Duh? And how are they working that one out?
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
According to a study by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, if the U.S. wants to significantly reduce its oil consumption, it should prioritize the fast adoption of electric cars over "the proposed national renewable portfolio standard".
While this makes a lot of sense, in a way, as a renewable portfolio standard would mostly have an impact on electricity production and not liquid fuels, what the study fails to mention is that we will need both approaches to truly start moving towards greener transportation.
In addition to that, can they please tell me who they would like to charge those electric vehicles? They will need electric power and most of that, in the USA at least, is produced by coal- or oil-fired power plants.
Let's talk about real green transportation
The electric car, and EVs per se, is all nice and fine but what are we really trying to do is to keep the status quo of using the car in perpetuity. This, however, is NOT going to work. Let's not kid ourselves and that is what we are trying to do, or at least that is what the powers that be would like us all to believe.
Our dilemma isn't to either decide to clean up power plants or clean up vehicles, but rather to figure out how fast we can do both, and we certainly must clean up electricity production. Electric cars can indeed make a big difference in oil consumption, but they'll only bring maximum benefits if their adoption is couple with a de-carbonization of electricity generation in the USA, and not just in the USA alone.
We must come to the understanding as well, and that now and not when the proverbial has hit the air moving device, and that is that the car, whether gasoline-, diesel- or electricity-powered, is history, period.
Real green transportation is what we must look at and this means slowing down our life and, while this may contrary to slowing down, we must do this quickly.
The Baker Institute analysis found "the single most effective way to reduce U.S. oil demand and foreign imports would be an aggressive campaign to launch electric vehicles into the automotive fleet." In fact, mandating that 30 percent of all vehicles be electric by 2050 would both reduce U.S. oil use by 2.5 million barrels a day beyond the 3 million barrels-per-day savings already expected from new corporate average fuel efficiency standards, and also cut emissions by 7 percent, while the proposed national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) would cut them by only 4 percent over the same time.”
Something else that this study does not seem to mention nor take into consideration is that another great way to reduce oil consumption is to be less dependent on cars in the first place. Making our towns and cities more walkable and cyclable, making public transportation better, bringing stores and everything, together with residents back into towns and cities, and having everything in easy reach by foot or bicycle, etc. would already go a long, long way towards reducing oil consumption. All of these things must also be done in parallel to cleaning up cars and power plants.
Such a narrow focus on just oil consumption might work for a study, but in the real world, we have to do it all.
Mind you, to all intents and purposes, if indeed the predictions for Peak Oil and the end of cheap oil are correct then I don't think that we'll have to worry much anymore as to cars and oil consumption. When a gallon of gasoline breaks through the US$15 and the UK£20 mark I seriously doubt that we'll see many cars on the road then.
And when the cheap oil is no longer and rates are in the given brackets – a UK gallon of gasoline or diesel is already hitting the US$10 region in Britain – we will also find that we will no longer afford to charge up electric cars and will have to revert back to human-powered travel or the horse and car, if we can afford the latter.
We better get used to it now for there is no time to waste. Another fact we also must consider, and that is the price of EVs. Most mere mortals like us will hardly be able to afford them anyway.
© 2010
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