(no subject)
Jan. 24th, 2007 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
microbie"The Department of Energy announced yesterday $17 million in grants to support the development of battery technology for plug-in hybrid vehicles and ethanol, two areas in the energy debate where officials in Washington and Detroit are closely aligned." -from here
Electric cars aren't that much better for the environment, not when over half our electricity comes from coal (I'm pretty sure the no. 2 fuel is natural gas- another nonrenewable hydrocarbon). And where exactly are we going to put the new power plants we'll need to generate this additional electricity? I suppose we have enough poor regions where the locals won't mind a few extra million particles in the air in exchange for some economic assistance.
Better battery technology for cars sounds good as long as you don't worry about where we're going to find all that lithium (or cadmium or whatever heavy metals end up being used) or what we'll do with the batteries once they no longer carry a charge. I hear Yucca Mountain has a storage facility...
And ethanol is a joke, a boon to Big Agriculture just as we should be emptying their subsidy trough. I suppose Big Ag is better than Big Oil; our plutocrats are better than their kleptocrats, right? Ethanol in this country is largely made from corn. Vast corn fields, of the size that would be needed to supply 15% of the gasoline we use, require huge amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, both of which are largely derived from, you guessed it, petroleum. I'd be slightly more enthusiastic if they were going to develop alternative ethanol sources, like switchgrass, but I don't know of any government programs that are encouraging such projects.
Electric cars aren't that much better for the environment, not when over half our electricity comes from coal (I'm pretty sure the no. 2 fuel is natural gas- another nonrenewable hydrocarbon). And where exactly are we going to put the new power plants we'll need to generate this additional electricity? I suppose we have enough poor regions where the locals won't mind a few extra million particles in the air in exchange for some economic assistance.
Better battery technology for cars sounds good as long as you don't worry about where we're going to find all that lithium (or cadmium or whatever heavy metals end up being used) or what we'll do with the batteries once they no longer carry a charge. I hear Yucca Mountain has a storage facility...
And ethanol is a joke, a boon to Big Agriculture just as we should be emptying their subsidy trough. I suppose Big Ag is better than Big Oil; our plutocrats are better than their kleptocrats, right? Ethanol in this country is largely made from corn. Vast corn fields, of the size that would be needed to supply 15% of the gasoline we use, require huge amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, both of which are largely derived from, you guessed it, petroleum. I'd be slightly more enthusiastic if they were going to develop alternative ethanol sources, like switchgrass, but I don't know of any government programs that are encouraging such projects.
