So many people still believe that we cannot reduce the worst case climate risks dramatically except at very high economic costs!! Yes, all the comprehensive plans we see at high political levels these days would be ineffective or economy busting, but better options do exist by making better use of market mechanisms and new technology. Last week on Korea national TV (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM), I gave just a general outline of a "new" five point strategy to do exactly that -- make deep cuts in the worst case climate risk at minimum cost, by using real focus and strategic thinking on all five of the points on this slide.
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One of my friends in the energy sector asked "Is that really possible? For example, for the car and truck sector, could we make deep cuts without destroying our economy?"
Here was my initial explanation of why we can:
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One huge problem is giving up oil will kill the economy, and vast numbers of people will die from the collapse.
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One of the five points in the central slide I showed is listed as "reduced GHG from cars and trucks." I don't think I used the word "oil" in the talk, because of limited time, but I pointed emphatically to www.werbos.com/oil.htm, which includes (along with less important things) the exact proposal from Senator Specter which he asked me to write and try to get to the floor in 2009, and the more recent, more thorough Transportation Policy report from IEEEUSA.
The emphasis was market-based fuel flexibility and choice, NOT the dumb pseudo-conservative bloc which picks winners and losers and tries to implement government monopolies!!
Those things grew out of a talk to 200 folks in Rayburn which I gave in 2007, invited by Congressman Kingston (then no 3 in the part in the House) to prepare for Bush's EISA bill (which was not as flexible and open in competition as we would have liked). The main slide, also in that folder, emphasizes a CHOICE, but puts more attention onb alternate liquid fuels.
Later, for another talk for Inglis (R), I showed the actual economic impact of the flexibility part. It actually would double revenue of **US** distribution companies, but cause deep cuts in money flowing to the Middle East.
I guess the latter are who really have power in DC lately. I still remember when Lamar Smith (R-Texas) had the Director of Engineering of NSF bring in a Middle Eastern oil guy to give us all new marching orders in 2014. A big part of why I (and many others) retired.
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In more detail: He replied:
Paul, what I am talking about is a PV to synthetic hydrocarbons scheme. Probably not a US kind of project, since these really low cost for power has shown up only in the mid east.
Current policy in China tends to support what many people told me in 2017: that PV electricity at 3 cents per kwh daytime in contracts actually signed in Chile and Middle East APPEARED real because of huge subsidies to PV manufacturers in China. Those are going away. It seems that the real cost was more like 9 cents per kwh just for daytime power in favorable locations. For the moment, PVs are no longer part of the "A team" (for earth). The "A team" for earth-based solar power is a form of SOLAR THERMAL solar farm, the form which Gary Barnhard helped educate us on at ISDC Alexandria. It is a new breakthrough in power tower technology, using new advanced Brayton cycle engines to convert concentrated heat to .. electricity. It comes with low cost thermal storage (usually estimated at $50/kwh, $50 per kilowatt of permanent reusable storage capacity, about one quarter the cost of targets for future batteries). There was a big news item recently about Bill Gates putting a big investment into taking the lead in that technology. The Middle East was pulling ahead, even though this is a US technology, because corrupt and evil politicians were shutting down the US capability, but for now Gates seems to have saved the day and kept the US in the game.
BUT: you were asking what the implications are for how we power cars and trucks, using alternative liquid fuels. Alternative liquid fuels really are a crucial part of any rational, efficient policy to slash the net greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
In my view, the EISA law of 2007 passed under the leadership of George Bush junior was a really great achievement, and I was very happy to help make that happen. BUT THE TECHNICAL DETAILS MATTER,
because the supply of alternate liquid fuels has been far less than Bush hoped, because of (1) terrible regulations, terrible enabling rules for EPA, due in part to nasty intrusions into how the bill was written, but also due to oversight of EPA; (2) less progress than we would create, if we are rational (getting more from new technology options like the ones you hope for AND others; and (3) a certain kind of spirit of never doing things differently, like a little dog barking and biting at the unknown even when its very survival depends on new hopes.
Specter's bill would have solved (1), led to a massive durable increase in energy security for all of our allies as well as the US, and, as I mentioned, an INCREASE in revenue to US fuel distribution operations. Good old fashioned bio based fuels could be adding MUCH more than they are now. We spoke to Reid's staff who said "No, we MUST pass an Obama bill before we can even allow discussion of anything else." He also made promises to Specter which he did not keep, which resulted in Specter leaving.
But yes, additional competing new technologies to make alternate liquids could have gone further. We wanted rational, fair markets to decide on the market shares of SEVERAL options, all of which should be made as efficient as possible by new R&D and such. Not PVs but there are many others.
Many years ago, UNH developed a system to create liquid fuels using the concentrated heat in the "eye of the obelisk," the place in the power tower solar farms where we now put Brayton engines. This makes a whole lot of technical sense, because alternate liquid fuels require a certain amount of free energy and a certain amount of raw delta H; the most efficient path balances a mix of both (as provided by concentrated sunlight) to drive the chemical reactions making the fuel. Using ONLY free energy (like electricity from earth or space) is inherently less efficient.
But there are many other options as well, and several "B team" options which have real hope of doing better if we do the aggressive exploratory R&D intelligently. (Fat chance of that under the New Order!)
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