This sounds serious:
"Big American utilities are slashing their investments in alternative energy. Florida Power & Light has cut its planned investment in wind power next year by 400 megawatts. Duke Energy of North Carolina has lopped $50m off its budget for solar power. And on October 31st VeraSun Energy, one of America’s biggest ethanol producers, caught out by gyrations in the prices of corn and petrol (gasoline), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the European Union the price of carbon permits has fallen from a high of almost €30 in July to around €20, making clean-tech investments less attractive."
But as the failure of VeraSun shows, the drop in oil prices is killing agribizz ethanol. Which is a good thing.
Will this also delay the roll out of plugin hybrids? Will it give the auto makers an excuse to put off mass production of oil substituting electric vehicles?
What it should do is winnow out the losers like ethanol flex fuel vehicles, instead Detroit lobbyists and their political shills are pushing flex fuel.
This means that mere lip service to green reform is only a chip away, cheap green washing. They can get their bail money without agreeing to mass production of a real economy plugin hybrid drivetrain. Keep guzzling ethanol and oil for the forseeable future? Thanks but no thanks! (hehey) We want clean renewable electric "gas" for our cars.
The flawed, perpetually promised, but never delivered 40k plugin hybrid GM "Volt" for instance has a 160 hp electric motor. That's ridiculous, only teenageers (or immature Detroit auto execs?) borrowing the family car need 160 hp to burn rubber.
A real economy plugin hybrid needs a 50 hp motor and needs to weigh in at around 1200 pounds. That way a mere 1000 dollars worth of currently available batteries can power the vehicle 30 or 40 miles, more than covering the average daily trip of 23 miles.
An overnight charge, 30 mile range, 50 hp electric drivetrain/battery pack, with a 20 hp backup generator, that costs a couple of thousand dollars, government needs to order up a million cars per year from the US auto ondustry with these mass produced power plants inside.
The rest of the vehicles, the outside, can be Chevy, Ford, and Chrysler, but inside they need this new propulsion system that eliminates 90% of gas use for the average driver.
To acheive the 1200 pound weight they will need to have carbon fiber body/frame units, as proposed by Amory lovins for his hypercar design. Thanks to his offshoot from RMI, Fiber Forge, the technology to stamp out carbon fiber body panels, just like the industry stamps out metal parts now, already exists.
Government needs to get these contracts for a million of these vehicles per year to revive the economy and insure an oil-free future for the climate and srable economic recovery and growth, a long steady boom in US manufacturing, jobs, and tax base. And a gradual decrease in oil demand, deficits, debt, inflation, and GHG climate pressure.
