Tag Archives: Energy

Electric cars will not save us

In addition to lots of twitter arguments about the Green New Deal, my feed has also been full of arguments about the relative role for electric cars.

I get the appeal of electric cars: it’s hard to envision any scenario where we address climate change without relying on electrification of our vehicle fleet. It’s a technology that has lots of promise. These cars appeal to our desires for innovation, yet still recall previous moments of national pride.

All that said, the simple math on emissions remains clear: electric cars alone won’t solve our surface transportation GHG problems. We have to drive less.

A number of articles in recent months have tried to emphasize this point, but they don’t often seem to break through. I’d like to highlight this one from Meredith Hankins:

…when we’re all driving zero-emission vehicles that plug into a zero-carbon grid, our transportation emissions will indeed be extremely low carbon. But here’s the thing: that future is a long way off. California’s ZEV mandate calls for only about 8% of new vehicle purchases to be ZEVs by 2025–and that’s just new vehicles. The average car sold today will be on the road for at least 11 years, locking in a decade plus of GHG emissions for every non-ZEV sold. In addition to our long-term electrification plans, we have to focus on strategies to reduce emissions from those non-ZEVs in the near term by getting them off the road.

The basic facts about cars (regardless of their power source) haven’t changed. They’re remarkably large and inefficient vehicles. They take up large spaces and require lots of energy to move.

Bringing U.S. per-capita transport energy use down to that of the next-highest country (AUS) would cut consumption by nearly 20%. Bringing it down to the level of most W. European countries would cut it by ~40%. It's not like this is impossible. pic.twitter.com/7SlmXRQdM1
— Tony Dutzik (@FrontierTony) January 7, 2019

Since the ultimate goal here is to reduce GHG emissions, making transport more energy-efficient in total is an important intermediate objective, we need to not just shift the energy sources to electricity, but also consider the overall efficiency.

Limiting automotive GHG emissions isn’t simply about making cars cleaner, but also about limiting how much we use these inefficient modes of transport. In other words, driving less.

Don’t take my word for it, just listen to the IPCC. Here’s Meredith Hankins again:

But here’s the thing: we can’t afford to ignore significant climate mitigation measures just because they are politically difficult.
The IPCC’s recent bombshell report notes that “demand-side mitigation and behavioural changes” are going to be needed to avoid the worst climate change impacts. Transportation mitigation pathways for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees require not just “[t]echnology-focused measures,” but also strategies based on “[s]tructural changes that avoid or shift transport activity” that have “received lesser attention in most global transport decarbonisation pathways up to now.”
(emphasis added)

To make things a bit more tangible, here are the kinds of targets California thinks they need to hit:

Quadruple the proportion of trips taken by foot by 2030 (from a baseline of the 2010–2012 California Household Travel Survey).
Strive for a nine-fold increase in the proportion of trips taken by bicycle by 2030 (from a baseline of the 2010–2012 California Household Travel Survey).

Dramatically increasing bike and walk trips (and doing so immediately) is both a simple goal, yet a radical one. It’s a radical change from the status quo, but also something simple enough to do. Meeting these goals doesn’t require any technological miracles (or even any new technology at all).

Breaking it down a bit further, hitting those targets realistically requires policies that impact both the supply of places that support bike and walk trips, as well as policies that increase demand for them.

On the supply-side, hitting these targets means increasing the supply of places suitable for bike and pedestrian trips: safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure, expanded at a massive scale. These are proven and relatively simple tasks, but the scale called for here is still daunting. Ask anyone who’s worked on these projects about the effort required to build 9x as many protected bike lanes.

Additionally, all of these supply-side elements are things local governments can do. For all of the Mayors out there talking a good game on climate, here’s the biggest bang for your buck. Furthermore, places that are already walkable and bikeable will be far better suited to accommodate shifting behavior. It’s entirely plausible to picture a nine-fold increase in biking in a big city.

The demand side perhaps more important in shifting behavior, particularly for pricing incentives (against cars, for walking/biking/transit). Some of this can happen at the local level (parking policy, pricing) while others will require state-level and national action. Just look back at the increases in transit usage when gas prices go up.

You are responsible for spills

Good to know.

NYT Infographics – VMT and Oil

Two great infographics from the New York Times – both related to petroleum.

First, a great graph of per capita VMT compared to changes in gas prices:

Putting vehicle miles traveled per capita along the x-axis instead of time makes the swings in both price and VMT more obvious. The massive growth of VMT over time despite the swings in prices shows just how entrenched car culture and automobility are in the US.

All that VMT must need a lot of oil. The Times also has a handy map of the Coast Guard’s forecasts for the extent of the growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.

April 22:

April 28:

May 1:

May 4:

The easy oil is almost gone

CC image from StuffEyeSee

So says the Department of Defense:

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.

The implications for urban planning and transportation are huge. Part of the big push for a VMT tax instead of merely raising the gas tax stems from the macro-level supply and demand issues. Seeing crude oil prices spike would almost certainly lead to a drop in consumer demand for gasoline, thus lowering gas tax revenues. Add in mandated improvements in fuel efficiency for cars and light trucks, and the long-term stability of the gas tax as a funding source doesn’t seem that robust.

Certainly, there are many other potential implications, but this long-term funding issue ought to be front and center in the current debate over how to fund transportation.

Links – bad day for the Midwest

Soldier Field, US v. Honduras World Cup Qualifier, summer 2009. CC image from flickr

The US has narrowed their list of potential host cities for the US Soccer Federation’s bid to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup – and shockingly, that list does not include the Windy City.

The final cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, East Rutherford, N.J., Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, Fla., and Washington.

“With Chicago, I think there was some Olympic fatigue,” Gulati said, referring to that city’s unsuccessful bid to host the Summer Games in 2016. “And in this group, Soldier Field was one of the smallest stadiums.”

Good news for DC – both FedEx Field and M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore made this cut, which almost assures the region of hosting some World Cup games should the US win the right to host. This list of 18 cities will be trimmed to a final list of 12 stadiums.

However, the exclusion of Chicago is baffling. Chicago regularly hosts US World Cup qualifiers, Gold Cup matches, is home to an MLS team, and hosted many matches the last time the US hosted this event in 1994. Renovated Soldier Field is indeed small in terms of capacity, but this is Chicago we’re talking about here.

Only slightly less confusing is the exclusion of any stadia from the San Francisco Bay Area, but at least this can be explained by the poor quality of the extant stadiums in both SF and Oakland. However, the San Francisco 49ers stand to get a new football stadium in the near future, certainly before 2022 rolls around. Likewise, given Dan Snyder’s constantly rumored talks about wanting to build a new stadium for his micromanaged Redskins, DC could be looking at a new stadium, too.

Point being, 12 years is a long time from now. Leaving off two of the US’s greatest cities from a bid that’s meant to showcase not just America’s stadiums and hosting abilities but the host cities as well is just inexplicable.

(advice to the USSF folks – it’s 106 miles to Chicago. Hit it.)

Picture of 'Detroit Industry' mural. CC image from flickr

Detroit is another city that hosted World Cup matches in 1994, but was left of this bid’s list. That obviously isn’t the focus of Detroit’s current issues. Mammoth directs our attention to a piece by Bruce Katz on re-industrializing Detroit. Katz looks to international precedents (Turin, Bilbao), addresses the need to Detroit to shrink and shift – even with re-development and re-industrialization, and the huge impact this might have on the shape of the city.

Obligatory DC connection:

Detroit has to change physically because it simply cannot sustain its current form. It was built for two million people, not the 900,000 that live there today. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston could all fit within Detroit’s 139-square-mile boundary, and there would still be 20 square miles to spare. Even more than its European counterparts, which had much less severe population losses, Detroit will have to become a different kind of city, one that challenges our idea of what a city is supposed to look like, and what happens within its boundaries. The new Detroit might be a patchwork of newly dense neighborhoods, large and small urban gardens, art installations, and old factories transformed into adventure parks. The new Detroit could have a park, much like Washington’s Rock Creek Park, centered around a creek on its western edge, and a system of canals from the eastern corner of the city to Belle Isle in the south. The city has already started on the restoration of the Detroit River waterfront, largely bankrolled by private philanthropy. The city has created a new “land bank,” which can take control of vacant and derelict properties and start the process of clearing land, remediating environmental contamination, and figuring out what to do next with the parcel, whether that’s making it into a small park, deeding it to a neighbor to create a well-tended yard, or assembling large tracts of land for redevelopment or permanent green space.

Also from mammoth, Rob Holmes takes a peek at the massive scale of some new solar infrastructure, linking to this post on the sprawling SEGS facility in California – conveniently located next to the world’s largest boron mine for scale comparisons.

Similarly, the scale comparisons remind me of a video recently shared with me about mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. The video comes from Yale University’s Environment360. the 20 minute video is extraordinarily well shot and edited, and well worth a watch. Given DC’s proximity to Appalachia and our (relative) reliance on coal power in this region, it’s definitely of interest to those of us in the Mid Atlantic region.

At a bare minimum, the images in the video alone are worth a watch.

When I think of tools for urban living, GMC trucks aren’t the first thing that come to my mind. I guess using that kind of comparison is like saying a jackhammer is a tool for hanging picture frames around the house.

Portland hasn’t seen big shifts in travel modes recently, as Jarrett Walker notes. However, Jarrett and a few of his trusty commenters seem to have a bead on to the potential cause – relatively cheap parking.

In other recent work we’ve been doing, we’ve repeatedly seen that parking price is the most powerful locally-controlled lever for shifting people out of single-occupant cars, in the absence of more direct congestion charges. Increases in parking costs drive big shifts to transit or other options.

In my experience working on various transportation demand management programs, this is absolutely true. Since TDM programs do not usually have the scope to implement congestion pricing, parking pricing is the single biggest contributor to mode shifts.

Electrification

High Voltage - by oskay on Flickr

The fact that most rail transit systems operate via electric power is usually listed as a net benefit in terms of energy efficiency. Not only is transit hailed as an inherently more efficient mode (more persons per vehicle, steel wheels on steel rails – as opposed to rubber tires on asphalt, etc), the fact that it’s using electricity is another environmental benefit over gas guzzling cars. Yonah Freemark says not so fast, however.

Eurostar’s example is a case in point: transportation systems relying on electricity can be dirty or clean, all depending on where the power is coming from. This point is unfortunately lost on most alternative transportation activists, who cite efficiency to support the claimed ecological advantages of using transit instead of automobiles. Yet efficiency means little when the electricity used is being produced by carbon-generating plants.

Now this is undoubtedly true – where the electricity comes from matters. However, that’s the beauty of electricity and transit systems that use it. Electricity can be produced in any number of ways, some more sustainable than others. The key difference, however, is one of scope. Electricity generation and greenhouse gas emissions are a whole different piece of the pie, dealing with every aspect of energy policy.

Light rail running on electricity may seem clean, because the local point emissions — in the city — are nonexistent, especially as compared to diesel-spewing buses. But if the necessary power is being generated at coal-based plants, the global effect is negative, making some transit systems less environmentally sensitive in terms of per passenger emissions than many automobiles.

Yonah’s referencing the fact that on a pure BTU per passenger basis, rail isn’t that much more efficient than a Prius. What this measure misses, however, is the secondary effects of transit. Congestion reduction alone saves tons of fuel from idling traffic, not to mention the savings of switching trips or eliminating them all together. Additionally, the changes in land use that rail transit enables allows more efficient transportation – walking trips, shorter trips due to neighborhood retail (and improved accessibility), and so on.

Where electrically powered rail transit vehicles have an advantage is in their applicability. The infrastructure (in most urban rail transit systems) is in place. The technology is proven. The same can’t be said of electric cars. They’ll face the same kind of issues with the cleanliness of the electricity they use, whether they’re plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles – and they won’t solve congestion issues or address the new residential demand from cars plugging in while parked in the garage.

Still, these are nitpicking Yonah’s general argument and final conclusion:

The point, then, is that to suggest that transit is ecologically sensitive is more accurate when the source of that transportation’s electricity is carbon-free or at least carbon-reduced. Proponents of transportation alternatives must also be strong advocates of the remaking of our electricity production system.

Transit alone isn’t the silver bullet. It can only be one part of the puzzle. Though I think it’s a larger piece of the puzzle than this post would imply, we must remember how that piece fits into the whole energy system.

City Block

a work in progress…