Should US Tax Payers Bailout the Electric Car Killer?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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While the US Treasury and Congress debate whether to save the Big 3 carmakers, environmentalists and renewable energy activists ponder whether General Motors, the Detroit auto manufacturing giant that killed their electric car 10 years ago, should be given a second chance. Some say that the 100 mile-per-gallon Chevy Volt promised in 2010 is too little, too late.

Tax payers are faced with a real dilemma. Should we support bailing out the Big 3 in Detroit? After all, investment banks got federal money to cover credit default swaps, which are unsecured side-bets on imaginary financial instruments. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are real brick-and-mortar companies that build real goods and employ millions of Americans. The news pundits warn that the challenged economy can't tolerate a shut down this large in the Midwest. Imagine hundreds of thousands of auto workers marching on Washington, with the fierceness and fury of Martin Luther King, demanding that Uncle Sam save the most powerful symbol of American manufacturing from extinction and mass layoff of over a million people.

Patriotism aside, how did GM and the rest get themselves in this mess? We may be quick to assume that like the Dow, Detroit is going down with the sinking ship the banking and mortgage crisis. The timing of the sudden run on government bailouts may suggest that the Big 3 are just another victim of the financial fiasco of Oct 08. No, it's just odd timing. Detroit's demise, if it comes to that, is by it's own doing – decades of poor decisions, culminating in it's most recent choice to continue making low mpg cars and trucks, even as gas prices hit $4+. Folks couldn't unload their SUV's and find enough high mpg cars to replace their daily driver. When they did, most of them were made in Asia.

GM made big cars because their ad consultants told them that big cars made drivers feel powerful. When city folks I know, who only drive in the city, purchased SUV's, their excuse to me was always that in a crash, big cars are safer. Physics would support that until every American seemed to be driving bigger and bigger cars.

Instead of making advances in hybrids and eletric vehicles, GM not only discontinued their only electric car after making only 1100, they decided that even less than a thousand on the road offered too much of a challenge to their gas-guzzing hegemony and actually had them towed away from their clinging lessees -- who offered GM millions just to keep the cars -- and crushed them!

Should we really have sympathy for car company that decided it was better to sue the State of California and overturn it's 10% zero-emission law rather manufacture a constantly improving electric car?

And what about this Volt? This hybrid sounds promising: You plug it in to power the first 40 miles, after which a gasoline powered generator makes just enough electricity to keep you going. 100 mpg or more is predicted for the car. Though GM would have you think it's breakthrough technology, it isn't, really. Every diesel locomotive ever made operates on the same principle: generate electricity to power the electric motors pulling the train. They are the most fuel efficient system in the world. When were they invented? 1920. So the Volt, we discover, is an old technology that GM finally decided the American driver was ready for.

The conclusion we come away with is that there is some kind of collusion between oil companies and domestic Detroit Iron. And somehow the wild and wacky speculation in oil futures (which was solely responsible for the dramatic gasoline price hike earlier this year), threw things out of control and drivers got spooked.

The car companies have known about the threat of high gas prices and shortages since the mid 1970's, but to hear the CEO's of these companies talk today, you would think that this problem suddenly occurred in the last few weeks. In a separate story we will talk about the real purpose of GM's introduction of the Chevy Volt - and it's not about getting good gas mileage or lowering our carbon footprint. Stay tuned.

The Company That Killed the Electric Car Brings It Back

Bill Georgevich reporting

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General Motors, after having re-introduced the electric car as the E-V1 then sending every one of those cars to the crusher, is now pretending it never happened. Ten years after the death of the E-V1, GM has gone green again, perhaps this time not as begrudgingly. The Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid, is being touted by Chevrolet as not just "gas friendly" but "gas-free", since the first 40 miles can be traveled without the use of any fossil fuel.

Below is a review of the Chevy Volt from Bryan Walsh.

I can see the future of the automobile — I just can't quite hear it. I'm riding around General Motors' secure proving grounds in Milford, Mich., in what from the outside looks like an ordinary Chevrolet Malibu. But inside it couldn't be more different. The test car isn't powered by a gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine, like nearly every automobile since the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line in 1908. Nor is it a hybrid like Toyota's fuel-efficient Prius with a gas engine assisted by an electric motor. This Malibu is electric, powered by a 400-lb. lithium-ion battery nestled beneath the floorboard — an energy source that is not only silent but entirely emission-free.

Actually, what we're driving is not a Malibu at all but a "mule," a stunt double for what will become the Chevrolet Volt, a new plug-in electric car that could save a struggling GM and, not incidentally, change the way we drive — just as long as they can make it work in time. "Developing this car is not something for the lighthearted," says Alex Cattelan, the Volt's assistant chief vehicle engineer, from behind the wheel. "But it's so much fun."

To understand why the Volt could be so important to two once dominant institutions that have hit hard times — General Motors and the United States — all you need to do is visit your nearest gas station, where a gallon of unleaded now costs an average of $3.64. We're spending around $700 billion a year to import oil, with much of that money being shipped to countries that don't like us very much. When we burn all that imported oil, we release nearly 2 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, heating up the planet. Those twin trends can't continue, and the solution "is to move away from oil as quickly and as devastatingly as possible," according to former CIA director turned green warrior James Woolsey.

GM is hardly the only major automaker to explore electrics as the way to make that happen; in recent months every major international automaker has announced plans to produce plug-in hybrids, semi-electric cars that can be recharged from a wall socket, like the Volt. But it is GM — which has seen revenues vanish as Americans stampede away from SUVs and other gas gluttons — that is pursuing the most ambitious program. The company does not have a happy history with electrics, having produced the battery-powered EV1 in the 1990s only to discontinue it in 1999. But this time GM has staked its future on the Volt, promising to have it in showrooms by the end of 2010 — far quicker than the pace of development for a standard car, let alone one whose battery does not technically exist yet. "This is not a choice," says Rebecca Lindland, an auto analyst for the research firm Global Insight. "This is necessary for their survival." And in a warming world, perhaps ours too.

Under the hood, Bob Lutz is not your typical green. The former Marine pilot — who owns a pair of surplus military jets he likes to fly — probably has a carbon footprint half the size of Michigan. But it is the gravelly Lutz, GM's vice chairman for global product development, who is the driving force behind the Volt. Lutz worked in the auto industry for decades, left to run the battery company Exide Technologies and returned to GM in 2001 full of ideas. His dream was to develop an all-electric car that would be powered by lithium-ion batteries similar to the kind now used in cell phones and laptops. Most current hybrids use nickel-metal-hydride batteries — less expensive, but also less powerful. In 2003 a Silicon Valley start-up named Tesla Motors announced it would produce a $100,000 lithium-ion-powered sports car, and that helped galvanize Lutz. "If some guy in California can do it, to me it shows that this is certifiable technology," he says.

GM as a whole shared that confidence and at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show unveiled an early concept-car version of the Volt. To the surprise of even Lutz, it was the hit of the show. Other hybrids may offer fuel efficiency, but the Volt would go several steps further. A traditional hybrid like the Prius has two means of propulsion: one electric motor run by a battery and one engine run by gasoline. The battery can't take you very far — maybe 7 or 8 miles — which is why the gas engine kicks in so often. But as you drive, the battery does pick up extra juice, mostly courtesy of what's known as regenerative braking — collecting the heat generated every time you hit the brakes, converting it to electricity and storing it in the battery. The result: less gas used on every trip.

The Volt will rely on its electric motor, powered by its new battery, and will go up to 40 miles without using a drop of gas. For the nearly 80% of Americans who drive less than 40 miles a day, that would mean they could effectively eliminate gasoline from their lives. After 40 miles, the Volt's gas engine switches on, but unlike the Prius', it doesn't make the car move an inch. Rather, it generates electricity and feeds it to the battery, much the way an emergency generator in a hospital keeps the lights on during a blackout. This allows you to go an additional several hundred miles before you need either a fill-up or a charge-up. "With [past electrics] people had to change the way they lived," says Andrew Farah, the Volt's chief engineer. "I want a vehicle that doesn't ask them to change at all."

Is global warming dead?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Many Republicans who already thought carbon cap and trade regulation was bad for the economy, now say that with the growing global economic crisis, American energy companies cannot afford to be green. Like the “Drill, baby, drill!” hysteria promoted by Governor Sarah Palin in the Vice Presidential debate, Republican congressmen and senators are warning that global warming will just have to wait.

The AP reports:

Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, and both presidential candidates, continue to rank tackling global warming as a chief goal next year.

But the focus on stabilizing the economy probably will make it more difficult to pass a law to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At the very least, it will push back when the reductions would have to start. As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst.

"Clearly it is somewhere down the totem pole given the economic realities we are facing," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal mandates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and non-profit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.

Just months ago, chances for legislation passing in the next Congress and becoming law looked promising. The presidential candidates support mandatory cuts and a Democratic majority is ready to act on the problem after years of the Bush administration resistance.

But the most popular remedy for slowing global warming, a mechanism know as cap-and-trade, could put further stress on a teetering economy. Under such a system, the government would establish a market for carbon dioxide by giving or selling credits to companies with operations that emit greenhouse gases. The companies can then choose whether to invest in technologies to reduce emissions to meet targets or instead buy credits from other companies who have already met them.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Va.), said that in light of the economic downturn, a bill that would give polluters permits free of charge would be preferable. "The first way we can control program costs is by not charging industrial emitters," said Boucher, who released a first draft of a bill this past week with the chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, Representative John Dingell ( D-Mich.). Giving away right-to-pollute permits was one of the options.

Other Democrats, however, see a cap-and-trade bill - and the government revenues it would generate from selling permits - as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using the money to help fund alternative energy.

"If you see this as a job creation opportunity for the U.S. to develop the products that are then sold around the world, then you should be optimistic about what the impact of passage would mean for the American economy," said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.).

Conservative Republicans, who were never fans of a law to curb greenhouse gases, have used the economic downturn as a rallying cry. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Senate environment and public works committee, in a blog entry this month, criticized 152 House members for releasing a set of principles to tackle global warming in the midst of the economic turmoil. "The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," Inhofe said.

Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) took the argument a step further when he said the Boucher-Dingell bill could lead the country "off the economic cliff." Even supporters of federal regulation of greenhouse gases acknowledge the difficulty given the state of the economy.

Senator John Warner (R-Va.), a lead sponsor of a Senate bill to curb greenhouse gases that failed this year, acknowledged that the economy could delay when reductions in carbon dioxide would start. Warner told The AP that any bill should allow the president to decide. "We must continue to think and devise a piece of legislation that will enable the president of the United States to control timing ... dependent on the president's analysis for the ability of the economy to assume the financial burdens," he said.

The U.S. is not alone. As the economic crisis has spread to markets across the globe, work to curb greenhouse gases elsewhere has stalled.

Earlier this past week, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN climate panel, said discussions about global warming solutions were "on the back burner."

Pachauri shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for their work on climate change."I'm absolutely sure that climate change will be the last thing people will think about at this point in time," he said. "Sooner or later, they will come back to it."

The upside is that in hard economic times, and with high energy prices, the amount of pollution in the air tends to decline. But environmentalists say it won't be enough to stop temperatures from rising.

Hey, T. Boone, the WindWing is here

Melanie Pahlmann reporting

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While oilman T. Boone Pickens installs thousands of turbines on his massive wind farm in Texas, a small California company is unveiling an invention that may revolutionize wind power production.

The "WindWing" may prove to be a superior alternative to the wind turbine, for an impressive variety of reasons:

• It can capture energy with low-velocity wind (as little as 6 mph, roughly half the mph necessary for wind turbines)
  
  
• Its wing-shaped design makes it a more efficient energy generator than the propeller turbine (40-60% compared to 5%)
  
  
• It poses no threat to bird populations
  
  
• It is quiet, unlike the propeller design
  
  
• It can be installed virtually anywhere, which reduces the need to transport the power over long distances
  
  
• Its small size and low cost make wind generation possible for individual homeowners and small communities, helping to decentralize ownership of the power source

While we welcome the enormous amount of clean energy Pickens' 4,000 megawatt wind farm will disseminate to the masses (1.3 million households when the project is fully operational), we do well to remember that Pickens will personally earn billions in revenue from this endeavor.

WindWing inventor Gene Kelley is a tireless, enthusiastic visionary who believes that renewable energy can be produced locally and inexpensively.

Wind energy, in particular, can be made far more efficiently than it currently is (and will be at Pickens's farm). Propeller-driven turbines are only about 5 percent efficient in converting available wind to actual energy. The 3-blade design offers a very small surface for wind contact. The wings of Kelley's WindWing offer a much larger surface, which increases its efficiency rating to 40 to 60 percent.

Wing units can be stacked vertically and their size can be customized in manufacturing, ranging from small models the size of a conference room table to large units the size of a jumbo jet. A small single unit could be installed in one's backyard, a "mini-cluster" of a few small units could power a neighborhood, and a "macro-cluster" of many large WindWings could power a shopping mall or factory.

Remarkably, the WindWing is not limited to wind as an power source. It can be placed upside down in a stream, river or aqueduct and catch the force of the moving water. The weight and constant flow of the water could create 800 times the force available from wind, according to Kelley.

Kelley and his company W2 plan to launch a prototype this fall at the Santa Barbara Harbor. Meantime, W2 has signed a contract with Hawaii's Natural Energy Laboratory (NELHA), where the WindWing is being tested for performance in a variety of wind environments. Breadth of application is also being researched; the NELHA successfully powering electric vehicles, batteries and other energy needs with the WindWing. They are also playing with a wind-solar combo. Photovoltaic cells have been mounted on the wings, which create 24/7 dual power generation.

One final adulation about the virtues of the WindWing: the cost. A WindWing unit comes in at about one-tenth the cost of a propeller turbine. Kelly also tells us that a single WindWing can do the work of 12 propellers.

The W2 web site is fairly sparse, but you can learn more here:

The W2 web site latest news

West Hawaii Today article

Ventura Country Star article

Energy Legislation at Last?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Despite many efforts to pass an energy package, Congress adjourned for summer recess gridlocked and empty-handed. Partisan compromise is essential if we will ever see any real energy legislation. Republicans must give up oil industry tax breaks and Democrats need to budge on the offshore drilling ban. A bi-partisan group of 10 Senators, days before adjourning last month for summer recess, wrote a compromise bill that does just that.

The New Energy Reform Act of 2008 was written in response to the months-long Senate deadlock on energy legislation. The legislation, which could be considered when Congress returns in September, includes limited offshore drilling with increased investment in new energy technologies. A portion of the finding for renewables would come from taking back tax breaks from the oil industry. The bill also sets a goal of fueling 85 percent of the country's automobiles with alternatives to oil within 20 years.

The upside:

• co-sponsored by a bi-partisan group committed to breaking the energy legislation gridlock in Congress
• closes tax loopholes for the oil industry
• maintains the ban on offshore drilling in California
• extends renewable energy tax incentives that will expire in December
• invests $20 billion for the conversion of cars and trucks to non-oil fuel sources
• garnering wide support from liberal democrats, moderates, and Republicans

The downside:

• permits offshore drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the east coast (by states' consent)
• recycling of spent nuclear fuel

Given the many bones of contention between the two parties, it is imperative to accept that a compromise coming from both sides of the aisle is the only solution to the impasse. Republicans need to give in on oil industry tax loopholes so that the renewable energy tax credits can be paid for. Democrats need to budge on their intractable stance on offshore drilling.

This bill was written just before Congress adjourned in early August. We hope that our Senators give serious attention to this bill when they return on September 4.

Countdown to Energy Reform

Bill Georgevich reporting

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This week we begin our Countdown to Energy Reform. While Congress enjoys their August recess, many Americans are wondering, where are the solutions to our energy issues? Despite multiple efforts to pass energy legislation, the Senate has been intractably gridlocked. Time is running out. Essential renewable energy tax credits will expire in December. Join us in our weekly call to action as we contact our vacationing Senators every week until they reconvene in September. This week: send a letter to Senators Obama and McCain.

Congress went on recess in early August without passing any energy legislation. Despite multiple efforts, both the House and Senate danced around the crucial issues of gas prices, offshore drilling, oil-market speculation, and the clean energy tax credits that are expiring in December.

The clean energy tax credits are especially important, because as December draws nearer, more and more investors in various renewable energy projects are getting cold feet. Many have pulled out entirely or are threatening to do so if the extension doesn't happen. Failure to renew these tax credits will be disastrous for our country and the steady momentum towards clean energy that has been taking hold.

Obama and McCain have remained rather detached in Senate activities related to renewable energy legislation. Both were among only a few to abstain on a vote to get a bill that would renew clean energy tax credits on the floor for debate. And both have shown some allegiance to the big oil industry that so handsomely finances their presidential campaigns. In 2005, Obama voted for an energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. In June of this year, in the weeks following McCain's embrace of offshore oil drilling, contributions from the oil and gas industry poured in ($1 million, in fact, compared to $116 K in March, $283 K in April and $208 K in May).

When the Senate reconvenes on September 4, they will be greeted with a new, bi-partisan energy bill, the first to offer a compromise to the wide philosophical and political schism that has prevented any passage of renewable energy tax credits. The New Energy Reform Act of 2008 is very promising, and couldn't come a moment too soon.

Obama has shown support of the bill, in recognition of the hope that it will end "partisan gridlock and special interest influence" and bring to the Senate "a good faith effort at a new bipartisan beginning."

McCain has remained very quiet about the bill, but most likely will not support it, for at least 2 reasons: one, the bill will take away subsidies for the oil and gas industry, which McCain adamantly wants to keep in place; and two, the bill allows for very limited offshore oil drilling (none at all off the California coast). Learn more about the bill here.

And if you haven't already, we invite you again to send a letter to Senators Obama and McCain on the very important and timely matter of energy policy.

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Turning Oil Fields into Wind Farms

Melanie Pahlmann reporting

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An unlikely Texas oilman – none other than the legendary T. Boone Pickens -- has announced plans to build the biggest wind farm in the world. His $10 billion dollar project will produce enough electricity to power an entire city. To date, he has put $2 billion into the project, including a record purchase of nearly 700 wind turbines from General Electric. He expects to begin generating electricity in 2011.

Pickens is not the only Texan to recognize the virtues of wind as an energy source. In recent years the oil capital of North America has emerged as the country's largest producer of wind power. In the little town of Sweetwater, up in the Texas Panhandle, wind turbines are going up at a rate of three to four a day. Some say the number of turbines in Sweetwater could top out eventually around 20,000.

Nearby Nolan County, if it were a country unto itself, would rank sixth on a list of wind-energy-producing nations in the world. It currently produces more wind-generated electricity in a year than all of California. Click on the graph for a fascinating state by state comparison of wind power.

Pickens is quick to note that "there could be lots of Sweetwaters out there," especially through the Midwest corridor stretching from Texas to North Dakota, where big wind and lots of empty space are ideal for wind power generation. Pickens envisions wind as a vital component of an energy plan for the U.S. His newly unveiled Pickens Plan declares that America can cut it's foreign oil needs by more than a third in less than a decade.

The sentiment behind his bold plan is this: "America is in a hole and it's getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war. I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil."

So great is Pickens' concern, he has launched a massive information campaign in print and on the web. His intention is to infuse the country's foreign-oil-dependence mania with a business-like pragmatism, replete with numbers, goals, targets and what he says is a realistic strategy. He's also hoping to prod our politicians into meaningful, results-oriented dialogue. "Neither presidential candidate is talking about solving the oil problem," he says. "So we're going to make 'em talk about it."

Ironic, really, that it might take an oil tycoon to nudge us toward a renewable energy policy.

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