Word problem; answers graded on a curve...
A 1981 Dodge Ram Van (faded brown with those funky round portholes in the back) leaves the town of Winkelman at 45 miles an hour pulling 2,500 pounds in an unregistered trailer. A 2012 Nissan Leaf (silver, with a "Be Kind" bumper sticker) departs Tucson at 72 miles an hour carrying an iPad 3 and a Frappuccino. Which is greener?
Beats me. All I know is I see them both on the road to the ranch, and each carries an intriguing back-story.
The van is hauling twenty-five hundred pounds of rusty, twisted scrap metal that's been scrounged from a desert wash somewhere. Looks like maybe a Studebaker panel and some old irrigation pipe. I know where he's headed: to the scrap yard. Rumor has it that scrap recyclers are now paying $160 a ton for anything you can drag in. Old freezers, wrecked cars, barbed wire, you name it, they'll buy it.
Pitiful gleanings of society's underclass? Perhaps. More charitably (and accurately), you might call it the largest voluntary regional recycling program in modern history. In the last ten years, according to the Steel Alliance, more than a trillion pounds of steel have been recycled. A trillion pounds. For reference, that's roughly the combined weight of all the humans on earth. How amazing is that? No mandates, no administration, no forms, no fines, no fuss. Just a steady stream of metal into the decentralized workings of an international system of material re-use. Would a concerted program to "clean up the desert" have been remotely as effective as this spontaneous outpouring of enthusiasm for bent and abandoned debris? The building boom in China, pushing up steel prices, is forcing me to call the cops on scrappy "entrepreneurs" nicking used hot water heaters. How cool.
Lean, Green, Clean Machines
Let us compare this to another spirited civil campaign. Like the vaguely disturbing monolith scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, four sleek columns appeared at the corner of Elm and Mabel one day. They are electric-car charging stations, part of a network of 180 residential and 230 public monuments to Tucson's environmental ethos. Made by ECOtality under the brand Blink, they would normally run $3,000 each and another two to three thousand to install. These were free. And thank goodness, because I've never seen a car plugged into the things since they appeared like mushrooms in January. I say "free" because the company helpfully offers the units free of charge (ahem...) and provides a $1,200 installation credit to boot.
Self-sacrificing public service by a green-minded company? Perhaps. More accurately (and less charitably), you might call it "fleecing." The company is relying on a $114.8 million grant from the Department of Energy. That means every income-tax paying citizen chipped in a buck to help this company "develop infrastructure" (I'll warrant a 'modest' profit besides). Who knows, maybe this is money better spent than the equivalent purchase of five and a half new F/A-18s. Or buying 33 million gallons of gas for poor people. Or paying the health-care costs of 14,000 souls. Or whatever. Maybe we taxpayers gain inner peace knowing that four unused electrical totems are at least "sending the right message." I know that our family is personally getting its money's worth: our 4 and 5 year-olds enjoy the touch-screens and making the nifty lights blink. One of the units (and I trust this is unrelated) needs replacing, after never being used.
Am I being snarky here? Why don't I get it? On the one hand we have a vibrant, unprompted industry that caters to the world's desire for metal, cleans the environment, lessens the need for additional mining, and creates livelihoods for people needing work. On the other we have highly centralized corporate welfare which picks "winners" to provide expensive, coal-fired electric charging service to people who don't want it. What am I missing?
I mean, I get it that electric gizmos are sexier than their diesel-powered cousins and all that. Who would want to drive the A-Team van when you could drive something shiny and shaped like a computer mouse? But surely we're going to base spending on more than just looks, right? ....Right?
Maybe it's the environmental benefit? I don't have the time personally to do a full life-cycle analysis, but according to British studies, electric cars have a slightly higher carbon footprint than their "petrol" counterparts (battery production is extraordinarily carbon-intensive and electric power is overwhelmingly fossil-based). Then again, other studies show a slightly lower footprint after about 80,000 miles of driving. So after your third road-trip around the equator, your karma-carbon account starts nudging into the green. Whatever the truth is, 'clean electric' is clearly not a slam-dunk. Are we perhaps pushing the cart ahead of the horse (hey, there's an idea!) by spending scads of other people's money on "sexy" technology? Just thinking out loud here.
I happen to like the environment, so I admit a bias. In fact, now that I mention it, I can't recall offhand anyone who doesn't. There are, I suppose, churls who revel in filthy air, dirty water, and poisoned landscapes, but they're probably (let's assume) in the margins.
Here's where I part ways with the mainstream excitement over these charging stations: I insist on, and think we all should demand, form over substance, content over caricature. The free-market recycling program I'm witnessing, scruffy as it may be, seems significantly more effective, environmentally speaking, than the empty symbolism embodied by the "EV Project." ECOtality wins kudos from the Vice President and matching grants from corporate America. The unimaginatively named Tucson Scrap Yard (which just announced on its bilingual website extended hours and 7-day operations) gets nothing but askance looks.
Which is greener? I guess it depends on how willing you are to look under the hood...
Follow Paul Schwennesen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@pschwennesen
Secondly, he doesn't actually link to the studies he cites - he links to slanted articles ABOUT the studies. If he had linked to the actual studies, it would have been clear that they don't say what he thinks they say.
Electric cars simply cannot be dirtier than gas vehicles - no matter what - simply because it takes huge amounts of electricity to refine oil into gasoline. You can't tell me that electricity PLUS oil is somehow cleaner than just plain electricity.
http://www.lowcvp.org.uk/assets/reports/RD11_124801_5%20-%20LowCVP%20-%20Life%20Cycle%20CO2%20Measure%20-%20Final%20Report.pdf
Low CVP is the author of the study - here's their press release:
http://www.lowcvp.org.uk/news/1644/lowcvp-study-highlights-importance-of-measuring-whole-life-carbon-emissions/
And here's Low CVP complaining about the misleading and inaccurate spin on their study by some of the press:
http://lowcvp-isleint4.isledev.co.uk/assets/news/Response%20to%20Press%20Coverage%20on%20Life%20Cycle%20CO2%20Report.pdf
Quote: "...It is true that our analysis indicated a high level of embedded carbon in the production process for EVs, but this is significantly off-set by their comparatively lower carbon emissions in use as compared with conventional fossil fuelled cars...all current evidence suggests that volume produced EV’s will offer a lower carbon alternative to fossil fuelled vehicles. "
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Plant a tree.
With all the sun and wind you have in AZ, you could easily power your whole state on renewables.
http://azstarnet.com/business/local/tucson-tech-city-ranks-th-for-electric-car-chargers/article_a0604f63-83f2-5578-b45d-108ded6fb858.html
I do battle with these local loony tune online babblers all the time and I suppose I'll log on there tomorrow to do it again. But, if just a few of the folks who have already logged intelligent comments here in response to this article and establish a Daily Star account, you could have some REAL fun. Be prepared to descend into the viper pit, though.
A more practical solution for large scale deployment (ie: what a power utility might invest in and place on a large field) would be high temperature solar thermal, which a has far more concentrated power density than would be possible with solar PV (scroll down about half way after the below page opens . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
Briefly, the Sun's energy is focused via parabolic mirrors to superheat water into steam, which drives turbines to produce the electricity. This could operate in conjunction move conventional fuel sources driving steam turbines. Or, grid storage batteries (largely sourced from old EV lithium packs that have already lived a decade-long useful life inside an electric car) stores this solar-thermal-produced electricity.
Point being, we can grouse about car mileage, but the easiest and greatest effect we can have on carbon output is reducing or eliminating our meat and dairy consumption.
The ad suggested Mexico was on board
Yes, that is the federal government giving billions of dollars every year to oil companies.
So, is the billions of dollars that the federal government gives to oil companies is also fleecing but on much greater scale?
The argument is that you CANNOT call for a level playing field, and say that the government shouldn't pick winnners, when it has been spending billions of dollars every year to tilt the playing field and pick winners!
If I run a business and you run a business, and you get massive subsidies, how can you say I should not get them because you believe that the government should not pick winners?
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2200949/electric-car-chargers-coming-to-capitol-hill
http://factcheck.org/2012/06/romneys-solar-flareout/
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/print-edition/2012/06/08/first-solar-ecotality-go-to-battle.html?page=all
The real bias the author will not admit to , but does display is a protection of the status quo. He uses snarky and retreaded absurdity to trot out mistaken impressions about clean tech.
((((No, hybrid vehicles( nor all electrics - no matter how they're charged) do not pollute more.)))) That myth has already been refuted and dismissed. Too bad the author either didn't get the memo, didn't care to find out for himself, or still desperately needs to cling to the delusion.
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/electric-car-global-warming-emissions-exec-summary.pdf
The word green was born when the father of ecology, Aldo Leopold, witnessed an ecosystem die in the absence of her wolves. Without the presence of the American wolf, the deer devoured the ecosystem, precisely what industrial civilization is enacting today, yard by yard, mile by mile -- mining for metals and solar panels, agriculture, cities, sprawl, roads and parking lots, all dead planet.
No technology, no green energy, no green gadgets will save mankind from extinction while he's busy as a bee wiping away the very functions, cycles and systems that support his very existence. Ecosystems are the real, life creating and sustaining physical body of our Earth, and each day, for green technologies, gadgets and plastics we skin and scour our only lifelines to life. We are only alive because of ecosystems, and ecosystems are only as alive and stable because of the richness of the plant and animal biodiversity. Earth loses 200 species of biodiversity every single day, a danger ecologists have compared to thermonuclear war!
Likewise, humans will not dispense with automobiles to move back to wooden-wheeled carts pulled by livestock to get around. I would hope that most of the vehicles built over the upcoming century will be powered by electricity, which can be cleanly generated today and even more cleanly generated tomorrow, if we have the will to move forward. Technology alone won't save us. But attempting to abandon it entirely is also naively heading down a blind alley.
What technology or computers release oxygen, maintain the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, create the life zone of Earth, her biosphere; naturally moderate and regulate the climate; provide the climate cooling water cycle; the nitrogen cycle; the entirety of Earth's biodgeochemistry, the creation and renewal of a life giving soil, the purification of air and water;
75% of new medicines; 99% of all pest control; decomposition; pollination; seed dispersal and the control and checking of human disease pathogens that kill humans, and the species in this eco-nomy are headed for extinction.
The life giving, natural surface of the planet is going, going, all for dead planet. Man's land-use changes destroy all his life-supporting functions and services. How can any technology save mankind when humans have not uncovered all the secrets of ecosystems? The biospheres proved this!