The Buzz Grows Louder: The Call to Arms is Coming

Sometimes I think it might be just me, since I'm pretty focused on alternative energies and alternative consumption, but I feel as though the "cleantech" buzz is growing into a dull roar all around me. This is from May 9:
Senator Poses 'Grand Challenges' for Energy Independence. [UPDATE: Full transcript of speech here.]

Senator Lamar Alexander is proposing a bipartisan effort "with the goal of making our nation independent within a generation." Here are the seven grand challenges he outlines:

• Supporting plug-in electric vehicle development, including "smart metering" by utilities that would allow cheaper rates for overnight battery charging.
• Making solar power cost competitive with fossil fuels, with the promise of solar thermal power plants.
• Making biofuels cost competitive with gasoline, particularly ethanol from cellulosic materials.
• Making more new buildings energy efficient
• Developing systems to capture and store carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.
• Developing ways to safely reprocess and store nuclear waste — the "most important breakthrough" needed to support more nuclear plants.
• Continuing research on nuclear fusion.

I've discussed several of these initiatives in my blog before. As you know, I'm a big believer in letting market forces and entrepreneurial energies solve these problems, but as Lester Brown points out in his book Plan B 3.0, the market is not recognizing huge chunks of costs associated with fossil fuels (climate change costs, pollution costs, national security costs, total-system-breakdown-from-rising-oil-prices costs, etc). If the market's pricing system is broken, free market forces don't work. That's the problem.

So I've always though that government action would be needed, as much as I'm loathe to depend on it. But the people seem to be demanding it... that's the dull roar I'm hearing.

Why not make this our generation's Manhattan project (although the metaphor I prefer is the moon landing)? Why not invest billions if not hundreds of billions of government dollars into this field? It's still much better than the trillions we'll hand out to governments around the world for oil over the coming years if we don't change.

Any of the three candidates will have a better chance of making alt energy/alt consumption more of a priority than Bush did. But our job is to make sure this is a major campaign issue. After all, whether your hot button is Iraq or the economy, alt energy/alt consumption plays a vital role.

The Shift Begins: Carmakers Respond to Customers Who Are Responding to Gas Prices

I've talked about it here at EnergyCrunch before, but I think we're now seeing some real-world evidence. My previous blog post talked about how consumers will start to change their patterns once they realize that the gas will cost more than the car they're buying. I mentioned $6/gallon as when that would happen. Now it seems to be starting to happen much sooner.

An article in today's New York Times reports that consumers are buying smaller cars (it would be hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles if more of those were available). Check out this astonishing real-world ripple effect:

"Light truck sales fell a staggering 32 percent at G.M., 25 percent at Ford, 19 percent at Nissan and 16 percent at Toyota."

"G.M. said this week that it planned to cut production of its full-size pickups by 88,000 units and of its large S.U.V.s by 50,000 units this year."

There you have it. Oil goes up, gas price goes up, automakers almost immediately change the blend of vehicles they're producing.

Simultaneously, the AP reported that hybrid sales went up 38% last year even as overall vehicle sales were down 3%.

If I were the Big 3 (or any automaker), I'd be fast-tracking whatever plug-in hybrid or electric car research I already had underway. And if I didn't have any underway, well I'd be hanging up a For Sale sign (or shorting my own stock) because the game's about to be over.