Author: Captain Obvious

That makes no sense of course … that is unless you live in Sweden. You really would have a tough time making things like this up. Read the article in Institute for Energy Research. 

This relates to a story in Fox News:

“Switzerland could ban electric vehicles from being used non-essentially this winter as government officials begin to brace for an energy crisis during the winter months, according to reports. The Telegraph reported on Saturday that Swiss officials have drafted emergency proposals that restrict power usage if things get bad this winter.

For example, shops may need to reduce their hours, streaming services may need to be limited and buildings may only be heated to 20 degrees Celsius, or 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  Other bans, according to the Telegraph, may include concerts, theater performances and sporting events, all to prevent a blackout.

The reason Switzerland is preparing for possible blackouts is that the country relies on imported energy during the summer months. While more than half, or 60 percent of the country’s energy comes from hydro powered means, but in the winter months productions slows and the country relies on imports.”

Where do I begin?  Have politicians lost their minds?  Don’t they remember the recent mask and distancing confusion that destroyed consumer confidence in their leaders?

Any media strategist will tell you that once you lose consumer trust it is almost impossible to rebuild it.  If EVs are an imperative … and things like banning Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) is law as it is becoming in some States, you would think you would find a way to give consumers who obey that law some level of preference in the supply portfolio rather than punish them for obeying rules.  Yes, it is important to keep the electricity flowing, but wouldn’t it be much more consistent to offer credits or payment to EV owners to charge at convenient times?

But, no … and the list of other inconveniences include:

• Under crisis measures, hot water may be disabled in public bathrooms and the use of electric leaf blowers barred.
• If the most extreme shortages hit, sports matches, concerts and theatre performances would be canceled, and all leisure businesses forced to close.
• These measures are being made necessary by decades of actions in Europe against the use of fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy, mostly intermittent wind and solar power, ostensibly in pursuit of meeting climate commitments.

Apparently, I am going too fast …

As I picked up the mail today and found nothing but a few cards, I once again threw away a stack of catalogs for companies we never buy from and a host of junk mail.  Once again I am struck by the stupidity of today’s world printing paper in full color, delivering it to my door, and then being forced to throw it away.  Years ago I put the paper recycling blue box right there under my mailbox.

Couple that with single use water bottles and the stack of boxes and packaging with my Amazon orders, I have to wonder whether we are all hypocrites.  We have come to learn that recycling is a delusion with less than 10% of the materials actually reused, and these catalogs are the kind of paper that is almost impossible to recycle.

Perhaps the attempts to bring these wastes into focus with Scope 1, 2, and 3 emission inventories will help, but I fear it won’t.  Maybe cities will start to ban single use water just like they are banning natural gas in new construction or the internal combustion engines.

But why don’t I hear public outrage with all this paper we are delivering to each household only to then pick it right back up and then have to landfill it?

Am I going to fast?  Or are we being distracted by something that sounds more threatening?

I attended an 8-hour virtual presentation on carbon strategies around the world and noticed now that they have changed the language once again.  Global warming moved to climate change because the warming was not showing up in the last decades of data and now the goal of net zero is being replaced by the phrase the pathway to safety … as if a 2 degree C temperature increase is now a good thing.

When are we going to get serious enough that we examine the way we live every day?

Everyone wants the EV charging experience to mimic the way they drive their internal combustion choices.  Seems only reasonable right?  Once again, we are asking the wrong question.

First, let’s make this very easy to understand and use my Tesla as an example.  I visit a recharge station with my Tesla battery just less than half full… say 100 miles showing and charge it to 200 miles in about a half hour.  Adding 100 miles requires about 35 kWh and I do that in 30 minutes so the average demand while I am charging is 70 kW.  On average I am adding 3.3 miles to the battery each minute.

Stay with me now.  As I watch the charging cycle on my dash I see the instantaneous charge rate starts out much higher than that indicating my electric demand is actually several hundred kW.  Since modern electric utilities measure demand as the highest amount of energy in 15 minute blocks for commercial customers, let’s just say the actual registered demand when my Tesla plugs in is probably 200 kW.

Now, let’s imagine I have a new Tesla with a 400 mile range and want to do the same thing.  My demand would be closer to 400 kW.  And, let’s imagine that I wanted my recharge experience to be similar to my gasoline powered car … say 5 minutes and not 30 minutes.  That means the demand is 1,200 kW.

All along the average demand at the charging station is dropping which makes the business case for the electric utility serving that site less and less attractive.  Therefore, the quest for short charging cycles is in complete opposition to economics and efficiency. Yet, we hear more and more of our taxpayer money being spent to promote the construction of these fast charge stations.

Am I going to fast?  In this modern era of electricity system emphasis on load management, why on earth are we suggesting that EVs should recharge at these rates… just because we want more and more people to have them?  Instead, why aren’t we thinking of offering customers pricing that reflects their choices on recharging.  If you want to recharge in 10 minutes, you pay a higher price compared to recharging in 30 minutes.

Why is it that I don’t hear anything about this kind of thinking?

Oh, I forgot … people are not thinking.

You have been thinking that ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.  After attending the daylong GreenBiz Group teleconference called VERGE Net Zero, I am convinced it stands for the Environmental and Social Gravy Train.

Today’s intellectual elites love aspirational standards that organizations should follow as they strive to be more socially responsible. And, the concept that ESG reporting is important because it helps investors evaluate whether or not to invest in a company.  However, after hours of platitudes and some frank admissions that things are just not working as planned, I conclude this is just one more gravy train.

This slang expression gravy train usually describes something as an easy way of earning a lot of money over a long period.  You usually use this expression in a disapproving way. In the United States, `gravy’ was slang for money or profit. Railway workers invented this expression in the early 1920s to describe a regular journey which provided good pay for little work.

Nobody …not one single person … brought up the blinding flash of the obvious: we can’t simply keep up our extractive uncontrolled consumption of the planet believing that in some magic way we will meet the energy, no less food and water needs, of a growing population with an appetite for goods and services using wind and solar.  Yes, for those of you who know, wind is a subset of solar … I know.

Our social responsibilities include recognizing that we have moved way beyond food, shelter, and living safely in our communities.  We are the lucky few who have these basic needs: rare to say the least for most of the rest of the world.  They are right to want them as well, but as they do, the energy footprint to meet those needs will rise as well.  We can’t build our way to a balanced supply/demand without flattening that demand curve.

It is interesting to note that today’s Climate Tech Weekly gave credit to the person who started the movement to reduce the demand curve: the legendary Amory Lovins (engineer and co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute) who called the “largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis” — conservation and energy efficiency. As he told GreenBiz in 2019, “Since ’75, the cumulative energy saved by reduced intensity is 30 times the cumulative extra supply from doubling renewable output.”

Maybe we will see a sea change.  I would hope so.  However, the lure of the governmental spending has brought forth thousands of firms who want to study how technologies will somehow solve the problem.  None of them … except for firms like us … have focused on flattening the curve.

One of my favorite professionals described this as: everyone is more concerned about getting their straw into the governmental punchbowl and sucking as fast as they can so they can get the most out of the boondoggle before anyone discovers it is waste (the Welfare Act for Scientists, Technologists, and Engineers).

Ugh.

I remember when we were asked to reduce speed limits to 55 mph because the energy crisis in the late 1970s was the “moral equivalent of war.”  But, I really wonder whether we have lost that sense of national commitment to reduce energy use when I feel going 75-80 in a posted 70 mph speed zone poses the real danger of being mowed down by those trying to get around me at 90 mph and higher speeds!  I do get a sordid sense of gratitude occasionally when I pass them pulled over on the side of the road getting a speeding ticket, but not often enough.

Everyone in the United States seems to say they are concerned about climate change.  But, it seems no one is concerned any longer about the trash we produce, the single use water bottles we throw away, or the appetite we have for things that are unnecessary for daily life.  This is all in stark contrast to the way Germans are responding to their energy crisis.  There is something to consider here.

The recent article in the Wall Street Journal points to the results of a national push to conserve and to do without. Read more here.  Actually, I am not really surprised.  Europeans have always been more tolerant of discomfort and doing without.  We used to be that way.  I still remember my parents talking about the Great Depression and how they conserved.  The joke was that my mother still had food from that period in her freezer.

Some of you will remember that the electric utilities used to make requests during heat waves that customers turn off appliances and set up their thermostats.  Utilities could and actually did count on these as predictable responses.  But, as the frequency of these requests increased, they noticed that customers would not respond to the same extent, and if you pushed these requests to more than two or three days in a row, they virtually disappeared.

This was not lost on the public service commissions nor the utility planners.  Hardware based programs emerged to directly cut water heaters and air conditioners off and some incentives were offered to customers for this inconvenience and/or loss of control.  Over the past few decades, smart thermostats have been added to the portfolio.  But, in most cases, the consumer has the right to opt out.  Yes, they may lose the economic benefit, but the electric system loses the safety net it had counted upon for system reliability.

And that is the rub, now isn’t it.  Our grid reliability hangs in the balance.  We all will suffer if the utility can’t control voltage and frequency.  Their only choice is to cut the power off.  We have watched that happen out West.  What do customers do then?  They buy generators.

Are we thinking clearly with all this as we pursue carbon reduction goals by asking customers to participate in these thermostat programs?  Might it not become terribly important that we educate customers that simply dropping out and buying a generator to eliminate their sense of obligation to a greater good is perhaps ignoring the obvious?