Reducing dependence on foreign oil through cleaner energy
NPR interviewed T. Boone Pickens this morning, a Texas oil tycoon with designs on greatly expanding wind farms in the U.S. to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Clearly wind farms are poised play a much larger role in U.S. energy production and provide a cleaner, positive alternative to burning fossil fuels. However, wind power (or solar or tidal) is not likely to do much of anything to our dependence on foreign oil.
The issue is that our electric grid is nearly entirely disconnected from our transportation energy needs. When asked about the disconnect, Mr. Pickens suggested that increasing wind power could free up some natural gas reserves which could then be used to expand the natural gas driven transportation sector. This hypothesized chain of events requires a number of events that do not necessarily lead to each other. There is no obvious reason to believe that natural gas, as opposed to other resources, would be freed up. Even if it were, this notion requires greatly expanding our vision on our currently limited natural gas transportation infrastructure, which is already limited more by our vision and will rather than by natural gas resources.
There is an obvious solution, though. The electric car (or plug-in hybrids) would forge the link between the grid and transportation energy resulting in advances in wind power and other renewable resources having direct and substantial reductions in foreign oil dependence. I have been a proponent of electric cars in the past because of their non-polluting nature. However, with gas at over $4 a gallon and rising electric cars are becoming more attractive for economic and security reasons as well. Can we muster the political will to bring them back and actualize T. Boone’s vision of reducing our dependence on foreign oil?
James Conder is a professor of Geophysics in the Department of Geology at SIU-Carbondale. His research specializes in tectonic and mantle processes at island arc volcanic chains and other marine plate boundaries. 
We are certainly at a point where great interest exists in finding alternative means to meet our energy needs. It seems that people are looking for that silver bullet solution that’ll magically eliminate our use of oil. This post seems to hypothesize that the electric car would be such a solution, when it is obvious that it will not be.
Certainly, it will be a good option for some people. There’s no harm in pursuing the technology in the hope that someday it would be our dominant energy source for our vehicles. Let’s just not place our bets on it. There are many immediate steps we all can take now:
i. Conserve energy, and save a little money in the meantime.
ii. Conserve goods. We are a disposable society. Perhaps we should cut back on our buying of goods and fix things that break.
iii. Downsize our needs. Do you need that super duty pick up truck to haul your little toolbox around? (if you’re union, you barely use half your tools anyway)
iv. Put your money towards businesses that use energy wisely. Put the energy hogs out of business.
v. Certainly look to make use of alternative energy sources. Electric, diesel, hybrid gas, hybrid diesel, or simply a smaller car all will help.
Finally, don’t forget about those huge batteries in that electric car. They will cost a bundle to replace, and you must recycle them. If you get an electric car, bundle it with a windmill or solar panels.
That is a great list to start with and would definitely help point things in the right direction. However, we need to look to larger solutions if we are truly going to reduce our pain induced by oil woes - and moving to an electric car system would drastically overhaul the present economy.
I would like to know why it is ‘obvious’ to you that moving from the internal combustion engine - the single largest use of petroleum in this country - to the electric car would not have a dramatic reduction in oil usage and demand. Batteries may be an issue, but by many accounts the technology is not as far away as you imply. It is true that in some ways moving from petroleum to electrically driven vehicles is switching from one source of pain to another, but there are good reasons to believe that oil pain will only increase with time, while battery pain will only decrease. It’s not too early to seriously look at the second option.
Here is a piece that won’t be on this blog or anywhere in the PD about how cleaner skies are causing the eatth to warm because of more sunshine. Your thoughts?
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19926634.800-cleaner-skies-explain-surprise-rate-of-warming.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
The electric car by itself is not an obvious silver bullet solution to the energy crisis. If we were able to magically flip a switch to all electric vehicles right now, what problems would we have?
* We would simply shift from one fossil fuel to another. Coal would be the new oil, with supply unable to keep up with demand.
* Electric grids would be brought to their knees. Some are at near capacity, and throwing the burden of our transportation energy needs onto them would be disastrous.
* Today’s technology is not ready for today’s needs. Driving trips would come to a halt. Tourism would suffer.
This list is the basis for my statement. Electric vehicles are not the final answer, but they could be part of the answer for some people.
I do see the wind farms as a piece of the puzzle, if not to relieve us from oil dependence, it will diminish our reliance on coal.
Think|, thanks for the comments. You have some worthwhile thoughts, but to maximize their usefulness, you need to more fully disentangle ‘energy crisis’ from ‘dependence on foreign oil’. I think everyone agrees that our dependence on foreign oil is a real problem - and is the gist of T. Boone Pickens’ arguments for wind power. Unfortunately, he is needlessly tangling the two as well.
As you point out, the electric car would be exchanging one fossil fuel (oil) for another (coal). That alone IS the magic bullet for solving our addiction to foreign oil. I agree that there will then be some issues with taxing the grid and increasing dependence on coal - but those are the issues that T. Boone’s proposals for wind and other alternative energies are actually solving. By conflating the two issues we end up hindering ourselves from finding substantial solutions to either oil or energy, leaving us to be continually stuck with minor tinkering of the system until oil becomes so expensive that we will have to move to coal or some other energy to run our vehicles anyway. Electric car technology is proven, there really isn’t any solid reason we couldn’t start moving that way now.