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Electric Lamar-land
Posted By katie allison granju
Sen. Alexander gave his big “we need a new Manhattan Project on clean energy” speech at ORNL today, and among his proposals is one that favors cars going electric:
1. Make plug-in electric cars and trucks commonplace. In the 1960s, H. Ross Perot noticed that when banks in Texas locked their doors at 5 p.m., they also turned off their new computers. Perot bought the idle nighttime bank computer capacity and made a deal with states to manage Medicare and Medicaid data. Banks made money, states saved money, and Perot made a billion dollars.
Idle nighttime bank computer capacity in the 1960s reminds me of idle nighttime power plant capacity in 2008. This is why:
• The Tennessee Valley Authority has 7,000-8,000 megawatts – the equivalent of seven or eight nuclear power plants or 15 coal plants – of unused electric capacity most nights.
• Beginning in 2010 Nissan, Toyota, General Motors and Ford will sell electric cars that can be plugged into wall sockets. FedEx is already using hybrid delivery trucks.
• TVA could offer “smart meters” that would allow its 8.7 million customers to plug in their vehicles to “fill up” at night for only a few dollars, in exchange for the customer paying more for electricity between 4 p.m. and 10 pm. when the grid is busy.
• Sixty percent of Americans drive less than 30 miles each day. Those Americans could drive a plug-in electric car or truck without using a drop of gasoline. By some estimates, there is so much idle electric capacity in power plants at night that over time we could replace three-fourths of our light vehicles with plug-ins. That could reduce our overseas oil bill from $500 billion to $250 billion – and do it all without building one new power plant.
• In other words, we have the plug. The cars are coming. All we need is the cord.
Too good to be true? Haven’t U.S. presidents back to Nixon promised revolutionary vehicles? Yes, but times have changed. Batteries are better. Gas is $4. We are angry about sending so many dollars overseas, worried about climate change and clean air. And, consumers have already bought one million hybrid vehicles and are waiting in line to buy more – even without the plug-in. Down the road is the prospect of a hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid vehicle, with two engines – neither of which uses a drop of gasoline. Oak Ridge is evaluating these opportunities.
Other proposals from the speech:
The other grand challenges were:
2. Make carbon capture and storage a reality for coal-burning power plants.
3. Make solar power cost competitive with power from fossil fuels.
4. Safely reprocess and store nuclear waste.
5. Make advanced biofuels cost-competitive with gasoline
6. Make new buildings green buildings.
7. Provide energy from fusion.
Alexander is chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Republican Conference and co-chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority Congressional Caucus. He is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees clean air and climate change issues, as well as the Appropriations Committee, which oversees funding for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
So what do you think? Is Alexander just talking the talk because it’s a campaign season, or will he actually take a bold leadership position on this stuff?
May 9th, 2008
