Josh Mogerman's Blog: Moving Beyond Oil

Better Place? Better Model! Concepts We All Understand for Clean Energy Infrastructure

2008-09-19T20:51:06Z

I finally got around to reading last month's Wired magazine, which included a feature story on the electric car company, Better Place. While I was struck by the incredible aspirations of this company, as a communicator, I was even more impressed by the way their business model helps to tear down the walls to an expanding green economy.

Over and over again we hear about how the infrastructure hurdles prevent some of the wholesale changes necessary in the energy sector. But Better Place's business concepts remind us that the changes aren't so daunting by connecting with a pair of technologies that have emerged, completely new, in recent decades.

You've probably used them today.

Got a mobile phone in your pocket?

Did you get cash out of an ATM this week?

Before you listen to the green energy doubters shouting about infrastructure limitations, think about how quickly those technologies emerged in the last two decades. They move to ubiquity in a very short period of time---even without government subsidies---through the rapid development of new infrastructure.

We've gone from executive brick phones to ubiquitous clam shells and Blackberries in no time.

And there's an ATM on every block here in downtown Chicago. Heck, I've used them on four continents!

In both cases, infrastructure was developed from scratch. Think about mobile phones. With the proper market signal, corporate players managed to get cell phone towers in place quickly all over the world. In two decades, the mobile phone companies have even changed out the technology infrastructure already----we don't even have cell phones anymore, all the carriers have shifted over to digital networks.

And that is where Better Place comes into play. Their business model assumes that batteries will take the place of the gas tank in your current car. Instead of paying at the pump---you'd enter into a recharging contract kind of like you your current mobile phone agreement (but using miles instead of minutes). You'd pull up to their charging centers to freshen or change out batteries. GM's Volt would be your Motorola RAZR; Better Place would be Sprint or US Cellular...

Sounds aggressive? No way they can build this out? They are starting now with contracts to build in Israel and Denmark. And they are in discussion with the state of Hawaii.

Small places no doubt, but if this works expect the business model of using cell phone-like plans to help reduce higher up front costs of green technologies to spread like wildfire.

Competition will sprout up and rather than thinking about whether we can build out the electric car infrastructure---you are going to have to worry about whether you want to pay the surcharge to juice up at one of Better Place's competitor's stations... The same mental math you probably make at the ATM.

So, is Better Place for real? Beats me. There are doubters out there. So I'll leave it up to Roland, Luke, or Deron in the Vehicles program to decide the merits on that front. But I do love its implications for messaging and conceptualizing quick action on the electric car front and getting people's heads around that issue is almost as important these days.

Freak Fish? There's just no tar sands euphemism for this…

2008-09-05T22:29:15Z

We know that tar sands oil produces 3-5 times the climate changing emissions of traditional petroleum oil production on a per barrel basis. But what about it’s mutating power? Perhaps, that is increased too? Just check out this photo of a fish, recently caught downstream from “the Patch” (the Albertans euphemistic name for the tar sands mining area). Two mouths make him look pretty angry, eh?

All kidding aside, this photo, taken by Ling Wang of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, has gotten a lot of attention in Canada where it symbolizes the angst that many Canucks are feeling over tar sands production. It is a cash cow---but what are the larger costs?

Beyond the climate change impacts, there are huge concerns over the water-intensive process of boiling water and using it to “wash” the low-grade oil substitute bitumen out of sand. To produce 1 barrel of oil from the Patch requires 2-5 barrels of water---most of which becomes so contaminated it cannot be returned to the river and gets dumped into the euphemistically-named “tailing ponds.” These are huge lakes of waste water so toxic that 500 ducks recently died after landing in one… Communities nearby have long been concerned over the potential for the tailing ponds to contaminate the nearby Athabasca River and the regional water table.

While fish mutations can occur for a variety of reasons, to many this fish exemplifies their fears of what is the likely true cost of tar sands mining, along with the elevated cancer rates already being felt in nearby native communities.

The folks in Alberta can certainly be creative with the English language. But I doubt that they will be able to come up with a euphemism to explain away this sick swimmer.

Chuck D Would Probably Hate Oil Shale

2008-07-23T20:43:23Z

I hit the Pitchfork Music festival this weekend in Chicago. A blissful weekend of indie rock that included a stellar live performance from Public Enemy.

Chuck D, Flava Flav, Terminator X, and the S1Ws ripped through their classic album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” which includes a song that would be the perfect sound track for the Department of the Interior this week…

"Night of the Living Baseheads,” was PE’s angry reaction to the impacts crack cocaine had on their community in the early 90’s. Nothing good comes from burning rocks.

The connection? Tuesday the Department of the Interior announces their intention to draft regulations for a commercial oil shale industry on 2 million acres of public lands out west.

Not familiar with the weird, hair-brained scheme that is oil shale? Let’s review.

Apparently, there are chunks of the countryside where the rocks have some petroleum in them. The idea is that if you heat these rocks, literally, for years at a time…eventually they will ooze a low-grade oil that might be refined into gasoline.

I am not kidding. That’s the new Bush administration energy policy: slow-cook rocks. We will literally melt some of our most picturesque landscapes for gasoline. It sounds more sci-fi than Soylent Green, but that is the state of our oil addiction.

We don’t even know if this is even a viable option---but we do know it is very bad one for the environment.

How bad? Four times the climate changing emissions of standard petroleum products. And it really sucks up water…which is problematic considering the rocks in question sit in the thirsty states of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Water is actually more valuable than oil in that region. State leaders in Colorado and Wyoming have their reservations about moving forward with this until the environmental impacts are assessed and mitigated. Hopefully, they will recognize that there has to be a better way to deal with the energy crunch than swapping the water for oil (incidentally, it is estimated that a commercial oil shale industry would use well over twice the amount of water as the population of Denver every year---yikes!).

There is a better way. We can use the resources we already have more efficiently, such as doubling the fuel economy performance of our vehicles which would be the same as cutting gas prices in half. And let’s get away from this false choice of dirty oil or dirtier oil. As we say again and again, it is time to invest in clean, renewable energy.

Because nothing good comes from cooking rocks. Chuck D’s words hold true whether you are talking about crack or oil shale:

“How low can you go?”

Want High Gas Prices? Invest in Tar Sands!

2008-06-18T21:32:46Z

Prices at the pump are hitting us all pretty hard. Everyone is looking for a quick fix. And everyone is looking for someone to blame.

NRDC’s recent win against the ConocoPhillips Wood River Refinery air permits gave a target to some folks with a troubling agenda.

Last week a U.S. EPA appeals board sided with NRDC and the American Bottom Conservancy, effectively rejecting permits that were too lax. The decision probably set a precedent that other refinery expansions will need to live up to from here on out to keep more dangerous pollutants out of the air in nearby communities. While we have a lot of problems with the stuff that this facility will be refining, the case was all about forcing this $4 billion expansion project to live up to the rule of law. At a time of record oil company profits, we really should not ask kids in East St. Louis to pay the refinery's environmental costs with asthma and the folks in Alton deserve the same environmental protections enjoyed by Californians. The law says best available technology is required---and that is where you will find it.

But some knee jerk reactionaries kept trying to link this to gas prices even though this refinery is years away from its planned completion. They said it was an effort to keep gas prices high… Or to make Americans drive ox carts to work… Huh?

Our challenges have done absolutely nothing to affect the current price of gas, but there certainly is a connection between prices at the pump and Midwestern refineries. Throughout the region, oil companies are undertaking huge expansion projects to refine more and more oil from Canadian tar sands. An investment in tar sands is an investment in high gas prices since the stuff is only profitable when a barrel of oil trades at the insanely high prices we have seen only recently. That is because tar sands oil is exactly what it sounds like, oil boiled from sand. Besides the frighteningly high environmental costs (in CO2 emitted, forests ripped to the ground, and water-intensive production), the stuff comes from one of the most expensive ways to extract oil there is…it ain’t cheap to squeeze goo from pebbles and sand.

Adding a dirty fuel source will hasten climate change, but it won’t fix the problem at the pump.

Tar sands will not make it easier for folks to fill their tanks right now. Unfortunately, very little will in the short term aside from tuning our engines, inflating our tires, and focusing on conservation. Only an embrace of efficient technologies can move us out of this hole---we cannot dig our way out of this mess.

NRDC is pushing for clean and renewable energy sources that will help stimulate the economy, create jobs, and help to ward of global disaster.

And the oil sands folks, what are they pushing for? I mean besides oil profits?

Ill-informed in Indiana

2008-06-02T22:29:27Z

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was in Benton County last week to kick off construction of a new wind farm with BP executives. That embrace of alternative energy is something to celebrate, right?

I was pretty excited by the news about the huge project in the Northwest Indiana Times…until I came to this section of the article:

Daniels also used the moment to comment on the larger theme of energy independence. And he thanked U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., for not joining those who oppose the expansion of BP's Whiting refinery.

"The ill-informed, I'll be charitable, who would stop, first of all, the biggest single investment, thousands of construction jobs and countless jobs beyond, but forget that, a refinery that will contribute to the end of $4 per gallon gas," Daniels said in a bold forecast and swipe at critics.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has said it plans to sue BP in federal court for alleged Clean Air Act violations at the refinery. Environmental groups also have challenged the state air permit for the expanded BP refinery.

Are you kidding me? Let’s review—that man speaking was the Governor of Indiana, not a BP spokesperson, right?

The expansion project that Daniels is heralding to end $4 gas is just the opposite---it is a sign that the oil companies are pretty confident that high prices are here to stay.

BP is making a $4 billion bet that high gas prices continue with that refinery. It will be the largest tar sands refining facility in the U.S. and tar sands can only be profitable when oil prices are high. To get the stuff out of the ground in Canada, they have to rip up the ancient carbon-eating forests, dig out sands by the ton, boil it to extract the bits of bitumen, and then go through additional refining processes just to get something like more typical petroleum products. With all of that, it was too expensive to use the stuff broadly until oil prices went through the roof. (Deron Lovaas has had some really strong postings about current gas prices.)

Besides, the refinery won’t be online until 2011, so it would have had no impact on current prices at the pump. The NRDC challenge to BP’s air and water permits will not stop this expansion---while we have real concerns about the environmental impact of tar sands, this is not an effort to stop the refinery. It is an effort to force the state to meet the standard of the law. Indiana’s regulators are not forcing BP to adequately protecting its citizens, Lake Michigan, or the surrounding communities...That is why we are fighting. I have no idea what the state is fighting for, though some in the local media have some thoughts (second item in link).

And as long as I am splitting hairs with the top dog in the Hoosier state, what is up with the “countless jobs” reference? He has been swapping talking points with BP on this project and knows very well how many jobs will be created---which is not many after the construction is complete. This is a $4 billion project that will create less than 100 permanent jobs. Yes, they are needed in northwest Indiana, but everyone in the region is going to be paying an inordinately high price for a handful of new positions if the state continues to stonewall NRDC’s efforts or the Illinois Congressional delegation does not convince the USEPA to fix the air permits.

Look, this is deep stuff. There are far better voices on this blog than me to talk about the energy crossroads we find ourselves at in this moment---but I am pretty comfortable pointing out that this was a wasted opportunity. Instead of tossing short-sighted blame-game-bombs, I wish the governor could have used the unique combination of windmills and oil execs to talk about big picture energy policies for the state of Indiana and the United States.

I could go on, but I think I’ll be charitable and hold off on pointing out the other ways that Governor Daniels is ill-informed.