US Approves Deep Water Drilling Again: BP Gets the First Permit!

This gets classified in the "WTF" files! Less than a year after the worst oil spill in US history, and before we can even get the slightest grip on the long term effects of the ecological disaster that took place, the US government has decided deep water drilling can continue and of all companies, BP was issues the very first permit!!!!!

If you follow the news at all lately, one of the hot news topics on electric cars is the Presidents desire to assist the electric car industry with subsidies to lower the cost of the cars (rebates) and funding to help install public charging stations. This has been met with resistance from some who claim they want the market to determine which fuel wins for personal transportation.

That sounds like a valid point, but people either forgot or never knew the oil industry is tremendously subsidized. There are drilling subsidies, exploration subsidies, refining subsidies and more. Then these companies that make tens of billions of dollars in profits every year don't pay a penny of federal tax. That's right, not a penny! You and I pay tax on their end product and than pay our own personal income tax, but these huge, highly profitable oil companies they don't pay the US anything!!!

I'll stop clamoring for federal assistance for a technology that will help the environment, the US economy and strengthen our national security when the competing fuel stops getting hundreds of billions of assistance every year. Plus, I didn't even bring up the money spent and US troops killed in the wars we fight to keep the oil flowing freely and inexpensively towards the West.

Four Months of Driving on Sunshine

MINI-E roof graphics and my house & solar system in the background

It's been almost four months now since I installed a 8.8kw solar photovoltaic electric system on my roof. The system has generated nearly 5 megawatt hours of electricity and roughly half of that clean, renewable energy has gone into my MINI-E's battery pack to allow me to drive about 10,000 miles.

The great feeling of driving an electric car and not using oil has had even greater meaning to me recently with the disastrous oil leak currently in the Gulf of Mexico. Charging the car with electricity I produce myself takes it up even another notch. One of the arguments against electric cars is that a majority of the electric generated in the US is made from coal fired powerplants and that EV's just displace the pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack. There is some truth to that but it still doesn't mean the electric cars aren't better for the environment. Every comprehensive study that I have read that compares the amount of pollution from electricity generation to the pollution from burning gasoline shows how much worse it is to burn gasoline. Then if you consider the cradle to grave supply chain of oil it becomes even more obvious. From wars over oil to oil supply chain disasters like what we are witnessing off the coast of Louisiana, there really is no comparison. Then consider the fact that you can make your own clean renewable electricity, as I do and the argument isn't even worth continuing, it's game over.

Hopefully with electric cars like the Nissan LEAF, the Chevrolet Volt and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV coming to dealerships in the very near future, I won't be such an aberration. I'm pretty sure as more and more people buy electric cars they will see the environmental and economic benefits of installing a home based Solar PV system to generate their own fuel. I'm not the only one that thinks that either, there even is a website that is dedicated to combination of electric cars and solar electric systems. It's called Solar Charged Driving and you can check it out here: SolarChargedDriving.com

Another thing I've heard is that our current infrastructure can't support the charging of hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of electric cars. This point has been countered also by people that point out that the majority of EV charging will take place at night when there is a great surplus of electricity. I can't really say one way or the other since I don't have the data that would support either argument. I can say it's true that most EV's will charge at night and you can program your EV to charge whenever you want so you can take advantage of off peak rates and charge when there is a surplus. Now if people follow my example and decide to install a solar PV array, they will be helping the grid instead of hurting it. By supplying electricity to the grid during daylight hours when demand is highest, and charging at night when demand is low and there is a surplus, I am actually helping the grid, not creating a problem with my EV. Now imagine if there were hundreds of solar arrays in every town, supplying electricity locally and reducing the strain on the local power grids. I think EV owners will be much more inclined to install solar systems, as I did. I had always thought about it, but it wasn't until I got the MINI-E and realized that I wanted to be driving electric cars from now on that I actually decided to install the system.

Soon we will see if the public embraces the electric cars that are coming to market. If they are received as well as I think they will be, than you can bet you'll start seeing more and more shiny black panels popping up on rooftops across America.

BP Oil spill continues to grow, threatens Louisiana's entire way of life

Ever since April 20th  when the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, claiming 11 lives of the coast of Louisiana, over 210,000 gallons of crude oil has been spewing into the waters from the seabed some 5,000 feet below. The extreme depth of the well is problematic in getting getting it capped, shut off or even allowing BP to capture the oil as it exits the pipe. So far efforts to stop the flow have been futile and estimates of 90 days to get it stopped keep surfacing. If indeed is is another 90 days, simple math will tell you that this spill has the potential to be twice as large a spill as the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 when 10.8 million gallons of crude spilled into the Prince Island Sound in Alaska. Compound that with the fact that nobody died when the Valdez spill occurred and it's beginning to look like this is going to be the worst oil spill the United States have ever had occur.

The really terrible thing about oil spills is that the affected ecosystems can take decades to recover. We can't just force BP to hire thousands of workers to clean up all the oil soaked beaches and rocks and then proclaim 'it's fixed". The oil can wreak havoc on the entire food chain from plankton up to whales. This delicate balance isn't easily or quickly repaired and may take decades for the ocean to come back to life in the region. So much of the area's economy depends on the fishing industry and tourism, both of which may be in complete ruin within the coming weeks.

When I first started researching electric cars, I did so for a couple reasons. First, I like new technology. I liked the fact that auto makers were exploring a new propulsion system that would be the biggest change in the automobile industry since there even was an automobile industry. Secondly, I believe know that America needs to move in a new direction with energy generation. We simply cannot continue down the current unsustainable path we are on. The price we pay for oil it too high. I'm not talking about the $2.85/gallon you pay at the pump because that only tells a small part of the story. I'm talking about the millions billions trillions of dollars we, the tax payers pay to protect our "oil interests" around the globe. I'm talking about the American kids that come back from the Middle East in boxes because we need to make sure the oil keeps flowing our way for as cheap as possible. I'm talking about the absolute disasters that ocurr when an oil tanker runs aground or an oil rig explodes and sinks and millions of gallons of crude oil contaminate and destroy everything in it's path and leave behind the stench of death for decades.

Using electricity as a fuel to propel automobiles will not cure all of our energy ills. Much of the electricity produced here in the US is done so by burning coal and there is nothing clean or nice about the mining process or burning it but it is still way less detrimental to the environment than the process of drilling, refining and burning oil is. Plus, all of the coal we use in mined domestically so we're not sending trillions of dollars out of our economy to foreign countries, many of which hate us. 

Then there's the fact that individuals have the ability to generate their own clean, renewable electricity right at their own homes and you can never say that about oil. As much as it pains me to read the news about this oil disaster in the Gulf, if there is a bright side I think it's going to open more eyes and help others agree that we need a new domestic energy policy. One that lessons the reliance our oil and there is no quicker way to accomplish that than beginning to transition from gasoline burning vehicles to electrics.

One Month of Charging on Sun Power

It's been one month since I had my 8.8kwh solar PV system installed on my roof and #250 has been "filling up" on electricity that I produce myself now. My system produced about 1,200kwh of electricity this month. I figure the MINI-E used about 500kwh and the rest will lower my home electric bill substantially. I may not even have to pay anything. It's the first time I actually wanted to get my electric bill! I'm curious to see what my usage is with the net metering figured in. Clean, renewable energy used to power an automobile! It makes even more sense to me now when I read the news about the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico spewing over 200,000 gallons of crude oil every day into the ocean with no end in sight. What do the oil apologists have to say now? Still complaining about the "long tailpipe" of EV's? Didn't think so. More on the Louisiana disaster in my next post.

Another ecological disaster thanks to our Big Oil friends

After the explosion that claimed 11 lives, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon sunk some 36 hours later. Since then, it has been spewing 42,000 gallons of crude oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico some 40 miles off the shores of  Louisiana. The visible spill is now roughly 1,300 square miles and rapidly growing.

Often when I read various online blogs and there are discussions over electric vehicles verses internal combustion engine cars, inevitably the discussion turns to the fact that much of the electricity in this country and around the world is produced by burning coal which itself is bad for the environment. This is true, burning coal (or burning just about anything for that matter) to produce energy is not environmentally friendly and we do need to develop more clean, renewable sources of electricity generation. However that doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that oil is better, it just means that the current electricity generation methods aren't perfect, but it's still a better fuel than oil.

One only needs to look at the scope of disasters like what we currently have off the coast of Louisiana to see the disastrous results of oil spills. If a train carrying coal to a power plant derails and spills, we can simply pick the train back up, scoop up the coal and the incident is over. When a tanker like the Exxon Valdez dumps 11 million gallons of oil into the water or a oil rig like the Deepwater Horizon sinks they create an epic ecological disaster that lasts for decades, costs hundreds of millions of dollars and kills uncountable amounts of wildlife.

I charge my electric car on electricity generated by my solar electric system at my home, but even if I was using electricity generated from a coal burning power plant I know it is still a much better energy solution than drilling for oil is.