Ocean Iron Fertilization - Doing the Math

I wanted to revisit the Ocean Iron Fertilization idea I mentioned in my last blog post, to run the numbers and see if it's worth the controversy. I found out some interesting things.

I compared three approaches for reducing CO2: (1) OIF, (2) replacing 100 million incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, and (3) replacing 1 million gas-guzzling cars with electric vehicles. The results are surprising. 1,000 tons of iron seeded into oceans beats both other options combined. And that's a small amount considering scientists are thinking about seeding 200,000 tons of iron into the oceans.

How do these compare to the size of the problem at hand. Consider that in 2030 the U.S. will emit 3.3 billion tons of CO2 into the air. So 40 million tons is barely over 1%. Now think that it would take 159,000 tons of iron to sequester 100% of the U.S.'s 2030 CO2 levels, and ocean iron fertilization begins to sound very intriguing, maybe even worth the risks.

Here are the rough calculations I did:

First off, 1,000 tons of iron seeded into algae blooms could sequester roughly 21 million tons of CO2.



Replacing 100 million light bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescent or LED bulbs could save 15 million tons of CO2.



A shocking finding for me was how little CO2 would be prevented by putting a million EVs on the road. Granted, part of this is because right now a big chunk of electricity comes from burning coal. If we moved more of our electricity generation to renewables, this number might increase. But right now a million EVs would remove less than 4 million tons of CO2, the same as 200 tons of iron fertilization.



On this rough evidence, OIF is definitely worth further investigation.

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.

Battery Technology - Nanotech Breakthrough

Plug-in hybrids and electric cars are the future, period. Why the future is not here has a lot to do with people's skepticism regarding battery technology. You always hear about limited range, size, and safety concerns. I've been of the opinion, however, that battery technology is going to improve, and when it does the economics of an electric car are going to be undeniable (see my post on how the cost of gasoline will soon outstrip the cost of the car, if it doesn't already).

That's why today's Science Daily article on nanowire technology is so exciting. Researchers at Stanford, led by Yi Cui, have come up with a new structure for lithium ion batteries using silicon nanowires as opposed to carbon for the anode. This allows the battery to store up to 10 times the charge of existing Li-ion batteries, and the nano-structure prevents the degradation of the silicon.

This would represent a geometric improvement in the capabilities of batteries, a technology that's already quite close to making electric cars feasible. This kind of breakthrough is what's going to make the electric car a no-brainer. Obviously there's going to have to be testing done on a battery like this, but improvements like these leave me optimistic that the battery technology will improve, and the electric car will have its day. If I were a big auto manufacturer I'd invest a lot of money now to get a head start on this market.

The Biofuel Mandate - Offsetting 25-55% of the Oil We Use for Transportation

I haven't discussed biofuels yet, partially because I'm pretty clearly excited about electric and PHEV vehicles. But it would be a mistake to think that electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids are going to come in and gain the whole market right off the bat. Their introduction may certainly be encouraged by rising oil prices, but you could say the same thing about biofuels. So what about biofuels? What does the market look like?

Well, it looks pretty huge is what it looks like. This article discusses the pending legislation that would mandate the use of 36 billion gallons of ethanol motor fuel by 2022. 36 billion gallons at a few bucks a gallon could mean this is a $100 billion market. And since 21 billion of those gallons are supposed to come from advanced biofuels (e.g. switchgrass, cellulosic, and my favorite, algae) there's a very large market that's being invented right now. That's a space I'd bet on.

That article also claims that 36 billion gallons equals 15% of U.S. gasoline consumption. My calculations show that it's actually between 25% and 55%, depending on how many gallons you can get from a barrel of oil. I've seen 19.5 quoted a lot of places, which would mean that 36 B gallons a year replaces 5 million barrels of oil per day. Since we currently use 9.2 million barrels/day for vehicle transportation, that would mean we're replacing 55% of the oil we use for transportation.



But this article from the AP claims that our 9.2 million barrels of oil per day equals 388 million gallons. That's more like 42 gallons per barrel of oil, which means biofuels would replace 25% of the oil we use for transportation.



Either way, biofuels will be a big market, and will go a long way toward getting us off foreign oil. If electrics and PHEVs can meet them halfway, the future is looking good on the independence from foreign oil front, and pretty darn good on the greenhouse gas front.

Marketing the Plug-in Hybrid - Emphasize Savings

As I read articles and press releases about plug-in hybrids, I've noticed the topic of expensive batteries mentioned several times, with cost estimates ranging from $1,200 to $3,600. The "Green Car Journal" recently featured an essay claiming that "battery costs remain the biggest obstacle to the rapid introduction of PHEVs." The author was quite ingenious and came up with good ideas on how to overcome this obstacle, including a very clever one involving utilities owning the batteries and 'leasing' them for free to the owners, with the utility gaining, well utility, by being better able to manage grid resources.

Okay, very clever, but I think there's a much simpler solution: marketing. Right now the average driver probably thinks, "well, I'll save a few bucks here and there with a plug-in, but it's going to cost me so much more to get the car..." And no one's telling him "the battery will save you $3,700 in 5 years!" Don't believe me? Let's do the math.

Let's look at a typical driver's fuel usage on a plug-in and a regular internal combustion motor. On Sunday, he just does some around-town driving, adding up to 10 miles. Three days of the week he just goes back and forth to work (34 miles). Two days of the week he adds five miles to his commute to run some errands (39 miles). On the 7th day he heads out for a 100 mile road-trip. Over a year this adds up to 15,000 miles. But as you can see in the graph below, if he plugs in every night, the first 60 miles of each day are electric, with gas kicking in only on his long road trips each Saturday. I used $3/gallon gas, and I figured that the gas he does use is at a higher MPG, because it's kicking in on the freeway on those long road trips. (Click to enlarge the image).



It's pretty easy to see that this average commuter will save almost $1500 a year! Even paying for an expensive $3,600 battery, he saves $3,653 over five years. And if the price of gas jumps fifty cents, he saves over $5,000 over five years.

Now isn't that way more compelling to the consumer than fretting about how expensive the battery is?

The L.A. Auto Show - The Year of the Green Vehicle

The "green" theme was a big presence at the L.A. Auto Show this year. So were gorgeous Ferraris, Maseratis, and Lamborghinis, but I was just there to check out the environmentally-friendly cars, right? Below are some of the cars we saw along with some quick thoughts. (Props to my photographer and girlfriend Kate... some of the shots she took were magazine-quality!).

Here's the Tesla. All-electric, 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, good-looking car... here's hoping they deliver on their promises. See my thoughts in the post below.



Chevy is heavily hyping their "gas friendly to gas free" concept, and they had the Chevy Volt on display (right). They call it an electric car, but it's really a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). It's got an electric range of 40 miles, which will work for 75% of commuters, and then after that gas (or ethanol) kicks in to extend your range. I'm a big fan of this technology, since it solves a big part of the problem now, the "fueling" infrastructure is already in place, and battery technology will only improve making PHEVs into BEVs (battery-only) and getting us gas-free.
Some stats on the Volt:
Recharge time: 6 to 6.5 hours.
Battery life: 10 years.
0-60: 8 to 8.5 seconds
Launch date: 2010

My apologies to Volvo. They had a Volvo C30 ReCharge there, but I didn't get a picture. So I borrowed one from their website (right). The ReCharge is a PHEV that promises a 60-mile range with a full battery recharge in only 3 hours. Also, apparently a quick charge of 1 hour should get you 30 miles or so. Not bad.
I really liked this car because it looks normal. I don't hate the look of the Chevy Volt, but why does it have to look so weird? Props to Volvo for integrating advanced PHEV technology so well into a normal-looking car.

There were a couple hydrogen cars there, a technology I don't like for two main reasons: (1) it's far inferior to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) for the simple reason that it requires a whole infrastructure of hydrogen fueling stations to be built, whereas sockets are already ubiquitous, and (2) up to 75% of the energy is lost in generating, compressing/liquefying, and transporting the hydrogen.

But here they are: the Honda FCX Clarity Fuel Cell car, which will start with a limited lease plan in 2008.



And GM's Fuel Cell SUV:



And then, just for fun, the Lamborghini. Man, I love lambos. Probably not the solution to the Energy Crunch, but great to look at.

Electric Cars - Kicking The Oil Habit and Saving Money Doing It

I've brought up the idea of peak oil on this blog a few times before. It's a topic that's starting to enter the mainstream's consciousness the way global warming was 10 years ago. I think it's going to loom larger and larger as oil production flattens and/or falls, and demand for oil keeps going up. The Wall Street Journal this week pretty much said: Peak Oil, Not Just For Wackos Anymore. OK, so maybe they call it an "oil production plateau" and not peak oil, but the concepts of "energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled competition for fuel" are similar.

And so far I've talked a lot about renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, but they won't solve the problem of peak oil, at least not by themselves. That's because there are no realistic solar vehicles, and the idea of a wind-powered boat, or "sail" boat, is ridiculous. Oh wait...

Jokes aside, our country's transportation is 90% dependent on oil. So to avoid the Energy Crunch of peak oil, we're going to have to come up with another way to fuel our cars and trucks, and quickly. That is if we want to avoid paying massive prices for gas, having those price increases hit our middle and lower classes the hardest, entering a recession or possibly depression, having our gas money go into the hands of countries that hate us, and possibly tangling militarily with other large economies vying for oil around the world.

I'll take a look at three ways we can kick the oil habit: electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, and biofuels. I'll start today with electric vehicles which, in my mind, have suffered badly from poor PR and from some of the most unfortunate car designs ever to hit the road. This has cemented them in the average consumer's mind as the car of the be-turtlenecked tree-hugger with his head in the clouds, a car no real man would ever be caught dead in. What a tragic error!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Change will have to make sense where it matters most: in the pocketbook, and well in this case, the consumer's ego. So this Thanksgiving many many thanks go out to Tesla Motors, whose new roadster (right) has changed everything. Finally a good-looking electric car which, oh by the way, completely dusts the Ferrari going from 0-60.

So maybe now we can leave behind those lame wheel-covered designs and make a nice electric car. But what about the pocketbook? Won't an electric car be too expensive because of the battery?

Let's do the math. New electric cars are piggybacking off the extraordinary amount of research that's been done on Lithium-Ion batteries for cell phones and laptops, and the idea is that one of these batteries for a car might add $1,200 to the price. That's a big hit... until you think about the money you save.

Here are some assumptions. Electric cars use about 0.215 kWh per mile. Cost of a kWh from the electric company (at least for me here in L.A.) is 10.5 cents. MPG of an internal combustion engine vehicle is 23 (U.S. fleet average). I used $3/gallon prices, as well as the new and improved $5/gallon we'll be paying soon (ok, that's just a guess for now), and I came up with the following annual costs of fueling your vehicle to go 12,000 miles:

















At those rates, here is the money you'd save after five years of using an electric car versus the car you drive today, and that's including the battery:


I don't know about you, but I could use the extra $10 grand. And mass production of these vehicles would reduce our dependence on that dwindling supply of oil, helping us avoid the problems I mentioned above. And to top it off, you'll be pumping less pollution into the air, especially as more of the electrical grid is powered by renewables. How could a mass-produced electric vehicle fail? Detroit, Japan, and Germany - market opportunity beckons.