Adam Carolla on Electric Cars

Adam Carolla turns his well-honed ire on electric cars and the stupider parts of the green energy movement.

[Gizmodo via Brian]

Google Power & Light [Googletopia]

Google Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google Inc., has been granted utility status by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

That's right. Google can now sell you electricity.

Why does Google want to do this? Right now, the company rakes in billions of dollars from ads and it doesn’t have to have extensive support desks and remote repair teams — the kind of people-power providers must have on staff — in order to do it. Selling power is a much more hands-on business.

Google has said it wants to go carbon neutral. With the FERC order, it can now effectively erect as many solar panels and install as many fuel cells as it likes without worrying about having purchased too much capacity; the company can now sell off the extra power it generates.

But more importantly, Google can now exploit its massive data centers to provide services for controlling power consumption in commercial buildings, industrial sites, and homes. It is largely a task that should be handed off to large computer rooms.

It was only a matter of time. Google's data centers use a ridiculou amount of energy, and its founders are strong green energy proponents. Now that they can become a self-sufficient power and data company, there is little stopping them from taking over the world.

With their commitment to green energy and efficiency, this may be a good thing, as long as they don't turn evil.

I personally look forward to the day when Google makes government obsolete.

[via TWig]

Exxon Invests $600 Million in Biofuels

Oil companies see dollar signs in going green:

Among the oil companies, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have been the most active investors in the sector. But it's even beginning to attract more-conservative companies like Exxon Mobil Corp., whose chief executive, Rex Tillerson, once famously dismissed corn-based ethanol as "moonshine." Exxon announced in July it was investing $600 million in an algae-to-fuel start-up, Synthetic Genomics Inc.

"It was a major signal to the biofuels industry," says Bruce Jamerson, chief executive of Mascoma Corp., a producer of cellulosic ethanol, which is made from inedible plant materials.

The world economy is shifting, in part due to organized government action.

The answer is the low-carbon policies now being put in place across the developed world. In the U.S., for example, the Renewable Fuels Standard mandates growth in annual sales of biofuels through 2022. The Department of Energy expects U.S. production of biofuels to increase from less than half a million barrels a day in 2007 to 2.3 million barrels a day in 2030. Inevitably, that will erode the oil majors' conventional business.

"The oil companies…see a world of restrictions coming on high-carbon fuels, and they need alternatives," says Mr. Jamerson.

Investments in biofuels, however, account for but a small fraction of total capital investments

Shell, for example, has spent about $1.7 billion on alternative energy and carbon-emission-reducing technologies like CCS in the past five years, while its total capital investment budget last year was $32 billion. BP's investments in alternative energy totaled $1.4 billion last year, about 6% of its capital-expenditure budget for the year, and will fall to between $500 million and $1 billion this year as the global economic slowdown saps demand for energy.

What I want to know is Shell's total investment in R&D. A lot of capital spending could be going to building infrastructure or buying machinery, but I don't think its public information what fraction of the research money is going to renewables. I would imagine a lot, but who knows, oil still has decades. But they know the change is coming.

To reduce carbon in the atmosphere efficiently, we must assign it a specific cost, because oil is terribly convenient from an energy perspective. It will take a long time before renewables catch up, and even longer if there is no change. Carbon credits are inefficient paperwork nightmares, and ultimately add up to a tax, so why not skip the middle man and call a spade a spade, and a tax a tax.

The Unintended Consequences

Renewable energy is often touted as our savior from environmental collapse, but many renewable sources come with their own downsides.

Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.

“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.

Conflicts over water could shape the future of many energy technologies. The most water-efficient renewable technologies are not necessarily the most economical, but water shortages could give them a competitive edge.

There are always unintended consequences, ignore them at your peril.