Saving The World From Global Warming Will Cost $10.5 Trillion

November 10, 2009

A sobering energy report from the International Energy Agency predicts that saving the world from global warming will cost $10.5 trillion.

The surprisingly daunting and closely watched IEA’s World Energy Outlook is especially timely this year, coming out Tuesday, just before the start of the Copenhagen climate talks next month.

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Goal is to keep temperatures to 2 degree Celsius above pre industrial levels

It forecasts that energy consumption will fall in 2009 due to the worldwide recession. But demand for power will shortly reverse course and begin to climb again, jumping 40 percent by 2030.

More so, “current trends in energy use puts the world on track for a rise in temperature of up to 6 degrees Centigrade and poses a serious threat to global energy security,” the report states. Climate scientists have already warned that a smaller rise than this might bring about irreversible planetary changes.

The study claims that China and India are expected to account for more than half of the projected increase in energy demand over the next 20 years. By 2025, China will overtake the United States as biggest spender on oil and gas imports.

The world’s response must be aggressive and committed to heading off an environmental disaster. The study proposes limiting greenhouse gases to 450 parts per million or less, which would keep temperatures about 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To accomplish this, fossil fuel demand will need to peak in 2020 and by 2030 greenhouse gas emission will need to fall below 2007 levels.

Energy efficiency will be the largest contributor to this goal. Half of emissions cuts can come from making homes, businesses, cars and other devices more efficient.

Low carbon energy sources also play a part and must account for 60 percent of energy production, Renewables are to contribute 37 percent; nuclear, 18 percent; and carbon capture, 5 percent. Hybrids and electric vehicles must make up 60 percent of sales by 2030, a dramatic rise from 1 percent today.

All this will cost $10.5 trillion, the IEA says, with some of the expense coming in the form of a payback – an $8.6 trillion reduction in energy bills.

Yikes!

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Source: International Energy Agency

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Fisker Buys Old GM Plant To Accelerate Its Electric Car Export Strategy

October 27, 2009

As we reported on Monday evening, Fisker Automotive announced plans Tuesday morning to invest $175 million to refitting a Wilmington, DE, assembly plant purchased from defunct General Motors to make electric cars.

The Fisker Karma will be its first car. A sedan will be made in Delaware.

But what we didn’t know is that the high profile auto upstart expects to export more than half of its production run, a percentage it claims to be “the largest percentage of any domestic manufacturer.’

As expected, Fisker said it bought the now unused plant for a fire sale price of $18 million. The investment it plans over three years to refurbish and retool the facility will come from a $528.7 million loan it received in September from the Department of Energy.

Production is scheduled to begin in late 2012 and ramp up to between 75,000 and 100,000 cars a year. Two thousand factory jobs are to be created, along with 3,000 vendor and supplier jobs by 2014.

Fisker plans to use the site to make its $39,900 family-oriented plug-in hybrid sedan. Its debut car, the sportier plug-in hybrid Karma, will go on sale this summer in the U.S. and Europe.

Vice President Joe Biden was on hand in Delaware this morning for the company’s announcement, It was unknown whether ha placed an order for a Karma.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Electric Cars Need $200/Barrel Oil To Sell Well

October 7, 2009

Hybrids will do well with consumers. But all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will struggle unless the price of oil skyrockets.

Only 4% Of vehicles sold will be plug-in hybrids or all-electrics with oil at $200 a barrel, says Lux Research

Only 4% Of vehicles sold will be plug-in hybrids or all-electrics with oil at $200 a barrel, says Lux Research

That’s the judgment of Lux Research in a widely publicized study of the electric vehicle market over the next 10 years. The conclusion that demand for these cars and trucks will trickle instead of gush runs counter to some expectations of a sharp spike in consumer interest.

Obviously one market drawback is the distance electric vehicles can drive on a charged battery – from 50 miles or a couple hundred. This is a noted contrast to the several hundred an average internal combustion car can cover and the ease with which a driver can find a fresh tank of gas.

But more important is price, says Lux. “Even in the scenario with $200 (a barrel) oil in 2020, only about 4% of the vehicles sold worldwide will be (plug-in hybrids) or (all-electrics) due to the high costs of the battery technology for these vehicles,” the study projects.

If oil prices remain closer to $70 a barrel, only hybrids will do well. Sales should be about 3 million vehicles annually by 2020. Plug-ins hybrids will see similar sales levels only if oil rises to $200 a barrel, Lux finds. All-electrics will add up to one-tenth the total.

That said, light plug-in hybrids could be best sellers in the U.S. with oil at $200 and the lithium-ion battery a big winner. The market for lithium-ion batteries designed for electric vehicles could expand to $9 billion by 2020, even as the price of batteries fall from $720 a KWh today to as low as $405 a KWh.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Electric Technology Will Be In One In Four Vehicles, Ford Says

October 2, 2009

Electrics and electric technology will likely come to dominate the U.S. automotive market.

One quarter of vehicles on the road will have some form of electric-energy technology within 10 years, says Ford’s Manager of Vehicle Electrification Mike Tinskey.

A prototype of Fords planned electric car

A prototype of Ford's planned electric car

Tinskey, in an interview with TechPulse 360, suggested the push toward “electrification” will represent a major change in how cars and trucks are built. “There is room for it to be the dominant technology of the future,” he said.

The transformation, if true, could bring about a dramatic shift in how consumers operate their cars, and usher the gasoline powered internal combustion engine toward the sidelines of the business. At home plug-ins will become commonplace, and timing charges to periods of low-cost electricity will be routine.

The electric technologies expected to find their way into vehicles vary. They range from all-electrics, to hybrids, plug-in hybrids and vehicles that use generators to capture the power of slowing down and speeding up.

“There will be customers for every part of that spectrum,” Tinskey said, “Clearly there will be room for all those technologies.”

Hybrids will ship at significant volume, he addeds, though their exact sales will depend on the price of oil.

Ford plans an electric version of the Focus in 2011 and a plug-in hybrid in 2012.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Intel Looking Cautiously At Smart Grid

September 23, 2009

The world’s largest chipmaker has been looking at the smart grid for about a year. But the slow speed of the market and hesitancy utilities have to swap out older equipment for new is giving it pause.

The smart grid is a mulit billion dollar opportunity for chipmakers.

The smart grid is a mulit billion dollar opportunity for chipmakers.

The smart grid offers a gargantuan opportunity for a company interested in finding new uses for its computer and consumer-electronics chips. Buildings consume about 40 percent of the nation’s power and are responsible for more than 40 percent of its CO2 emissions.

Clearly new ways of doing things need to be found. At the heart of this change is the need for grid devices to have more intelligence and therefore the ability to channel information and control to utility administrators and consumers. It is the ideal job for today’s powerful semiconductors.

But equipment in the grid is typically designed for a 10 to 20 years lifespan. That makes it difficult to quickly incorporate new generations of chips that come out every year or two.

At the same time, adopting technical standards is critical, says Lorie Wigle, general manager of Intel’s eco-technology program office.

Wigle says Intel has 20 people working on an opportunity that for chipmakers of all stripes (not just those making computer chips) could be billions of dollars. Part of the task so far has been to identify where chips might go. Smart substations, plug-in hybrids, in-home displays and renewable energy systems are just some of the spots she has earmarked.

But she is convinced the utility mindset must change. So far, utilities are focused on installing smart gear to reduce costs, putting in a smart meter, for instance, to eliminate the need for a meter reader to drive to a home.

They are not yet thinking of supplying information to consumers, she says. “A lot of the utility activities are moving a lot slower than we might like,” she adds.

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Fisker To Unveil $39,000 Plug In Hybrid

September 15, 2009

Electric car manufacturer Fisker will unveil a $39,000 plug-in hybrid within the next couple weeks.

The Fisker Karma will have a sibling - with a production run of 100,000 or so units

The Fisker Karma will have a sibling - with a production run of 100,000 or so units

The follow on to the $87,900 Fisker Karma is expected to be built in larger volumes – at a production run of 100,000 or so vehicles, said Ray Lane, a managing partner at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Lane let the news slip at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito. He said the announcement is expected this week or next.

Kleiner Perkins is an investor in Fisker, which has raised about $100 million since its founding in 2007. The Irvine company competes with high-end electric car makers, such as Tesla.

The new car will be designed to be more accessible than the Karma, but, says Lane, “who would not want to buy a Fisker Karma, if you could afford it.”

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Biofuels Will Be Cheaper Than Oil In Three Years Says Khosla

September 15, 2009

Move aside you makers of plug in hybrids and battery-constrained electric cars.

The internal combustion engine has lots of life in it and the prospect of inexpensive biofuel is just around the corner, says clean-tech investor Vinod Khosla.

Khosla has made waves by shrugging off the popular belief that electric vehicles and hybrids will be the panacea to global warming. It’s not that he dismisses their role, just the size of it. The efficiency of the internal combustion can be greatly improved, and if that efficiency is doubled, carbon output falls by 50 percent – a far larger contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases than the 25 percent mileage improvement of hybrids.

Internal combustion engines can be made sharply more efficient and may still be the path to the future, says Vinod Khosla

Internal combustion engines can be made sharply more efficient and may still be the path to the future, says Vinod Khosla

And when biofuels become competitive…well that’s more icing on the cake. Khosla said Tuesday that he is almost certain biofuels will be cheaper than oil in three years.

That will have a dramatic impact on consumer habits.

Millions of Indians are destine to drive the $2,500 Tata Nano, not the $25,000 Honda Civic hybrid, he points out. So without upending the industry with the task of building a new infrastructure of electric charging stations, big improvements in the fight again global warming are possible.

In the next two to threes years, the technologies for harvesting as many as a half dozen bioluels will be proven, he predicted during an appearance at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito. The real question will be who will risk the funds to scale up production.

Khosla said his calculations assume oil will fall to about $30 barrel in order to compete with biofuel. And he threw one bone to the hybrid people. Hydraulic hybrids for heavy trucks and machinery – now there is a technology he likes.

One hundred percent improvements in mileage are possible, he said.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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