Replacing Oil Blog

I saw this Digg post and had to respond, although quickly. Hang on another year or so because there will be cheap electric cars, in Israel.

Shia Agassi and Israel’s Better Place Project have a plan to take over the roads with electric cars within a couple years. They’re borrowing from mobile phone service’s business models.

The car you see below will be so ubiquitous that you will not only be able to charge it all over Israel, but you’ll even be able to quickly swap your drained battery with fully charged one to keep you on the go. How much will these cars cost? Nothing!

At least that’s the plan. According the Shai Agassi, the electric car service should be able to afford to give the cars away for free so long as customers agree to a service agreement for six years. In the same way that mobile phone services charge per minute, they’re going to charge for battery changes and electricity.

It’s going to be very exciting to watch and see if the electric car services proliferate as quickly as mobile phone services did. I’m betting they take off even faster.

I’ve been saying this for years

I haven’t spent a great deal on research as an individual, but it doesn’t take a team of mathematicians to realize that there’s a gold mine of energy in the Saharan desert. I often get bewildered looks from friends, and the occasional stranger, when I try to tell them that North Africa could quite easily be the wealthiest region in the world. According to Arnulf Jaeger-Waldau of the European commission’s Institute for Energy, just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts would be enough to meet all of Europe’s energy needs.

That doesn’t seem so difficult now, does it?

Problem #1: Photovoltaic cells or turbines?

Right now there’s debate between photovoltaic cells or turbines powered by steam created by an array of mirrors. Personally I’ve never been a fan of the turbine technology, it just seems like a dead end. Photovoltaic cell technology on the other hand is constantly being improved. New breakthroughs involving nanotechnology make photovoltaic cells a much more exciting choice. Steam and turbines … BORING!

Problem solved for 45 billion Euros

Problem#2 Distrubution via high voltage cables? Why not hydrogen?

There are a few reasons I don’t like the direct cable to Europe. First, they would limit Saharan nation’s power export markets to European countries that are connected to the “supergrid,” instead of being able to sell their power to the highest bidder. Second, what happens when a massive dust storm reduces electricity across solar farms in the Sahara? Both problems could easily be solved by using hydrogen to store and distribute power effectively.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing something from Greg Blencoe’s Hydrogen Discoveries Blog on the subject of infrastructure soon enough. I’d be very interested to know how the energy lost on a DC line from the Saharan Desert to Paris stacks up against transportation of hydrogen via pipeline or canister.

The idea of a European supergrid powered entirely by renewable energy is exciting in itself. It’s hard to believe such a radical departure from traditional power distribution methods has won support from political leaders like Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown. Let’s hope they don’t bungle it!

I love NYTimes op-ed sometimes. After dubbing to Israeli visionary Shai Agassi as “The Jewish Henry Ford” Thomas L. Friedman heaps some well deserved praise for the efforts of “The Jewish Henry Ford” and the Pickens Plan’s efforts to loosen their respective countries from foreign oil dependence.

The only good thing to come from soaring oil prices is that they have spurred innovator/investors, successful in other fields, to move into clean energy with a mad-as-hell, can-do ambition to replace oil with renewable power.

Breifly, Shai Agassi is pushing a innovative electric car opperator network, called Project Better Place. The idea is to offer cheap, mass produced electric cars with a network of recharging outlets and even battery exchanges. Those services will be offered in scaled plans for consumers like your mobile phone company with distance instead of minutes. It’s catching on, Gordon Brown is pledging a few quid to make Britan “the European capital for electric cars.”

What about those of us that live in big countries?

T. Boone and the Pickens Plan, on the other hand, is firing at the same target with different ammunition. He too realizes that America’s $700 billion a year addiction to foreign oil is very large monkey to carry on our backs (it’s late, I can’t stop with the imagery). A nationwide electric car operator network as effective as the one proposed by Shia Agassi’s Project Better Place is just not going be an easy sell. He didn’t become a billionaire by ignoring straight economics in favor of lofty ideals.

In a nutshell, the Pickens Plan aims at adding a ton of energy created by enormous wind farms to electrical power grids. The added wind energy should then allow us to shift our ample natural gas resources away from electricity generation into transportation. Every time I think of Pickens and his plan I picture him smirking as he draws a cigar to his lips with his leather gloved hand and telling the nation how he loves it when a plan comes together.

True, natural gas is a fossil fuel that adds CO2 to the atmosphere, but it’s a lot cleaner and cheaper than gasoline. It’s also not so difficult to have existing cars fitted for CNG, at least not here in Thailand (where I’ve been residing for the last several years).

Here at Replacing Oil we think that hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles are the way forward. However, if I had to choose between the Pickens Plan very likely materializing during the Obama Administration or a hazy hydrogen future (despite it’s obvious posibility), I’ll take the Pickens Plan. He’s got enough money and political attention to nudge the lumbering behemouth that is America’s transportation system in the right directions. Just don’t expect Gordon Brown to discard their blossoming EV ambitions for Wind and Gas. The relationship just isn’t that special anymore.

I knew we were doing good, but I had no idea. It seems that despite the arguments of Still President Bush and the oil industry. More than three quarters of Americans believe that policymakers need to focus on new energy technologies, rather than exploring and drilling for more oil.

I’m not sure how much my Replacing Oil blog had to do with it, but this has got to be a major kick in the pants for the McCain campaign. No wonder he looks like a deflated balloon every time he gets in front of a crowd and tries to straight talk about the energy crisis.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska and the offshore waters of the outer continental shelf will remain safe from oil exploration and drilling. I don’t want to get into it here, but we all know how much regard the Bush administration has for overwhelming public opinion.

The good news is this despite an incredible amount of misinformation about biofuels especially ethanol and other alternative energy technologies. Americans still believe that replacing oil is no longer a choice. Hopefully Obama can stop promising how he’s going to “remake the world” long enough to read the Pickens Plan and form a more concrete alternative energy technology policy.

By the way the pool we are referring to was conducted by he Washington DC research firm, Belden Russonello & Stewart. you can download a PDF of the telephone survey here.

Synthetic biology company has created a informative promotional video highlighting the power of algae and it’s possible impact on the biofuel industry.

We’re big fans of algae based biofuels here and can’t wait to see more from companies like Solazyme and Sapphire Energy.

Treehuggers step aside, saving the environment is now in the realm of bottom line huggers. I’ve been reading the Pickens Plan and it seems like billionaire oilman T. Boone is about to overshadow the combined efforts from decades of smelly hippies and eccentric pirates with a real strategy. He’s out to save America from it’s 700 billion dollar a year dependency on foreign oil, largely by taking advantage of the great plains state’s unique wind resources.

There’s something about being a billionaire that gets people to listen, perhaps the wads of cash bulging out from under his ten gallon hat. Honestly, I’ve never seen Pickens in a ten gallon hat, but It’s hard to imagine a Texas oilman in anything else. Even conservative columnist Cal Thomas is excited about his plan and it’s ability to bridige the divide between parties.

While we are a bigger fan of microgeneration than Pickens’ multi-billion dollar wind farms, we’re very excited here at Replacing Oil with the amount of attention being drawn to the botton line of alternative energy rexources in the United States. The great plains states have enough wind to churn out more power than all the oil off the shore of Florida (I really don’t have the numbers to back that up, but it sounds about right). From both economic and environmental perspectives wind farms are a very safe investment. Hopefully when Obama takes office in less than 6 months, we can quit banging our heads against the wall trying to get Washington to listen to reason.