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According to the linked-to DOE report, the guy who was fired wasn't quite as brave as the Bulletin article implies -- the DOE says he drove up to the site, stayed in his car and spoke on his cell phone with a supervisor, then got out of the car and just chatted with the protesters, failing to detain them or protect his weapon. When the supervisor arrived, the guard was instructed to provide cover for the supervisor while the supervisor made the actual arrests, but the guard did not do so, allegedly turning his back on the process at one point.

DOE report here (warning, PDF).

It's obviously a contested point, but the pictures painted by the Bulletin article and the DOE report of the guard's conduct are rather different.

Also, yes, I read both articles, new here, etc.etc.

"Curiosity’s primary mission will be to gather geological and environmental data from the Martian surface to determine whether the planet has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for life --and collect data for a manned mission. It will do this by travelling around a particularly promising site called Gale Crater, which has three miles of exposed geological strata, or rock layers like we have in the Grand Canyon. By drilling into these rocks and sampling them, scientists can tell quite a bit about global processes that formed the planet --including the role of water in its creation and the possibility of microbial life." http://energy.gov/articles/powering-curiosity-lab-tech-goes-mars

I saw your comment, but I couldn't find your data. The only information I could find regarding expected life was 25000 hours. Some examples:

"Lasts at least 22.8 years", "22.8 years means rated average life based on engineering testing and probability analysis where the lamp is used on average 3 hours/day, 7 days a week"
22.8 years * 365.25 days/year * 3 hours/day = 24983.1 hours
- http://www.usa.philips.com/c/energy-saving-light-bulbs/ambientled-12.5w-a19-soft-white-dimmable-046677409906/prd/en/;jsessionid=2F0BBF3F454415D0EF4B126D0DAC020C.app102-drp4

"The unit that I am reviewing is warm-white (2700K) and has a CRI of 80. Warranty is 6 years, and Philips rates it at 25,000 hours of operation (it should last for decades if you take good care of it)."
On picture of the box: "Life 25,000 hours"
- http://www.treehugger.com/interior-design/philips-ambientled-125-watts-led-lightbulb-product-review.html

"The LED bulb will last 25,000 hours compared with the 1,000 hours that consumers normally get out of the average 60-watt incandescent bulb."
- http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20004766-54.html

"The next question you need to ask yourself is would you pay $40 (around £25) for a light bulb? Answer is probably not but if that light bulb was to last as it is advertised for 25,000 hours then of course."
- http://www.solarkinguk.com/blog/new-philips-led-light-bulb-lasts-for-25000-hours

"Other features include: instant-on, dimming capability to 10% of maximum brightness, a 25,000 hour life and a 6 year warranty."
- http://www.polar-ray.com/Philips-AmbientLED-A19-LED-Bulb-12E26A60_p_235.html

Long-term lumen maintenance testing
Continuing to run; now > 12,000 hours
Lumen mainteance at 25,000 hours -> 99.3% (95% confidence, 200 units)
- http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/lprize-webinar_01-18-12.pdf

Pumped storage plant has been used since the 1960's, but it does require a dam.

On places where there is no dam, this method can not be deployed.

However, technological advancement has enabled us another way - by using ultra-capacitors.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/piprod/documents/Session_D_Miller_rev.pdf

Advancement on capacitor technology resulted in capacitors that can store HUGE amount of electricity for a LONG time, with miniscule loss.

And many are being deployed in power grids - not only as a power storage but also acting as a power stabilizer - the ultra-capacitor can "soak up" power spikes and release power during "brown outs".

That way it doesn't matter how the solar panels are performing at any given moment,

But it does matter what the average output of the solar cells are over time, versus the average amount of charging of cars they are doing. TFA says that the station will provide slightly more energy in a year than would be required to charge cars, but they don't specify how many, or how often, and I didn't see where they talked about how big the charging station was.

What if it takes 10 m^2 or panels to run it, and can only support one car of average usage? Then it doesn't scale up as easily. You'd need a football field sized Supercharger to maintain ~50 cars.

In 2009, there were 254m passenger vehicles in the US. In 2007 there were 164k gas stations in the US. That's an average of 1548 passenger vehicles per gas station. This doesn't count commercial vehicles and semi trucks. My assumptions about the charging station up above are surely conservative, but it's clear that on-site solar generation is not going to scale up the same way as conventional gasoline stations.

Now, distributed power generation certainly is the way to go, and so it would make sense to proceed with this strategy, but I don't think it will continue to a net contributor to the grid as volume ramps up.

If you read the article and follow the hyperlinks, from energy.gov:

There are 22 types of traditional incandescent lamps that are exempt. DOE will monitor sales of these exempted lamp types after the legislation is implemented. If it is determined that of any one of these exempted lamp types doubles in sales, EISA requires DOE to establish an energy conservation standard for the particular lamp type. This provision will prohibit any one of these exempted lamp types from taking market share from the general service lamps that are affected by the EISA efficiency standards.

Appliance lamp
Black light lamp
Bug lamp
Colored lamp
Infrared lamp
Left-hand thread lamp
Marine lamp
Marine's signal service lamp
Mine service lamp
Plant light lamp
Reflector lamp
Rough service lamp
Shatter-resistant lamp (including shatter-proof & shatter-protected)
Sign service lamp
Silver bowl lamp
Showcase lamp
3-way incandescent lamp
Traffic signal lamp
Vibration service lamp
G shape lamp (as defined in ANSI C78.20-2003 and C79.1-2002) with a diameter of 5" or more
T shape lamp (as defined in ANSI C78.20-2003 and C79.1-2002) and that uses no more than 40W or has a length of more than 10"
B, BA, CA, F, G16-1/2, G-25, G-30, S, or M-14 lamp (as defined in ANSI C78.20-2003 and C79.1-2002) of 40W or less

I think you may have a point on the advent of less car ownership, but if electric were feasible for taxis as you described then public bus transit would already be electric, as they are even better suited for such a routine. That does not appear to be the case.

If you live close enough to work and a store to commute on a single charge, and have a second vehicle in the household for longer trips it makes sense. I think that this niche is a lot bigger than the current market - electric vehicles are still much more expensive than equivalent compact cars.

Exactly. Whether an electric car is practical or not depends on application.

There are millions of people for whom electric cars perfectly fit their requirements. If you're thinking "replace 100% of the cars in use"-- well, yes, that is impractical. But there are large segments of the market for which electric is practical today.

In 2009, the average length of a car trip was 10.1 miles; the average length of a commute to work was 12.6 miles. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw615.html
My commute to work is considerably shorter. Most usage of cars could be done easily with electric vehicles, with recharge overnight at home. Not all-- however, for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical.

The point is to make electric cars for the uses for which they are well adapted. If you want a vehicle to take a family of four on a camping trip from New York to Yellowstone, an EV is not the right choice. If your application is a seven mile commute for one person in Atlanta, along with occasional trips to the grocery story, it may be exactly what you need. It may be a "niche" market by some definitions, but there are a 443 makes and models of cars sold in America-- there's room for many niche vehicles to sell perfectly well.

(Another interesting point is that electric vehicles are more practical in regions south of the snow belt, unless you have plug-in stations at the destination that can keep the batteries warm. A practical EV for Alaska is a harder technology than making EVs for Los Angeles!)

Then hope that you live close to one of the 519 CNG stations in the country. Compare that to the amount of diesel stations in the country, BP alone has 367 diesel gas stations in the Los Angeles area alone.

If you're using electricity, heat pumps are two to three times more energy efficient than conventional electric resistance heaters, at least in warmer climates. And as a bonus, you can use even the waste cold to cool your home in the summer.

No, it isn't the tank style heaters that need to go, but any heaters that use electric resistance to create heat, unless you're in a very cold climate.

Helped discover graphene:
http://science.energy.gov/news/in-focus/2011/03-25-11/

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=8694

27% of pickup owners have *never* hauled anything in the bed. 78% do so once a month or less. [1] Face it, the average pickup truck driver is some suburban cowboy poser who is commuting to his office park. If we're serious about oil consumption, we're going have to move about 50% of pickup buyers back to cars.

[1]Polk Pickup Truck Usage Study (sorry no url)

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw404.html Notice who paid for this study. Pickup Truck Usage Study, prepared for Environmental Defense, September 2005

Geothermal - great if you live near steaming hot springs and are basically sitting on an inactive volcano, not so great if you aren't

This is not true in general and not in Japan specifically because the entire region is geothermally active. New enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) can extract electrical energy from temperature deltas far lower than traditional dry steam plants. They don't even have to be on land: offshore subsea geothermal plants would work quite well especially with a cool flow of ocean water to supply the cold side of the delta. There is very little of the US that could not generate power with EGS. Google mapped them for us. Quote: "Potential for the continental U.S. exceeds 2,980,295 megawatts using Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and other advanced geothermal technologies such as Low Temperature Hydrothermal. " This is 3/4ths of domestic consumption in 2011. We don't even have to look for them - typically EGS thermal sources are found incidental to other mineral exploration, and ignored even though most of the work is already done at that point.

Since these resources are completely safe, nontoxic, natural, carbon-free electrical energy resources that cost even less than nuclear energy it would be irresponsible to engage in any increase in risk or carbon generation whatsoever before all of these resources were fully exploited.

As both baseload power and on-demand power EGS also offers the potential to mitigate the variability of other clean resources in a way that even nuclear can't. The persistent thermal resource in a given area is limited, but over a long time base so on surges in need can over-extract thermal energy for many years before diminishing returns diminish the resource locally for a while. This makes them the perfect complement to PV solar and others.

There are other things we could do to improve the situation without the toxins of carbon or the risk of nuclear, like encouraging shallow geothermal heatpumps for home heating and cooling, and extracting electricity from the thermal deltas of manufacturing, but EGS is a really big bucket to serve our energy needs in a realistic way and your dismissal of it in this way is offensive so now I'm going to reciprocate.

One chief objection to nuclear is that we have many hundred reactors worldwide of the Fukushima disaster designs. And every one has 40 years worth of spent fuel stored in an elevated pool on top of the building that could be destroyed in some way - many times the design load of fission byproducts for these pools now, and dozens of times the fuel in the reactor vessel. After cooling for a time this fuel is supposed to be moved to safer dry cask storage. But casks cost money and the operators are skinflints and it's cheaper to have the pools recertified for more and more spent fuel packed tighter and tighter and not ever move any to the casks. But density is the bugaboo of nuclear fission: the tighter you pack these rods the more they encourage each other to fission. So now our national production capacity for these casks is 3% of the need, and one brick of C4 on the bottom of one of these pools could lead to a meltdown outside of the containment leading to a vast wasteland of hundreds of square miles of American Exclusion Zone that can't be occupied for 100 years - among other things - for each of these reactors. Certainly there is evidence that this occurred at Fukushima to some degree. On that very day the dumb bastards trusted to operate our nuclear plants should have been cutting P.O.s for casks - and that

Project Gnome was an experiment to create such a cavern in a salt deposit. There's a photo of someone standing in one of those caverns in the link. Considering the instability of such caverns, the guy in that picture has to be pretty brave. The Wikipedia article on Underground Nuclear Testing talks about these caverns. The process is well enough understood that they have specific names for the zones that form in the rock around the melt cavity: "crushed zone", "cracked zone" and "zone of irreversible strain". Overall, they don't sound like great places to live if you like surviving.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2007_fcvt_fotw475.html

Heaviest weight from 1987, but still a good bit less than 50 years ago. Weight rises every year, unless there's some emergency.

Not to take away from your excellent comment, but gasoline was more like a dime a gallon in the '40s according to everyone I've known who was alive then. The lowest I ever paid for a gallon of gasoline was seventeen cents, around 1970 (there was a gas war). Even then, the normal price was about 25-30 cents. thirty years later the price quadrupled (I was paying $1.05 in 2000), six years later it had nearly quintupled and has gone down by a third since then.

Well, I'm 54, so I'm not old enough to know personally. Just from what my parents and older relatives told me, and so for the purposes of that post, I looked here:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw364.html

It appears from the chart there that the retail price was right around 18 to 20 cents a gallon. Doing a Google search nets a number of results, however, from the totality of what I've been able to read and deduce from the various sources, it looked to me like 20 cents was a safe median estimate for that period.

But, as you agreed, that doesn't really change the overall point.

That's why we had the rampant inflation in the '70s. Thankfully (for the 1%ers anyway), Nixon instituted wage/price controls that allowed the businessman to get richer by selling more goods via export to counties that hadn't impoverised themselves with foolishg wars, while normal people saw their buying power decline. The '70s inflation is what paid for the VietNam war. I'd prefer they'd taxed those who benefitted forom that war to pay for it, rather than shielding them from the cost.

It helped the huge corporations, but it was a disadvantage to entrepreneurs with small and medium businesses, both in raw financial terms, and as a barrier to their ability to enter and compete in the market. It also partially paid for the wildly-expanded entitlement programs during that time, which are now taking the lion's share of the Federal spending, now dwarfing every other government expenditure, including the military and all the wars.

Strat

The parent is dead on correct. Vermont pulls most of it's power from a nuclear reactor that is slated to be shut down. They use almost no natural gas; it doesn't even register as a fuel source for electric power generation in Vermont according to the feds.

Vermont will replace the nuke with Canadian hydro power. They neatly re-classified huge hydro power operations ( > 200MW ) as 'renewable' so they can sign a big contracts with Hydro Quebec.

They're just trading salmon habitat in Canada for the consequences of gas mining, real or imagined, at home. How noble. Maybe they should ban whale oil derived power next.

1. All hybrids come with low rolling resistance tires. The tires on my wife's car needed to be replaced after 20,000 miles. Tires were worn down to the tread wear indicators. I replaced then with 40,000 mile + tires. Cost about $1000.
Gas mileage dropped by about 1-1.5 miles per gallon. We were getting 23.6 mpg. Now we get about 22 mpg. At an extra $1000 every 20,000 miles, I will take the loss of MPG.

For such a thrifty guy, I question your tire purchase decisions. I recently replaced all four tires on our car with LRR tires for about $500, with a rated lifetime of 100,000 miles (Kumho eco Solus). Rather than spending $1000 every 40,000 miles, maybe spending half as much, for 2.5 times as long life would be a wiser use of your money. LRR tires may improve fuel economy by as much as 3 or 4%, so can be cost effective even if higher priced than non-LRR tires. Obviously if they are actually cheaper that's even better.

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/vehicles/fuel_economy_tires_light.html

Not really. This is a reverse fuel cell. Liquid fuels have higher energy density than batteries.

ARPA-E has funded a whole bunch of these electrofuels projects.

Here's one at Harvard, using a different species of bacteria: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/Electrofuels/EngineeringaBacterialReverseFuelCell.aspx

And yet another one at Columbia: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/Electrofuels/BiofuelsfromCO2UsingAmmoniaOxidizingBacteria.aspx

Not really. This is a reverse fuel cell. Liquid fuels have higher energy density than batteries.

ARPA-E has funded a whole bunch of these electrofuels projects.

Here's one at Harvard, using a different species of bacteria: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/Electrofuels/EngineeringaBacterialReverseFuelCell.aspx

And yet another one at Columbia: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/Electrofuels/BiofuelsfromCO2UsingAmmoniaOxidizingBacteria.aspx

Not a bad plan overall - but is hydrogen really a byproduct of natural gas production? Those hydrogen atoms don't like to float around by themselves and quickly bind to other atoms.

To get hydrogen from natural gas, I always thought you had to perform steam reforming...

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/fuels/hydrogen/currenttechnology.html

First of all that is not a reputable peer-reviewed scientific article. That is a blog.

Second of all

Chu responded that he had been discussing the concept with the folks at Google. "So far, there's not enough information so [that] I can give an evaluation of the probability that it might work or not," he said. "But I'm trying to get more information."

That is a politicians/scientist answer. It in no ways means he thinks it will work or that it will not work. This was Chu trying to be polite to the ding bat that asked it.

The following organizations set us fusion policy and direction.
FES
FESAC

Leave the science up to the scientists. You just make yourself look stupid.

First of all that is not a reputable peer-reviewed scientific article. That is a blog.

Second of all

Chu responded that he had been discussing the concept with the folks at Google. "So far, there's not enough information so [that] I can give an evaluation of the probability that it might work or not," he said. "But I'm trying to get more information."

That is a politicians/scientist answer. It in no ways means he thinks it will work or that it will not work. This was Chu trying to be polite to the ding bat that asked it.

The following organizations set us fusion policy and direction.
FES
FESAC

Leave the science up to the scientists. You just make yourself look stupid.

Wind is already viable. I'm on the east coast and using 100% wind energy and marginal cost is a few bucks per month. It's a small price to pay for clean air. You can find a clean energy provider in your area from this useful page by the Department of Energy.

I'm with you; I'd rather see hydrocarbons used as lubricants/raw materials for manufacture than burned as energy. Which makes my job at Halliburton somewhat ironic, but life's funny that way.

The good news is that energy companies (and energy service companies) are eying the alternative energy market as an exit strategy from oil-as-energy. Halliburton does geothermal well cementing, and is trying to advance the art so the wells and plants can be more productive. Challenges include seismic instability, high permeability of the rock layers (you pick places where there are lots of natural fractures), and balancing the need for insulation/strength/durability of the cement. None of these problems are insurmountable, but making geothermal cost competitive with oil is challenging.

I'm personally surprised that we don't see closed-loop geothermal power systems. It seems like they're all farcture-and-collect style systems. Admittedly, fracture-and-collect exposes the water to more surface area of rock, and the wells are cheaper to drill. On the other hand, the operator wouldn't have to deal with produced sand/salt/corrosives that will invariably result from mingling water with rocks downhole, and there wouldn't be any issue with water losses.* If I had to take a guess, though, no-one does it for the same reason that oil/gas operators in the Rockies don't buy downhole sand control solutions - it's an upfront cost that they have to justify to a beancounter rather than an operating cost they can balance against ongoing profits (cost of doing business and all that...).

*Seriously, who approves these lossy geothermal systems in deserts? When there are crops to irrigate and drinking water needed for houses (not to mention sensitive ecosystems) I have trouble seeing how the water use of (big pdf warning!) nearly a gallon per kWh is practical.

Why not use the wind energy to make hydrogen, and store the hydrogen (as a gas, as a liquid, or in metal hydrides)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage

Or why not use the wind to make compressed air, and store the compressed air?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy

Or why not use the wind to charge batteries?
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/GRIDS/ARobustandInexpensiveIronAirRechargeableBat.aspx

Or why not use the wind to heat up molten salts, and use a steam turbine to make power? Solar does it, but so could wind:
http://grist.org/solar-power/2011-07-05-groundbreaking-solar-plant-in-spain-generates-24-hours-of-power/

Or why not use the wind energy to produce liquid synthetic fuels from carbon from the air?
http://www.staxera.de/announcement.105+M5320325207d.0.html?&L=1

Or why not use the wind energy to run energy-intensive industrial processes that can run intermittently (like grinding up rocks for fertilizer or chilling nitrogen out of the air)? And so on.
http://www.remineralize.org/

There are solutions for the lack of buffers for renewable energy. Put them all together, and you have a way to use wind.

That said, LENR and cheap solar panels seem more likely to succeed, one because it is compact (if it really works) and the other because it has now moving parts and requires little maintenance.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/15/0226219/can-nasa-warm-cold-fusion
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

"A Road Not Taken: Solar Panels, Jimmy Carter, and Missed Opportunities for Change "
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/06/a-road-not-taken-solar-panels-jimmy-carter-and-missed-opportunities-for-change
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/09/obama-no-thanks-to-carter-solar-panels

The true cost of fossil fuels:
http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/true-cost-fossil-fuels.html
"For decades now, fossil fuel company executives and D.C. politicians have worked together to ensure that coal and oil prices stay low enough to keep the American people hooked. In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how "vampire industries" like oil and coal have forged "an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices." Industry gets tax breaks, subsidies, military support in volatile regions, the right to use our air and water like a sewer, and assurance that the government will clean up its environmental messes. Politicians get campaign contributions, a steady flow of dirty energy, and a talking point to brandish about how they kept gas affordable. But the Ame

You should do more research before accusing others of posting incorrect facts.
Here's an example of a well written, current analysis:
http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf

Here are a few interesting facts, easily confirmed from DOE and industry sources:

- Shale oil extraction is just now beginning; in about 10 years it will be a mature industry.

- The break-even price is $45/barrel. Some sources put it at $60.

- 1.5 trillion barrels is the standard estimate for the northwest U.S. basins which contain shale formations. Estimates of how much of this oil is actually extractable range from all of it to several hundred billion barrels, using current technologies. It's safe to assume the extraction technologies will continue to improve. But even if we assume only 20% yield, that's still equal to Saudi reserves (about 300 bbls). The U.S. consumes about 7 billion barrels a year, so this resource would supply all our petroleum about 40 years at current consumption rates.

- As an interesting side point, northern Israel has an estimated 300 billion barrels of shale. Given Israeli abilities and incentives, it would not be surprising to see them fully exploiting this resource over the next decade and possibly emerging as a major oil exporter, even as the Arab oil reserves dwindle.

- The oil derived from shale is high quality: higher in hydrogen by weight than oil derived from tar sands, rich and high temperature.

- The water used in extraction ranges from several gallons to 1 barrel per barrel of oil. There are indeed valid concerns about groundwater contamination, but so far no connection has been established.

- Another point that often gets lost is the amount of money the United States and its allies spend to protect unstable sources of oil, e.g. the 1991 Gulf War, the continuing support for regimes that sponsor terrorism and instability throughout the Muslim world, the need to police the sea lanes, etc. The U.S. alone has spent probably trillions of dollars in defense of this vital resource, not to mention the cost in human lives from various conflicts. When you factor this into the cost of a gallon of gasoline, we are actually paying a lot more than $3.70.

Just the facts:
OPEC is bad.

This is actually an opinion. Since you can't understand the difference I regret to inform you your right to use the word "facts" has been revoked.

CNG tanks are safer than gasoline tanks.

Only when empty...

With only 3000psi would could possibly go wrong?

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/cng_h2_workshop_8_wong.pdf

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/cleancities/pdfs/ngvtf10_cyl_safety.pdf

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Electric cars are running off energy generated at electricity plants which means you're running your car off coal or natural gas anyway. Why not cut out the middle man?

You then get to use any form of energy production wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geo, methane, coal and ultimately if batteries get better electric drive is simple and reliable.

Critics of the frac process have found only 2 alleged cases of groundwater polutions and industry experts disagree with those 2 cases.

Remind us what all those industry experts had to say about the health benefits of smoking again? Use of industry experts = unprofessional + conflict of interest. Independant experts are needed.

These are just SOME of the facts... please research as much as you can. Opinions aren't important, only the facts....

Unfortunatly when people assert things as facts that are actually not facts (including conclusions based on evidence) real facts are lowered to the level of opinion. This can be very problematic as it can mean those with opinions may enjoy the same level of legitimacy as those with evidence.

Just the facts:
OPEC is bad.

This is actually an opinion. Since you can't understand the difference I regret to inform you your right to use the word "facts" has been revoked.

CNG tanks are safer than gasoline tanks.

Only when empty...

With only 3000psi would could possibly go wrong?

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/cng_h2_workshop_8_wong.pdf

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/cleancities/pdfs/ngvtf10_cyl_safety.pdf

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Electric cars are running off energy generated at electricity plants which means you're running your car off coal or natural gas anyway. Why not cut out the middle man?

You then get to use any form of energy production wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geo, methane, coal and ultimately if batteries get better electric drive is simple and reliable.

Critics of the frac process have found only 2 alleged cases of groundwater polutions and industry experts disagree with those 2 cases.

Remind us what all those industry experts had to say about the health benefits of smoking again? Use of industry experts = unprofessional + conflict of interest. Independant experts are needed.

These are just SOME of the facts... please research as much as you can. Opinions aren't important, only the facts....

Unfortunatly when people assert things as facts that are actually not facts (including conclusions based on evidence) real facts are lowered to the level of opinion. This can be very problematic as it can mean those with opinions may enjoy the same level of legitimacy as those with evidence.

First, I recently saw this graph of historical gas prices adjusted for inflation. Obviously, gas and crude oil are not the same thing, but the two graphs are rather different. I wonder why. (Not disputing your link; I am actually curious about the difference. I assume it has something to do with normalizing for inflation not being the same as comparing to the price of gold.)

More importantly, using gold (or any physical resource) as a basis for an economy makes no sense. For a quick list of the issues, here's Wikipedia's list of disadvantages (of course, you can scroll up to see the list of advantages). The main issue is the first one in that list: being on the gold standard is an assertion that your entire economy is worth no more than the total amount of gold in the world. Which is ridiculous. That's way too low a value for the US economy.

Your memory is incorrect. I am sick of false fantasies of incredibly low gas prices in history. It never happened. There is this thing called inflation. Gas was not "almost free" in the 1970s. Adjusted to 2004 dollars, it varied between $1.73 and $2.28. The lowest adjusted price for gas EVER was $1.22 in 1998. That compares to the best adjusted price in the 1930s - $2.15 in 1931 - and the best adjusted price in the 1950s - $2.00 in 1952. In 2004 it had only risen to $1.89 from the 1998 low.

OK, the chart stops in 2004, and the current adjusted value is probably around $3.90, but somehow I don't think twice the price is the difference between $2 and $3.90 is "nearly free" compared to agonizingly high.

Ref: Historical Gas Prices, 1919–2004

Actually, it was an endangered tortoise, not a lizard. And it wasn't shut down, the company behind it had to acquire more land to manage habitat for displaced animals.

So really, nothing actually happened to that particular solar plant. I swear, sometimes I think environmentalists are the new all-powerful bogeyman. Everything goes wrong is their fault, even the stuff that doesn't go wrong.

One source: http://energy.gov/articles/department-announces-loan-guarantee-brightsource-energy-inc 2 minutes of googling finds you load more.

In fact, after this article flagged concerns about searching the site, we started working to change the search functionality on the homepage of Energy.gov to default to global search. Currently, the search defaults to within the top-level Energy.gov pages and doesn’t include results from all the subsites within the platform unless you indicate as such. For example, when I search for "Hanford" on Energy.gov, I get 20 results. However, when I select “search all of Energy.gov” the results increase to 254 items.

While we are incredibly proud of the new Energy.gov platform, there are Energy Department program office websites and subsequent documents that just aren’t on the Energy.gov platform yet. In order to improve the availability and transparency of our information, we’re currently in the process of migrating the remaining program office content into the system (including the Office of Legacy Management’s website and documents) – but this process takes some time.

It’s no secret: the federal government has a pdf problem. And at Energy.gov, we’re striving each day to make it better. We’d love feedback on how to do so. Feel free to share your ideas here: Contact Us

Wow, there's a lot of trolls today.

Back on topic:
I couldn't find anything at Energy.gov that indicates what portion of my tax burden is due to supporting non-competitive forms of "green" energy.

I don't care where you come down on these issues, but anyone who views this site has to agree, that it is pure marketing. I run my monitor at 1920x1080, and I had to press 'PageDn' three times to get to the content!

From my layman's understanding, yes, but how much of a real world effect it is vs. a polymer based device, I don't know. In general though, the three factors related to drive current+lifetime that come to mind are 1) good emitter outcoupling, 2) the fact that OLED is dimmable and 3) OLED is color tunable.

The internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for PHOLED is always going to be 100% as opposed to (much less) for fluorescent OLED. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) factors in outcoupling. So the more light reflected out of the device, the less energy required in the future vs. current benchmarks.

For dimmability and lifetime, the drive current can be reduced (which with OLED retains/increases it's efficiency).

Since OLED is color tunable, white oled fixtures can be biased for more higher-lifetime red and green when CRI is not so important. For display, it just means biasing the UI towards red and green usage since all white is a problem (i.e. minimizing blue).

If you're curious, see these three easy-reading links for info on the power issues, materials specs, and an outline presentation of how things are looking for lighting. Lighting will be different in terms of efficacy, structure, CRI, etc. But from a materials standpoint, there's still good info that can be extrapolated to displays wrt PHOLED efficiency and degradation:

http://www.universaldisplay.com/default.asp?contentID=605
http://www.universaldisplay.com/default.asp?contentID=604
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/pattison_oled_sslmiw2011.pdf

I live North West of Boston. The closest charge station to where I live is the next town over. There are none listed in Maine, none listed near where I work in Framingham, and none listed in the Nashua, NH area. Plus, there are none in Atlantic Canada (where I am originally from), maybe due to the cold winters.

For a clickable map, see here: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/electricity_locations.html

Until electric vehicles can be recharged quickly, either through a fuel cell or a large capacitor, they will not be an option for my next purchase. I do enough long range driving for them to be impractical.

oh man micro econ was some time ago, what was that word? extrinsic cost? whatever the econ word was, it meant, something with a cost to society as a whole, or outside of the entity. like letting 1 in 100 kids go un-vaccinated. it is not so much the cost saved from not paying for that 1 shot, but the ripple effect of relying oh herd protection. or more broadly, pollution. company x dumps pollution into the air, all the town suffers from poorer air. there is not a specific cost to company x to clean the air or pay for the cancer treatments. how this applies, there is a cost associated with sorting the waste, storing 3 "trash" cans vs. 1. there could be a cost savings of reduced landfill from organics being reused somehow. (just yesterday i saw this http://energy.gov/articles/pumpkin-power-turning-food-waste-energy seems to apply here.) but would the savings be passed to the homeowner? not likely. would the cost of sorting be passed to the trash collection agency? seems not. so where would it go?

The argument being made is that expensive and potentially hazardous materials are required to make wind turbines and solar panels.

Yes, I got that from the article too, that using current technologies for renewable energy we will be using, potentially, a lot of non-renewable resources. The whole fallacious article is about how current technologies, unimproved over years of research and development YET TO COME, will do these horrible awful things. Indeed they will, if newer and more efficient ways of providing two megawatts of wind power aren't found, or better than 30% efficiency from solar panels and internal combustion engines, or maybe even less expensive ways to get power from rivers and the ocean than big dams. So, yeah, if nothing advances and no further research is funded then this guy's fantasy world of doom will come to pass. Let's hope others aren't as narrow minded as the author seems to be and that we will have some tremendous breakthroughs in renewable energy technologies with continued funding.

The fundamental impediment has been fighting a fossil fuel corporate monolith which has hijacked our government. Its time for us to take back our future.

You mean we need to hijack our government to ban fossil fuel production and throw more money at some other industries? Not sure that's really going to work like you think it will.

I do know how expensive it is to drill. And a lot more things about your questions. You're way off. You're thinking about this on a "what you might expect" level. It turns out what it is is very much different than you might expect.

Geothermal is baseload power. It can reliably generate up to 98% of its capacity 100 percent of the time - day or night, maintenance or no maintenance. This is even better than nuclear, which has reactors that must be periodically shut down for maintenance. Better than that, since an EGS plant can overextract the heat available it can moderate its consumption of this resource to compensate for variability of other energy resources like wind and solar in a way that nuclear plants can't.

Nuclear takes 10x as much water, and coal needs as much. The geothermal resource must not be at the surface - in fact, a dry well from oil drilling will often do for a start and to prove the resource. Frequently oil and gas exploration terminates with "too hot to drill" conditions that indicate the explorer has found a different kind of energy. The US Department of Energy places the new enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) at about $0.05/KWh, which compares favorably to nuclear. Plant investment is less than nuclear too, but not less than coal. Sometimes geothermal drilling accidentally finds oil, gas or coal resources incidentally, as was recently the case in Britain with a well that found all four. All the major energy drilling companies probably have huge data on geothermal resources they've categorized as "unfit to drill because the rock is too hot" and dry holes to start at. For 50 years or more they call these dry holes and cap them and walk away. There's maybe drillers in receivership you could get with this data for under a million dollars. It's lost data come useful.

The new EGS systems are a closed loop: water is injected into deep dry hot rock, typically after opening up a large surface area for thermal transfer with fracking. When the water comes back up hot the heat is transferred to a second closed loop system that uses another fluid with a low boiling point, much like your refrigerator. This allows conversion of the energy retrieved from water that's not necessarily above 100c when it reaches the surface. The cooler (but still warm) water is then reinjected back into the well, resulting in a closed subterranean loop, and incidentally injecting this warmer water increases the efficiency and lifespan of the well, meaning there are no emissions whatever, ever, except for the precipitates of dissolved minerals that rain out during cooling.

Google, which has been doing some research into minimal footprint power because they use so much of it, funded a study you can find here that allows you to explore geothermal resources with a Google Earth interface. To put it simply, the US has vast amounts of subsurface energy available to be tapped. It costs less than nuclear, has no carbon emissions like coal does, requires no fuel that might fluctuate in cost or availability, is clean available baseload power, but it can be moderated to counteract the variations of wind and solar dynamically on a moment's notice, so it can help integrated those sources into the grid removing the risk.

Over-exploitation can overcool the hot rock to the point where it's not useful, but it doesn't halt the energy flow. Ultimately a level is found that delivers an average use that can be varied in the short term.

Best of all there's no mountain of toxic fly ash to be rid of, no spent fuel you can't find a home for. There is no waste - at all. There's no fuel cost commodity spikes, shortages, embargoes, import levies or restrictions because there is no fuel and this reduces the risks associated with building a plant that must generate power for 50 years or more, and the cost of insurance against such risks. Men don't need to toil miles beneath the ground to

Solar is out because it takes too much room and is too ugly and not to mention how inefficient it is.

Solar is not "inefficient". I hate how that myth is perpetuated. Compared to plants (biofuels), solar is extremely efficient. Typical crystalline PV panel is around 15% efficient at turning sunlight to electricity today - meaning that 1 sq/M of panel in direct sunlight of ~1000W sq/M will produce about 150W. Thin-film panels are around 10-11% efficient, but they are cheaper per watt of output. High-efficiency consumer panels are around 20% efficient, but they cost more per watt of output. The best solar panels are around 40-50% efficient, but these are so expensive that they are only used where space and weight is an absolute premium - like space ships and satellites.

Efficiency doesn't really matter for most uses - just covering all your ugly rooftops with that technology would provide a very substantial amount of electricity. Even if we could produce 50% efficient panels for the cost of 15% panels, that's only a 3x improvement - not quite earth shattering - and still not the limiting factor in use today.

Really, the only thing that matters is cost. Right now PV costs between $0.15-$0.30 / kWh depending on how much sun your area gets and the details of your installation. Get that down to $0.05-$0.10 / kWh and you will see panels plastered everywhere the sun shines. We're not that far off - we'll probably be there by the end of the decade. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/

A lot more detail on this subject on this great blog post: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/dont-be-a-pv-efficiency-snob/

Your feeling is wrong. As is this whole story that's nothing more than Republican propaganda.

They are doing it.

Except Fisker's cars are built in the US by Americans, despite the BS that is all there is to this story.

And, by extension, all there is to your assertion about US quality. Why do you hate America?

You can imagine all you want. But this whole story is a lie designed to appeal to your Republican imagination and fear of actual facts. Fisker got US government money that it spent on US jobs, 5x as many as the foreign jobs as Fisker pays out of other Fisker income. A profitable investment private investors refused to try, so the American public gets not just the jobs and industry (and taxes on it), but also the interest on the loan.

A victory. Victory is totally unrecognizable to you Republicans since all you can do or imagine is epic failures, for generation after generation.

No, you're precisely wrong.

This story turns out to be total BS. The DoE loan to Fisker was spent on American carmaking jobs. Fisker does also employ 20% of that amount in Finland, but the US public money was not spent on that. Fisker's successful use of the DoE loan employed 2500 Americans who were cut loose by American car corps during this recession, and started back up an American car factory where they work. Since it's successful, Fisker will be repaying the loan.

The government invests money private industry wouldn't in a foreign corp creating American jobs. Increasing the transit tech overall, increasing the attractiveness of the industry to private investment. Making a profit on the interest.

But none of that matters, because - surprise! - car corps are global enterprises. A foreign company getting US government investment also has some foreign expenses, but not ones paid by the US government.

Nothing to see here. Unless you're a Republican, in which case the only thing you can possibly see is Democratic government corruption that doesn't exist.

All this for $592M in US tax money for a product that doesn't create a single US job.

You're wrong.
The loan is for a different car (Nina) that the company will be manufacturing in Delaware.
Though their manufacturing date has slipped from 2012 to 2013.
In 2016 they'll be moving production of the Karma (now made in Finalnd) to Delaware.

Further, we're talking about a loan, not a grant.
So unless Fisker goes bankrupt, the US won't have really lost anything.

Technically there is an opportunity cost, but the government isn't really limited by that,
as part of what the government does is fund projects the private market isn't interested in.

This story is a hatchet job, plain and simple.
The facts I've laid out have been available for a loooong time

So... this means there's going to be a worldwide ban on coal as a fuel source, burning of trash, medical and hazardous waste incinerators, cement production, and CFL bulbs? Good luck with that.

Do you have a citation for the DOE stuff? I would love to have it handy, because I've definitely heard that before and I'm constantly getting into fights with people who don't believe it and I can never find anything really authoritative about it.

I can see a couple reports here: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/vehicles/electric_charging.html but haven't had time to read them thoroughly.