"With the price of oil above $50 a barrel, with political
instability in the Middle East on the rise, and with little
slack in the world oil economy, we need a new energy strategy,"
says Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a
Washington, DC-based research institute. "Fortunately, the
outline of a new strategy is emerging with two new technologies.
These technologies--gas-electric hybrid engines and
advanced-design wind turbines--offer a way to wean ourselves
from imported oil, says Brown. If over the next decade we
convert the U.S. automobile fleet to gas-electric hybrids having
the efficiency of today's Toyota Prius (55 miles per gallon
combined city/highway driving) we could cut our gasoline use in
half. No change in the number of vehicles, no change in miles
driven--just doing it more efficiently.
With gas-electric hybrid cars now on the market, the stage is
set for the second step to reduce oil dependence--the use of
wind-generated electricity to power automobiles. If we add to
the gas-electric hybrid a plug-in capacity and a second battery
to increase its electricity storage, says Brown, motorists could
then do their commuting, shopping and other short-distance
travel largely with electricity, saving gasoline for the
occasional long trip.
This could lop another 20 percent off gasoline use in addition
to the initial 50 percent cut from shifting to gas-electric
hybrids, for a total reduction in gasoline use of 70 percent.
Moving to the highly efficient gas-electric hybrids with a
plug-in capacity, combined with the construction of thousands of
wind farms across the country feeding electricity into a
national grid, will provide the energy security that has eluded
us for three decades, says Brown.
Brown points out that some 40 million consumers in Europe now
fill their residential electricity needs via wind energy, with
195 million (half the population of Western Europe) projected to
do so by 2020.
In the U.S., a 1991 Department of Energy study reported that
three states--Kansas, North Dakota and Texas--have enough
harnessable energy to meet all national electricity needs. Wind
turbine design has improved enormously since then, with
generating costs dropping from 38 cents per kilowatt-hour in the
1980s to 3 or 4 cents today.
This will also rejuvenate farm and ranch communities and shrink
the U.S. balance-of-trade deficit. Even more importantly, it
will dramatically cut carbon emissions, making the U.S. a model
in the climate-stabilization effort that other countries can
emulate.
###
SOURCES:
Earth Policy Update, Oct. 13, 2004.
