At a panel on "Climate and Sustainability: Fueling the Future: Sustainable Choices for a New Transportation Landscape" neither the guy from Mercedes-Benz nor the guy from Chevron seems to think measures to reduce energy demand have any role whatsoever to play. Instead, it's exclusively about awesome new kinds of cars and new sources of fuel. As they say, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.
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Surprise, Surprise
02 Jul 2008 12:44 pm
Comments (21)
"neither the guy from Mercedes-Benz nor the guy from Chevron seems to think measures to reduce energy demand have any role whatsoever to play."
That's not their job. As long as it's somebody's job to think otherwise, it's just fine for them to think whatever they want.
So what exactly is the grand goal we're all working to accomplish here? I think I must have missed something. If the goal is to prevent catastrophic climate change by reducing our carbon emissions, then new kinds of cars and new sources of fuel are entirely valid ways to help accomplish that, as long as those new approaches emit less carbon dioxide. And because those methods don't require any lifestyle changes, they are the easiest to sell to the public. Then again, if the goal is reform all of those terribly gauche, SUV-driving suburbanites into hip, transit-riding urbanites, then I'm sure plug-in hybrids leave a lot to be desired. Us liberals need to get on the same page on this issue: are we motivated by the pure desire to protect our climate, or do we find the high-energy lifestyle itself to be immoral?
To be fair, if these companies can find a way to let people have their cake and eat it too, I see no reason to slam them. Some solutions (e.g. solar panels) might allow for the same amount of output (e.g. lights, A/C, electronics, etc.)
If, however, they simply spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to hold back the inevitable, then f*** 'em.
It would be interesting to see a transcript of their actual comments instead of this shrillness. Sustainability is a huge thing in the oil industry and has been for some time. And that includes increase efficiency and diversification of fuels. Basically, your last sentence is BS. Their salaries depend heavily on them understanding it. If they cant come up with more efficient cars or different fuels/better supplies their business will be gone in the foreseeable future. And to expand upon NJorl's comment, I doubt whether they were invited to a panel to talk about something outside their immediate area of expertise. That would be stupid and suicidal for a company.
Come on, Matt. I love your work and expect more of you. This sounds more like Kate Shephard talking about clean coal (IT'S BAD, IT'S BAD). I'm still waiting to find a liberal blog where people can discuss energy policy without the environmental straight jackets. It would do the party some good.
So Matt, what kind of awesome new cars is Mercedes promising? Could they be cars that will use less fuel? If you leave out that part of the story it's hard to know whether or not the point you made is valid.
Most, if not all of the news coming out of Mercedes with regard to new product introductions over the next five years, involves substantial increases in fuel economy and in alternative fuel vehicles. Reviewing the tech in this post isn't important but if the cars they're talking about are the ones the automotive press is writing about, your point makes no sense, at least not with respect to Mercedes.
I don't know, MY. Seems like you're being a little overly critical here. The title of the session is (in part) "Fueling the Future". I'm sure they understand the concept of reduced fuel consumption, but why is it wrong for an employee of a fuel company and an employee of a car company to focus primarily on sustainable fuels as part of a panel on sustainable fuels? Isn't that what the organizers asked them to do?
At a panel on "Climate and Sustainability: Fueling the Future: Sustainable Choices for a New Transportation Landscape" neither the guy from Mercedes-Benz nor the guy from Chevron seems to think measures to reduce energy demand have any role whatsoever to play. Instead, it's exclusively about awesome new kinds of cars and new sources of fuel.
What exactly did they say to make you think they think reducing energy demand has no role to play whatsoever? One of the major features of "awesome new kinds of cars" is higher energy efficiency. Other things being equal, more efficient cars means less demand for energy.
Or do you mean energy demand in the aggregate? Even with more efficient cars, total demand for energy may rise if there are more cars in total. Given the growth of cars in China and India, this is likely. But why should it be considered a bad thing?
There are, basically, two ways to reduce demand: efficiency and changing the behavior that's driving the demand.
M-B is promising lower demand by making the systems we currently use more efficient. If I drive 30 miles round trip to work, my carbon footprint is going to be lower in the future. No doubt.
But, it would have a much greater impact if I reduced the underlying demand, by walking or taking mass transit to work. That requires, in this country, greater density and more mass transit. Of course, greater density and more mass transit would diminish M-B's market. So, obviously, they don't propose such a solution.
The problem, as previous posters have pointed out, is that M-B's promises of more efficient execution of our current behaviors may dampen the political demand for policies that would hasten the more fundamental changes. And, that's bad.
And that, folks, is why I have learned not to care one whit about CAFE standards. We don't need more fuel-efficient cars as much as we need massively fewer miles driven.
Really, the problem is the use of the word "demand." Increasing efficiency does decrease the demand for fuel.
Lowered demand mostly implies lowered lifestyles too - how do you expect to get people to reduce their consumption of energy without having a lower quality of life? The pattern of the last 30 years - even with more efficient everything, is that energy demands go up, not down.
The hairshirt penance based approach simply isn't going to wrk out.
If the car companies come up with non-fossil-fuel cars, then there's no need to reduce consumption, at least in our cars. I really don't see how these guys are wrong. Maybe from a traffic standpoint we need fewer miles on the road, but we're talking about the environment here, right?
sean,
But, it would have a much greater impact if I reduced the underlying demand, by walking or taking mass transit to work.
No, it wouldn't. Cars account for about 96% of total surface transportation passenger-miles. Transit accounts for about 1%. The potential for reducing energy demand through new auto technology is enormous. The potential for reducing demand through more transit/walking is minuscule. We're not going to tear down the low-density, car-oriented housing and commercial development we've spent the past 50 years building, and replace it with high-density, transit-oriented development. It's utter fantasy. The most you could reasonably hope for in the foreseeable future is a modest increase in transit's market share. But even doubling or tripling that market share, to 2% or 3%, would have a negligible impact on total transportation energy demand, because automobiles would still be overwhelmingly dominant. Transit-boosters need to wake up and accept this fact.
"They" would be Upton Sinclair.
Nanotech.
Solar energy from space.
Only possible way to double energy supplies by 2050.
Requires no multi-trillion-dollar modifications to the entire physical infrastructure to be made to work.
Umm, yeah, sure. Building nuclear power plants would be way, way simpler, and it would use tech we already understand. All the delays inherent in building such plants are from uneducated (but "sophisticated") people like Matt, who hear the word "nuclear" and assume it means "bomb".
Back in the real world, the French have figured out how to build plants quickly, and how to dispose of waste safely. If a fairly highly regulated society like France can figure that out, so can we. All we need to do is start giving the opinions of people like Matt and Hack the respect they deserve... which is to say, none.
Robertson the "nucular physicist" says so, so we should all bow down and worship.
STFU, Robertson. You can't build enough nuclear plants in the next fifty years to double the supply of energy currently used which is what is needed.
Dr. Smalley put that shit to rest in one of his lectures - I quote:
Fission and fusion. You know the problem with fission: the wastes are radioactive. And it’s the problem of nuclear weapons. And it’s really the question of cost. The capital cost to build a nuclear power plant now is much more expensive than a natural gas power plant. If you’re going to solve this problem with nuclear fission, 10 TW is the minimum amount of clean, new energy we would need by 2050. That would be equivalent to 10,000 nuclear reactors. And it couldn’t be 10,000 nuclear reactors of the sort we have right now, or else we’d burn through the world’s uranium supply in about 10 years. No, they’d have to be breeder reactors. And these 10,000 plus nuclear breeder reactors would be spread all over the world. Even if you could do it, what would the cost of those breeder reactors be? There’s a big Generation IV research program being started up by our government and others to develop alternatives. But not very many people even in the nuclear business expect that we could ever produce as much as 10 TW from that source.
So again, Robertson: STFU.
I love the "trust an expert who parrots my bad opinion" thing the left subscribes to. Nuclear power plants, like any other well understood technology, can be built quickly - if we decide to do so.
To give a simple example - contrast the issues surrounding the Freedom tower at the WTC site with how fast the Empire State building went up.
When the country decides that it's had enough of the hairshirt left, things will happen quickly. Until then, the current glacial pace of construction will be the norm.
Ultimately, Hack - and Matt - and his supposed expert - believe that what France has done is impossible. Or more properly, they would like the rest of us to believe that.
What part of 10,000 nuclear plants being needed don't you understand, moron?
Do the math.
1. Lowering demand does not mean lowering quality of life. Anyone who says that is betraying an ignorance of energy and energy economies so fundamental that it disqualifies them from the discussion.
2. The environmental and social externalities of car-centered development go far beyond the direct emissions of burning the fuel.
3. There is enormous pent-up demand for transit and transit-oriented-development -- see, e.g., here.
4. Transit and transit-oriented-development boost regional economies, increase jobs, and reduce inequality.
5. There are many, many causal factors involved in Americans' flight to the suburbs over the last several decades, but some sort of intrinsic human attachment to cheap, shitty housing, monocrop lawns, and long commute times -- the ax Mixner is so vigorously grinding -- is not one of them.
6. And finally, to JAB, "environmental straightjackets" are only marginally involved in a rejection of "clean coal." It's an economic Frankenstein that has absolutely zero chance of providing more than a marginal amount of our electricity without enormous and permanent government subsidies. IGCC plants with sequestration facilities at any kind of scale are 10-20 years off, and that's probably optimistic. Meanwhile, renewables like wind and concentrated solar already beat the cost of "clean coal," today, and are headed down steep cost curves. In 10 years the notion of going through the baroque permitting, construction, and ongoing monitoriing necessary to run a clean coal plant will appear flatly insane when there are numerous cheaper, cleaner alternatives. It's an economic loser, even putting aside the enormous water use, ravages of mining, disposal of fly ash, enormous health costs, and other piddling concerns environmentalists are in a "straightjacket" over.
The environmental and social externalities of car-centered development go far beyond the direct emissions of burning the fuel.
So do the environmental and social externalities of transit-centered development. So your observation above tells us precisely nothing of value. If you have a serious, quantitative comparison to offer of the total costs and benefits of each type of development, let's see it.
There is enormous pent-up demand for transit and transit-oriented-development -- see, e.g., here.
Polling of this kind doesn't tell us much of use about actual demand, because it just reflects abstract preferences rather than real-world choices. What matters is what people actually end up doing, after they've looked at real houses in real neighborhoods and weighed real-world pros and cons of different kinds of lifestyle and development. And demand overwhelmingly favors low-density suburban living over high-density "walkable communities."
Transit and transit-oriented-development boost regional economies, increase jobs, and reduce inequality.
Do please produce your evidence to support this assertion. I don't doubt that some specific transit projects in some specific areas serving some specific communities can have a variety of positive effects. But that doesn't tell us anything about the value of transit-oriented development vs. car-oriented development overall.
There are many, many causal factors involved in Americans' flight to the suburbs over the last several decades,
The overwhelming factor is the car. Cars provide fast, convenient, comfortable, flexible, affordable, on-demand, door-to-door transportation. Transit just can't compete with that, which is why transit has been losing market share to automobiles for a century. Except for a few very specialized kinds of journey (e.g., certain commutes into NYC), cars are simply much, much better than transit.
Comments closed July 16, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Seriously? Two colons in the title? And you WENT?
Posted by Jake H. | July 2, 2008 12:50 PM