Wireless Dynamic Car Charging Graphic from Stanford. Click image for the largest view.

The team follows research work from 2007 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology getting magnetic resonance to light a 60-watt bulb.  That experiment demonstrated that power could be transferred between two stationary coils about six feet apart, even when people and other obstacles are placed in between.

The MIT team researchers even created a spin-off company named WiTricity that is developing a stationary charging system capable of wirelessly transferring about 3 kW of electric power to a vehicle parked in a garage or on the street.

But Stanford has proposed a design published in the journal Applied Physics Letters that would transfer up to 10 kW of electrical energy to a coil 6.5 feet away with an efficiency of up to 97%.  One can imagine the groans in Massachusetts.

Both the new company WiTricity and the Stanford team are building high-efficiency wireless charging systems using magnetic resonance coupling that wirelessly transmit large electric currents between metal coils positioned a little less than or about 2 meters apart. The long-term goal of this type of research is to develop an “all-electric” highway that wirelessly charges the cars and trucks as they cruise down the road.

Magnetic resonance coupling transfers power with two copper coils tuned to resonate at the same natural frequency. The coils are placed a couple meters apart with one coil connected to an electric current that generates a magnetic field, which causes the second coil to resonate. This magnetic resonance results in the transfer of electric energy through the space between the first coil and the receiving coil.

The WiTricity design for power transfer efficiency depends on the relative sizes of the power source, capture devices, and on the distance between the devices.  Maximum efficiency of the WiTricity design is achieved when the devices are relatively close to one another, going past 95%.  WiTricity has secured partnerships with automobile manufacturer Toyota and electrical component manufacturer Delphi.

Across the country at Stanford, (Isn’t competition great?) Shanhui Fan, an associate professor of electrical engineering, and his colleagues wondered if the MIT system could be modified to transfer 10 kW of electric power over a distance of 6.5 feet enough to charge a car moving at highway speeds.

Working with computer models the team set out to determine the most efficient way to transmit 10 kilowatts of power to a real car.

Shanhui Fan explains the problem, “Asphalt in the road would probably have little effect, but metallic elements in the body of the car can drastically disturb electromagnetic fields. That’s why we did the APL (computer model) study – to figure out the optimum transfer scheme if large metal objects are present.”

The Stanford team created computer models of systems with metal plates added to the basic coil design.  Using mathematical simulations, postdoctoral scholars Xiaofang Yu and Sunil Sandhu found that a coil bent at a 90-degree angle and attached to a metallic plane can transfer 10 kW of electrical energy to an identical coil 6.5 feet away.

Fan and team members Xiaofang Yu, Sunil Sandhu, Sven Beiker, and Richard Sassoon recently filed a patent application for their wireless system.

Next up are plans to test it in the laboratory and eventually try it out in real driving conditions. The researchers also want to make sure that the system won’t harm, interfere with, or affect drivers, passengers or the dozens of microcomputers that control steering, navigation, air conditioning and other vehicle operations.

The team has started discussions with Michael Lepech, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, to study the optimal layout of roadbed transmitters and determine if rebar and other metals in the pavement will reduce efficiency.  Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) and his group are involved to be sure that the remaining 3% is lost as heat and not as potentially harmful radiation.

Both the MIT firm WiTricity and the Stanford team are way out in front of the technology.  The SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) taskforce on wireless charging and positioning of electric vehicles isn’t yet working up an on-road dynamic charging specification, even though a wireless charging and positioning of electric vehicles standard is expected to come with a final draft later this year.

Before everyone gets excited these technologies have quite a way to go.  The level of efficiency now looks very good.  The concept seems feasible.  But these kinds of ideas are going to be road-building projects and consume large amounts of copper.   Then one wonders how to bill the user.  Dynamic charging is a grand idea, and looks like it will work, but we’re quite a way from rolling on the highway and driving unlimited distances.   But it sure is appealing idea for the future.

Battelle/R&DMag has it that R&D funding growth will largely be driven by the Asian economies that will see an increase in spending of nearly 9%. North American R&D will grow by 2.8% topped by European R&D that will grow by about 3.5% even with Greece, formerly one of the world’s top 40 R&D spenders, expected to have no increase.  Worldwide growth remains strong and stable in the aftermath of the global recession.

Worldwide R&D by Nation 2012. Click for more info.

Still the largest economy the U.S. growth of 2.1% is leavened against a reported and suspect 2% inflation rate.  Taken at face value the growth is a miserly 0.1% and if inflation were counted more fully and accurately the growth would disappear.  That puts the U.S. in the same league as Greece.  The U.S. breakout Battelle/R&DMag uses looks like this:

• U.S. Private Industry will spend by far the largest amount with a projection of $279.6 billion in R&D in 2012, up 3.75 percent over 2011.
• U.S. Federal Government spending will reach $125.6 billion in 2012, a decrease of 1.16 percent.
• Academia in the U.S. will spend $12 billion on research in 2012, up 2.85 percent over last year.
• Non-profits will increase spending in 2012 by 2.7 percent to $14.5 billion and other government entities in the U.S. will round out total R&D expenditures by increasing 2.72 percent to $3.8 billion.

Beyond the national competition the Funding Forecast offers an insight on expectations.  The trend is climbing for more economic results in commercial outcomes.  Several years ago, only 10 percent of U.S. industries calculated return on investment (ROI) from R&D efforts, but the newest data from the surveys, which has become a part of the forecast, now indicates that 40 percent measure that figure.

Martin Grueber, Battelle Research Leader and co-author of the report said, “ . . . industry isn’t the only sector under the ROI microscope. There also are increasing demands that public sector R&D investments show real economic and policy outcomes.”

Of the top 50 firms worldwide 18 are in the U.S., where manufacturing R&D is the dominant role.  Getting to information that has a personal impact like output, products and jobs is a challenge faced by both U.S. firms and the government.  But there is wide agreement that technology collaborations are important to growth with many manufacturers planning on increasing collaborative activity such as knowledge sharing, shorter development cycles and the availability of proprietary technologies.

The survey respondents identified the top three ways government could help support manufacturing R&D as: providing tax credits to companies with active R&D programs, supporting academic R&D in manufacturing and increasing technology transfer support from U.S. national labs to industry.  That sounds like, let us keep our money, keep academia pushing the boundaries and knock down the bureaucratic barriers to get technology out into the economy.

The forecast looks at several industries and the full forecast can be downloaded.  For us the energy and fuels area is the prime interest.

In our field of interest, energy-related research sponsored by U.S. manufacturers and technology providers will reach nearly $6.7 billion in 2012, up 23.1 percent from 2011. Global spending by energy-related companies will grow by 7.8 percent to reach $17.9 billion in 2012.  Over a third of the world R&D total will come from the consumer of a quarter of the energy market, and a big chunk will be provided by Big Oil.

Top US Energy R&D Investors 09 to Q3-11. Click image for more info.

In the meantime a “review panel” commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) identified key R&D areas where DOE program and investment can play a significant development role, including several in which the DOE historically has underinvested. Those areas include both energy supply and demand and relate to both stationary power (deploying clean electricity, modernizing the grid and increasing building/industrial efficiency) and transport power (deploying alternative hydrocarbon fuels, electrifying the vehicle fleet, and increasing vehicle efficiency).

Top Energy Technology Research Areas Worldwide 2014. Click image for more info.

The review panel calls on DOE to maintain a mix of analytic, assessment and fundamental engineering research capabilities in a broad set of energy-technology areas, all the while seeking to balance more assured activities against higher-risk transformational work.  The panel’s report acknowledges that R&D efforts must be relevant to the private sector.  But there is a tension between supporting work that industry doesn’t – the long-term nature of basic research – and the urgency of the nation’s energy challenge.

That’s the paradox facing the granting bureaucrats and the private sector.  It obviously can’t be all one or the other.  Where the balance lies will be different for anyone looking.

It comes with some relief that there is a “raise” in store for the energy field, and a good one beyond the inflation rate.  There are a few policy and budgeters out there that grasp the importance of reliable energy and lower costs to consumers to drive a healthy economy.

Printed copies of the full R&D Funding Forecast report will be available by request Jan. 3 by contacting Sandy Walker at (614) 424-7619 or at walkers@battelle.org.

The variance comes from ExxonMobil being in business where careers, investors and consumers have to live with the results.  As the world’s largest free and independent petroleum company ExxonMobil has the most careers, largest amount and number of capital holders and countless consumers.  With investment planning running over a decade and money at risk in the hundreds of billions of dollars in such time frames, what these folks think matters to everyone.

To no great surprise the forecast calls for more worldwide energy use through 2040 by 30%.  Natural gas is expected to grow, and surprisingly coal is expected to decrease on a long trend down.

Catch this brief statement – Demand growth would be more than 4 times the 30% projection without the expectation of efficiency gains.  Obviously some consumers are going to do better than others and the hint in case it’s missed is, efficiency gains are going to be crucial to one’s economic welfare.

Global Fuel Mix By Decade ExxonMobil. Click image for the largest view.

On that point ExxonMobil is noting that steep improvements in personal transport are going to be vital as hybrids push the new car efficiency to 50 mpg.  The sooner one own transport gets there the better off over time one will be.

The Outlook mentions horizontal drilling and fracking reservoirs.  By 2040 the high tech natural gas production should clear 30% of the total consumption.  That’s cause to pause on the hysterics about the technology.  30% is a huge marginal percentage, meaning a loss of the technology would drive prices astronomically higher.

ExxonMobil isn’t just looking at petroleum because a tiny bit of oil and a substantial amount of natural gas goes to electric power generation.  Here is where the numbers truly surprise and are due a great deal of thought. ExxonMobil is projecting that global electricity demand will rise by 80% through 2040 in national economies for living standard improvement and consumers will switch to electricity from other sources such as oil, coal or biomass. By 2040, four out of every 10 units of energy produced in the world will be going toward the production of electricity.

Even at that 80% rise the Outlook foresees coal use to start shrinking and natural gas use to increase dramatically to over 30% as well.

Depending on one’s viewpoint good or bad, ExxonMobil points out that nuclear power use could well double by 2040 in nations worldwide.  One might think that the U.S. would do very well from a national security and economic standpoint to get moving on less dangerous and less expensive nuclear power options.

The projection for 2040 holds that more than 15 percent of the world’s electricity will be generated by renewable fuels – solar, wind, biofuels, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric power. The fastest growing of these will be wind, which will increase by about 8% per year from 2010 to 2040.

The brightest point is ExxonMobil’s calculations suggest that as the world personal vehicle fleet doubles the total fuel use will be essentially flat.  Against that is commercial use, trucks, planes, ships, and trains’ energy demand will grow 70%.  The Outlook is calling for 30% more oil production to keep up.

The Outlook is honest enough to point out some factors that could revise the forecast dramatically.  The leading ideas are in low cost storage for wind electricity and the fact that high utilization could speed up the wind installations.  Then battery costs on a steep decline would have a major impact on electric drive personal vehicles.  Then there are breakthroughs in petroleum production in research that might make everyone’s ideas obsolete.

The ExxonMobil 2012 Outlook pdf file is only 43 graphic rich pages. It’s a written narrative more than a track through data rich statistics.  And the variance from the Energy Information Agency isn’t far off.  Its time well spent to leaf through it.

The graphic above makes clear that is only been a couple hundred year since coal got a market share start, about 100 years for oil then natural gas to take off and barely 50 years for everything else.  It takes decades for energy infrastructure to take hold and gain major market share.

The question on the technological front is and will remain for some time which technologies will earn a big chunk of the bar in future graphics.  It’s quite clear for now that those bar segments aren’t going to change much in the coming decades without some major production and infrastructure cost break throughs.

FuelChoiceNow believes the circumstances that advanced fuel companies are developing new, affordable and commercial-ready alternatives to oil, but are inhibited by unnecessary vehicle and refueling constraints that choke demand and inhibit change in the marketplace.

The case for the position is founded in reality: ethanol and natural gas are evidence of a marketplace that does not reward price-competitiveness and innovation. Both are domestically-produced fuels that are cheaper than gasoline, but have limited market access.

Brooke Coleman, Executive Director of the Advanced Ethanol Coalition and a columnist of the BioFuelsDigest, is coordinating the organization’s campaign.  Coleman notes that cars and trucks could be made to run on any blend of gasoline, ethanol or natural gas-derived methanol for less than $100 per vehicle.  He’s correct if not exactly accurate.  For some the $100 quote is low and others way under.

Coleman says, “Americans are paying $4 per gallon for gasoline while we export cheaper fuels to other countries.”  This is not refutable – US firms are planning to export natural gas in liquid form, sell ethanol oversees in a growing market, and sell coal by the shipload.  All of these products could be used in the U.S.

FuelChoiceNow has a bit of a problem with the positioning.  Some folks insist that biofuels are best, as they offer no new CO2 to the atmosphere.  But the energy security crowd is quite pleased that alternatives and fossil sources are considered fairly.

That may be from a reality of economics.  Alternatives are only small fractions of the whole scale of fuel use.  More likely is that opportunities for jobs and an economic turnaround are going to need both sources at full speed.

FuelChoiceNow sees the effort as encompassing a wide range of fuels, including biofuels, natural gas, electricity and others, while supporting the immediate deployment of technologies that are available and price-competitive now. The position of its longer-range view has something to offer those whose primary concerns revolve around carbon, and the replacement of an oil-based fleet with electric vehicles.  That could be inevitable – or not – depending on how the storage issues work out.  We may be recycling carbon for centuries.

The ‘who’ of the early backers is heavily based around biofuels producers and an influential group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.  Observers have noted that after a period of three years in which a combination of oil, food and environmental interests have maintained a counteroffensive and substantially eroded much of the fan base of alternative fuels in Washington.  FuelChoice Now seeks to draw together a group comprising all the alternative fuel technologies and thereby renew the offensive against the oil platform.

Your humble writer doubts that big bad oil is so nefarious.  They’re just self-interested and will argue with considerable credentials that the facts command that the existing industry be handled with care.

FuelChoiceNow offers four arguments for gaining support.  First is that no single technology, in the near term, has the feedstocks or manufacturing base to replace all 180 billion gallons of fossil fuels consumed for road transport in the United States, or even the substantial majority of those gallons that are imported. A portfolio of technologies, and vehicle efficiencies, will be needed to end the addiction of imported oil.  This rather counterpoints the idea of an offensive mentioned above – yet the perspective is that transition is key to an earlier point – economic security may be more important to oil company stockholders than market suzerainty and share.

The second argument proposes that new technologies – through market access and market choice – will reduce costs for the American driver, create jobs for the domestic fuel and vehicle makers, reduce the trade deficit, and keep dollars inside the US that can be used to further economic growth through domestic investment.  This point has been pounded for months by the American Petroleum Institute to deaf democrats – so wish ‘em luck.

Third is the dubious “ridiculously low price of $100 per vehicle” for a flex-fuel conversion to unlock the fuel markets.  The pitch is “That’s the cost of two fill-ups, over the lifetime of the vehicle.” Right or even wrong by 100% – its cheap and worth doing by most people.

The fourth is a matter of reality – China, India and Brazil are already going this way.  These countries are the rising economic powers of the 21st century and unless the U.S. reasserts its economic leadership in a massive way risks being left far behind.  An oil-only U.S. economy corralled with high energy prices and the costs of defending access to imported oil, has no hope of competing in world trade against countries that have developed superior platforms for domestic energy production.

The FuelChoiceNow effort is missing a major player in energy sources.  Coal.

Technologies that convert natural gas to liquid fuel are similar to the technology to convert coal into liquid fuel as well.  Another is compressed natural gas, already in use by fleets.

Coleman’s relationship with BioFuelsDigest has triggered a discussion of technology from Celanese Corporation (at the end of the article).  Celanese has worked on light carbon molecules for years with acetic acid – the two-carbon molecule component of vinegar that is one step away from ethanol.  Celanese can make methanol from natural gas and with syngas can make abundant ethanol competitive to $60 crude.

Celanese is headed to China because they can do business there.  In the U.S. the process would be some major “policy discussion” taking years whereas China just needs to work out the commercial details.

There’s a recession based on business regulation example for you.

Right now China is already the second largest market for ethanol.  You might want to take a few minutes out to look at the BioFuelsDigest article for a much deeper explanation.

We best keep an eye on FuelChoiceNow.  Lets hope their press releases make it this way. Here’s to wishing them some success.

The chemical market from the raw material producer to the end user all have a need for standards, the way things are described and disclosed so decisions can be made.

Chemical companies and manufacturers want to be able to select greener starting materials and use cleaner chemical processes to make environmentally preferred products. But there are no authoritative marketplace criteria to identify green, greener, or greenest. And for those who think they are green, there’s uncertainty over the best way to communicate the supporting information.

The answer is a comprehensive voluntary industry standard that enables everyone from raw material suppliers and manufacturers to retail consumers and policymakers to exchange common information in a standard format on the environmental performance of chemical products and processes.

Neil Hawkins, Dow Chemical’s vice president of sustainability and environmental health and safety puts it this way quoted in Chemical Engineering News, “There is a hunger in the marketplace for reliable, consistent, compelling information on which to base greener, more sustainable choices. Chemical companies need a life-cycle view – greenhouse gases, water, energy, renewables, waste reduction, recyclability – that encompasses all parts of the supply chain. A standard is needed that provides guidance on the different types of data required, who should be publishing the data, in what form, and in what quality, so that you end up with a robust decision-making apparatus that will allow businesses and consumers to make fair comparisons and better choices.”

Standards already exist in many chemical fields and the most likely a consumer will see is a product ecolable or warning.  There might even be a recycled content label.  But the task across the whole chemistry field isn’t complete.

To that end, the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) is spearheading an effort to create the Greener Chemical Products & Processes Standard. This standard will provide data to allow anyone to evaluate the relative environmental performance of chemical products and their manufacturing technologies.

GCI Director Robert Peoples says, “We are building a multiattribute, consensus-based standard with third-party verification that a company can certify against to say that it has a greener product or manufacturing process than a competing product or a technology that it aims to replace.”

Nearly 60 participants, including stakeholders from chemical companies, academia, trade groups, federal and state agencies, and nongovernmental organizations, are providing a balance of opinions to help establish the standard, Peoples adds.

NSF International, a global expert in standards development, is administering the process. The end goal is to have the standard issued by the American National Standards Institute. A draft of the standard is nearly complete and is expected to be released for public comment over the summer. The plan is to have final approval by the end of the year.

The basis for the strategy of “informed substitution” is based on selecting chemical products that are fully assessed, have low hazard, and provide life-cycle benefits. The effort to develop the standard comes from green chemistry initiatives already in place. A primary example is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment (DfE) program, which encourages collaborative efforts between companies and environmental groups to screen chemicals and promote use of safer materials.

The EPA’s staff develops DfE protocols for conducting screens of alternative chemicals based on threshold values for human and aquatic toxicity, bioaccumulation, persistence, and other parameters. Products that contain ingredients posing the least concern among chemicals in their class earn DfE certification and the right to use the DfE logo on the product label.

The point of “informed substitution” is to move away from using the most hazardous chemicals.  Inherent in this model is an allowance for continual improvement by obtaining more data and a better understanding of what is greener and more sustainable over time.

Stephen K. Ritter writing in Chemical & Engineering News, a journal of the American Chemical Society has a much longer version of this post available. For those of you with interest in the issues, as this writer is in sustainability, recyclability, and contaminates that will always be issues life on Earth is going to have to stay abreast of, Ritter’s article is a great place to start.  Its link rich for getting the deeper details.

Its fair to say the standards, like it or not, are coming.  One might also hope that imports would also be subject to the standard as lead paint on kid’s toys is something that never ever should happen.

Fuels are going to migrate to more bio content.  As we’re seeing now some interesting compounds would blend and substitute fossil oil.  Many products for energy gathering an storage will use chemicals in manufacturing that should be well marked.  Human ingenuity is getting so sophisticated that some form of map about the components involved needs to be available.

The American chemical industry needs lauded for the effort and the result.  Manmade chemical compounds can be nasty, as can biological compounds.  But when industrial scale is involved the volumes and concentrations become a concern.  The safer chemical product production can get – the better.  Over time perhaps man can do better than biology.

Knowledge makes doing better possible and standards go far to spreading the knowledge and making it useable for more people to do more things.

The ACS selected 11 papers concerning materials and methods for energy production and storage (e.g., fuel cells, batteries, bio-hydrocarbon fuels and solar) from JACS and 10 papers from ES&T speak to how energy could – or should – be cleverly harnessed.

All articles will remain free to non-subscribers until the appearance of the next JACS Select. This issue is published in concert with the 2010 ACS Spring National Meeting’s similar focus on “Chemistry for a Sustainable World”.

An editorial by John Crittenden, ES&T Associate Editor and Henry White, JACS Associate Editor provides a quick summary of the papers selected for the issue.

One doesn’t see much transparency even though you’re often the taxpayer providing the money for the government’s grants.  Anytime one gets a shot a looking through the science it’s a fascinating experience.

Click the link and have a look. You may find something quite interesting.


It’s a problem that needs considered early on.  Shanz says, “Entrepreneurs often come up with ideas that can be protected, and this article lays out the pros and cons of various intellectual-property protections.  Furthermore, the paper urges entrepreneurs to weigh the time, cost and effort involved in pursuing various intellectual-property protections.”  That may be the most sage advice possible – know your options.

Schanz outlines three protections in the paper: patents, trade secrets and copyrights. Patents apply to inventions and devices. Utility patents provide legal protection of the idea for 20 years, dating from when the patent application is filed. However, when the 20 years are up, the information becomes part of the public domain. Trade secrets also apply to inventions or devices, but are protected internally, meaning that there is very little in the way of public protection. The benefit is that the idea never enters the public domain, so it can remain secret in perpetuity – a good example of a trade secret is the formula for Coca-Cola. However, if anyone else figures it out, they can legally market it themselves.

The third and of interest to this author is copyrights. Copyrights protect unique expressions, such as writing, music, art, film or design. Even elements can be a significant component of marketable products, such as the sounds and images associated with popular video games. Some people use this site’s contents for their site with an abundance of advertising to obtain an income without doing the work.  Others are students who think that copy and paste from this blog and other blogs I assume, is a fast way to a great grade.  I do appreciate the nice complementary email from teachers and professors.  So you know . . .

Schanz says, “Determining which protections best suit your needs is not a ‘one size fits all’ scenario. The options you may want to consider will vary over time. For example, entrepreneurs in a young start-up company with limited capital and resources may want to go the trade secret route until they ascertain how it fits in their business plan. But, if they have determined that the idea is valuable, they should also take steps to ensure that – eventually – it can be patented.” Schanz explains that if an entrepreneur discusses the idea with outside parties who have not signed non-disclosure agreements, the idea may no longer be patentable – it will have entered public domain.  Fair warning . . . Get a non-disclosure agreement before you show your work.

“If, over time, the start-up company has more resources available – and the concept is commercially viable – it may want to pursue a patent,” Schanz says. “The important thing is for the entrepreneur to weigh the risks and benefits of various options and make an informed decision. This paper should help entrepreneurs do that.”

The paper titled “Entrepreneurial Options for Protecting Intellectual Property,” was published in the September issue of the Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal, and can be downloaded in a pdf file. So get yours, save it to your drive and review it each few months.  If nothing else, it will save you a lot of money using your own lawyer as you’ll be much further up to speed than not having Schanz’ help in mind.

Maybe all this could backfire on a blog about energy and fuel.  But post writing and staying out in front of what’s happening, and may come in the future, depends on ideas having some capital value, which is what copyrights and patents offer.  So give the good professors paper a reading – if your idea works out, you and all of us will be glad you did.  We all will owe some thanks to Professor Schanz, the paper is after all a peer reviewed overview that everyone can use.

Its what the concept means that matters.  Just what all of the above mean by energy independence isn’t just one idea, but remember, energy isn’t fuel.  Fuels can get in short supply and see fearsome astronomical highs and depressing groveling lows.  But energy is abundant, it falls from the sun endlessly, radiates out from the planet’s core, and man has found one way to make it freed with fission, looks to be closing in on fusion and other even more exotic ways to exploit E=MC2 may becoming too.  Energy isn’t rare or expensive, yet gathering and reforming it into useful work can be an expensive challenge.

Energy independence does not mean self-sufficiency, it doesn’t mean not importing any oil or barricading a country from the global market.  Nor is energy independence about the amount of oil we consume or import.

Energy independence means turning primarily oil and other fuel products from strategic commodities that in short supply or extreme price pressure may drive economies to depressions or undermine the global economy and so determine the course of world affairs, into just another trading commodity.

Here is a real example to explain.  The electrical generation business has on the short list of sources, wind, wave, solar cells, solar thermal, hydro, natural gas, oil, coal and nuclear.  That ‘s a long short list.  Oil’s importance and critical need comes from its virtual monopoly over fuel for transportation that supports the entire economy and the modern way of life. Worldwide, 95 percent of our transportation energy is petroleum-based. Cars, trucks, planes, rail and ships run on nothing but oil or oil slightly diluted with alternatives and a bit of electricity.  There’s the issue, a massive dominance of petroleum, an oil monopoly in the transport fuel market.

North America is already energy independent for electrical generation and with a little resolve can become a vast overproducer and drive costs down dramatically.

The two consumer roles that can move the economy to independence are simply conservation meaning choices of low fuel use over profligate waste and more efficient tools.  Efficient tools can insulate a person or family, but as a society a larger choice needs made.

Transport vehicles, cars in particular will need to be more like the electrical generating system with more fuel choices.  The ability to run on other fuels in addition to those refined from petroleum is a crucial first step.  So long as cars are gasoline-only, oil remains the only source of energy, which is prescription for dependency, price manipulation and market volatility.  Not just energy independence is implausible, but economic security is at grave risk.

The technology is already here for the first step.  The current and least expensive is the flex-fuel vehicle that can run on any combination of gasoline and alcohol.  Alcohol does not mean only ethanol, and ethanol does not mean only corn as a source of supply.  It costs something less than $100 per new car to make a car flex-fuel capable. It only requires a fuel sensor and corrosion-resistant fuel parts and some adjustments in engineering choices.  Some of the engineering choices can assist in efficiency as well.

An Open Fuel Standard designed such that every new car sold in the United States be flex-fuel would not only help build the industry of alternative fuels and the associated refueling infrastructure, it would drive the technology of foreign automakers to add fuel flexibility options to all of their models, effectively making it an international standard, impacting the whole world market.

The next logical step is changing the car’s source of energy entirely.  Electricity can be transportation energy that can compete with oil.  Electrons with voltage are cheap, cleaner with the potential to be emissions free, domestically produced and can be generated from the multiple sources listed above and others not yet invented. Its refueling infrastructure is as close as wall sockets that are widely available. All that’s needed for an electric car to connect to the grid is an extension cord.

About 50% of Americans drive 25 miles per day or less, so shifting from fuels to electrons would make a visit to the local gas station a rare thing indeed.  Those lucky ones whose work, errands, friends and family are that close with a daily range of under 100 miles have an enormous expense advantage.  They need only rent a larger fueled vehicle for long trips.  If those U.S. consumers all owned an electric vehicle or hybrid half of the U.S gasoline market would be gone, some 12.5% of the world’s demand.  The hybrid models if made flex fuel as well could see miles per gasoline gallon numbers way beyond 500 mpg.

The world’s automakers have already committed to produce models of limited-range pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and fueled hybrids.  The plug-in electric hybrid allow drivers to travel on stored electric power for the first 20-40 miles, after which the car keeps running on the liquid fuel in the tank, providing the standard 200-400 mile range.  The opening to energy independence is there, its just a matter of consumer choices now.

For the energy independence naysayers, it’s too late.  The masses of vehicle buyers are plenty smart enough, they’ve seen the $147 barrel of oil collapse to near $32 and swing again to over $70.  Headlines of forecasters offer $200 barrels when the economy recovers.  Hybrid sales are on the upswing again.  The plug-ins are coming.  Oil’s monopoly is on its last legs.

But energy independence and security still depend on consumers making choices, government getting the doors open for alternative energy and fuel supplies and business healthy enough to invest in the infrastructure we’ll need to get the fuels and energy where its needed cheaply.

Professor Richard A. Muller. Click image for more.

Muller reportedly dares to argue that coal and nuclear fission are good sources of energy. Hydrogen and electric powered cars won’t do much to save either our atmosphere or our balance of trade, solar panels on residential rooftops make no economic sense; those environmental preachers Al Gore and Thomas Friedman are exaggerating the effects of global warming. My, that’s asking for it. This guy works as UC Berkeley after all.

Yet in such a place Muller teaches a course called “Physics for Future Presidents,” voted best class at Berkeley in 2008. Since 2000 it has grown from 54 students to 500, with a 100-person waiting list. At UC Berkeley. I’m gaining faith in America’s youth by the paragraph. In 2008 he authored a book with the same title for we regular folks. That might be worth the money.

What makes him stand out is that over the past eight years he’s attracted attention in public policy circles with his efforts to inject scientific understanding into the debates about terrorism, nuclear power, energy and global warming. Muller is 65 and was named a MacArther genius back in 1982. A native of New York City’s South Bronx he studied physics at Columbia and earned a Ph.D. guided by Luis Alvarez the UC Berkeley professor and Nobel winner who figured out what ended the dinosaur era.

Muller’s main interest is the U.S. leaders lack of understanding about the science behind important policy issues. This conviction stems partly from the 34 years he spent as an adviser to the U.S. government on national security issues. “I was painfully aware that scientific issues were not understood by top officials,” he says. “So many important issues have a high-tech angle to them.”

Muller, like a lot of us, agrees the planet is warming – Muller being worried and some of us just interested. What he talks about is that misinformation has been spread by scientifically uninformed folk: “deniers” on the one hand and “exaggerators” like Gore and Friedman on the other. Muller likes to rely on the IPCC as the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change is known. To which I watch, curiously bewildered at the reliance on computer modeling and historical and contemporaneous data of dubious value.

Muller comes right out at the exaggerated information spread by the notorious Al Gore and widely circulated columnist Tom Friedman with a couple sharp knife counter points.

More of interest to us is Muller reminds that The U.S. hasn’t started a new nuclear power plant operation since 1996. The blame, he asserts is in part irrational concerns about radiation. Muller says, “We need to educate the public. Nuclear is not as dangerous as they think it is. For starters, the public doesn’t understand that a certain amount of radioactivity is normal. Denver has 50% more radioactivity than the average U.S. city because of the granite in the rocks there. Yet the cancer rate in Denver is lower than in the rest of the country.”

On the Federal nuclear fuel repository at Yucca Mountain Muller notes that radioactivity levels are likely to be lower than in Denver, but that hasn’t calmed the public’s fears about storing waste at Yucca. As reported Muller completely overlooks the fact that all that “spent” fuel stored around the country has an enormous quantity of energy that can be used in other reactor designs.

Muller also has a clear head on clean coal. Maybe too clear, as he realizes that no matter what the developed world chooses about coal the developing world is simply going to use it. Muller concedes that clean coal will be necessary to control carbon emissions, while here the matter is all the other junk in coal effluents that is much more alarming.

Muller continues by crashing notions on photovoltaics by saying, “The only way to break even on solar rooftop panels is through the subsidies.” To which I’ll add that Obama and the Democrats are so busy spending the taxes on the future’s paychecks and profits that incentives, let alone capital investment will be very hard to find. Getting below a dollar a watt invested on a photovoltaic set seems extraordinarily high now.

On batteries Muller is “skeptical” thinking the life span for the investment isn’t going to work when considering the replacement costs. He might be correct today, but tomorrow will be a different picture. The concern from a planning view is not just the storage in a vehicle, but also the storage at charging locations in homes and commercial charging locations. A fast charge of a vehicle in minutes, or even a notebook computer in seconds is way, way past the installed wiring capacity. Fast charge is going to require more storage than almost everyone has calculated. A notebook at only 43.2Wh using 10.8 volts charging from 110 volts would need over 20 amps for a 1-minute charge, well past the 15 amp standard circuit in homes. Figuring a vehicle’s capacity would exceed the power of an electric range or electric dryer or even a welder. Storage will need to be something near equal the vehicle’s on board storage so doubling the total investment.

Perhaps Dolan’s best work is reporting Muller’s view that the biggest contributors to global warming or pollution will be China, India, Russia and others as their economies grow and industrial production increases. The relevant observation, hard fact if you like, is we have to invest in, or invent, technology that’s cheap enough to be deployed in China. “Anything that does not address China and India is a feel-good solution,” Muller says.

Kerry Dolan has written a great story for Forbes and I hope I’ve distilled it to a quicker read. There is more story at the Forbes site where it runs about three times longer with more personal details and point counterpoint exploration. That point counter point might be useful in talking with others making the story a worthwhile read.

The world is a better place for people like Muller having their say. As you’ve noted I’m not exactly in step, as I have a more future orientation, because what is passed cannot be undone, but what’s coming is in our power to control.

Getting efficiency has a more reasoned gratification; a shift is coming pointing to status earned from self-sufficiency, and a value of ego centered in stewardship and responsible actions. The cost isn’t in sin, rather it’s a sense of rightness and for some, a sacrifice.

Parallel to the emotional mental sensations are the effects of intelligence, creativity, discovery and applied effort. Investing from the mind’s efforts from research into new devices to the choosing and using tools and equipment brings satisfactions that last, at least until the next big breakthrough.

The measure was, is and will be using money. Efficiency has a cost from investing to find, design and manufacture goods to spending for buying and maybe installing what will over time save money. The single greatest hold on an economy wide transition isn’t a lack of incentive for the intellect, or even a change of emotional drivers, it’s the real cost benefit analysis each user will make.

A classic example written by Rebecca Smith in the Wall Street Journal looks at utilities that recoil from efficiency because they see a drop in use as a way to lose money. Ms Smith’s story called “Less Demand, Same Great Revenue” looks into the paradox faced in the electricity generation and distribution industry. An answer is labeled “decoupling” a method to assure a return on investment in the power business. As Ms. Smith describes, the pressure is on with the answers that are less than ideal.

States are ahead with measures to compel forms of decoupling with the Feds proposing to withhold some grant money if decoupling efforts are not underway. Meanwhile consumers are cutting use, from homes to reduced business hours and simply business closings have reduced demand. This is already motivating the utilities to look more closely at their role in overall energy use. A part of that is the desire to use decoupling as a way to protect utilities in a slowdown, which isn’t the point.

The regulations for utilities have been to set rates high enough to cover costs as known from experience and what projections can teach. The economic conditions, weather and events have been usually eaten by utilities only to be factored in to future rates.

Ms Smith’s story looks into the main decoupling efforts that have some results and offers some information useful for consideration. Allowing or compelling utilities to have a role past the meter is something that may well be “on time” now.

The other major energy and fuel area is transport. From scooters to airliners and massive ships the past year’s grave oil price distortion has had a lasting effect for many, but not all. “Not all” is so many that markets for guzzling vehicles survive even as the economy experiences a downturn. The government has answered twice now with standards for fuel economy rates for consumer vehicles that had consumers answering with a resounding “avoid” the choices, choose something even larger and heavier. Where the market is now can be hard to ascertain as sales are off a third or more across the model spectrum.

What we’ve done isn’t gain efficiency, rather we’ve economized, cutting use, cutting jobs, overtime, closed businesses and shrank the economy.

What’s available is efficiency. Efficiency can mean a return to that previous level of powered work and pleasures for the economized expense. But we all have to invest. We have to do the cost benefit analysis. Discover the rate of savings to get the investment back. Then we know when and what the payoff is.

In the face of an intense political, press and media blitz to spend disguised as stimulus, we are still faced with the choices. I admit it’s a hard thing with economic fear in place of the confidence known so many short months ago. But today is a good day to learn what choices to make in the coming months and years. My suggestion is absolutely not to behave as irresponsibly as politicians with a great rush to spend. Instead, with economizing underway, reduced expenses at hand and perhaps improved learning, what choices can yield the best results is a research each of us can undertake.

The economy will not be bad forever; confidence will overcome uncertainty and our doubts. It’s a good day to start figuring out what to do to gain efficiency, how to invest in it and plan to time it for the lowest cost.

If your confidence in your income is high it’s a great time to invest in efficiency – you’ll be an economic stimulus of one – one that matters and is contagious to others.