites are undeniable. Hydrogen is a poor energy transport mechanism for a number of reasons, and it's unlikely that we'll find workarounds for all of them. It may be the case that we eventually move hydrogen around in other forms -- I've heard systems proposed that involve ammonia pellets, and it may be possible to hydrogenate unsaturated hydrocarbons and then crack them in the vehicle to power fuel cells (I don't know whether the efficiency of such a process would make it viable -- currently the economics favor extracted hydrocarbons so heavily that no one's bothering to develop such a system). But vehicles powered by gaseous hydrogen are pretty much a nonstarter, unfortunately.
So is the idea of using sunlight-powered electrolysis at the car. Silicon solar cells are considerably more efficient than splitting water into hydrogen and then putting it through a very expensive fuel cell. But while solar cars exist, they're only very light-weight, low-speed and almost-nonexistent-pickup experimental jobs. There isn't enough surface area on a normal car for it to be powered solely by the sun, even if solar panel efficiencies suddenly doubled.
Personally, I hope that EV technology is widely adopted and pushes the market toward lighter vehicles and perhaps a common system for swapping charged batteries for depleted ones (this would be a complicated proposition due to the batteries' weight, limited lifespan and cost, but it's certainly within the realm of engineering possibility).
Hydrogen isn't going to get the job done, and EVs aren't going to be able to seamlessly replace our current fleet. There will be significant changes if we leave hydrocarbons behind. Plugin hybrids are probably the best we're going to be able to do for a while. Shorter trips, made less often in lighter cars: that's the real way out of this.
Excess sun: break down water into H2+O2. Excess demand: combine H2+O2 and get water. And it could be a closed loop, so once you pump in the initial water, you just keep reusing it.
Forgive my glibness, but I'm having a hard time understanding what this means or it's relevance. Could you elaborate?
Mike: actually, you've got it exactly backward. Lead-acid is heavy and takes up a lot of space relative to the energy it stores. That makes it bad for portable applications. But it has a low self-discharge rate, is extremely cheap, very robust and has a pretty good lifespan. Consequently a lot of non-mobile solar applications *do* use lead-acid for storage.
Tanks of hydrogen, on the other hand, are huge pains in the ass. They can't store much energy and the hydrogen leaks out -- those are the two biggest problems, but there are others. Check out the link in my last comment for more.
Five bucks says that Hydrogen is not the right answer.
It's light and nonpolluting, but it leaks from most containers, requires massive pressures, perhaps cryonic temperatures, and could lead to some huge explosions as a result.
I agree with your point on batteries... But I'll bet the next big energy source will be stable at room temperature, pourable/transportable unpressurized, does not react violently with water (e.g., lithium), and has not destroyed too many zepplins.
The next big thing is more likely microbally-produced diesel or alcohols. Maybe algae and/or biomass used as a feedstock, pulling CO2 out of thin air.
Hydrogen has a shot... But it's scary.
GPS Navigation + evenly distributed refilling stations over a broad metropolitan area would bring enough demand to get the chicken/egg ball rolling, while allowing consumers to find a nearby station with relative ease.
Just thinking out loud here .... I wonder if there is some way to use the radiation from a nuclear reactor to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and hydrocarbons -- sort of like natural photosynthesis, but on an industrial scale?
Would such a gizmo violate any fundamental Laws of Chemistry or Thermodynamics???
Mixner: if you click through you'll see that I was referring to the viability of using EVs for carsharing fleets. That would require much greater ranges or much faster charging times for our batteries.
Not necessarily. You could allow for recharging time by increasing the size of the fleet, or through a battery exchange system.
Rather, my point was that battery technology, although always improving, has come a depressingly small way over the past two centuries, especially compared to other technologies.
The near-term goal is to produce batteries that are good enough to allow electric/PHEV vehicles to effectively substitute for conventional vehicles on a mass scale. That obviously doesn't mean batteries need to match the rate of improvement of, say, personal computers, or whatever other technologies you have in mind. And we pretty much have "good enough" batteries already. The main obstacle right now is that they're still too expensive, but prices are expected to decline substantially with mass production and incremental improvements. 10 years from now, a PHEV car will probably cost only a few thousand dollars more than a comparable conventional vehicle.
There is currently no reason to expect that batteries will approach hydrocarbons' energy densities, which means we're going to be stuck using fossil fuels for at least some ground transportation applications for the foreseeable future.
Sorry, but I see no basis for your first assertion here. Nanotechnology may allow battery energy densities that exceed that of gasoline. We simply don't know what the practical limits are yet. And as I said, batteries don't need to achieve gasoline-like levels of energy density to allow for electric/PHEV vehicles that can effectively substitute for the vast majority of conventional vehicles, anyway.
Yes, we will probably be dependent on petroleum to fuel some of our ground transportation for the foreseeable future. But the point is that we already have the technology to greatly reduce that dependency. And plausible improvements in batteries and other automobile engine and fuel technologies over the next decade or two will allow us to reduce the dependency even further. The real challenges now are mostly about refining and commercializing the technologies we already have.
Tom Lee,
Shorter trips, made less often in lighter cars: that's the real way out of this.
Sorry, but if even existing technologies will allow us to double (triple, quadruple) the energy efficiency of our auto fleet, and to greatly diversify our automobile fuel sources, why do we need to do any less travelling at all? When $4/gallon gas effectively becomes $2 gas or $1 gas, we should expect driving to increase rather than the reverse.
The average American automobile today gets around 20 mpg. A regular Toyota Prius, available for purchase now, gets almost 50 mpg. The first-generation plug-in Prius, which is expected to be on sale within 2 years (along with a bunch of other PHEVs, from several major auto manufacturers) will get the equivalent of over 100 mpg--five times as fuel-efficient as the average automobile of today. Again, this isn't far-future, pie-in-the-sky technology. It's technology that's already being commercialized for mass market production.
HYDROGEN TO POWER LOCOMOTION IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF ITS VALUABLE BY-PRODUCT, HOT DISTILLED/POTABLE-WATER, AND AS WELL VERY DANGEROUS TO MAN'S VERY SURVIVABILITY!!!
WE KNEW THIS AT FORD AND G.M. FORTY YEARS AGO!!!
BUT THERE NEED BE NO WORLD "WATER-'CRISES' " IF ONLY GOVERNMENTS FINALLY GET SERIOUS ABOUT MAKING NEW WATER!!! HYDROGEN IS ''FLYING-WATER''!!! HYDROGEN FOR "TERRAFORMING"!!!: MAKING NEW WATER IN NEW PLACES!!!
(30 YEAR-OLD TECHNOLOGY: HYDROGEN IS "FLYING-WATER"; A.K.A. "HINDENBERG-EFFECT" (HYDROGEN-UP; WATER-DOWN),A.K.A. "CHEMICAL-RAIN-IN-PIPES" RENEWABLES-HYDROGEN-WATER CUSTOMIZABLE SCALEABLE RETROFITABLE INTEGRATED OPERATING-SYSTEM ECONOMY IS A DIRECT CHALLANGE TO DESALINATION WATER PLANS (BECAUSE IT CONFLICTS WITH HYDROGEN-PROPULSION NONSENSE!!!)
S U R V I V A B L E AND MUCH MORE PROFITABLE, SINCE IT BOTH:
(a) MAKES NEW NET-"ENERGY"/POWER, BEING RENEWABLES-PUMPED, OVER 100% EFFICIENCY;
(b) CAN ALLOW SEABOARDS TO BECOME A NET EXPORTER/SELLER OF WATER TO ANYWHERE UPHILL/INLAND: TO REFILL WATER-STRESSED/PARCHED AQUIFERS; THE ALTERNATIVE TO "ENERGY"/POWER-INTENSIVE/EXPENSIVE POSEIDON AND/OR ANY/ALL OTHERS' SEAWATER DESALINATION!!!
GLOBAL-WARMING DRIVEN: WATER RISING INEVITABLY!!!(?) GLACIERS MELTING IRRETRIEVABLY!!!??? OCEANS RAPIDLY ACIDIFYING KILLING FORALS/FISH, !!???(REF.; USHA LEE MACFARLING, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SUMMER 2006-PULITZER PRIZE!!!
OCEANS RAPIDLY DE-OXYGENATING KILLING FISH!!!??? THE COMMON SOLUTION TO ALL!!!:
"WATER WATER EVERYWHERE AND NE'ER A DROP TO DRINK"[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "THE ANCIENT MARINER"(~1798)];
"H Y D R O G E N , H Y D R O G E N E V E R Y W H E R E AND S T I L L , NOT A DROP TO DRINK!!!"[EDWARD SIEGEL(~1957; ~1979); REALITY: (2008,)].
THE SUBJECT IS(OLD SCIENCE FICTION, N O W/F U T U R E SCIENCE F A C T!!! ):
"TERRAFORMING": BRING "NEW" WATER TO NEW PLACES!!!;'I.E. BRING NEW HYDRO-GEN TO NEW PLACES AND BURN IT!!!
WERE SEAWATER POTABLE, IT WOULD STILL BE PROHIBITIVE TO PUMP UPHILL!!!
WHY? WEIGHTS-RATIO: ATOMIC/MOLECULAR: [O]/{[O]+[H]+[H]} = [16]/{[16]+[1]+[1]}= [16]/{[18]} = 88% ~ 90% ~ T W O ORDERS-OF-MAGNITUDE!!!
WHY PUMP FAT HEAVY OXYGEN UPHILL WHEN IT IS EVERYWHERE ABOVE EVERYONE'S HEAD IN THE AIR??? SOLUTION: INTEGRATE ALL INTO A RENEWABLES
(POWERS: SOLAR, HYDROELECTRIC, WIND, WAVE,...)-HYDROGEN-WATER INTEGRATED OPERATING SYSTEM!!!X"FLYING-WATER";A.K.A. "THE HINDENBERG-EFFECT"
("HYDROGEN UP; WATER DOWN"), A.K.A. "CHEMICAL-RAIN-IN-A-TUBE/PIPE", A.K.A.
GREEK ARCHIMEDES(BOUYANCY)/"ROMAN" AQUA-DUCTS!!!
(REFERENCE: "INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ALTERNATIVE-ENERGY", BAL HARBOR, FLORIDA(1979), T. NIHAT VEZIROGLU ED., HEMISPHERE/SPRINGER (1980)-VOLUME-5/PAGE- 479!!!
CONTACT FOR MORE DETAILED PARTICULARS:
DR. EDWARD SIEGEL
PHYSICIST/METALLURGIST/MINERALOGIST/PETROLOGIST/CHM./.../INTELLECTUAL-PROPERTY OWNER/ORIGINAL-INVENTOR(1957; 1979; 1980):
OF "JEREMY RIFKIN" OVER-HYPED MIS-UNDERSTOOD -"HYDROGEN-ECONOMY" AS RENEWABLES-HYDROGEN-WATER CUSTOMIZABLE, SCALEABLE, RETROFITABLE, INTEGRATED OPERATING-SYSTEM ECONOMY, OVER 100% EFFICIENT: ENERGETICALLY AND FINANCIALY!!!
A.K.A. "FLYING-WATER"!!! A.K.A. "HINDENBERG-EFFECT", A.K.A. RENEWABLES-GENERATED CHEMICAL-RAIN IN A PIPES!!!
[FMR. G.M. & FORD HYDROGEN-ENGINEER(1960s; 1970s)] "FLYING-WATER"
LA JOLLA / SAN DIEGO
USA+(858) 270-5111-NO VOICEMAILS
USA+(858) 490-1340-TAKES VOICEMAILS
FLYING-WATER@SAN.RR.COM ;
CHAVAH36@SAN.RR.COM ;
THOMAS LEWIS/CEO
USA+(619) 618-8511
TLSD@AOL.COM
He's saying that you use more energy splitting H2O than you get back in useful energy from the reverse process. IIRC, typical efficiencies are in the 50-60% range, meaning you get back 50-60% of the energy you put into splitting the water apart.
I'm glad Dr. Siegel shared that valuable information with us.
Don't you have to know anything to comment on this blog? Or to write for it, even?
It's absurd that people would even consider posting on battery/energy storage subjects without at least one semester of chemistry.
But I guess being an economist means never having to say "that's not my field."
Energy portability is a very different beast from power generation. If we're near the limits of chemical batteries, then perhaps a change in thinking is necessary: I wouldn't care if I could only drive 100 miles, if recharging a battery was fast (like 2 minutes). The fact that modern electronics get their oomph from something other than an improvement in chemistry tells me that some creative thinking might be able to come up with some non-chemical improvements to usability.
We don't need a solution which is right all of the time - even a 50% solution would be a big benefit.
Mixner:
Not necessarily. You could allow for recharging time by increasing the size of the fleet, or through a battery exchange system.
Yes, but it's hard to imagine that the associated costs would work out in EVs' favor in the carsharing case. I don't mean to dismiss EVs or plugin hybrids -- they will be ideal for many applications. But I don't think that carsharing fleets are one of them. It would almost certainly be cheaper to charge users a premium for carbon-neutral biofuel (assuming such a thing can be obtained) than to pay for the extra cars, mechanics and parking spaces that it would take to keep a spare car unused, charging.
Sorry, but I see no basis for your first assertion here. Nanotechnology may allow battery energy densities that exceed that of gasoline. We simply don't know what the practical limits are yet. And as I said, batteries don't need to achieve gasoline-like levels of energy density to allow for electric/PHEV vehicles that can effectively substitute for the vast majority of conventional vehicles, anyway.
As I said in my original post, there's an order of magnitude difference between batteries and hydrocarbons when it comes to energy density. If we can overcome that distance, great. But at the moment the burden of proof certainly has to rest with your side of the argument. This is a very significant improvement we're talking about. Contrary to your assertion I believe we DO know the theoretical upper limit on energy density for a given cathode/anode pair, assuming infinite surface area. I believe it's a considerably simpler math problem, in fact.
I agree completely with the last sentence of your paragraph, though.
why do we need to do any less travelling at all?
First, keep in mind that the status quo is not scalable. There are many more people becoming wealthy around the world, and they are going to want to travel by car, too. If we are to reach a sustainable level of per-capita energy use, Americans will certainly have to reduce theirs. We're using an unbelievable amount, and in many cases without any particularly good reason.
It's important to keep in mind that improvements in energy efficiency will almost always be the simplest solution to an energy problem. Technology is great and an important part of the answer, but it's not the biggest part. Energy use will inevitably produce heat and, in almost all cases, negative environmental externalities. In places where efficiency can be increased it should be.
That isn't to say we should go back to living in caves, but we also shouldn't react to the suggestion that we should collectively drive less as if it's an assault on the American way of life. Quality of life can continue to improve even if we start to spend less time in the car and throw away our incandescent lightbulbs. In many cases accomplishing this goal will be as simple as doing things like loosening zoning laws so that people can buy food within walking distance of their homes, or fostering a work culture that allows more telecommuting.
If folks love driving as a hobby I'm sure they'll be able to continue to drive as much as they want, although almost certainly at a somewhat higher price per mile.
"But as I've said to liberals in re: other problems, the fact that there is a problem does not imply that there is a solution." -- MM
It's not quite clear what you meant here with the "liberals" reference, but as far as I can tell it's mostly conservatives who think better batteries will allow us to keep private cars as our near-exclusive transportation mode, and mostly liberals who think we need a real lifestyle shift involving more public transit and different housing patterns. Right?
Silicon Valley has already been giving us lots of demand for improved batteries. A few electric car startups joining in the efforts, well, ever hear of the law of diminishing returns?
This is basically why McCain's prize offer is stupid; whoever can deliver a battery that delivers four times the storage at the same weight and only double the current cost of lithium ion is looking at billions and billions of dollars from the market right now. And their battery still won't be cheap enough per stored joule to make fully electric cars economical against gas-powered cars at $4-a-gallon. A government prize isn't going to deliver it any faster (and neither is demand from Tesla Motors).
And every time I hear about governments pushing specific solutions to a problem, I'm reminded of the 1980s HDTV wars. Japan had a government-sponsored push to invent analog HDTV; Western Europe had a inter-government-sponsored push to invent analog HDTV; Americans complained that George H. W. Bush refused to sponsor the development of an American version of analog HDTV. In the end, a relatively small US firm developed a digital HDTV standard with no help from any government . . . and their version is the basis for HDTV worldwide today.
Hydrogen is a wonderful. Unfortunately, it's a light, flammable gas, which means it's hard to store in quantity, and has a tendency to explode at inconvenient times.
Thankfully, there's a wonderful technology that allows us to harness the energy of combining hydrogen with oxygen and makes hydrogen easier to transport and store:
Stick some carbons in between!
There's even a great biofuel source of these "carbonated hydrogens" - dead organisms from millions of years ago, crushed beneath rocks!
See?
Biofuels!
Hydrogen!
Change!
You can believe in!
Not anymore. = )
Surprised nobody has mentioned the research of Yi Cui at Stanford University.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/cui_group/press/StanfordReport.pdf
From the document:
"Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries... The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and
engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours..."
Just want to hasten to add...
As has been pointed out on these pages before (by our gracious host and others):
Getting it to work in a lab is one thing, getting it to work in an everyday environment is another.
But mighty oaks from little acorns grow and Dr. Cui's findings are encouraging news.
I'll throw my two cents in along with Tom Lee and Chet: batteries of the electrochemical sort aren't going to get much better any time soon, no matter how much money is thrown at 'development' and this is essentially basic chemistry, or if you prefer, basic physics and geometry. These comments also tell me who knows any real science, and who's blowing smoke. I'm guessing that they would not blink at an assertion like 'someday a substance 100,000 times stronger than steel will be perfected.' No, it won't, again because of basic physics having to do with Planck's Constant and the charge of the electron.
Yes, every few years you get these breathless reports about 'fundamental breakthroughs' fresh off the pages of Discovery Magazine and other sources of equal repute. I recall back in '79 a twitter-pated recounting of a new process that would make solar cells cheaper than $0.50 a square foot, and that it was only a matter of months until product was brought to market. No, I won't a priori discount any 'breakthrough', but the long odds say that such a thing is very unlikely to happen.
My best guess would be that automobiles will always be powered by internal combustion (baring a radical change in lifestyle of the American people), and that as more reactors come on line the requisite hydrocarbons will simply be synthesized by the Fischer-Tropsch process. It's not that much more expensive than the alternative, after all.
@mister nomer, that research is hugely promising - I had just copied that same link into my browser when I saw you beat me to it. Even if the silicon nanowire approach doesn't pan out, I think it's inconceivable that in the age of nanotech and quantum manipulation we won't figure out a way to store electrical energy much more efficiently than we do now.
Tom Lee,
As I said in my original post, there's an order of magnitude difference between batteries and hydrocarbons when it comes to energy density.
Advanced lithium-ion batteries, incorporating nanotech features, with 10 times the capacity of conventional Li-ion batteries have already been demonstrated and are expected to be available commercially within 5 years. Further advances in nanotechnology could produce another order of magnitude increase in capacity.
And energy density is not a particularly useful metric for comparing gasoline and batteries as automobile power sources, anyway. Battery-powered electric motors are simply a much more efficient way of propelling a car than ICE-powered mechanical drivetrains. Only a small fraction of the energy content of gasoline (about 15%, according to the Dept of Energy) is converted to useful energy to move the vehicle or power accessories like air conditioning.
In any case, as I said and as you seem to agree, we don't need batteries to match the energy density of gasoline to produce dramatic increases in auto fuel efficiency. We already have hybrids that effectively double the fuel efficency of comparable conventional vehicles, and we will soon have plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles that provide four or five times the fuel efficiency of conventional vehicles. And these are just first-generation models.
Contrary to your assertion I believe we DO know the theoretical upper limit on energy density for a given cathode/anode pair, assuming infinite surface area. I believe it's a considerably simpler math problem, in fact.
I said practical limit, not theoretical limit. The theoretical limit on energy density is certainly much greater than the energy density of gasoline.
.... I wonder if there is some way to use the radiation from a nuclear reactor to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and hydrocarbons -- sort of like natural photosynthesis, but on an industrial scale?
Would such a gizmo violate any fundamental Laws of Chemistry or Thermodynamics???
Posted by john w
No, unfortunately, ionizing radiation breaks down complex molecule bonds and some simpler ones, which is why ionizing radiation is so deadly to life even at low energy levels. (the energy of a match head lighting, if it was all made into ionizing radiation joules, or 4 minutes of exposure to sun - if it was gamma instead of visible light, IR, and UV - would be enough to kill you)
Nuke plants of the next-gen HTGR sort that operate at higher temperatures and pressures may become hydrogen generators because electrolysis is twice as efficient at those temperature and pressure regimes - but for now, appear to be very uneconomical given the cheaper process of getting H2 from natural gas by breaking the far less energy needed to break the C-H bonds than the far stronger H-O2 bond.
People that talk about home solar cells making all the H2 they need or charging cars don't know much about physics, I'm afraid.
Megan MacArdle's larger point is that we have a large majority of the American population who despite high school understand very little about science or engineering....and by ideology, be it extreme environmentalism or wacky unlimited global growth through population growth ideologues ...embrace the snake oil of "miracle technology will always bail us out" propagandists.
1. They extrapolate fast growth in one technology, like micropressor speed into an entirely unrelated technology like cancer chemotherapy, solar cells, or battery storage technology and assure people that the progress in those dissimilar technologies are "sure" to also improve geometrically.
2. Both the Greenies and supply side nuts (free markets solve all supply problems, don't worry!) see history as an entirely positive, ever-improving wave of prosperity where "miracle innovation", zillions of substitute materials always bail us out of situations.
But they don't. History is made of civilizations rising on new technology, populations exploding, then decaying as "free markets!" "unlimited human innovation!" failed to fix the challenge of resource depletion or others invading to get the wealth.. (People rise on new agriculture, irrigation, war innovation, new trade technology...which then fall...And each time no doubt, you have people like the Mesopotamians confront their civilization-ending problem with blithe assurances that since they innovated irigation, written language, mastered walled city construction that "salt accumulation of our arable lands no doubt has an easy, soon to be found technical solution.)
3. There comes a time when Malthus's simple math must prevail.
Africa had 100 million people in 1900, now 1.1 billion projected by 2030, with growing desertification, deforestation, and collapse of ecosystems and potable water acquifers.
The Indian Subcontinent had 240 million people in 1900, now between Pakistan, India, Bangladesh with similar environmental problems to Africa, they have 1.4 billion.
America itself will have more people (434 million and perhaps more as more refugees demand in) in 2050 than China, with all its subsequent famines and democides, had in 1900.
The agronomists and water people say the optimum, sustainable population of the planet may be 1-2 billion. If no "exciting miracle energy cures" or chemical, fertilizer, lube substitutes for fossil fuels exist - then we may be forced to drop population to 2 billion and RESERVE shale oil, coal, nat gas and oil deposits for future generations NON-energy uses.
Then it gets real ugly as "precious god-given AMuuurican Freedoms have to be shitcanned in a global era of gov't limited access to depletable resources, one-child per family, no more immigrants.
The problem, Mike, is that for all 'coulds', 'possibles', and 'mights' and 'somedays', this sort of fanboy reporting doesn't really give any realistic account of the actual possibilities of this working. As I recall from the more sober reports, for example, this idea only works for one part of the cathode/anode pair. That right there should tell you something. Don't forget that reportage like this is the bread-and-butter of a certain sort of magazine that caters to the technophile crowd: anybody remember the swing-wing, for example, that was going to 'revolutionize' airplane design? (I can say this with a sneer because I happen to be a technophile myself. Though a slightly more nuanced one, my Unix to Megan's Vista.)
Let's turn this around: how many of these sensationalistic 'breakthroughs' have actually worked in the past?
Tom Lee,
First, keep in mind that the status quo is not scalable. There are many more people becoming wealthy around the world, and they are going to want to travel by car, too. If we are to reach a sustainable level of per-capita energy use, Americans will certainly have to reduce theirs.
Sorry, this claim just doesn't make sense, either. First, there is certainly enough energy in total--fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables--to allow everyone on the planet to consume as much energy as Americans do currently. Solar energy alone would be enough, if we collected it. Americans do not need to reduce their energy consumption to "free up" energy for people in other countries. More importantly, we don't need to continue consuming as much energy as we do today to maintain our current lifestyle and standard of living (including travel).
With respect to ground transportation specifically (since that is what we are discussing here), we already have the technology that will allow us to increase our motor vehicle fuel efficiency by a factor of 4 or 5. So again I ask, why do we need to reduce our total amount of travelling at all? All the evidence suggests that the typical car of twenty or thirty years from now will be vastly more energy efficient than the typical car of 2008. Thanks to this massive increase in efficiency, the real price of motor vehicle fuel (per vehicle-mile or passenger-mile of travel) will likely be lower in the future than it is now. That is likely to produce more travel, not less.
That isn't to say we should go back to living in caves, but we also shouldn't react to the suggestion that we should collectively drive less as if it's an assault on the American way of life.
I think it is an assault on the American way of life. Or, at least, on the demonstrated preferences of the American people for the past 50 years or more. Americans love cars, love the freedom and convenience and speed of travel that cars make possible. Cars free Americans from the need to live close to where they work and shop. That freedom has allowed Americans to afford bigger houses.
Quality of life can continue to improve even if we start to spend less time in the car and throw away our incandescent lightbulbs. In many cases accomplishing this goal will be as simple as doing things like loosening zoning laws so that people can buy food within walking distance of their homes, or fostering a work culture that allows more telecommuting.
I don't see much unmet demand for people to buy food within walking distance of their homes. The typical American working mother is certainly not going to go food shopping for her family on foot. And I doubt most single people who have the option of driving are going to do that, either. For one thing, even if you do live within walking distance of any food stores, they are likely to be small stores with a limited selection and high prices. Small, neighborhood food stores may serve a niche market, but most people are probably going to do most of their food shopping at large stores where they get a much bigger selection and much lower prices. And these days that means not just ordinary supermarkets, but new Big Box food retailers like SuperWalmart, SuperTarget and Costco.
Well, there are other possible alternatives for utilizing that radiation, such as nuclear isomers:
Another, purely chemical possibility is the manufacture of N60(analogous to C60, the eponymous 'Bucky Ball') directly from the nitrogen in the atmosphere. It also has a higher energy density than gasoline. A lot higher. IIRC, the stuff has a specific impulse of over 1500.
Here I think you do both sides an injustice. People get their wacky ideas about technology and technical possibilities from TV and movies. They see nothing inherently implausible about, say, travelling faster than light, and think that the fact that we are unable to do so is something of a technical problem akin to breaking the sound barrier.
This, btw, is also where the source of the stiff resistance to nuclear power is to be found - the flip side of techno-optimism. People saying that it's the Luddite Greens who have successively opposed nuclear power for going on half a century simply don't know what they're talking about. Sorry to say, it's the public's fear of Giant Tarantulas that make them wary of nuclear power.
Small, neighborhood food stores may serve a niche market, but most people are probably going to do most of their food shopping at large stores where they get a much bigger selection and much lower prices. And these days that means not just ordinary supermarkets, but new Big Box food retailers like SuperWalmart, SuperTarget and Costco.
There is little-to-no empirical evidence that this is true. In industrial societies with different urban planning and zoning regimens, such as Europe and Japan, most people in densely populated areas do, in fact, shop at small neighborhood stores rather than large "big box" retailers. I've lived in both Japan and Korea; CostCo and WalMart have tried to make inroads into these markets using the American "big box" retail model, and both have failed to do so. The fact is, when it's possible to conveniently shop for food for only, say, two to three days ahead, many people will elect to do so, because the product is of higher quality and meals require less advance planning.
This idiotic article not only ignores the real problems with Hydrogen, it fails to realize that Hydrogen won't free ANYTHING from the oil economy.
Hydrogen is MUCH WORSE than CNG for running vehicles; if you believe in Hydrogen, just ask yourself, why not believe in CNG??
CNG is here, now, it's an abundant, cheap, clean fuel, you get to ride in the HOV lane, it doesn't require a $300,000 fuel cell stack to run it, and it only takes 3,600 psi while H2 takes special treated tanks at 10,000 psi.
More: unless you carry technical-grade Oxygen, as well as technical-grade Hydrogen, the fuel cell stack degrades from the Carbon in the air within three years (up from two).
Why don't you study just a tiny bit before you blather on?? At least CONSIDER these points, instead of chattering like a fool without thinking about the subject?? Aren't there any editors at The Atlantic???
Mixner - With respect to ground transportation specifically (since that is what we are discussing here), we already have the technology that will allow us to increase our motor vehicle fuel efficiency by a factor of 4 or 5. So again I ask, why do we need to reduce our total amount of travelling at all...
Yeah, the Secret 150 mpg carbeurator the oil companies acquired in the 50s and kept locked up ever since!!!!
Seriously, that claim that motor vehicles could be made 5 times more fuel efficient is the sort of scientifically illiterate propaganda the public gets all too much of. Along with the weekly food item touted as causing cancer, or preevnting cancer. Sometimes both within the space of a few years.
Mixner - I think it is an assault on the American way of life.
Claims that there is some Holy American Way of Life that must be status quo and any change in it is somehow an assault on "our God-given rights" is insipid.
That was the argument the slave-owners made.
Same with corporatists that said in the 19th Century that they owned the industries and properties and that gave them the right to pollute all they wanted and keep unions out as "inherent precious freedoms of America sacred to each individual"
Same with the whining about rationing in wartime, past energy crises.
Mixner - First, there is certainly enough energy in total--fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables--to allow everyone on the planet to consume as much energy as Americans do currently. Solar energy alone would be enough, if we collected it.
Nope, and nope.
First, there isn't enough fossil fuel, nuclear, and renewable capacity now to give everyone a US-level energy use lifestyle. Nor will there be in the future because we still have a population explosition that outstrips all efforts to construct new energy capacity.
1.4 billion people in 1900, 6.7 billion now, 9.6 billion in 2050.
Second, energy is primarily a tool to utilize other resources - minerals, food, wood products, get water and materials and finished goods to places - and we are running out of water, arable land, and certain mineral resources like copper at bout the same clip we are being constricted by energy.
Third, saying solar energy is abundant and enough if "we only collected it" is like saying gold is abundant in the ocean and in miniscule levels in rocks, and enough to make everyone a millionaire several times over if we "only collect it".
The problem is you cannot economically collect all that "abundant" solar or gold because it is too diffused over wide areas.
==========================
Re: I think it is an assault on the American way of life.
??
Why? Seems to me if you drive less you have more disposable income that can be used for other purposes-- even for savings, though Lord knows that's an old tradition that's fallen by the wayside. I'm sure the heck a lot happier spending $90 a month for gas than I was spending three times that amount. And no, I haven't gotten rid of my car and certainly don't plan to. I love my car too, like any American. Doesn't mean I want to live in it, spend more than I need to on it, and I sure don't love sitting in backed up traffic. I mainly use the car now to go shopping (and run similar errands) and to go out on weekend evenings. That, and the occasional road trip.
Re: And these days that means not just ordinary supermarkets, but new Big Box food retailers like SuperWalmart, SuperTarget and Costco.
The Publix supermarket chain in Florida had a far most diverse overall selection of groceries than any Walmart I have been in. I think you'll find that's true in a lot of areas: there's at least one "normal" grocery store that beats Walmart etc. hands down in that area. Walmart is cheap, but the choices are a bit limited.
Re: People get their wacky ideas about technology and technical possibilities from TV and movies. They see nothing inherently implausible about, say, travelling faster than light, and think that the fact that we are unable to do so is something of a technical problem akin to breaking the sound barrier.
This is true, but no one is suggesting doing anything that flat-out violates any fundamental physical laws in our quest to replace fossil fuels. After all, if fossil fuels can supply sufficient energy for cars, etc. then that sort of thing cannot be counter to the basic laws of narture, and replacing fossil fuels is a technical problem not something impossible a priori.
The detail that the battery was invented in 1859 is fascinating. It's theory bespeaks a recipe that doesn't seem to occur in post Maxwell devices. Thinking of this reminded me of another device that seemed on a similar level of theory, Ben Franklin's kite and electrified keys, about as far away from the battery as the battery is from us in the time of it's occurrence. Would it be possible to electrify the line to an airborne device such that it could be used as a wick for lightning. Perhaps the wick could be tied to a giant capacitor or, more science fictionally, used to ignite a fusion device.
I agree that today we haven't enough energy to give the planet a USish supply. I challenge the idea that it is impossible to expand our ability to do so in the future in an environmentally friendly way. There are no fundamental physical or engineering limits that would prevent humanity from producing 100X today's energy output. If you disagree, I'd like to know why.
"The lead-acid battery was developed in 1859, for pete's sake. It's really heavy relative to the energy it stores, can produce explosive fumes if overcharged, and sometimes requires the addition of distilled water. Yet it's still the best battery technology we have for supplying the high current necessary to turn over an engine. A century and a half and we haven't come up with anything better!"
Aluminum-air batteries have significantly higher power density than lead-acid batteries and are much lighter. They are also, for the moment, prohibitively expensive and used almost exclusively for military applications. That could change. Al-air battery powered cars would likely match present cars in performance and range very quickly, though they would be more expensive to operate without a breakthrough in recovering the Al in the spent batteries.
Jon, the suggestion that electrochemical batteries can get anywhere near the performance of gasoline _is_ a violation of fundamental physical law. That's the point: you would know this if you had a basic (or what I would consider basic) education in science.
These are not really batteries. They are fuel cells, and they 'burn' aluminum. Recycling schemes to recover the aluminum are (insofar as I know) at least as expensive as synthesizing plain old gasoline, and for about the same reason. you might as well talk about 'recycling' CO2 and water to recover the original hydrocarbons.
Recycling schemes to recover the aluminum are (insofar as I know) at least as expensive as synthesizing plain old gasoline
Never mind the energy cost of getting the aluminum out of bauxite to begin with.
About 8 years ago I heard a Nobelist speak about the possibility of hydrocarbon fuel cells, which, if they existed, would achieve enormous increases in efficiency over ICE (including, as we calculated in Stat mech class later, a higher theoretical amount of energy available). Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be panning out. Anyone know why?
Our company, Limnia, Inc. (http://www.limnia.com) has resolved almost all of the issues associated with hydrogen infrastructure. We store hydrogen in patented, solid-state, non-pressurized canisters that are safe, efficient, better than many battery solutions, use common carriers already built out globally and can recharge a car in seconds via hot-swap. Our many hydrogen generation partners have shown methods, this year, to make hydrogen from water or organic waste for highly efficiency energy ratios.
Cindy Lewis
I'd like to echo the comments that H2 as a fuel is a non-starter without a breakthrough. Every process for production of H2 has large losses.
First, there are no H2 wells out there - that are carbon neutral. Most H2 is made by cracking natural gas. Every process for production of H2 has large losses, making them non-scalable.
Second, H2 is a low density fuel, needs special tanks, has bad effects on metals, and has the nasty habit of burning without color in the flames (so fires are hard to spot). The safety hazards of having large high pressure or cryogenic tanks in cars are huge.
I'd like to point out that the best solution is to find a carbon neutral source of hydrocarbons and use that. It would allow us to use the current distribution network and technologies.
A couple of notes on technological progress: it has been said (by Clarke?) that we tend to overestimate progress in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Second, scientific breakthroughs are unpredictiable.
If politicians want to move us to a carbon-neutral future, they need to ignore science and concentrate on engineering. Most politicians don't know the difference, and as someone with degrees in each, I know they are immense. Scientists can tell you what's possible, engineers what's practical.
We need to look for technologies that are successful at the pilot stage and construct incentives to move them to manufacturing. For example, there seem to be some startups that have promising technologies for algae that produce oils that can be harvested and for bacterial processing of cellulose to alcohol. Both of these techniques could move us away from using food crops for ethanol and toward using crop and timber waste for fuels. Much better for the poor of the world.
It's interesting that more attention is paid to who the economic advisors of the candidates are than their tech advisors, since so many of the problems they address are tech problems in the end.
The logical way to store hydrogen is not pressurized gas or cryogenic liquid but as a metal hydride. The Germans have been studying this for decades (mostly BMW, if memory serves). A metal hydride can store more hydrogen in a given volume of space than can be stored in the same volume with hydrogen as a cryogenic liquid.
The Germans demonstrated this back in the late 1970's or early 1980's - this is not new technology. There are problems, of course, including things like the weight of hydride tanks but they compare very favorably with batteries.
xeynon,
There is little-to-no empirical evidence that this is true.
You mean, "little evidence" apart from the fact that the vast majority of food in this country is sold by supermarkets and big box food retailers (Walmart, Costco, etc.) rather than small neighborhood food stores? Walmart alone has grown from selling virtually no food a decade or so ago to become the largest food retailer in the U.S.
In industrial societies with different urban planning and zoning regimens, such as Europe and Japan, most people in densely populated areas do, in fact, shop at small neighborhood stores rather than large "big box" retailers.
You have a very quaint and outdated view of how Europeans live. Like most Americans, most Europeans live in suburbs and do their food shopping at supermarkets and other large food stores. Tesco, a large British supermarket chain, is one of the biggest food retailers in the world. Ditto for Carrefour, a French supermarket and "hypermarket" chain. The small number of Europeans who live in "densely populated" inner city areas may (or may not) shop mostly at small, neighborhood food stores, but they are vastly outnumbered by supermarket shoppers.
Cindy,
I can't find any patents or published applications assigned to Limnia in the US or PCT databases. Care to elaborate?
Re: Like most Americans, most Europeans live in suburbs
I don't know much about how Europeans shop, but I do know their settlement patterns are different than ours, in part due to the fact that those coutries have been settled, and the land developed and owned, for centuries. There's rather little room for the sort of sprawl we see in North America (and I include Canada and Mexico in this with the US). Living in a large city is seen as the most desirable location by Europeans, though many cannot afford to do so. Second best are smaller cities, including satellite cities near a major city, but not a true suburb in the sense of a bedroom community (for a US example, consider Ann Arbor MI or St Petersburg FL which are far more than just suburbs of Detroit or Tampa respectively). The very word for "suburb", in French "banlieu", in German "Vorort", has a negative conotation in many European languages, often doubling as the word for "slum" as the poorest Europeans, notably immigrants, are generally relegeated to the suburbs.
And yes, some people on these threads have an over-romanticized of Europe, based on experience with major tourist destinations not the countries as they actually are. Europeans are just as car-loving as Americans. But they have more fuel-efficient cars, and generally, much shorter commutes.
JonF,
Why?
I explained why in the text immediately following the single sentence that you quoted. Did you stop reading after that one sentence?
Seems to me if you drive less you have more disposable income that can be used for other purposes-- even for savings, though Lord knows that's an old tradition that's fallen by the wayside.
If Americans wanted to drive less and spend the savings on something else, they'd do it. They have in fact reduced their driving in the past year or so in response to the rapid increase in gas prices, but that is likely to be temporary. When the real cost of driving starts to fall again, as people trade in their SUVs for smaller conventional vehicles and new, fuel-efficient technologies increasingly displace conventional gasoline-engine cars, driving will likely start to increase again. The fact that car ownership and driving are so ubiquitous demonstrates how much Americans value those things.
I'm still waiting for anyone who thinks Americans ought to drive less in the future to present a clear argument in support of that prescription. And if they think Americans are likely to drive less in the future, to present a clear argument in support of that prediction.
I do think that Americans are likely to do less work-related driving in the future. Not because they're going to embrace mass transit or "high-density" lifestyles, but because of the rise of telecommuting, teleconferencing, compressed work schedules, and other such developments. Travel for leisure/recreation/socializing is likely to increase.
I've learned more in this thread than in most full blown articles, thanks for that.
Other than the storage problem isn't the fact that sunlight converts to electricity something that should be subsidized much more than it has been? It's sunlight, it's forever, it's free.
An electrochemical battery is not the only way to store electrical energy: I'm surprised no-one here mentioned advances in capacitor design. By increasing the area of the opposing plates with exotic geometry, and using exotic materials to increase the breakdown voltage (and therefore energy density), new capacitor designs may become competitive with traditional batteries or even hydrocarbons in terms of energy density (see here for example). The technology may not be mature yet, but at least it's another avenue to investigate, quite independently of electrochemical battery design.
JonF,
I don't know much about how Europeans shop,
I do. As I said, Europeans do most of their food shopping at supermarkets and other large food stores, just like Americans. Not at small neighborhood food stores. Supermarkets in Europe provide the same advantages of lower prices and larger selections as they do in the United States. Small food stores serve only small, niche markets and simply cannot compete with the large food store chains like Tesco and Carrefour.
Living in a large city is seen as the most desirable location by Europeans,
Do please present your evidence for this highly implausible assertion.
ech - I'd like to point out that the best solution is to find a carbon neutral source of hydrocarbons and use that. It would allow us to use the current distribution network and technologies.
Think of what you just said. The only carbon neutral way of burning hydro-carbons is to gather your burnt carbon and remake new fossil fuel from your thermodyamic entropy wastage.
Or make it from "exciting, miracle" ethanol. Which we discover is barely or not at all "global warming neutral"
=========================
John - I challenge the idea that it is impossible to expand our ability to do so in the future in an environmentally friendly way. There are no fundamental physical or engineering limits that would prevent humanity from producing 100X today's energy output. If you disagree, I'd like to know why.
You're the one making bald assertions that we can go from global 450 Quadrillion BTUS to 45,000 Quadrillion BTUS in and environmentally friendly way.
So the onus is on you to describe the technologies and the solved engineering and physical constraints that gets us to that 100-fold increase in an "environmentally friendly" way.
But even if you knew what you were talking about, and you appear not to be, to put it at a minimum, energy is mostly used to move and shape other resources like arable land, water, materials of manufacturing to human use. Only 40% of oil is used for private transportation. The rest is for public aviation, military, industrial manufacturing, lubrication uses, and petro-based chemicals, plastics, fertilizers - that windmills and solar crap will not substitute for.
And many of those resources are under the same supply constraints we now see with too many people chasing too little oil with global population quintupling in the past century. We are outstripping wood, potable water, arable land that can be farmed without causing mass erosion or desertification. We are also seeing limits on key minerals and metals now with shrinking reserves and exploding prices - tin, copper, helium, vanadium, uranium. We have destroyed most productive global fisheries and in doing so, have proven the lie of population growth exponents from the Vatican to the Open Borders crowd that the sea had a "limitless food suply".
isn't the fact that sunlight converts to electricity something that should be subsidized much more than it has been? It's sunlight, it's forever, it's free.
Posted by: judson
If it is forever, except at night or on cloudy days, and it is free, just like all the dissolved gold in the ocean....why are you saying something that is free should be subsidized more by taxpayers to lower its costs? (Which, BTW, are 40-50 times the cost per KW as coal or nuclear generation)
I wish we'd quite publishing reports like this until the product is up for sale. It feeds an unrealistic belief that we don't need to develop our own oil and gas resources when we think that some version of solar or wind is right around the corner.
I'd love to be able to tell the Arabs and Chavez to drink their oil, but too few reports really explain the scale or cost of such a switch. Furthermore, I don't trust the people who are touting solar and wind power now to not turn on them as soon as they become widespread. They've done it before.
Other problems, constraints aside, how much water would be required to produce enough hydrogen to replace oil? What would be the source of this water?
Cindy Lewis,
What is the storage density attained with your technology? How much energy or hydrogen can you get from a pound of car-sized storage device? I can't seem to find this on your website.
Ech --
At times when I'm at my most cynical it's because I truly believe that the politicians all have their snouts in the trough and want to maintain the status quo until they figure out who else will give them money/power (see "Ethanol" brought to you by ADM or "Windpower" as brought to you by T. Boone "right-of-way" Pickens and Nancy "$100,000 isn't a big investment" Pelosi).
At my most optimistic I just believe that politicians are just stupid. Seriously, I don't know about your school but in mine (both high school and college) the politicos didn't take much in the way of math/science.
If Americans wanted to drive less and spend the savings on something else, they'd do it.
Surely you see how silly this is. There are many, many factors that affect how modern American life is conducted, from zoning to highway planning to the level of transit funding to homeowner tax credits to the way the culture presents positional goods. Not all of these institutions have been decided upon democratically or even through market mechanisms. It's foolish to look at the present state of affairs and decide that it is the American ideal, and that deviations from it are impossible or unpatriotic. Our society will continue to change and adapt. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's inevitable, anyway, so we may as well accept it.
As for the specific point: I live in Washington, DC. There are two large supermarkets in easy walking distance of my home -- a 3-unit rowhouse -- and at least two more that are a short bus ride away. And it's not a super-high-density neighborhood -- many urban and suburban neighborhoods can support this sort of arrangement. I grew up in the suburbs and enjoyed similar proximity to a supermarket. Nobody needs to be consigned to doing their shopping at a corner bodega.
Alternately, many Americans had their groceries delivered to them for much of the country's history -- it's not hard to imagine a return to such a state of affairs. That'd produce great efficiencies, too.
Asserting that driving long distances to big box stores is the answer, now and forever, bespeaks a lack of imagination. It sounds like it's a way of life that you enjoy, and that's fine with me. I imagine that you and your family will be able to keep doing it for as long as you'd like. But it's not going to be the right answer for everyone. There are certainly cheaper, more efficient ways of getting your food and other goods that many people would regard as just as pleasant, if not more so.
I remain extremely skeptical that we will be able to raise everyone's per capita energy use to present American levels. I do feel confident that we can give everyone on the planet a quality of life similar to or better than the one currently enjoyed in the developed world. I think we're going to have to figure out more efficient ways to reach that level of wealth.
Re: supercapacitors and li-ion breakthroughs -- what others have said. There's very little reason to pay any attention at all to press releases from .edu domains. If it's of academic interest it'll be in a journal. If it's of practical interest it'll wind up in the popular press. There's no reason to pay attention to it until it's passed that initial layer of filtering (and even then it frequently should be ignored -- our science journalism is really terrible).
Sent of Violets pretty well covers it:
"How many of these sensationalistic 'breakthroughs' have actually worked in the past?"
Indeed: Most research fails. If this were not the case, we'd surely have a lot more research.
One sobering fact is that research and attempts to innovate in the area of battery research have intensified greatly since laptops, iPods, Walkmen, cell phones and all things portable have become big industries. The rewards for a breakthrough are huge.
For the same reason, the rewards for breakthroughs in the areas of storage (hard drives, Flash RAM), transfer speeds (we've gone from dial-up to cable), and processor speeds are ALSO great, for the same reason stated above.
Well, fewer people use dial-up every day. Cell phones are smaller and capable of handling faster wireless traffic. Hard drives get bigger by the day. And Moore's Law is still in play.
But battery life? Tom Lee's right - batteries are up against the wall of physical laws, in ways that other technologies are not. Some breakthrough MAY yet happen, but based on earnest, well-funded efforts to date, history tells us not to hold our breath waiting.
Megan, there's something else we don't know how to do yet, and may never be able to do, and that's produce commercial scale electrolyzer cells that don't lose a lot of electricity due to ohmic losses in the electrolyte. The closest commercial technology to a hydrogen generating electolyzer right now is the chlor-alkali cell, and anywhere from half to two thirds of the electricity in those goes to waste to heat the brine up. And this is in addition to all of the other (above mentioned) problems with hydrogen.
I'll put my money on lithium cells. If hydrogen/fuel cell systems ever do become practical in mobile service, it'll be in large commercial vehicles (ships, trains, maybe buses).
Pssht, McArdle, maybe both you and Mr. Lee should stick to what you know -- which is clearly not chemistry, or engineering.
In the first place, who says batteries have to use metals ferfuxsake? Just because that's the way it's always been done? Because neither you nor Mr. Lee realize that you can write standard reduction potentials for any chemical species, not just for metals? Does it come as a surprise to you to realize that a hydrogen fuel cell is a battery?
Is a "hydrogen economy" a good idea? Speaking as someone who knows the chemistry very well, but not the engineering, I'd say a definite maybe not. While hydrogen has the advantages of leaving carbon out of the oxidation/reduction cycle, it has two serious disadvantages:
(1) It's the least dense of all gases, with a ridiculously low boiling point, which makes it very hard to get good energy storage densities without a lot of work to confine the stuff.
(2) Unlike the CO2/hydrocarbon cycle, there is no H2/H2O oxidation/reduction cycle in nature which we can adapt to our own uses, or even learn from. We're totally on our own here. No plants or animals do this. (That might tell you something, by the way.)
For my money, the way to go is achieving some better global control over the natural CO2/hydrocarbon cycle we've already been using. This is an excellent cycle, used everywhere in nature, and with many advantages, viz.:
(1) Hydrocarbons are available in many different chemical identities, from heavy gases (methane through butane), liquids from light (octane) to heavy (fuel oil), and solids (coal). They all have great energy storage densities. You can pick gas, liquid or solid, depending on what's convenient. Notice that with H2 you get one choice: an annoyingly light and difficult to contain gas.
(2) We already have a proven distribution system for hydrocarbons, whereas the distribution system for H2 is an enormous headache. You're going to ship H2 around the country how? Remember the Hindenburg? Or do you plan to ship it using giant cryogenic high-pressure tanks -- wow! expensive! -- or packing it all into giant kiloton palladium crystals shipping those? Or do we all just generate hydrogen on site? A mini-Hindenburg in every driveway, cool!
(3) We understand the CO2/CH oxidation/reduction cycle very well, and in case there are any blank spots, this cycle is used by every other living system on the planet, from algae to giraffes.
(4) We know it's possible to inject energy into the cycle from many and various sources, because we see examples all over the ecosphere. Green plants, for example, power the cycle directly from sunlight. We can harness or adapt that chemistry. Are there any natural systems that reduce H2O to H2? Why, no there aren't, none at all.
The only difficulty we've been having is that we've historically paid no attention to the CO2 to CH part of this cycle, relying on the fact that Carboniferous-era plants kind of overdid it for a while and built up a huge underground reservoir of CH. All we need to do to remedy the "limited" supply of hydrocarbons underground and our fears about letting too much CO2 accumulate in the atmosphere, is start deliberating managing the reduction (CO2 to hydrocarbon) part of the cycle ourselves.
That can be as simple as just growing a lot of green plants, which we know how to do, and turning them into -- or engineering them to produce themselves directly -- the hydrocarbons we want.
Why go to a completely different redox cycle (H2/H2O) when the entire natural world has already agreed on the one we're partially managing already (CH/CO2)? That's don't make much sense to me, glittery and cool and New Age though it might sound.
Tom Lee,
Surely you see how silly this is. There are many, many factors that affect how modern American life is conducted, from zoning to highway planning to the level of transit funding to homeowner tax credits to the way the culture presents positional goods. Not all of these institutions have been decided upon democratically or even through market mechanisms.
I think it's your claim that's silly. Yes, markets and the democratic process are not perfect. They do not perfectly represent the wishes and preferences of the people. But they do represent those preferences and wishes pretty well. If Americans wanted significantly different zoning laws, they'd vote for them. If Americans wanted significantly different government policies on transportation subsidies or housing-related tax credits, they'd elect representatives to change those laws. If Americans wanted significantly smaller houses or significantly higher infrastructure densities, their voting and buying behavior would reflect those preferences. But they don't. For at least fifty years, Americans have been voting with their feet, their pocketbooks and at the ballot box for the kind of car-oriented, low-density, suburban lifestyle that most of them live. The idea that this lifestyle has somehow been foisted on the American people against their wishes by nefarious forces that are immune to the market and the political process is just utter nonsense. The fundamental reason why our insfrastructure and transportation systems are the way they are is because that is how people want them to be.
Our society will continue to change and adapt. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's inevitable, anyway, so we may as well accept it.
Yes, it will undoubtedly continue to change and adapt. But the particular kind of change you seem to want and expect--a significant shift away from private motor vehicles towards more mass transit, and a significant shift to higher-density, urban-style housing and lifestyles--seems not only highly implausible as a factual matter, but strongly at odds with the long-standing preferences of the American people.
Contrary to what some have posted here, hydrocarbons are just like hydrogen - they are a chemical energy carrier, not an energy source. Hydrocarbons are merely the form of chemical energy stored biologically from ancient photochemical processes of long dead plant life - hence the name "fossil fuels". Once fossil fuels are burned chemically (in boilers or internal combustion engines) the energy is released/consumed permanently.
Renewable sources of energy (wind, solar, and hydro) can continue to be produced indefinitely, powered in real time by the sun. Renewable energy sources are indeed one of the best means of producing hydrogen fuel in the future hydrogen economy, albeit today most US hydrogen gas production comes from steam reformation of relatively cheap and abundant natural gas. And hydrogen, when pressurized sufficiently, is a very dense energy carrier, comparable (as measured in range distance) to petroleum fueled internal combustion vehicles.
True, renewables are not the only feasible source of hydrogen gas production. Hydrogen gas can also be electrolyzed from nuclear sources, utilizing gas cooled fission reactors operating at very efficient high temperatures (900 C). However, in just the last couple of years, great advances have been made in catalyzed low-temperature electrolysis, with conversion efficiencies in the range of 80% to near 100%.
And of course, hydrogen fuel cell power plants are vastly more efficient at converting stored chemical energy into actual work (i.e., the power and miles delivered by the vehicle) than are internal combustion engines ... by a factor of at least two to one. Internal combustion engines waste much of their fuel energy content on creating waste heat and overcoming internal friction.
The future hydrogen economy will be powered more than likely by a combination of renewable sources (especially wind power, which is growing dramatically in the USA) and non-renewable sources like HTGRs and even eventually nuclear fusion reactors.
As for Megan's concerns about the safe storage of hydrogen fuel in vehicles, that "problem" has long been solved. Hydrogen in fact is a far less dangerous vehicle fuel than is gasoline - in the event of a fuel tank rupture, the gas simply dissipates into the atmosphere, whereas as we all know, gasoline can be sprayed or spilled on passengers and stick to clothing and tissue, and also gathers in low places. Today's Honda Clarity provides safe hydrogen storage at comparatively low pressure (5,000 psi - much lower than some other manufacturers use in their fuel cell cars) yet still provides a range comparable to gasoline engine vehicles (350+ miles). And some designs have been developed that store the hydrogen within a fail-safe plastic matrix that cannot burst.
Tom Lee,
Mixner is correct- the living and transportation habits of Americans are unlikely to change much. It will take a much higher relative cost of energy to bring about the preferences you desire, and Americans have been revealing the present set of preferences long since the time that energy consumption was a much bigger fraction of GDP than it is today. What you will certainly see is better mileage automobiles being substituted for the low mileage ones of today. It is most likely that mileage driven 30 years from now will be higher than it is today on a per capita basis, and that the relative costs of doing so will eventually begin falling again in the near future.
There is a tremendous amount of ignorance about hydrogen as a vehicle fuel ... let me debunk several of the myths:
Myth 1 - hydrogen is inherently dangerous.
Hydrogen gas is no more inherently dangerous than hydrocarbon fuels (gasoline, or compressed natural gas, or compressed propane, or diesel fuel), and if fact is LESS dangerous. Chemical energy - which is what both hydrocarbons and hydrogen gas both contain - is energy, period. If the energy is released uncontrolledly (as in, spilling gasoline on yourself or the ground, or releasing hydrogen gas to the atmosphere) and it is ignited due to reaching the necessary combination of oxygen and fuel, then you get a fire, or an explosion. In fact, gasoline is actually much more dangerous than hydrogen gas, because it is a liquid at room temperature, and thus does not immediately dissipate into the atmosphere when released. For those who inanely bring up the Hindenberg, I bring up the 9/11 plane crash, wherein the jet fuel from the crashing planes essentially stayed inside the World Trade Center towers, coating the structure and burning at extremely high temps, which greatly weakened the steel structure causing both towers to fall. If the two jets had used compressed gas for fuel, the fuel would have almost instantaneously dissipated and not caused the destruction of the towers.
Likewise, it is fairly common for gasoline tanker trucks to crash into bridge abutments and literally burn up our highway bridges. That happened recently right here in Florida on I-75.
The answer: don't release chemical energy in an uncontrolled manner, period, no matter what form it is in. But all things considered, liquid fuels are more dangerous than gaseous fuels.
Myth 2 - hydrogen gas does not have sufficient energy "density" ... i.e., it "weighs too much" for the amount of energy you get.
That's completely untrue.
The amount of chemical energy contained in one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of compressed hydrogen gas is virtually identical to the chemical energy of one gallon of gasoline (weight - approx. 6.1 pounds). The amount of resulting mechanical WORK that can be performed by a hydrogen fuel cell powerplant from just 0.5 kg of hydrogen gas is equal to the amount of WORK you can derive from one gallon of gasoline in an internal combustion engine. So in terms of both energy density (in BTU) and "work density", hydrogen gas is much more "dense" than gasoline.
And contrary to what one poster said above, the energy required to compress hydrogen gas to usable pressures (5,000 psi in the Honda Clarity, which is now on the road in the USA) is nowhere near half the chemical energy content of the gas itself. The mechanical energy used to compress the fuel to 5,000 psi is something less than 5% of the energy content of the fuel itself.
Myth No. 3 - Hydrogen gas cannot be distributed easily, or by pipelines at all.
Not true - in fact, we have hundreds of miles of hydrogen gas pipelines installed in the oil patch of the Gulf Coast area (LA, TX, and OK). These pipelines are used to carry hydrogen (generally produced from steam reformation of natural gas) to oil refineries, wherein the hydrogen is used to process high sulfur crude oil into gasoline and diesel fuels. In fact, few people realize this, but the oil refining industry in the United States uses enough hydrogen gas to power 100% of the nation's existing motor vehicles with fuel cells.
In other words, there already IS a hydrogen economy, and it already powers our hydrocarbon economy.
Of course, there are other ways to transport hydrogen gas than pipelines. Liquified hydrogen gas tankers are the primary means of transporting industrial gases (other than to the very large oil refineries which use pipelines).
And of course, hydrogen gas need not be transported at all ... it can be generated directly at the point of use, by utilizing distributed electrolysis plants. Honda even sells a small household electrolysis unit for its Clarity drivers. It operates off household current, and can fully refill the Clarity's hydrogen fuel tank overnight.
Similarly, the Norwegians have developed a network of distributed hydrogen fueling stations along their nearly 300-mile long "Hydrogen Highway". Each station is a self-contained electrolysis plant, all contained within a room-sized enclosure, operating from Norway's abundant and cheap hydroelectricity.
We can do much the same here in the USA. All we need to do is upgrade our electrical generation and transmission capability, which we are going to do no matter what.
There is a tremendous amount of ignorance about hydrogen as a vehicle fuel ... let me debunk several of the myths:
Myth 1 - hydrogen is inherently dangerous.
Hydrogen gas is no more inherently dangerous than hydrocarbon fuels (gasoline, or compressed natural gas, or compressed propane, or diesel fuel), and if fact is LESS dangerous. Chemical energy - which is what both hydrocarbons and hydrogen gas both contain - is energy, period. If the energy is released uncontrolledly (as in, spilling gasoline on yourself or the ground, or releasing hydrogen gas to the atmosphere) and it is ignited due to reaching the necessary combination of oxygen and fuel, then you get a fire, or an explosion. In fact, gasoline is actually much more dangerous than hydrogen gas, because it is a liquid at room temperature, and thus does not immediately dissipate into the atmosphere when released. For those who inanely bring up the Hindenberg, I bring up the 9/11 plane crash, wherein the jet fuel from the crashing planes essentially stayed inside the World Trade Center towers, coating the structure and burning at extremely high temps, which greatly weakened the steel structure causing both towers to fall. If the two jets had used compressed gas for fuel, the fuel would have almost instantaneously dissipated and not caused the destruction of the towers.
Likewise, it is fairly common for gasoline tanker trucks to crash into bridge abutments and literally burn up our highway bridges. That happened recently right here in Florida on I-75.
The answer: don't release chemical energy in an uncontrolled manner, period, no matter what form it is in. But all things considered, liquid fuels are more dangerous than gaseous fuels.
Myth 2 - hydrogen gas does not have sufficient energy "density" ... i.e., it "weighs too much" for the amount of energy you get.
That's completely untrue.
The amount of chemical energy contained in one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of compressed hydrogen gas is virtually identical to the chemical energy of one gallon of gasoline (weight - approx. 6.1 pounds). The amount of resulting mechanical WORK that can be performed by a hydrogen fuel cell powerplant from just 0.5 kg of hydrogen gas is equal to the amount of WORK you can derive from one gallon of gasoline in an internal combustion engine. So in terms of both energy density (in BTU) and "work density", hydrogen gas is much more "dense" than gasoline.
And contrary to what one poster said above, the energy required to compress hydrogen gas to usable pressures (5,000 psi in the Honda Clarity, which is now on the road in the USA) is nowhere near half the chemical energy content of the gas itself. The mechanical energy used to compress the fuel to 5,000 psi is something less than 5% of the energy content of the fuel itself.
Myth No. 3 - Hydrogen gas cannot be distributed easily, or by pipelines at all.
Not true - in fact, we have hundreds of miles of hydrogen gas pipelines installed in the oil patch of the Gulf Coast area (LA, TX, and OK). These pipelines are used to carry hydrogen (generally produced from steam reformation of natural gas) to oil refineries, wherein the hydrogen is used to process high sulfur crude oil into gasoline and diesel fuels. In fact, few people realize this, but the oil refining industry in the United States uses enough hydrogen gas to power 100% of the nation's existing motor vehicles with fuel cells.
In other words, there already IS a hydrogen economy, and it already powers our hydrocarbon economy.
Of course, there are other ways to transport hydrogen gas than pipelines. Liquified hydrogen gas tankers are the primary means of transporting industrial gases (other than to the very large oil refineries which use pipelines).
And of course, hydrogen gas need not be transported at all ... it can be generated directly at the point of use, by utilizing distributed electrolysis plants. Honda even sells a small household electrolysis unit for its Clarity drivers. It operates off household current, and can fully refill the Clarity's hydrogen fuel tank overnight.
Similarly, the Norwegians have developed a network of distributed hydrogen fueling stations along their nearly 300-mile long "Hydrogen Highway". Each station is a self-contained electrolysis plant, all contained within a room-sized enclosure, operating from Norway's abundant and cheap hydroelectricity.
We can do much the same here in the USA. All we need to do is upgrade our electrical generation and transmission capability, which we are going to do no matter what.
Re: Living in a large city is seen as the most desirable location by Europeans,
Do please present your evidence for this highly implausible assertion.
I did. Property values within European cities are usually quite high, indicating strong demand for housing there. European elite especially tend to live in cities, far more so than American elite do (with the exception of uber-rich Manhattanites most American super-rich live in places like Boca Raton FL, well outside large cities.) And for crying out loud just visit Europe: the "suburbs" are slums. These are places where the immigrants and the poor live, out of sight and out of mind, until they start attacking the cops and burning cars. But I did point out that since they often can't afford to live right in London, Paris, Berlin or Moscow, most the European middle clas generally lives (and quite often works) in mid-sized or small satellite cities-- places with their own history and local culture and, yes, local retail. I don't dispute that Europeans generally shop at chain retail outlets (to which they drive) just as Americans do. Economy of scale works in Europe same as it does here. But history and culture have imposed some different patterns of living on Europe. In the US and Canada the presence of a lot of cheap, under-used land allows for sprawl. Europe does not have very much land like that-- people have buildng on it and passing on to their heirs for centuries. So there's far less sprawl. Europe is not simply America speaking in tongues! History and culture and, yes, public policy do matter.
Regarding the Malthusian idea that growing population will deplete limited resources:
I believe that it was Arthur C. Clarke that said (and I paraphrase) - ninety percent of the resources available to the human race do not exist on the earth.
Except, of course, he was wrong. It's at least 99 percent, possibly 99.9 percent. For all intents and purposes, the availability of both resources and energy is limitless, at least for the next thousand years or so. And I expect that by then, research may come up with a few more tricks .... :-)
It's not even remotely clear what technologies we will be using in 30 years. In my mind we need to do everything, drill, build nukes, conserve fuel, rapid transit, bike trails, etc.
The danger is the goverment deciding to drop all of our eggs in one basket.
The problem with batteries is weight and longevity, they also lose energy sitting in the car.
Hydrogen has some huge problems, but it's extremely clean and it can be stored. Metal hydrides can store hydrogen at a density greater than liquid hydrogen at room temperature.
The problem is not going to go away, and the solution may come from a variety of sources.
Solve the hydrogen storage problem and we're in business.
Oh and using your alternator to make hydrogen/oxygen and feeding it to the engine to increase gas mileage is a scam..
Popular mechanics just released the results of their tests, and it doesn't increase mileage.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4276846.html
Consumer affairs has an article that exposes the proponents of this garbage as con men.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/07/water4gas.html
These guys we need to get off the net as soon as possible, they're con artists.
Oh and using your alternator to make hydrogen/oxygen and feeding it to the engine to increase gas mileage is a scam.
In other news, perpetual motion machines have had another disappointing year.
"Recycling schemes to recover the aluminum are (insofar as I know) at least as expensive as synthesizing plain old gasoline, and for about the same reason. you might as well talk about 'recycling' CO2 and water to recover the original hydrocarbons."
Posted by ScentOfViolets
For now, yes. I was merely pointing out that there was a battery technology (the battery/fuel cell distinction is unimportant) that was in a state of relative technological immaturity that could outperform lead-acid. Obviously, the most attractive option would be cheap synthesis of the fuels we already use from atmospheric CO2, but that is even more immature.
As an American who has lived in Germany for 30+ years, one note on the supermarket thing. It used to be true that Europeans went to small shops in the cities, the Tante-Emma-Läden of old. However, supermarkets and shopping malls (Einkaufszentren) have killed them off, despite all the warnings about the evil Amerikanisierung they symbolize.
Remember, Ikea is European. Berlin has three of them.
Germans still walk more than Americans, certainly, but they love their cars, too, as you might have heard. Germans will talk endlessly about how their cars use less gas (or diesel), but suggest a speed limit and they just stare at you. No German politician is going to touch that, ever, the environment be damned. Hybrids are virtually unknown -- I have friends who don't even know what a Prius is -- and not seen as "real" cars. Echte Männer don't drive electric automobiles.
In short, the grass is not greener over here, just a different shade.
Regarding the Malthusian idea that growing population will deplete limited resources:
I believe that it was Arthur C. Clarke that said (and I paraphrase) - ninety percent of the resources available to the human race do not exist on the earth.
Except, of course, he was wrong. It's at least 99 percent, possibly 99.9 percent. For all intents and purposes, the availability of both resources and energy is limitless, at least for the next thousand years or so. And I expect that by then, research may come up with a few more tricks .... :-)
Tom Lee,
Asserting that driving long distances to big box stores is the answer, now and forever, bespeaks a lack of imagination.
I didn't say it is "the answer" (the answer to what?) "now and forever." I pointed out that the long-standing trend in food retailing has been towards large stores reached by car. Not small stores reached on foot. The dramatic growth of big box food retailers over the past decade or two (Walmart Supercenters, Super Targets, warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam's Club, etc.) continues this trend. I see no evidence of a significant shift in American food-shopping preferences away from large stores accessed by car towards small stores within walking distance. If you think you have such evidence, I'd like to see it.
The future you seem to want is one of smaller housing in higher-density communities and developments, combined with a smaller share of travel by car, a larger share of travel by mass transit, and less travel overall. I see no serious reason to believe this is likely to happen, and no serious reason to believe it ought to happen. Continuing advances in automobile fuel-efficiency are likely to continue to reduce the real costs of driving. And advances in auto and highway automation are likely to further increase the already-large advantages of travel by car over travel by public transportation, in terms of speed, comfort, convenience and flexibility.
In fact, I think the combination of advances in automobile engine and fuel technology and advances in automobile automation are likely to spell the death of mass transit in the traditional sense of fixed-route, fixed-schedule large-vehicle transportation services (that is, buses and trains). The mass transit of 2040 or 2050 is likely to consist mainly of automated municipal taxi services. Buses and trains may disappear almost entirely.
Brad Templeton has written an excellent series of posts exploring the prospects and implications of clean, fuel-efficient robotic cars of the near-future.
Let's step back and work the problem a bit here.
First, it would be useful to remember that transportation only makes up about 25% of the U.S.'s energy consumption. So moving to hydrogen or electric cars is not going to make you energy independent. The discussion always seems to be around cars, but the vast majority of oil consumption is used elsewhere.
Now, as for whether we need a 10-fold increase in storage density for batteries... Of course not. The exciting thing that's happening in automotive engineering right now is that there is a synergy taking place - advances in computing, materials science, and engine technology are making cars far more fuel efficient. GM now has a 300 HP V6 that can get over 30 MPG in a typical heavy sedan, without turbocharging. It uses direct injection, variable valve timing on intake and exhaust, computer controlled spark advance, and all kinds of other technology to be as efficient as it is. Imagine that engine with half the displacement, a turbocharger, and put in a car that's 1000 lbs lighter. We're talking about maybe 60-70 mpg, with still excellent performance.
Materials science and new manufacturing techniques are allowing us to add more aluminum and composite materials to cars, making them lighter. Cars are actually getting heavier, but a lot of this is due to the added crash safety requirements, and the fact that exotic lightweight materials are still too expensive for cheaper cars. But if we absolutely have to, we could shave a lot of weight off of today's cars.
In the meantime, battery technology and usability has improved, and smart charging technology can allow us to charge as much as 85% of the car fleet without having to upgrade the infrastructure.
Electric motors are getting more effcient as well, and computer controlled charging systems and regenerative braking are getting better all the time.
Now put all that together. You make a lightweight plug-in hybrid car with a small gas engine/generator. Like the next generation Chevy Volt. This car might get 80 MPG when calculating the energy efficiency with the gas engine running, and infinite MPG when the gas engine isn't used (of course you're stll using power, but that's coming from the grid, and we know how to make lots of power from the grid - nuclear).
The average car in America spends 80% of its time on trips of less than 40 miles. If that car drives 10,000 miles in a year, 8000 of it will be all-electric, and 2000 of it will be spent at 80 mpg.
That car will burn less than 30 gallons a year, or an average of 333 miles per gallon.
At that consumption rate, who cares where the petroleum comes from? With that kind of efficiency, you can use biomass - even corn. Even if it's twice as expensive to make as gasoline. Even if it were $10/gallon, that would only be $300/year for fuel - far less than people typically spend today. Hell, if you only needed 30 gallons of gas a year, you could probably make it at home with your own still and local biomass from your lawn mower and table scraps. Not that anyone would necessarily go to that trouble, but it shows how small the problem gets if you only need 10% of the petroleum you need today.
It doesn't have to be biofuel. It could be a hydrogen fuel cell, or a normal gas engine, or LNG, or whatever. The point is, once we remove 80% of our driving from the oil dependency mix, the need to come up with something exotic for the remaining 20% goes way, way down. And if we ca make the other 20% twice as efficient as it is today, our car fleet on average would use only 10% of the petroleum it uses today.
This is all just around the corner. The first plug-in hybrids will be on the market in less than 2 years. Unless they turn out to have huge unforseen problems, or oil prices crash, I'm guessing that in 10 years half the auto fleet will be plug-in hybrid.
The 'solution' is already on the way. You can see it coming. It's not going to be one big thing - it's going to be a mix of technologies and improvements that together are greater than the sum of their parts. We probably won't have one new energy source, either. We'll see some cars running gas, some biofuel, some all-electric with extended range batteries, etc. Let the market work, and it will converge on the right mix.
Regarding the Malthusian idea that growing population will deplete limited resources:
I believe that it was Arthur C. Clarke that said (and I paraphrase) - ninety percent of the resources available to the human race do not exist on the earth.
Except, of course, he was wrong. It's at least 99 percent, possibly 99.9 percent. For all intents and purposes, the availability of both resources and energy is limitless, at least for the next thousand years or so. And I expect that by then, research may come up with a few more tricks .... :-)
My apologies. I had no intent to post my comments repeatedly. Apparently, every time I refreshed the page (to see the follow-on comments), my original comments were again posted.
To whoever moderates this comment section - please feel free to delete my redundant comments.
Let's step back and work the problem a bit here.
First, it would be useful to remember that transportation only makes up about 25% of the U.S.'s energy consumption. So moving to hydrogen or electric cars is not going to make you energy independent. The discussion always seems to be around cars, but the vast majority of oil consumption is used elsewhere.
Now, as for whether we need a 10-fold increase in storage density for batteries... Of course not. The exciting thing that's happening in automotive engineering right now is that there is a synergy taking place - advances in computing, materials science, and engine technology are making cars far more fuel efficient. GM now has a 300 HP V6 that can get over 30 MPG in a typical heavy sedan, without turbocharging. It uses direct injection, variable valve timing on intake and exhaust, computer controlled spark advance, and all kinds of other technology to be as efficient as it is. Imagine that engine with half the displacement, a turbocharger, and put in a car that's 1000 lbs lighter. We're talking about maybe 60-70 mpg, with still excellent performance.
Materials science and new manufacturing techniques are allowing us to add more aluminum and composite materials to cars, making them lighter. Cars are actually getting heavier, but a lot of this is due to the added crash safety requirements, and the fact that exotic lightweight materials are still too expensive for cheaper cars. But if we absolutely have to, we could shave a lot of weight off of today's cars.
In the meantime, battery technology and usability has improved, and smart charging technology can allow us to charge as much as 85% of the car fleet without having to upgrade the infrastructure.
Electric motors are getting more effcient as well, and computer controlled charging systems and regenerative braking are getting better all the time.
Now put all that together. You make a lightweight plug-in hybrid car with a small gas engine/generator. Like the next generation Chevy Volt. This car might get 80 MPG when calculating the energy efficiency with the gas engine running, and infinite MPG when the gas engine isn't used (of course you're stll using power, but that's coming from the grid, and we know how to make lots of power from the grid - nuclear).
The average car in America spends 80% of its time on trips of less than 40 miles. If that car drives 10,000 miles in a year, 8000 of it will be all-electric, and 2000 of it will be spent at 80 mpg.
That car will burn less than 30 gallons a year, or an average of 333 miles per gallon.
At that consumption rate, who cares where the petroleum comes from? With that kind of efficiency, you can use biomass - even corn. Even if it's twice as expensive to make as gasoline. Even if it were $10/gallon, that would only be $300/year for fuel - far less than people typically spend today. Hell, if you only needed 30 gallons of gas a year, you could probably make it at home with your own still and local biomass from your lawn mower and table scraps. Not that anyone would necessarily go to that trouble, but it shows how small the problem gets if you only need 10% of the petroleum you need today.
It doesn't have to be biofuel. It could be a hydrogen fuel cell, or a normal gas engine, or LNG, or whatever. The point is, once we remove 80% of our driving from the oil dependency mix, the need to come up with something exotic for the remaining 20% goes way, way down. And if we ca make the other 20% twice as efficient as it is today, our car fleet on average would use only 10% of the petroleum it uses today.
This is all just around the corner. The first plug-in hybrids will be on the market in less than 2 years. Unless they turn out to have huge unforseen problems, or oil prices crash, I'm guessing that in 10 years half the auto fleet will be plug-in hybrid.
The 'solution' is already on the way. You can see it coming. It's not going to be one big thing - it's going to be a mix of technologies and improvements that together are greater than the sum of their parts. We probably won't have one new energy source, either. We'll see some cars running gas, some biofuel, some all-electric with extended range batteries, etc. Let the market work, and it will converge on the right mix.
Duane,
I pretty much agree with your statements exploding hydrogen myths, but there is a problem with your analysis of "Myth 2." The problem is not with the weight energy density, but the volume density. Liquid hydrogen (-253 degrees C)has a handbook density of 71 grams per liter. 5000 psi hydrogen comes out to 31 g/l. (.09g/l x 340 atm). Octane, on the other hand, is 710 g/l, of which 132 g is hydrogen. Thus octane (gasoline) transmits twice the hydrogen of liquid hydrogen per unit volume, with the carbon thrown in for free. To be sure, it's not quite equivalent, the bond energies in the hydrocarbon will absorb something (I'm too lazy to look it up), but this gives the general idea.
Other problems, constraints aside, how much water would be required to produce enough hydrogen to replace oil? What would be the source of this water?
Um... what would be the source of the single most common compound in the known universe?
Really? You're wondering where we get something that covers 3/4 of the surface of the Earth? Gosh, hope we don't run out. Oh, wait, we won't, because when you finally do use the hydrogen to produce motion in an ICE or electricity in a fuel cell, the exhaust is - get this - water vapor.
of course you're stll using power, but that's coming from the grid, and we know how to make lots of power from the grid - nuclear
Eh. I'm not sold on the wisdom of replacing one non-renewable resource with another even rarer one. Plus, oil just comes up out of the ground when you find some. Uranium you have to go down and get.
Let's start with a way of getting power generation out of our cars and to a central location. Even if we kept burning gasoline for power, generating it at one place and transmitting it (in wires, as hydrogen, whatever) would still be substantially better than 20 million inefficient engines on the road.
Dan H.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote in your last post, except the part about the importance of the transportation sector to oil independence.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the transportation sector accounts for 70% of U.S. oil consumption. Obviously, part of this is airplanes and rail (diesel locomotives). But most of it is automobiles (cars and light trucks) and buses. So improving the fuel efficiency of the nation's auto and bus fleet, and shifting to fuels other than petroleum, probably is the most important thing we can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil (and oil in general).
Duane,
I pretty much agree with your statements exploding hydrogen myths, but there is a problem with your analysis of "Myth 2." The problem is not with the weight energy density, but the volume density. Liquid hydrogen (-253 degrees C)has a handbook density of 71 grams per liter. 5000 psi hydrogen comes out to 31 g/l. (.09g/l x 340 atm). Octane, on the other hand, is 710 g/l, of which 132 g is hydrogen. Thus octane (gasoline) transmits twice the hydrogen of liquid hydrogen per unit volume, with the carbon thrown in for free. To be sure, it's not quite equivalent, the bond energies in the hydrocarbon will absorb something (I'm too lazy to look it up), but this gives the general idea.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote in your last post, except the part about the importance of the transportation sector to oil independence.
My apologies - the 25% number is total energy consumption, not petroleum. You're right that 70% of petroleum is consumed in transportation. However, only about 60% of that is consumed in cars and light trucks, which is really the subject of the discussion. So about 42% of our petroleum is used in cars and light trucks. The U.S. imports over 60% of its oil, so completely eliminating the gasoline engine from cars and light trucks wouldn't eliminate oil imports. This just illustrates how hard it is to truly achieve energy independence.
In any event, it looks to me like we're on the cusp of a technology convergence that will significantly cut fuel consumption in cars and light trucks in the near future (a decade or two).
"The environmentally responsible natural gas-powered Civic GX uses no gasoline, earning it the title of "America's Greenest Car" from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). The fast-selling GX has quite a bit of experience in this top position. The Civic GX was first ranked at the top of the ACEEE list in 2000, and has held the title of "Greenest Car" for five consecutive years. That’s more than any other vehicle. The Civic GX stays ahead of the green competition because of its squeaky-clean and gasoline-free near-zero-emissions performance—which is great news for you and the environment."
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/reviews.aspx
T. Boone is right about, at least, one thing, Domestic Natural Gas, of which we have lots and lots, should be the fuel for the vast majority of our transportation rolling stock..
remember, Oil and Natural Gas are two different things..
You mean, "little evidence" apart from the fact that the vast majority of food in this country is sold by supermarkets and big box food retailers (Walmart, Costco, etc.) rather than small neighborhood food stores? Walmart alone has grown from selling virtually no food a decade or so ago to become the largest food retailer in the U.S.
Did you read my whole post, Mixner? I explicitly said IN OTHER COUNTRIES, where it is easier to shop in the neighborhood, people do not show a marked preference for big box shopping.
The small number of Europeans who live in "densely populated" inner city areas may (or may not) shop mostly at small, neighborhood food stores, but they are vastly outnumbered by supermarket shoppers.
I never meant to imply that Europeans (and Asians) don't shop at supermarkets as well - they do. Not as much as Americans do, however. And due to greater population densities and different zoning laws, it is far more likely that they are able to do so at a supermarket that is in their own neighborhood or close to it. I have relatives all over Europe (many of whom live in suburbs) and live in Asia myself (in a suburb). Neither I nor any of my relatives that I've observed have to drive more than a few minutes to get to the nearest supermarket, which is not the case with my parents (15 minutes to the closest supermarket, in a fairly heavily populated suburban area in the northeastern U.S.). Furthermore, neither I nor any of my relatives do "one-stop shopping" of the sort so popular in the U.S. - large-scale staples may be bought during the bi-weekly trip to the supermarket, but daily essentials like milk, eggs, and bread are generally bought at the (more convenient) neighborhood grocery.
I'm not arguing against supermarkets per se. I'm arguing against an urban planning model that leads to infinite sprawl on the theory that people can always get in their cars and drive twenty minutes to the nearest big box when they want to shop. There's no reason for residential and commercial areas to be as rigidly divided as they are in the U.S., and this division is partially responsible for the U.S.' truly appalling wastefulness when it comes to energy use.
Think of what you just said. The only carbon neutral way of burning hydro-carbons is to gather your burnt carbon and remake new fossil fuel from your thermodyamic entropy wastage.
Um. With sufficient, cheap energy we can make hydrocarbons from air. Nuclear and other sources can provide that energy.
Or make it from "exciting, miracle" ethanol. Which we discover is barely or not at all "global warming neutral"
As I said in my post a few sentences down, I find the use of food crops for ethanol production to be stupid. GM recently dumped a big chunk of money into a company that has a system to produce ethanol from cellulosic waste from bacteria. There are significant quantities of cellulose available from crop waste. Current ethanol production seems to be nearly carbon neutral, and has net energy ratios comparable to some of the lower yield oil sources.
I'm surprised that no one has questioned the assumption that the only way to power an electric vehicle is with batteries or onboard generation of electricity. What about the century-old technology behind electric trains? Yes, it's a much simpler affair with a controlled right-of-way and vehicles on rails. But if I had plug-in hybrid that could go 20 miles on batteries and could pick up power from some version of an overhead or underground power line just on Interstates, I'd use about 1 tank of gas a year.
xeynon,
Did you read my whole post, Mixner? I explicitly said IN OTHER COUNTRIES, where it is easier to shop in the neighborhood, people do not show a marked preference for big box shopping.
Sorry, but the statement of yours in question ("There is little-to-no empirical evidence that this is true") most definitely did not refer to "other countries." You made that statement in response to a paragraph of mine about the shopping behavior of Americans.
With respect to Europeans, as I said in my previous response to you, most Europeans do not live in "densely populated areas" where it is "convenient" to use small neighborhood stores for food shopping. Most Europeans live in suburbs and do most of their food shopping in supermarkets and big box stores ("hypermarkets") similar in concept to big box American stores like SuperWalmarts and Costcos. The days when Europeans walked into town every couple of days with a basket to buy their food from local neighborhood grocers and butchers are long gone, as other commenters have attested.
I have relatives all over Europe (many of whom live in suburbs) and live in Asia myself (in a suburb). Neither I nor any of my relatives that I've observed have to drive more than a few minutes to get to the nearest supermarket, which is not the case with my parents (15 minutes to the closest supermarket, in a fairly heavily populated suburban area in the northeastern U.S.).
What you and your relatives do tells us precisely nothing about the shopping habits and experiences of Asians and Europeans in general. The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence." If it is true that Europeans generally have shorter drives to supermarkets than Americans do (you offer no evidence to support this claim), then that is most likely because European housing tends to smaller and higher-density than American housing. But I very strongly doubt that your claim is true, anyway. I suspect that the vast majority of suburbanite Americans live only a five or ten minute drive from a supermarket. Most American suburbs were explicitly built around car travel, and consequently were designed with lots of wide, multi-lane roads and lots of parking. Even if the average distance from house to supermarket tends to longer in the U.S. than in Europe, the average travel time in the U.S. is still probably shorter because driving and parking are so much easier in American suburbs than in European ones.
Xeynon,
There's no reason for residential and commercial areas to be as rigidly divided as they are in the U.S., and this division is partially responsible for the U.S.' truly appalling wastefulness when it comes to energy use.
There you go again. What "appalling wastefulness?" Show us your evidence that this "appalling wastefulness" exists anywhere other than in your fevered imagination.
And I do mean evidence of "waste," not merely evidence of higher consumption.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence."
Actually, I did offer evidence further up the thread - the fact that the likes of Carrefour, WalMart, CostCo, etc. have had limited success in Japan and Korea. I don't have data on Europe, but my personal experience is that while that retail model is successful there, it hasn't dominated the way it has in the states.
If it is true that Europeans generally have shorter drives to supermarkets than Americans do (you offer no evidence to support this claim), i>
It's well attested that Europeans drive less than Americans, so well attested that if you're well-read on this topic I shouldn't need to provide evidence to demonstrate it's true. But since you seem skeptical, here are some statistics:
In Europe, between 30 and 48% of all trips are by car. In the U.S., the number is 86%. Even Canada, with similarly spread out geography, is more efficient - 15% of all trips are via mass transit, as opposed to 3% in the U.S.
Furthermore, the average American vehicle travels more than twice as many miles in a year as the average vehicle in Japan or Germany, and 60% more than the average vehicle in Britain:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/1995/in-4.pdf
Since the average American household owns 1.8 vehicles, as opposed to averages of about 1.2 for Europe and Japan, our vehicle-miles per capita is even farther out of proportion to theirs.
Even people in countries with population densities more comparable to that of the U.S., such as Sweden, drive far less than Americans. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that the European and Japanese fleets are, on average, twice as fuel efficient as the American one.
How much all of this is due to the layout of American communities vs. their European counterparts is a matter of debate, of course, but no urban planning or transportation expert doubts that it is a major factor - read the rest of the Calthorpe's argument in the link above.
then that is most likely because European housing tends to smaller and higher-density than American housing.
That is undoubtedly one reason, as I implied by using the word "sprawl". I have no problem with making more efficient use of space in America by building smaller, more compact communities - in fact I think we're going to have to do so as energy becomes more expensive. As I said, though, the way a community is planned matters as much as its size - unsurprisingly, in areas where it is possible to bike or walk to a store near your home, more people bike or walk to a store near their home rather than drive. In the typical American suburb, where stores are often miles away, the only practical option is a car. That is, IMO, a serious shortcoming in how we plan and develop our communities.
Even if the average distance from house to supermarket tends to longer in the U.S. than in Europe, the average travel time in the U.S. is still probably shorter because driving and parking are so much easier in American suburbs than in European ones.
Except for the fact that, as you ought to realize by now, Europeans frequently make these trips by means other than driving their cars.
There you go again. What "appalling wastefulness?" Show us your evidence that this "appalling wastefulness" exists anywhere other than in your fevered imagination.
I see it every time I go to a suburban shopping center and see a soccer mom using a 12,000 lb. SUV to transport 20 lbs. of groceries that could just as easily make the 3 mile trip back to her house in a 2,500 lb. compact.
But if a visual like that doesn't do it for a numbers-minded individual such as yourself, the fact that we spend way, WAY more energy per capita on transportation than any other industrialized nation - including, again, countries such as Canada and Australia, which face the same challenges as we do in regard to large distances - ought to.
There is nothing sacred or inherently superior about the "American Way of Life" - there are actually some things that America is pretty much **** at, and if you've traveled widely or done any social science or economic research whatsoever you ought to realize this. Unfortunately, in the case of energy efficiency it appears that the only thing that will shake up Americans up vis-a-vis their consumption habits is a giant, painful, kick in the economic crotch administered by a tight market. Welcome to the year 2008.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence."
Nor is "snark" a synonym for "informed, factually based counter-argument".
I actually did offer evidence further up the thread - the fact that the likes of Carrefour, WalMart, CostCo, etc. have had limited success in Japan and Korea. I don't have data on Europe, but my personal experience is that while that retail model is successful there, it hasn't dominated the way it has in the states.
If it is true that Europeans generally have shorter drives to supermarkets than Americans do (you offer no evidence to support this claim),
It's well attested that Europeans drive less than Americans, so well attested that if you're well-read on this topic I shouldn't need to provide evidence to demonstrate it's true. But since you seem skeptical, here are some statistics:
In Europe, between 30 and 48% of all trips are by car. In the U.S., the number is 86%. Even Canada, with similarly spread out geography, is more efficient - 15% of all trips are via mass transit, as opposed to 3% in the U.S.
Furthermore, the average American vehicle travels more than twice as many miles in a year as the average vehicle in Japan or Germany, and 60% more than the average vehicle in Britain:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/1995/in-4.pdf
Since the average American household owns 1.8 vehicles, as opposed to averages of about 1.2 for Europe and Japan, our vehicle-miles per capita is even farther out of proportion to theirs.
Even people in countries with population densities more comparable to that of the U.S., such as Sweden, drive far less than Americans. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that the European and Japanese fleets are, on average, twice as fuel efficient as the American one.
How much all of this is due to the layout of American communities vs. their European counterparts is a matter of debate, of course, but no urban planning or transportation expert doubts that it is a major factor - read the rest of the Calthorpe's argument in the link above.
then that is most likely because European housing tends to smaller and higher-density than American housing.
That is undoubtedly one reason, as I implied by using the word "sprawl". I have no problem with making more efficient use of space in America by building smaller, more compact communities - in fact I think we're going to have to do so as energy becomes more expensive. As I said, though, the way a community is planned matters as much as its size - unsurprisingly, in areas where it is possible to bike or walk to a store near your home, more people bike or walk to a store near their home rather than drive. In the typical American suburb, where stores are often miles away, the only practical option is a car. That is, IMO, a serious shortcoming in how we plan and develop our communities.
Even if the average distance from house to supermarket tends to longer in the U.S. than in Europe, the average travel time in the U.S. is still probably shorter because driving and parking are so much easier in American suburbs than in European ones.
Except for the fact that, as you ought to realize by now, Europeans frequently make these trips by means other than driving their cars.
There you go again. What "appalling wastefulness?" Show us your evidence that this "appalling wastefulness" exists anywhere other than in your fevered imagination.
I see it every time I go to a suburban shopping center and see a soccer mom using a 12,000 lb. SUV to transport 20 lbs. of groceries that could just as easily make the 3 mile trip back to her house in a 2,500 lb. compact.
But if a visual like that doesn't do it for a numbers-minded individual such as yourself, the fact that we spend way, WAY more energy per capita on transportation than any other industrialized nation - including, again, countries such as Canada and Australia, which face the same challenges as we do in regard to large distances.
There is nothing sacred or inherently superior about the "American Way of Life" - there are actually some things that America is pretty much **** at, and if you've traveled widely or done any social science or economic research whatsoever you ought to realize this. Unfortunately, in the case of energy efficiency it appears that the only thing that will shake up Americans up vis-a-vis their consumption habits is a giant, painful, kick in the economic crotch administered by a tight market. Welcome to the year 2008.
I'd just like to thank Dr. Edward Siegel for his enlightening screed. One thing he seems to have forgotten however, is that Prince Charles is behind it all with the help of aliens from Bogar9.
In my opinion, Hydrogen will only be a niche fuel, with battery/electrics winning the game. The reasons are laid out in all these posts - Hydrogen is expensive to procure, difficult to store, and has a low energy density. Europe gets more travel for it energy because they have invested trillions of $$ on mass-transit, and such transit there is convenient and inexpensive, so its used.
The USA will not equal other places' efficiency unless we too invest trillions of $$ in mass transit, to make it convenient and inexpensive to use. This would require massive public subsidies, which Europe gets from high fuel taxes. Those taxes make driving more expensive, which drives the market toward fuel-efficient vehicles. It also drives the home heating/air conditioning markets toward higher efficiency.
However, the biggest driver of increasing fuel usage is ever-increasing population, and no one wants to touch that tar-baby!
Xeynon,
Actually, I did offer evidence further up the thread - the fact that the likes of Carrefour, WalMart, CostCo, etc. have had limited success in Japan and Korea.
I didn't say anything about Japan and Korea. I challenged your claim with respect to Europe.
I don't have data on Europe, ...
No, I didn't think so. And not only don't you have any data, but you didn't even seem to be aware of the existence of big box European food retailers. Have you ever been to Europe?
... but my personal experience is that...
Your personal experience is utterly worthless as a guide to general patterns or trends.
It's well attested that Europeans drive less than Americans
The issue here is not driving in total, but driving distances and travel times between homes and supermarkets. Do you have any evidence that Americans have longer average trips to supermarkets than Europeans, or don't you? How much longer?
I scanned all of the blogs to see if ANYONE had ever suffered through a course in THERMODYNAMICS. This is the science that tells you what you cannot do. One of them is to make hydrogen without large inputs of energy from somewhere.
Another point: There is a huge demand for industrial hydrogen. For example: The use of Alberta heavy oil requires treating the stuff with hydrogen. Some calculations I did a long time ago suggest that you can get a barrel of increased volume of clean gasoline with about 10,000 cubic feet of hydrogen. No better use can be found for the stuff - if you have it.
What about the century-old technology behind electric trains?
You mean the ones that will kill you if you step onto the tracks?
Yeah, let's run those right down the middle of every street in the neighborhood.
I didn't say anything about Japan and Korea. I challenged your claim with respect to Europe.
You're getting off on a tangent here. My contention was that the American model for food consumption was not self-evidently the best or most natural one; Japan and Korea, being developed countries with similar lifestyles, are thus relevant cases for comparison. Narrowing the focus to Europe doesn't help your broader argument.
No, I didn't think so. And not only don't you have any data, but you didn't even seem to be aware of the existence of big box European food retailers. Have you ever been to Europe?
Ummm, yes. Not only have I been there (to 15 different European countries), I've spent entire summers there, including a lot of time with suburb-dwelling relatives. In all that time, I shopped at a big box retailer (the existence of which I am well aware) maybe once, and saw far fewer stores of that sort than I ever have in the U.S. I am well aware that this is an anecdote and of limited value, which is why I acknowledged that I don't have data on shopping patterns. Nevertheless, it doesn't help your case (also, I might point out, blessedly unburdened by data, or even so much as a corroborating anecdote) that Europeans are just as prone to shopping at big box retailers as Americans are.
The issue here is not driving in total, but driving distances and travel times between homes and supermarkets. Do you have any evidence that Americans have longer average trips to supermarkets than Europeans, or don't you? How much longer?
I could not find any studies so narrowly targeted as to focus solely on trips to the supermarket, but if you read the excerpts from the book I linked to, you'll see that the author goes into exhaustive detail about short-distance daily trips, which I imagine include trips to the supermarket for both Americans and Europeans. Europeans take fewer of them, and they tend to be shorter. The data supporting both of these claims are indisputable. They also jive with my (anecdotal) experience. None of this completely settles the issue, but as I said, since you have done precisely nothing, other than re-state your opinion more loudly, to prove your assertions, I am reasonably confident that my intuitions are incorrect.
xeynon,
My contention was that the American model for food consumption was not self-evidently the best or most natural one;
No, your contention in question was that Europeans have shorter travel times to the supermarket ("a few minutes") than Americans. Have you found any evidence to support this assertion yet?
I don't know of any data on food-shopping travel times, but Americans have significantly shorter commute times than Europeans. According to the Census Bureau, the average commute time in the U.S. is about 24 minutes.
The BBC reports that the average commute time in the EU is about 38 minutes. Of the large European nations, only Italy has a shorter average commute time than the U.S. (just barely, at 23 minutes). In Britain and Germany, commutes take almost twice as long on average as they do in the U.S.
One of the primary reasons for this is that more Europeans use mass transit. And mass transit is slow, as well as being inconvenient and uncomfortable. Not coincidentally, the longest commute times in the U.S. are in New York. New Yorkers have such long commute times because so many of them have to rely on mass transit rather than being able to drive to work, thanks to New Yorks high density.
Given that mass transit tends to be fastest during commute times (because that is when trains and buses tend to run most frequently), and driving tends to be slowest at commute times (because that is when roads tend to be most congested), the time advantage from driving compared to using mass transit (or walking, or biking) is probably much greater still during non-commute times.
xeynon,
Except for the fact that, as you ought to realize by now, Europeans frequently make these trips by means other than driving their cars.
No, not "except" for that alleged fact. As I just explained, using means other than their cars almost certainly increases travel times, rather than the reverse. Walking, biking and mass transit are all generally much slower than driving, especially outside of commute times, when people are likely to do most of their shopping.
I see it every time I go to a suburban shopping center and see a soccer mom using a 12,000 lb. SUV to transport 20 lbs. of groceries
There you go again. I asked for evidence. E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E. Not yet another unsupported anecdote about what you claim to have seen.
And just to remind you, lest you try to move the goalposts yet again and pretend you said something different than what you actually said, your claim in dispute here is that Americans exhibit "appalling wastefulness" in energy consumption. To support this claim of "appalling wastefulness," it's not enough to show merely that Americans use more energy than people in other countries.
the fact that we spend way, WAY more energy per capita on transportation than any other industrialized nation - including, again, countries such as Canada and Australia, which face the same challenges as we do in regard to large distances.
This is the second time you have made this claim without producing anything to substantiate it. Please present your data on energy consumption for transportation showing that Americans spend "way, WAY more" energy per capita on transportation than Canadians and Australians.
I have come late to this discussion, and just scanned the thread. I happen to side with those who contend that a "hydrogen economy" makes no sense, and just serves to distract us from getting on with more practical changes, such as the Pickens Plan.
Here is the MOST CONCISE argument I've yet seen against the "hydrogen economy". It is part of a presentation by Mr. Ulf Bossel, to the European Sustainable Energy Forum in 2007.
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E22.pdf
There are several gems in the presentation, but these are the ones that stand out for me:
Give me an all-electric car today, with NiMH batteries, that can go 40 miles on a charge, and has a reasonable TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), and I will BUY IT. 40 miles would cover > 90% of my normal usage. I would save on both fuel and maintenance. Few people realize how much simpler an all-electric powertrain is.