Noted venture capitalist, founding partner of Sun microsystems, Vinod Khosla visits grist to defend his remarks on plugin hybrids versus ethanol (blogging with the bigshots, hehey).

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/27/153441/49/#comment7

15,000 more V?  Does the Audi plugin hybrid cost that much more than a regular hybrid or a comparable economy car?

With mass production would plugin hybrids cost anymore than a conventional economy car?  It's a fact, until mass production efficiencies kick in products are more expensive.  Plugin hybrids take a fifth of the batteries of a pure electric car, and those batteries need not be the very expensive quick charge type.

Plugin hybrids do not need quick charge.  They have backup liquid fuel.  A few hours charge time is no problem.

The complaint that electric cars pollute just as much if the electricity is from GHG intensive sources like coal is deceptive.  The goal of renewable energy revolution is to go renewable with the grid as well.  Your dream of cellulosic ethanol would not happen overnight, neither will a distributed renewable smart grid to charge plugin hybrids.

Thanks for your reply though.  I personally think you would be better off targeting investment dollars to a distributed renewable generation and storage internet enabled smart grid.  Plugin hybrid vehicles and high speed light rail.  And conservation in the form of geo heat exchange heating and cooling.

Climb on board and come on in for the big win with us (to paraphrase "Full Metal Jacket").  

One more thing.  20 years is the timetable we are looking at to make this complete new energy direction work.

17 million new cars are sold each year in the US.  300 million need replacement over 20 years, no problem then.  

The best part of the new Audi plugin hybrid design is this.  They simply added a rear axle plugin battery electric drive to a regular front wheel drive car.  That not only allows easy conversion of used cars, but it means automakers don't need to change their capital intensive production facilities.

They keep turning out the standard front wheel drive cars and simply add the rear wheel electric drive.  making them all wheel drive as well.  Another atractive feature for extra traction in difficult weather conditions, with ever more extreme weather this is a feature car buyers already pay more for.

Witness the great success of Subaru.  It's the silent sports/nature lovers status vehicle of choice right now.  Eco friendly folk don't want SUVs anymore.

It's not personal, it's just business, hehey. Well maybe it is personal for green car buyers, we want to keep up with the latest eco status symbol.

Gas guzzling flex fuel vehicles just don't make the grade.  Wether they guzzle oil or corn or cellulose.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/11/googles-goal-re.html#comment-94252066

The first part of my favorite entry in this effort would be concentrating solar cogeneration.  10 sun trough concentration reduces the amount of PV cells by 90%, reducing the cost by 60% (1/10nth the PV cells are used, but the concentrating troughs add some cost), and tripling the usual efficiency of most PV cells in use now.

Like the typical ones used in this roof mounted system in solar insolation average NJ.  It's no shining desert, but no rain forest either.

http://msmith.typepad.com/smithelectricco/ 

 This system has a 8.5 year payback with subsidies, but coal has numerous subsidies too, in the form of tax breaks.  Tripling the efficiency for this system and cutting the cost by 60%, by hypothetically replacing it with the concentrating trough system would produce triple the kwh per year.  Thus cutting the payback to one third, and the original 8.5 years is cut to 5.1 years by the lower cost already.  For a 1.7  year payback.  After that the kwh are free.

That surely beats coal!  With it's ever increasing fuel costs.  Free after 1.7 years beats nearly everything.  Add to this the cogenerated heat to heat hot water and the payback drops even further.

A smart grid with this kind of solar power mounted on every suitable rooftop, and distributed wind, wave, water, and biogas from waste power generation.  And smart grid switching of loads to store and conserve energy.  And plugin hybrid vehicles employing smart grid vehicle to grid storage and charging.  And a switch to geo heat exchange heating/cooling. 

That kind of energy system design, which google has related expertise at (the internet switchable smart grid part), would not only be cheaper than coal.  It would impell an economic, foreign policy, and climate renaissance. 

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/12/wind-power-as-a.html?cid=93753972#comment-93753972

This article claims 95% of baseload can come from wind with a small, affordable amount of storage.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/212637/60

How so? That claim is based on a study of the output of 8 wind farms.

The more wind farms, the higher the baseload power percentage and the lower the amount of storage or backup needed.

And as amory Lovins pointed out, our vehicles have 7 times the power generation potential of our entire power grid. If only 10% of vehicles were plugin hybrid, vehicle to grid storage would more than take care of storage.

An internet enabled smart grid that used heating/cooling load timing (storing heat or cold in buildings and freezers for instance) letting them coast on stored heat/cold, would also be enough to fill in gaps in wind.

Another great backup power source is solid oxide fuel cell/turbines running on natural gas or biogas. These can be distributed around the grid in smaller units that the typical coal or nuclear power plants. The cogenerated heat used for heating, adding efficiency to the already 70% efficiency of the fuel cell/turbine.

Natural gas for this application can be diverted from heating buildings by switching to smart grid controlled geo heat exchange heating/cooling. Another big load of gas can come from biogas production from the waste stream, keeping high nitrogen run off from human waste, manure, and landfills from releasing methane (a 23 times worse GHG than CO2) from natural carbon sinks, like wetlands.

Finally as the ultimate natural gas/fuel cell/ cogeneration backup, coal, tar sands, and sour oil can be converted to natural gas underground with bacteria. Making coal obsolete.

With solid oxide fuel cell/turbines in the 20kw range as liquid fueled backup generators for plugin hybrids, vehicle to grid with the vehicle fuel cell plugged into natural gas when parked would supplement distributed fuel cell cogeneration backup. These fuel cell units are under development by Boeing, as backup generators for their aircraft and the power source for unmanned aerial vehicles. Mass produced for vehicles the cost would come down to compete with internal combustion engine powertrains.

An internet enabled smart grid, incorporating these devices, would be different from the old centralized power grid model. The old grid is designed to meet any load at anytime, necessitating huge capacity for peaks that sits idle or worse is kept in "spinning reserve' mode, consuming fuel but yielding no kwh. No matter how much capacity or power line buildout, it seems that this grid always falls short during peak air conditioning load, or ice storms, or lightning events.

A smart grid would adjust load during emergency peaks by shutting down non-essential load. Letting heating/cooling coast for instance. It would adjust to variability, becoming much more predictable, even as the grid itself becomes more variable.

A new paradigm for utility engineering is emerging. A renewable distributed generation, storage, and conservation grid, operating with smart grid technology, that will make GHG and fossil fuel use a minor part of our power system. A system that makes local, regional, and national grids autonom,ous in emergencies, but allows for distribution of power over the grid for added efficiency.

This system can pay it's own way in fuel and GHG saved, storm outage averted, trillions saved on centralized power grid and power plant upgrades, and economic revitalization with lower energy costs and a whole new manufacturing sector.

The UK is shifting to offshore wind as its base load power.  That means mass production will get a big boost.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/12/noted-in-pass-2.html?cid=93472172#comment-93472172

Now put all that offshore wind onto floating platforms.

Transfering technology to China.  It is already happening at a breakneck pace. 

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007686.html

 China is already catching up on wind, manufacturing at lower cost of course. I think China "transfers" technology all the time, helped out by companies operating factories there.

Forget clean coal, that is nothing but a fantasy hyped by the coal industry. The real way to clean up coal is to turn it into natural gas underground using anaroebic bacteria. Forget coal mining and leave the toxic coal mess underground where it is now.

Extract the natural gas and use it in solid oxide fuel cell/turbine distributed power plants. These operate at twice the efficiency of conventional coal power, cutting GHG in half. These smaller units also allow for the cogenerated waste heat to be used for heating hot water or buildings.

And they also operate on biogas from the waste stream, by tapping the waste stream manure and landfill run off is prevented from releasing methane (23 times worse GHG than cO2) into the atmosphere from biomass acting as a carbon sink in wetlands.

The huge consumer market here in the US fed by corps like Walmart is funding rapid dirty coal power plant expansion in China. A market for renewable energy devices and smart grid equipment here, as well as plugin vehicles and geo heat exchange heating/cooling systems will impell chinese companies to manufacture all of them.

And since they yield lower energy costs, along with GHG remediation, mass production cost efficiency and competition will dictate their use in the chinese energy economy. They will rush to beat the world in low cost production, as they have with most other consumer products in demand around the globe.

How much will this energy revolution cost the US and world economy? It won't.  It  will make economic opportunity expand.

On the contrary, it will take high energy costs, actually acting as a huge tax payed to multinational energy corporations, off the world economy. And as all good economists know, taxes kill growth. Cutting taxes impells growth.

Multinational energy corporations now direct the power that goes along with these huge "taxes" towards oil wars over their favorite commodity and buying out governments like the US government to further their own monopoly interests. Then their military industrial cohorts drain 60% of the national budget for "defense".

Defense of foreign oil fields from the people of nations like Iran and Iraq that actually rightfully own these resources and ought to benefit from their exploitation. Their "royal" corporate partners like the saudi ruling class then keep the knife of tyranny at the throat of their own population to continue to steal the oil.

Encouraging terrorism along the way. All the 9/11 terrorists and most of the foreign fighters in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia.

GHG climate disaster is already collecting a huge new "tax" as well. Take the widespread ice storms across the US lately, the resulting power outage curtails business and puts a huge dent in growth. Now multiply that effect by all the effects of climate change related hurricane, drought, fire, flood, and on and on.

This well worn talking point by the corporate right, that green energy revolution will be a huge cost to the economy is nonsense. it will be a huge power shift away from the war mongering, politically corrupting, climate destroying status quo. that will hurt the interests of big energy monopoly, but it will help create good jobs and growth that will benefit we the people of spaceship Earth.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/5/184641/855#64

Quality versus quantity
Do the developed nations with full health coverage (an illuminating distinction), value quality of life over quantity of possesions and consumption?  The rich and super rich pay more taxes there, but the not so rich are healthy.