Autonomous Vehicle Consultant

Massachusetts’s Goal

In January 2009, Gov. Deval Patrick set a goal of developing 2,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity, enough to power 800,000 Massachusetts homes, by 2020. This post addresses unrealistic expectations of that goal in terms of onshore wind turbines. (The offshore case will be treated in separate posts.)

Acceptable Locations for Wind Turbines

In planning for wind development, the first task is to figure out the minimum wind speed needed by turbines, land areas where that speed is available, and the fraction of the time that it blows at that minimum level (known as the capacity factor). Areas with annual average wind speeds around 6.5 meters per second at a 80 meter height and a capacity factor 30 percent generally are considered to have a suitable wind resource for development. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in conjunction with AWS True Power conducted this wind area analysis. These areas did not include parks, wilderness regions, urban areas, and water features (because of the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome).

Based on this NREL analysis, the April 7 post will discuss unrealistic growth of wind turbines in Massachusetts as well as the incorrect number of homes that would be powered by them. The post of April 12 will highlight wind turbine issues associated with high capital costs and tax breaks. Summarized in the post of April 14 will be business-development issues related to the commercialization of wind turbines.

U.S. Uranium Reserves

The quantity of U.S. uranium reserves depends on the forward cost of uranium. By the end of 2008, U.S. uranium reserves totaled 1,227 million pounds of U3O8 at a maximum forward cost of up to $100 per pound U3O8. Based on uranium consumption in nuclear power plants from 1999 to 2008, there is approximately 23 years worth of demand at a maximum forward cost of $100 per pound.

The availability of U.S. uranium reserves depends on market value and becomes less with lower forward cost (for example, 10 years worth of demand at $50 per pound). Since the U.S. currently imports nearly 90 percent of its uranium, domestic uranium reserves will decline slower.

Foreign Dependence on Uranium: The pie chart shows sources of  imported uranium for 2010. Only 8 percent comes from the United States, a very troubling statistic when one thinks about energy security. The following table shows the production of uranium in various countries. The U.S. is ranked 8th. Glancing at the list of the remaining seven countries, one would consider Canada and Australia as reliable sources of uranium, but not necessarily the other five.

Production from mines in 2009 (country—tons of uranium)
1. Kazakhstan—14,020
2. Canada—10,173
3. Australia— 7,982
4. Nambia—4,626
5. Russia—3,564
6. Niger—3,243
7. Uzbekistan—2,429
8. United States—1,453

U.S. Government Plan

The Office of Nuclear Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy has published the following goals regarding nuclear energy:

1. extend useful life of existing nuclear power plants
2. enable new plants to be built
3. reduce the carbon footprint of transportation and industry
4. develop a sustainable fuel cycle
5. prevent proliferation

Business Development Issues

There is no U.S. policy that addresses the fact that the U.S. has limited uranium reserves and must import uranium. Will new nuclear plants (goal 2 in the aforementioned plan) be even more dependent on imported uranium?

Problem

A few decades ago the United States was a major exporter of crude oil, whereas now it continues to import an increasing amount (60 percent from OPEC). Further, 75 percent of crude oil is used for highway transportation and of this amount, 43 percent is consumed by passenger cars, according to the U.S. Transportation Energy Fact Sheet.

Future vehicles will need a fuel other than gasoline from crude oil due to ever decreasing supplies of crude, some from politically unstable countries. The U.S. Department of Energy does not appear to be addressing this problem with a comprehensive plan and timetable for a sustainable transportation system.

There are several alternative fuel candidates, such as ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, diesel from coal (a method used by Germans in World Wide II), hydrogen (that is, fuel cells), all electric vehicles, natural gas (liquefied natural gas (LNG)), and compressed natural gas (CNG). This post treats CNG.

Possible Solution: Natural gas is readily available in the United States., which possessed 2,552 trillion cubic feet of it in 2009. Based on the United States rate of consumption at 22.8 trillion cubic feet per year, there is enough to last nearly 110 years. That period could be considered sustainable for those with a “next quarter” mindset.

As of 2009 there were 11.2 million natural gas vehicles worldwide. Pakistan, Argentina, Iran, and Brazil each have more than 1 million such vehicles. The Asia-Pacific region has 5.7 million and Latin America has 4 million. CNG vehicles in the United States are limited primarily to 130,000 buses.

Bi-fuel (gasoline/CNG) vehicles are found in Europe where either fuel can be selected from a dashboard switch. Peugeot, Toyota, Honda and others manufacture bi-fuel cars. “Any existing gasoline vehicle can be converted to a bi-fuel vehicle. Authorized shops can do the retrofitting. This involves installing a CNG cylinder in the trunk, plumbing, a CNG injection system, and the electronics, according to Wikipedia’s article on natural gas vehicles. Adding more bi-fuel vehicles to the U.S. fleet could be a starting point in the transition to extensive CNG technology deployment.

Business Development Issues

“On December 16, 2010, the Department of Energy announced that it was accepting applications for up to $184 million over three to five years to accelerate the development and deployment of new efficient vehicle technologies.” Eight technology areas of interest were cited. None explicitly addressed CNG. Given overseas progress in CNG vehicle deployment, why did the Department of Energy explicitly ignore this technology?

The  post of March 15th discussed the use of all electric vehicles to reduce foreign oil consumption. More realistically hybrid electric passenger vehicles may lead to reduced foreign oil consumption, possibly sooner than all electric vehicles,  given their fuel efficiency and number sold to date.  For example the Toyota Prius (model year 2010) achieves nearly 50 miles per gallon, an average between city and highway driving according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The following figure indicates steadily increasing market penetration of both Honda and Toyota hybrid vehicles with a combined total approaching 2 million in 2010.

A problem with counting on hybrids to alleviate oil consumption in the near term is that it won’t happen in the near term. In the meantime, there may be serious disruptions to U.S. oil supplies from overseas any time a Middle East conflict erupts (such as in 1973, 1978, and 1990). What is the plan for that event? Long lines at gas stations? Don’t count heavily on the U.S. petroleum reserve, which has a supply for about 34 days at the current level of consumption.

Even more realistically, one should develop policies and comprehensive plans for using less crude oil in transportation by reducing the number of passenger vehicles in favor of expanded use of trains, buses, bicycles, Internet conferencing, and working from home. At present the United States does not have such policies and plans to squarely confront the fact that all U.S. crude oil assets are producing less oil every year. These assets include the lower 48 states, the Gulf of Mexico, and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska.

During his State of the Union address in January 2011, President Barack Obama declared that the United States should have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. This post addresses two key questions related to this policy goal:

• To what extent will electric vehicles help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil?
• Will these vehicles be available any time soon?

Passenger vehicles today are primarily powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs) and number nearly 137 million. These engines are heavily dependent on crude oil:

• 75 percent of crude oil is used for highway transportation
• 43 percent of crude oil is consumed by passenger cars
• 63 percent of crude oil is imported

The total U.S. crude oil consumption is 18.771 million barrels per day (b/d)  and 3.8 million is consumed by passenger cars using imported oil (derived from the aforementioned figures: 0.75 x 0.43 x 0.63 x 18, 771,000 b/d).

Using these numbers, the U.S. passenger vehicle fleet powered by ICE consumes approximately 3.8 million b/d of imported oil. If 1 million electric vehicles became part of the passenger vehicle fleet of 137 million vehicles by 2015, then those electric vehicles would be 0.73 percent of the entire passenger vehicle fleet. Thus, electric vehicles would reduce foreign oil imports by 0.0073 x 3.8 million b/d or 27,740 b/d, a mere “drop in the bucket.”

The entire passenger fleet of 137 million would have to be totally powered by electric motors to completely remove foreign oil imports for that vehicle class. “Although electric vehicles sales are forecasted to reach 67% by 2030, they will only account for 24% of the light-vehicle fleet,” according to the Electric Vehilces in the U.S.—A New Model with Forecasts to 2030.

President Obama’s goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2015 will not have an impact on the United States’ foreign crude oil dependence for decades.