Obama is saying some good things on energy

If you listen to President Obama, he's saying some good things about energy and environment. Here's a recent quote:

"So transportation, when it is not just fixing our old transportation systems, but it’s also imagining new transportation systems. That’s why I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. I would like for us to invest in mass transit. Because potentially that’s energy efficient and I think a lot more people are open now to thinking regionally in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we’re just building sprawl forever? Those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats… everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to design communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation. That’ll make a big difference.”

My daughter is an environmental planner. Here's what she had to say just last week:

"...Increase densities in cities with growth boundaries and incentives to decrease build-out. Make residential green building design affordable..."

I can see that idea beginning to work in my community of Las Colinas in Irving, Tx. Las Colinas has been a planned development for nearly 30 years now. It had an explosion in the early 80's, and then some stagnation in the 90's, Recently, the activity in the Las Colinas urban center has picked up dramitically. Why, because light rail is coming. With the Las Colinas light rail connection to downtown coming in 2011, and then connecting to DFW airport shortly thereafter, a major influx of high density building is taking off.

Light rail centered development has already occurred in Dallas at Mockingbird Station, downtown at Victory Plaza, and others. And it isn't just Dallas. Other cities have seen this as well. What I hope for is that this goes beyond using rail to travel around the metroplex. High Speed rail interconnecting major Texas cities like Dallas-Austin-San Antonio, Dallas-Houston, Dallas-Denver, would open major new realms of low cost, environmentally friendly travel.

We need not only the spending, but an attitude change by Americans to make this possible. The attitude change is already underway in our younger generations, it just needs to spread to the old folks in congress.

Death by Regulation

I was listening this morning to a report about alternative energy delimmas caused by solar and wind projects that can't seem to get their product to market because of resistance to building transmission lines. They site environmental regulations, not-in-my-backyard attitudes, difficulty getting permits from everyone as major hurdles.

I certainly agree that transmission towers are ugly. All above ground utilities are ugly. I used to own a house here in Irving, Tx that I loved. It had a great floorplan. It had exactly what my wife and I needed. My biggest problem with it is that the room on the second floor that I would use for my office had only one window, and it looked straight on to an electric pole with a power transformer only 25 feet away. That transformer was a major factor in my deciding to sell that house. So I understand when communities and homeowners take a stand against high voltage transmission lines in their back yard. They are ugly, and some would say even dangerous to those in their shadow.

Continuing with my own example, I moved from the house with the transformer and bought a house next to a gas pipeline. The pipeline was underground and protected by a 50 foot wide pipeline easement. It wasn't ugly, in fact, it gave me a 50 foot buffer to the next lot and thus much more privacy than I might of otherwise had. Was it dangerous? I don't know. It didn't have an issue in the years that I lived there, and indeed the only reminders that it was actually was the occasionally fly over of an inspection plan every few months.

Here's my point: We should build all new transmission lines underground. I know it's more expensive, but as I have previously suggested, it will not only mitigate the nay-sayers but potentially may become part of a multi-use right of way where appropriate.

There will need to be amendments to environmental and other regulations that enable swift approval and streamlined right of way aquisition for these underground lines as environmental disturbance, if properly built, will be only temporary and completely transparent in a very short time.

I am not advocating that the United States become as ruthless as the Chinese when it comes to economic progress. Amendments to environmental regulations must protect the intent of preserving, but we have to be able to adapt to change, and we have to do it without years and years of delays.

Wind Generated Electric Cars ranked most friendly

An article by Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/balanced-score-card-alternative-transportationenergy-source-_ranks-wind-electric-first-ethanol-last.php , listed Battery Electric Vehicles, charged by wind generated electricity, as the top Alternative Energy amongst known alternatives.

Not surprisingly, the article also lists Ethanol, wheter derived from corn or cellulose, as last. A few months ago, National Geographic Magazine also berated Ethanol as a marginal alternative fuel.

So why does our government pay out huge Ethanol subsidies? The answer may lie in the lobbists and a blind effort to do something, even if it is wrong. Not only was the Ethanol subsidy the wrong thing for the planet's energy alternatives, it was the wrong thing for the price of food. We simply can't afford to burn our food for energy.

Let's hope the new administration can deal with the error of our ways on Ethanol, and put the savings into the electric grid infrastructure.

A New Electric Grid should be multi-purpose

In his major speech on the economy, President-elect Obama mentioned the electric grid as one of his infrastructure investment proposals. This is a much needed investment that could be made much more useful if it could be implemented as a multipurpose right-of-way as I first proposed in this blog on Nov. 13.

The two most important elements of the multipurpose right-of-way are the underground electric grid and the high speed electric powered passenger rail service.

With the exception of a few routes, passenger service in the United States is provided over rails designed many decades ago and most Amtrak trains are limited to 79 mph maximum speed. This speed limit severely limits the ability for rail travel to compete with airlines or automobiles. High Speed, environmentally friendly, electric trains would change this equation, and in my judgement significantly change preferred alternatives in favor of rail for travel of 500 miles or less.

Flying has become such a hassle. TSA delays, weather delays, luggage restrictions, and ground transportation all make us seek an alternative. I believe such an alternative may be rail, and we can began by coupling it to our planned grid infrastructure improvements.

Do you know...Where we're going To?

A song, a direction, what?

Barack Obama has announced his energy team, and his Interior secretary. Where do we go from here?

I'm impressed with the energy secretary and equally unimpressed with the Interior secretary.

Here's my view:

• Corn Ethanol has to be OUT!
• Natural Gas should be IN!
• Nuclear power should be IN!
• Clean Coal shoud be OUT, unless it is really Clean, if so, it should be IN!
• Wind should be IN in every way.
• There should be a federal policy that overrides any homeowner association restrictions on Solar power installations for domestic power generation.
• There should be mandatory acceptance of reverse power credit. (meaning if you generate more than you use, the power company must give your credit.)

Regarding Interior department positions:

• I support 'right to carry' based on states policies on weapons
• I want increased funding of National Parks
• There should be 'line of sight' restrictions on BLM development
• We should allow ANWR development with strict restrictions.
• There should be mandatory air quality improvements in critical parks such as 'Great Smoky Mountains National Park'

These are my views as of today, December 18, 2008

Super Highway Corridor of the Future

Why not build a new kind of superhighway consisting of an integrated set of components.

1. An underground high voltage transmission line as a part of our next generation transmission grid.
   
   The underground transmission grid is already being proposed by advocates of a new grid system. The advantage of integrating the transmission grid with tracks and roadway are to take advantage of this proximity to massive power to make adding the infrastructure for the trains and the roadways significantly less expensive because of the power availability.
   
2. Tracks and supporting infrastructure for high speed magna-lev and / or conventional electric trains
   
   Inexpensive high speed transportation point to point could provide a quality alternative to air travel over short to medium distance hauls. For distances of 500 miles or less, high speed 'bullet' type electric trains or magnalev trains would likely be able to provide shorter total transit time from downtown to downtown than air travel.
   
3. Roadways for electric cars.
   
   The electric car roadways would both power and charge electric cars using this roadway. This roadway would be a limited access toll road providing not only and electricity supply to power and charge the cars using it, so that batteries would be fully charged on exit of the roadway. Toll charges would automatically be computed based on KW used. There could be automated lanes, similar to the HOV lane concept, that provided computerized control, such that, once entering the lanes, the cars could literally drive themselves along the route with drivers taking over again on exiting the automated portion of the roadway.
   
   This concept could work with any of the electric car designs currently in progress with the addition of electrical pickup hardware and control logic. The cool thing about this proposal is that once a pickup and charging standard were developed, there could be benefit even if the road segments were discontiguous as they would provide a 'charge on the fly' capability for whatever length they exist.

This is probably not an original idea. It may not even be a good one, but it seems so logical to me. It rolls a set of ideas and directions proposed by so many of our energy leaders into an ultramodern composite. It's the stuff of sciencefuture.

If the next administration is going to invest in a massive energy independence program, a massive jobs program, and a massive infrastructure rebuilding program why not build the future, not just more of the past. Integrate the ideas I say.

Elections over, now the environment!

Tonight the voting is over but the counting is just beginning. No matter who wins, tomorrow is a new day. The exit polls say the number 1 issue is the economy. That's American...whatever ails you most at the moment.

I'm in the midst of a 2000 mile driving trip. With gas prices less than half what I paid this summer on my trip to Yellowstone, it's no wonder Americas short term memory is wrapped areound saving us from the misdeeds of a Wall Street few.

I hope that the new president will take a serious look at ranking the energy alternatives in terms of the total environmental cost of each, and choose some national priorities to pursue with an unprecendented national goal.

Good luck to the winner. You will need it.