Energy & Power Generation

230 mpg?

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General Motors has announced that the Chevy Volt will get 230 mpg for city driving, and probably around 100 mpg for combined city/highway driving.

The Volt obtains this performance, of course, through its use of a battery recharged from the grid. “230 mpg” means “230 miles per gallon of gasoline,” and ignores the coal or natural gas which in most cases will supply the recharging. The Electricity Fairy has not been coming around a lot lately.

A proper metric for a vehicle such as the Volt depends on what factors the buyer really cares about…

If your main concern is “energy independence,” then “miles per gallon of gasoline” is probably a reasonable criterion.

If your main concern is operating cost, then you need “total cost per mile,” based on a combination of gasoline cost and electricity cost.

If you worry that the world is going to run out of energy, you should be looking at “BTUs per mile.”

And if you really believe CO2 is going to destroy us all, then the metric you should care about is “CO2 emissions per mile.”

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Words Matter

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Owen D Young, who served as president and chairman of GE from 1922-1939, told a story on himself (quoted in the Ida Tarbell biography) about his days as a young lawyer working for Stone & Webster. His assignment was to obtain streetcar franchises for the company in various cities, and he was particularly proud of the contract he negotiated with El Paso…it explicitly gave S&W the right to run trolley tracks “in every street, present and future of the city.”

Shortly after Young left El Paso, though, another guy–a real operator named Theodore Barnsdall–visited the city, and after paying $25000 to the owner of a tiny, mule-powered street railway (which Young had viewed as having no value other than the $50 that the mule was worth) got introduced to the city council. He also obtained a contract from the city–identical to Young’s except for the words “in the middle of every street, present and future.”

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Hillary vs the Industrial Revolution

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Saw a snippet of an interview last night in which Secretary Clinton was saying that: When America (and also Europe, presumably) built all those coal plants and other fossil-fuel-based infrastructure, we just didn’t know what a bad thing pollution was. With the pretty obvious implied mesage to India being: YOU, on the other hand, have no excuse.

Set aside for the moment the second part of the above and focus on the first part. Suppose that, beginning around 1800, we had known everything that we know now (and think we know) about pollution, the possible effects of CO2, etc. What does she think we should have done?

As factories began to emerge, should we have restricted them to those locations in which they could have been powered directly by waterwheels, in order to avoid the use of coal-burning steam engines?

Should we have similarly restricted the use of electricity to areas in which waterpower was feasible? (Bear in mind that during the great age of electrification there were no photovoltaic cells available for solar power generation…also, of course, may environmentalists are almost as opposed to large-scale hydro projects as they are to coal plants.)

Should we have continued to rely on the horse and the mule for transportation? (Remember, without a robust electrical grid, electric cars are not an option…indeed, without fossil-fuel-based power, even electric streetcars would have been out of the question in most places.)

For an individual with Hillary’s wealth and connections, of course, things wouldn’t have been too bad under this scenario. Even if clothing cost 5X what it does today, for instance, she would surely have been able to afford everything she needs. And I imagine that even if fossil-fuel-generated electricity had been banned for the masses, people like Clinton and Gore would have been able to get special permits for coal-fired generators for their homes. (At least if people like them were running the government.

But a large and affluent middle class–on which the Democrats say they place such value–would never have come into existence.

“Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.”

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Gov. Palin weighs in with a good piece attacking Obama’s cap-and-trade plan.

She sets out simply and clearly the burden this monstrosity is going to impose on the economy.

This is a good angle for her to take, and within the scope of her experience and knowledge.

It is good to see this.

With some leadership and clear thinking, it is still possible to stop further structural damage to the American economy at the hands of Mr. Obama.

UPDATE:

Michael Barone had a good piece about how the House cap and trade vote was the 1/3 of the country that does not rely on coal imposing itself on the rest. Barone’s numbers do not add up to an Obama victory in the Senate. Good. There is blood in the water.

Palin is attacking where Obama is weak. She trying to mobilize opposition and hand him a major defeat.

This is not complicated, people can understand it, its a terrible plan, and Obama has exposure on it.

A serious effort to stop it could work.

I hope Gov. Palin goes around the country making speeches about it, or otherwise campaigns against it.

Defeating Barack on something this big will strip away a lot of momentum, show he can be beaten.

The enemy has been advancing steadily. I hope that he has reached the culminating point of the attack.

It would add much sweetness to the victory if Gov. Palin was in the lead on the successful counter-attack.