Hybrid car cost of ownership

Tom Del Rosso wrote:
> Besides higher mileage I suspect there must be hidden costs or else
there
> would be hybrids on dealers' floors. Is there a significant cost due
to
> replacing batteries or something? Or are they just not ready for
primetime?
>

Forgive me if this gets posted twice. I crashed earlier.....

Anyway, we had a Ford Escape Hybrid in our shop a few days ago for
pre-delivery inspection. Cost is about $27,000. The technician that was
trained to work on the thing said the battery costs $8,000, but Ford
puts a 150,000 mile warranty, free replacement on the battery. We'll
see. Everything under the hood that has 330 volts is colored red as a
warning. EPA rated mpg is 31 highway, 36 city. Yep, it's rated higher
mpg in the city than the highway. 'Course we all know that EPA ratings
are not accurate.
I'm not posting this to praise or to bash the thing, but if gas goes
higher (and it is) more people will be interested in them.
My sister-in-law has a Toyota hybrid which I have yet to see or drive.
She says that with more than two people in it, it REALLY is
underpowered.

Steve W. wrote:

> "JazzMan" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>y_p_w wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Certainly many of the electrics in recent years were sold at a net
>>>loss. Remember the GM EV1, Toyota RAV4 Electric, or the Honda EV
>>>Plus? GM claimed there was no demand for the EV1 (a lie). The
>>>real reason was because it was costing them $80,000 each to make
>>>them
>>>
>>
>>The EV-1 was never intended to be sold to consumers. That
>>vehicle was only available under a lease program, GM used
>>that lease program to do long-term testing of electric
>>vehicle technology. It was a sad day indeed when the program
>>was terminated at the end of it's run and the cars were all
>>taken back. Every single lesee really liked the car and it
>>worked well for them. If it had been available in my area
>>I would have leased one in a heartbeat. The volatility and
>>the gaming going on in the gasoline industry is really
>>hurting people now, having an all-electric car would allow
>>someone who truly wanted to to step out of the game altogether.
>>
>>BTW, the reason for the high production costs of the EV-1 was
>>because every one was a hand-built and hand-assembled car. If
>>GM had set up their usual mass-production assembly line for
>>the EV-1 it likely would sell for less than what a mid-level
>>SUV sells for now. Fundamentally, the only really expensive
>>part was the motor and the battery pack, but don't forget that
>>those costs were offset by elimination of expensive to design
>>and build transmission systems and complex emissions control
>>systems on gas engines. No fuel injectors, no catalyst, no
>>smog pumps or EGR systems, no exhaust system at all for that
>>matter, no fuel systems, no evaporative vapor recovery system,
>>no clutch system, no tranny cooler, no radiator, no antifreeze,
>>I could go on and on. Ultimately I would see an all-electric
>>direct-drive car being cheaper to make than a regular petro-fuel
>>vehicle.
>>
>>Another plus of an all-E car is that it can use better
>>electrical sources, including reforming fuel cell technology,
>>and renewable non-carbon energy sources.
>>
>>
>>JazzMan
>>--
>
> I love folks who preach how great electric cars are. They never take
> into account that generating the power to charge that vehicle is doing
> more damage than running an auto. It also seems to escape their notice
> that electrics are only useful in large cities since they have such
> terrible range they are impractical in the rest of the country. The only
> real non good source for electrical power on a long term scale is
> nuclear and the green folks scream when they hear that. But it's a fact.
> No other power source is even close.
> As for fuel cells they are a joke. Current cells fail in less than 10K
> and are dependent on natural gas to produce the energy. Add in the fact
> that they are an energy losing item as well and you see why they are not
> really big sellers.

Generating the power isn't a net environmental loss. The electricity
can often be produced elsewhere - away from urban centers. In the
end, electric vehicles aren't putting out anything while they're
stopped. Powerplants used to generate electricity are far more
efficient than automotive engines.

It's wasn't simply about what's available now, but that there needs
to be a learning curve in advancing the technology. I'm sure that
electric and fuel cell technology will advance like gasoline engines
have over the past hundred years.

> "Tom Del Rosso" wrote:
> Is their plan to tax gas more if the vehicle has high mileage??? That
> seems backwards even for them.

The plan is (and there is a test plan going on right now in Oregon) to tax
by the mile with a device that gives your mileage at the pump and is added
to your bill. This will alleviate any loss of road construction money from
hybrids that would be lost in the now present gasoline tax if less gas
consumption is done by hybrids.

Think of it as just another way of regaining lost tax revenue.

B~

Comments in line below...

Steve W. wrote:

> I love folks who preach how great electric cars are.

Yay! I'm loved!!!!!!

> They never take
> into account that generating the power to charge that vehicle is doing
> more damage than running an auto.

Of course we do! How could we not? Anyone who thinks electricity
comes from nowhere is an idiot. Large scale power production, say from
a large power plant, produces less pollution for the power generated
because of highly efficient technologies that can't really be scaled
to a car. Cars typically lose over 75% of the energy in the fuel as
waste heat from the radiator and from the exhaust. The remaining energy
goes into kinetic energy in the form of the car's moving mass, but even
that energy is wasted as brake heat every time the car stops. A power
plant is able to convert much more of the energy in fossil fuels into
useable power, so effectively it releases less carbon for the power
generated compared to a mobile source like a car. Internal combustion
cars also can't recover any of the kinetic energy because it's
impossible to convert that energy back into fuel.

> It also seems to escape their notice
> that electrics are only useful in large cities since they have such
> terrible range they are impractical in the rest of the country.

Duh, where does the vast majority of the population live? They live
in or near cities. LOL! Most people drive less than 75-100 miles a
day in their regular commuting, so for these an EV-1 was perfect. Not
only that, but the new NiMH battery that was being developed was going
to double that range to nearly 200 miles. To say that the minority of
people to whom an electric car wouldn't be practical should dictate what
the majority of the people could use is arrogant and ignorant.

> The only
> real non good source for electrical power on a long term scale is
> nuclear and the green folks scream when they hear that. But it's a fact.
> No other power source is even close.

Nope, not true. Lots of other power sources are capable of generating
the same levels as nuclear, such as solar-thermal, solar-photovoltaic,
geothermal, wind, tidal, etc. Back in the 80's they built a nuke plant
down here that was supposed to cost 1 billion to build. It ended up
costing
13 billion, and will cost over 30 billion in 1980 dollars to decomission
in less than 20 years when the reactor vessels will no longer be safe
because
of radiation embrittlement. For that same money they could have built
the
same capacity using solar-photovoltaic and wind. And it's for a
terrorist
to build a radiologic bomb out of used solar cells and windmill blades.
We
greens are not only trying to protect our children, but your children
too.

> As for fuel cells they are a joke. Current cells fail in less than 10K
> and are dependent on natural gas to produce the energy.

I only mentioned fuel cells as a bridge toward better electrical
storage.
An electric car doesn't care where the electricity comes from,
batteries,
fuel cells, etc. An electric car using fuel cells for power generation
can be operated anywhere there's natural gas, propane, butane, etc. This
is almost the entire country including farms and remote areas. Fuel
cells
are twice as efficent at getting power to the wheels as burning fuels
is,
mainly because so little heat is lost unlike radiators and exhaust heat
in a combustion car. Ultimately other forms of electrical generation
will
have to be developed that don't rely on fossil fuels or nuclear fission,
and electric cars won't care one bit. Oh, and with regards to
efficiency,
electrics can do something that no IC car can ever do, and that's
recover
a significant amount of the kinetic energy by converting it back to
power
that can be stored in batteries. That one thing alone greatly increases
effective fuel efficiency. And as to premature failures? Pure Hydrogen
fuel cells last a very, very long time. Reforming fuel cells are a
developing
technology but they certainly last longer than 10k miles, and that
figure
is improving day by day. Remember, the very first cars had motors that
rarely lasted more than a few thousand miles, now they are expected to
last 100-200k miles with minimal problems. New technology has to start
somewhere, and fuel cell technology is good because it can leverage an
existing natural gas distribution infrastructure, giving us time to
design and built the trillions of dollars worth of H distribution
infrastructure needed in the future.

> Add in the fact
> that they are an energy losing item as well and you see why they are not
> really big sellers.
>

This is just idiocy. Energy losing? They are so much more
efficient at making power from fuel than burning that fuel
that it's not even funny. They aren't big sellers now because
they're still in development and generating units are fairly
expensive. However, they are being installed in large commercial
operations around the world because the increased power effiency
makes them a good investment for the mid-term. As the technology
develops the costs per kWh will come down substantially. How many
steam engines did Watt sell when he started designing them? How
many cars were sold in 1900? How many airplanes flew in 1930?
How many jet engines were on planes in 1950? How many people had
personal computers in 1970? How many people were
on the internet in 1980? How many people had cellphones in 1990?
How many people will be driving all electric cars in 2020? How
much power will be generated by burning fossil fuels in 2050?


JazzMan
--
************************************************** ********
Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
************************************************** ********
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of
supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to
live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry
************************************************** ********

A few comments below...

JazzMan wrote:
>
> Comments in line below...
>
> Steve W. wrote:
>
> > I love folks who preach how great electric cars are.
>
> Yay! I'm loved!!!!!!
>
> > They never take
> > into account that generating the power to charge that vehicle is doing
> > more damage than running an auto.
>
> Of course we do! How could we not? Anyone who thinks electricity
> comes from nowhere is an idiot. Large scale power production, say from
> a large power plant, produces less pollution for the power generated
> because of highly efficient technologies that can't really be scaled
> to a car. Cars typically lose over 75% of the energy in the fuel as
> waste heat from the radiator and from the exhaust. The remaining energy
> goes into kinetic energy in the form of the car's moving mass, but even
> that energy is wasted as brake heat every time the car stops. A power
> plant is able to convert much more of the energy in fossil fuels into
> useable power, so effectively it releases less carbon for the power
> generated compared to a mobile source like a car. Internal combustion
> cars also can't recover any of the kinetic energy because it's
> impossible to convert that energy back into fuel.

I'll certainly agree that a conventional gasoline (or diesel) engine is
not exactly a model of efficiency. The highly variable demands of an
auto application are a large obstacle to efficiency from nearly any
technology.

Other that then environmentally clean but paranoia inducing power
produced by nuclear plants, the remaining bulk of US power production is
coming from pollutant belching coal fired plants. There are certainly NG
fired plants and a smattering of hydro, but nuke and coal ate the bulk
of it.

The location of the power plant as you made note of has less-than-zero
relevance to it's pollution output. Whether it's located in the middle
of downtown or in the middle of a desert it's the technology, not the
location that affects pollution.

I'll also note that while technologies such as solar and wind have
plenty of potential, with the current available technology they both
cause more environmental impact and/or damage than a comparable capacity
nuke or NG plant. This is largely due to the low energy density and
conversion efficiency which causes them to occupy a significantly larger
footprint.

Solar PV is at what now, about 5% conversion efficiency for the most
expensive cells? Solar fueled steam turbines I think can get better
efficiencies and some use can be made of waste heat, increasing the
overall efficiency, but they still require a large collection area
relative to the power produced.

Wind energy is far more limited in where is can be practically located,
and when someone tries to locate a wind plant they get resistance from
environmentalists who apparently would rather keep coal plants in
operation rather than see progress made with renewable sources.

Hydro while location limited has reasonable efficiencies and energy
density, but once again there is a lot of resistance from
environmentalists to even existing hydro plants. Perhaps they're afraid
they'll end up without anything to complain about...

>
> > It also seems to escape their notice
> > that electrics are only useful in large cities since they have such
> > terrible range they are impractical in the rest of the country.
>
> Duh, where does the vast majority of the population live? They live
> in or near cities. LOL! Most people drive less than 75-100 miles a
> day in their regular commuting, so for these an EV-1 was perfect. Not
> only that, but the new NiMH battery that was being developed was going
> to double that range to nearly 200 miles. To say that the minority of
> people to whom an electric car wouldn't be practical should dictate what
> the majority of the people could use is arrogant and ignorant.

I'm not sure it's exactly the "vast majority", there are a lot more
people living in more rural settings than most city folks realize.

Cruising range of an electric vehicle is only one part of the issue,
recharge time is a much larger issue. Even with a cruising range of
100mi an electric vehicle could be reasonable *if* it could recharge in
the 5 min it takes to refuel a gasoline vehicle. Perhaps a battery
exchange station system could solve that problem. It works with electric
forklifts in warehouses. Cylinder exchange has long been common for
industrial gasses and is now common for consumer propane.

The next issue for electric vehicles is capacity - not for cruising
range, but for cargo. Most electric vehicles are fully taxed carrying
two adults and some groceries. It's not that vehicles with higher
capacities can't be built, but the efficiencies start going down again.
This limits the practicality of electric cars to commuting and grocery
use for the most part (for consumers anyway).

Commuting use of electric vehicles, while more efficient than gasoline
is still quite inefficient. For commuter transit, the most efficient
transport is a quality mass transit system. Unfortunately a quality mass
transit system requires a huge upfront capital investment which it seems
nobody is prepared to make.

The only truly practical large scale use of electric technology at the
moment is in commercial applications. Vehicles that only operate within
the grounds of an industrial complex, local delivery vehicles (pizza,
mail, etc.) with short ranges, and similar. Sure there are some people
who have quite sedentary lifestyles who can make practical use of an
electric vehicle, but they are a small percentage of the population.

>
> > The only
> > real non good source for electrical power on a long term scale is
> > nuclear and the green folks scream when they hear that. But it's a fact.
> > No other power source is even close.
>
> Nope, not true. Lots of other power sources are capable of generating
> the same levels as nuclear, such as solar-thermal, solar-photovoltaic,
> geothermal, wind, tidal, etc. Back in the 80's they built a nuke plant
> down here that was supposed to cost 1 billion to build. It ended up
> costing
> 13 billion, and will cost over 30 billion in 1980 dollars to decomission
> in less than 20 years when the reactor vessels will no longer be safe
> because
> of radiation embrittlement. For that same money they could have built
> the
> same capacity using solar-photovoltaic and wind. And it's for a
> terrorist
> to build a radiologic bomb out of used solar cells and windmill blades.
> We
> greens are not only trying to protect our children, but your children
> too.

Once again this is a case of people blinding themselves to the realities
due to paranoia. One significant fact is that all of these comparisons
are made against obsolete first (commercial) generation reactor
technology. If compared against a modern reactor design (pebble bed
perhaps) the balance shifts significantly.

The comment about other power sources being capable of generating at the
same levels is only partly true at best. In order to reach the same
power generating levels as a nuke (or even NG or coal) plant *all* of
the other technologies mentioned require a significantly larger
footprint and hence impact the environment on a larger scale. Also when
comparing the technologies remember to factor in production per day, not
just peak output.

A conventional plant can produce x megawatts continuously, whereas a
solar plant needs about 4 times the instantaneous output of a
conventional plant to have the same production. Wind and tidal have
similar limitations. So for comparison with say a 100MW conventional
plant you would need something like a 400MW solar plant to generate the
same amount of power. A 400MW solar plant with even the best
solar-thermal technology would likely cover 10x more ground or more than
a conventional 100MW plant.

The only large scale place where an alternate energy source has truly
practical potential with current technology is with solar PV in a
distributed generation model. In this one model the environmental impact
of the area required is negated since it makes use of existing roof area
on existing housing. The current PV efficiency is still low and the cost
is still high, but a system such as this can reasonably provide 90% of
the electrical energy required for an average home.

Unlike solar heating systems which most often require a fair amount of
maintenance which is not as readily available from commercial companies
(though it could be) solar PV systems are largely maintenance free which
makes them suitable for a mass market. What is needed for this
application to take off is to get the initial cost down to a reasonable
level.

Perhaps a leasing to own model would be a good way to get distributed PV
off the ground on a decent scale. A service company would install and
maintain the PV system while charging a competitive rate for the
electricity produced until the cost of the system had been covered at
which point you would own the system and have essentially free power for
the remaining life of the system.

>
> > As for fuel cells they are a joke. Current cells fail in less than 10K
> > and are dependent on natural gas to produce the energy.
>
> I only mentioned fuel cells as a bridge toward better electrical
> storage.
> An electric car doesn't care where the electricity comes from,
> batteries,
> fuel cells, etc. An electric car using fuel cells for power generation
> can be operated anywhere there's natural gas, propane, butane, etc. This
> is almost the entire country including farms and remote areas. Fuel
> cells
> are twice as efficent at getting power to the wheels as burning fuels
> is,
> mainly because so little heat is lost unlike radiators and exhaust heat
> in a combustion car. Ultimately other forms of electrical generation
> will
> have to be developed that don't rely on fossil fuels or nuclear fission,
> and electric cars won't care one bit. Oh, and with regards to
> efficiency,
> electrics can do something that no IC car can ever do, and that's
> recover
> a significant amount of the kinetic energy by converting it back to
> power
> that can be stored in batteries. That one thing alone greatly increases
> effective fuel efficiency. And as to premature failures? Pure Hydrogen
> fuel cells last a very, very long time. Reforming fuel cells are a
> developing
> technology but they certainly last longer than 10k miles, and that
> figure
> is improving day by day. Remember, the very first cars had motors that
> rarely lasted more than a few thousand miles, now they are expected to
> last 100-200k miles with minimal problems. New technology has to start
> somewhere, and fuel cell technology is good because it can leverage an
> existing natural gas distribution infrastructure, giving us time to
> design and built the trillions of dollars worth of H distribution
> infrastructure needed in the future.

They hybrid gas/electric vehicles also make use of regenerative braking.
And at this point fuel cell technology is not even close to ready for a
consumer application. It's even still in it's infancy for commercial
applications.

The best hybrid vehicle I've heard of so far from an efficiency /
practicality standpoint is a diesel turbine electric hybrid delivery
truck. The predictability of this application can allow a turbine to be
sized to the application so that the turbine can provide the total
energy (averaged out) and the batteries charge during periods when the
vehicle is stopped or under light load and provide power under peak
loads.

>
> > Add in the fact
> > that they are an energy losing item as well and you see why they are not
> > really big sellers.
> >
>
> This is just idiocy. Energy losing? They are so much more
> efficient at making power from fuel than burning that fuel
> that it's not even funny. They aren't big sellers now because
> they're still in development and generating units are fairly
> expensive. However, they are being installed in large commercial
> operations around the world because the increased power effiency
> makes them a good investment for the mid-term. As the technology
> develops the costs per kWh will come down substantially. How many
> steam engines did Watt sell when he started designing them? How
> many cars were sold in 1900? How many airplanes flew in 1930?
> How many jet engines were on planes in 1950? How many people had
> personal computers in 1970? How many people were
> on the internet in 1980? How many people had cellphones in 1990?
> How many people will be driving all electric cars in 2020? How
> much power will be generated by burning fossil fuels in 2050?

Fuel cells are more than "fairly expensive" at the moment. In another
decade they might be more affordable, but now you'd pay tens of
thousands for even a smaller unit.

What really needs to be done *now* is 1. replace (capacity wise) all of
the fossil fueled power plants (coal in particular) with clean safe
current generation nuclear plants and 2. start replacing the old first
generation nuclear plants with renewable source plants on a practical
scale.

The problem with both of these steps is not the technology or safety, it
is resistance from irrational paranoid people who are blindly anti-nuke,
and from irrational environmentalists who apparently think we should
immediately go back to the stone age until we can develop renewable
energy technology to a useable level.

One thing that I note is that very few of the environmentalists the you
see protesting one thing or another are actually doing anything about
using alternate energy in their own lives. I was young then, but I
remember back in the mid 70s when people were actually interested in
developing renewable technology and a lot of people were building their
own solar collectors and whatnot.

Today I see a lot of people whining for someone to produce renewable
energy for them, but they are unwilling / unable to do anything for
themselves. The basic technology hasn't changed much, it is still
entirely possible to build a practical working solar heating system for
your home with materials and tools that are all available at your local
Home Depot or Lowe's.

If you own home has solar heating and you make as much use of "green"
technologies as possible, then you have some moral right to say that
others should do the same. If however you drive Mercedes SUV or a 20yr
old pollution belching rust bucket to the protest and then go back home
where you sit around playing an X-Box and eating junk food you need to
think about practicing what you preach.

I suspect death of any sort of mechanical technical education in the
schools is in large part responsible for this. When kids took shop class
in school they were at least exposed to what can be done and learned
something about how to use tools. Today if it's not on a computer it's
not taught and there is a real loss there.

Two true (and scary / sad) stories:

A friend of mine (used to be one of my teachers), is now teaching at a
"talented and gifted technology magnet type high school".

In one class he provided a socket set for a group of students to use in
assembling some parts. The entire group of perhaps six students had no
idea how to use a socket wrench.

In another class there was an otherwise bright kid who had absolutely no
idea how to use a ruler. No lie, he just randomly held it up to the item
in question and read a number. Wasn't use of a ruler taught in
elementary school when you were a kid?

These last few examples show where the real problem lies...

Personally I try to be reasonably efficient in my use of resources.
Being a techie I've always been big on practical recycling, i.e.
salvaging and rebuilding old equipment that would otherwise end up
scrapped. I for the most part buy used business PCs which are quite
adequate for the many uses I have, even my CAD system and keep more
waste out of the landfills. I repair items myself instead of throwing
them out and buying new ones.

I'm not real big on some of the consumer recycling efforts though since
some are "feel good" exercises that really have no practical benefit.

A prime example of this "feel good" recycling is glass. Glass is
basically melted sand, sand as a resource is not under the slightest
threat. In order to recycle glass it has to be collected and transported
to a plant using the same or more energy as it would take to get raw
materials due to the efficiency of bulk transport vs. local collection.
The recycles glass then has to be melted to reuse and it takes about the
same amount of energy there as well. Used glass in a landfill is about
as inert as it gets and has no environmental impact. The end result is
essentially a loss due to the transport efficiencies and labor costs.

I've recently moved to a climate that is more suitable for solar energy
production and on my drawing board already are an air type collector
array to warm my detached workshop which I will also do for the house if
it works well on the shop, and a parabolic solar-thermal steam generator
and steam engine driven electrical generator.

Pete C.


>
> JazzMan
> --
> ************************************************** ********
> Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
> Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
> ************************************************** ********
> "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of
> supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to
> live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry
> ************************************************** ********

Tom Del Rosso wrote:
> Besides higher mileage I suspect there must be hidden costs or else there
> would be hybrids on dealers' floors. Is there a significant cost due to
> replacing batteries or something? Or are they just not ready for primetime?
>
>
I have heard the companies are sort of subsidizing them, to gain good
will and to test market, that is- not making the profit they make on
other comparable models. I suspect they don't want to sell too many at
the current prices. If they decide to flood the market, I'm sure the
price will go way up.

In article om>, Kruse wrote:
>
>Tom Del Rosso wrote:
>> Besides higher mileage I suspect there must be hidden costs or else
>there
>> would be hybrids on dealers' floors. Is there a significant cost due
>to
>> replacing batteries or something? Or are they just not ready for
>primetime?
>>
>
>Forgive me if this gets posted twice. I crashed earlier.....
>
>Anyway, we had a Ford Escape Hybrid in our shop a few days ago for
>pre-delivery inspection. Cost is about $27,000. The technician that was
>trained to work on the thing said the battery costs $8,000, but Ford
>puts a 150,000 mile warranty, free replacement on the battery. We'll
>see. Everything under the hood that has 330 volts is colored red as a
>warning. EPA rated mpg is 31 highway, 36 city. Yep, it's rated higher
>mpg in the city than the highway. 'Course we all know that EPA ratings
>are not accurate.

This might actually make sense if the energy recovery on braking is high
enough.

--
/"\ Jan Kalin (male, preferred languages: Slovene, English)
\ / http://charm.zag.si/eng/, email: "name dot surname AT zag dot si"
X ASCII ribbon campaign against HTML in mail and postings.
/ \ I'm a .signature virus. Copy me to help me spread.

"Pete C." > wrote in message
...
> A few comments below...

>
> Other that then environmentally clean but paranoia inducing power
> produced by nuclear plants, the remaining bulk of US power production is
> coming from pollutant belching coal fired plants.

The bulk of pollution coming out of coal plants these days is CO2 which
is of importance to the greenhouse effect. But the pollution controls on
coal plants today are very serious. Much better maintained that what's on
a typical car.

There are certainly NG
> fired plants and a smattering of hydro, but nuke and coal ate the bulk
> of it.
>
> The location of the power plant as you made note of has less-than-zero
> relevance to it's pollution output. Whether it's located in the middle
> of downtown or in the middle of a desert it's the technology, not the
> location that affects pollution.
>

That isn't really true since transmission line losses must be taken into
account.
A plant far away has to produce more power to make up for the line losses
than once close by.

> I'll also note that while technologies such as solar and wind have
> plenty of potential, with the current available technology they both
> cause more environmental impact and/or damage than a comparable capacity
> nuke or NG plant. This is largely due to the low energy density and
> conversion efficiency which causes them to occupy a significantly larger
> footprint.
>

For wind power, the bulk of this "environmental impact" is visual. Sure,
if you locate the turbines right in the middle of a bird migration route,
you might have trouble. But a wind farm can be put 500 miles away and
nobody will see it.

A nuke plant needs a lot of water which means riverfront property is
often used, this generally puts it in a highly visible place. You also need
a big staff of people and access to rail lines and such, which means
it's going to be close to a population center.


> Hydro while location limited has reasonable efficiencies and energy
> density, but once again there is a lot of resistance from
> environmentalists to even existing hydro plants. Perhaps they're afraid
> they'll end up without anything to complain about...
>

No, it's because your trading one industry for another. The salmon runs on
the Columbia River before it was dammed were so thick you could practically
walk across the river on the backs of fish during a fish run. They are a
shadow
today of what they used to be despite fish ladders and a big hatchery
program.

>
> Cruising range of an electric vehicle is only one part of the issue,
> recharge time is a much larger issue. Even with a cruising range of
> 100mi an electric vehicle could be reasonable *if* it could recharge in
> the 5 min it takes to refuel a gasoline vehicle. Perhaps a battery
> exchange station system could solve that problem. It works with electric
> forklifts in warehouses. Cylinder exchange has long been common for
> industrial gasses and is now common for consumer propane.
>
> The next issue for electric vehicles is capacity - not for cruising
> range, but for cargo. Most electric vehicles are fully taxed carrying
> two adults and some groceries. It's not that vehicles with higher
> capacities can't be built, but the efficiencies start going down again.
> This limits the practicality of electric cars to commuting and grocery
> use for the most part (for consumers anyway).
>
> Commuting use of electric vehicles, while more efficient than gasoline
> is still quite inefficient. For commuter transit, the most efficient
> transport is a quality mass transit system. Unfortunately a quality mass
> transit system requires a huge upfront capital investment which it seems
> nobody is prepared to make.
>

I think that it's a given that long-haul interstate trucking isn't going to
be depending on electric vehicles for some time.

But a mass-transit system is not more efficient than a network of electric
vehicles, it is far less efficient. It is also far more costly to the
society
for most cities.

For mass transit to work in a city you need 2 things in my experience:
1) flat or generally flat topography. 2) Extremely high development
density.

Mass transit doesen't work in a city unless people are willing to do a
lot of walking. New York City is a case in point, most New Yorkers
walk far more than most other city residents do. Same goes for London.
Both these cities are pretty flat. This sort of thing doesen't work in a
city like San Francisco which is built on a hill.

When you have a city like, for example, Los Angeles, or Seattle, you do
not have sufficient density - most of the places people need to go are
different,
not walkable, and so if you put them all in mass transit you are wasting
many
hours of people's time, losing a lot of productivity.

These cities are condusive to automobiles and there really isn't anything
wrong with that. Electric cars work out very well in those areas.


> A conventional plant can produce x megawatts continuously, whereas a
> solar plant needs about 4 times the instantaneous output of a
> conventional plant to have the same production. Wind and tidal have
> similar limitations. So for comparison with say a 100MW conventional
> plant you would need something like a 400MW solar plant to generate the
> same amount of power. A 400MW solar plant with even the best
> solar-thermal technology would likely cover 10x more ground or more than
> a conventional 100MW plant.
>

Conventional nuke plants often have long periods of time where they are down
and not producing power.


> >
> > > Add in the fact
> > > that they are an energy losing item as well and you see why they are
not
> > > really big sellers.
> > >
> >
> > This is just idiocy. Energy losing? They are so much more
> > efficient at making power from fuel than burning that fuel
> > that it's not even funny. They aren't big sellers now because
> > they're still in development and generating units are fairly
> > expensive. However, they are being installed in large commercial
> > operations around the world because the increased power effiency
> > makes them a good investment for the mid-term. As the technology
> > develops the costs per kWh will come down substantially. How many
> > steam engines did Watt sell when he started designing them? How
> > many cars were sold in 1900? How many airplanes flew in 1930?
> > How many jet engines were on planes in 1950? How many people had
> > personal computers in 1970? How many people were
> > on the internet in 1980? How many people had cellphones in 1990?
> > How many people will be driving all electric cars in 2020? How
> > much power will be generated by burning fossil fuels in 2050?
>
> Fuel cells are more than "fairly expensive" at the moment. In another
> decade they might be more affordable, but now you'd pay tens of
> thousands for even a smaller unit.
>
> What really needs to be done *now* is 1. replace (capacity wise) all of
> the fossil fueled power plants (coal in particular) with clean safe
> current generation nuclear plants and 2. start replacing the old first
> generation nuclear plants with renewable source plants on a practical
> scale.
>

Wrong. First of all nuke plants have no answer for high level waste
generation,
while I personally think they ought to just reprocess it and shoot what's
left over into the Sun, it's not practical.

There is of course plenty of answers - high level waste could be buried in
a subduction zone, in Yucca Mountain, etc. Fine - for the pro-Nuke people,
I say go ahead once you get the high level waste disposal site. But if
you think your going to just be able to leave your spent fuel rods in a pool
on the property of the nuke plant - which all current nuke power plants
in the US are doing - then forget it.

The real answer - even though people mostly don't believe it - is
wind. According to the DoE, wind could cover 1.5 times all
generation needs in the US, see he

http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhy...potential.html

Plenty here for electric cars.

>
> One thing that I note is that very few of the environmentalists the you
> see protesting one thing or another are actually doing anything about
> using alternate energy in their own lives.

That is because nowadays the environmentalists hire professional
protesters.

Haven't you ever wondered how those environmental marches
in front of the White House can turn up 100,000 people who
seem to come out of nowhere, then disappear? There is an entire
industry now built around paying protestors and there is an entire
culture of people who spend all their time just travelling from city
to city, protesting things.

Of course if you ask them they would insist that nobody is paying them
a salary, and that is true. But ask them where they got the money for
their last meal, their last busride from the last place they protested at,
etc. and you will find that most of thes people out there marching, have
no money to their name, and instead are housed, fed, and shuttled around
by this infrastructure. In short, we are talking professional bums. It's
a great deal for them since their only responsibility is to show up and
wave a sign and in exchange they get to travel for free.

> I was young then, but I
> remember back in the mid 70s when people were actually interested in
> developing renewable technology and a lot of people were building their
> own solar collectors and whatnot.
>
> Today I see a lot of people whining for someone to produce renewable
> energy for them, but they are unwilling / unable to do anything for
> themselves. The basic technology hasn't changed much, it is still
> entirely possible to build a practical working solar heating system for
> your home with materials and tools that are all available at your local
> Home Depot or Lowe's.
>

The reason you don't hear much about this is that you can save more money
by spending your dollars on insulating hot water pipes, insulating your
home,
and so on than by building a solar collector. So that is where those
dollars
are going now. Why do you think people are all up in arms now buying those
radon/carbon monoxide/etc. detectors? It is because they are all now living
in
homes that have almost sealed environments.

What is the point of building a big solar collector and dumping hundreds to
thousands of BTU's per month into a home that is so drafty that the energy
just flies right back out the window?

> Personally I try to be reasonably efficient in my use of resources.
> Being a techie I've always been big on practical recycling, i.e.
> salvaging and rebuilding old equipment that would otherwise end up
> scrapped. I for the most part buy used business PCs which are quite
> adequate for the many uses I have, even my CAD system and keep more
> waste out of the landfills. I repair items myself instead of throwing
> them out and buying new ones.
>

Unfortunately, though, this just delays them going into the landfill.
Another
really big problem now is too many manufacturers using plastic cases for
computers. The real answer is when your buying new hardware, insist on
steel cases (besides the recyclability and increased durability, they have
far
better radio shielding) and when disposing, remove the circuit boards and
plastic and send the sheetmetal to the furnace.

> I'm not real big on some of the consumer recycling efforts though since
> some are "feel good" exercises that really have no practical benefit.
>
> A prime example of this "feel good" recycling is glass. Glass is
> basically melted sand, sand as a resource is not under the slightest
> threat. In order to recycle glass it has to be collected and transported
> to a plant using the same or more energy as it would take to get raw
> materials due to the efficiency of bulk transport vs. local collection.
> The recycles glass then has to be melted to reuse and it takes about the
> same amount of energy there as well. Used glass in a landfill is about
> as inert as it gets and has no environmental impact. The end result is
> essentially a loss due to the transport efficiencies and labor costs.
>

This isn't strictly the case. While you are correct when you are looking
at "mixed color" glass, this is not the case with clear glass. Clear glass
is in demand - for one thing, to get glass from sand you have to introduce
some glass into the furnace to get the melting process going. It is in fact
cheaper to recycle clear glass from bottles if you can source separate
it into containers of clear glass only. (NOT mixed clear plate glass and
container glass, it must be all container glass and all clear, because
container
glass melts at a lower temp than sand or plate glass, and thus is cheaper to
reuse then to do the sand melting thing)

And also the big thing that glass recycling ignores is that a glass
container is
washable and reusable. Back in the "olden days" when people used to get
milk
delivered, dairies all reused glass milk bottles.

If the United States really gave a crap about consumer packaging recycling
they would mandate standard sizes and dimensions for glass consumer
packaging, and mandate water soluble glue for paper labels. For one thing
this would save an enormous amount of money
since glass containers would not have to be custom manufactured, and
metal lids would all be the same sizes. manufacturers would of course still
be free to print their own labels and differentiate their products that way.
And recycling would be easy - you just wash the returned containers and
the labels are washed off, and you have a glass container that is ready to
be reused for your product and your label. A container can take dozens of
washings before it would start etching and have to be scrapped.

As for other kinds of recycling, the consumer recycling for steel, (tin
cans)
aluminum, and for paper is worthwhile. Plastic recycling isn't generally
worthwhile
except for plastic shipping peanuts, but once again, if the government
really
gave a **** about this they would mandate a set of standard plastic
materials
used for consumer containers. Right now for example, there is no law banning
use of PVC plastic in PET containers, (bottle caps for example) and small
quantities of PVC present can destroy an entire load of PET for recycling.
There is also no law banning paper labels on plastic containers either, and
these can also be a problem.

One other issue with recycling is if you do enough of it, it will reduce the
waste stream volume which means you don't have to setup new landfills
as often. In some areas this is no problem, in others where land is at a
premium, it is a very big problem.

The biggest problem with the consumer recycling is that too many consumers
are lazy *******s and won't source-separate their recycling.

Ted

More comments below...

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
> "Pete C." > wrote in message
> ...
> > A few comments below...
>
> >
> > Other that then environmentally clean but paranoia inducing power
> > produced by nuclear plants, the remaining bulk of US power production is
> > coming from pollutant belching coal fired plants.
>
> The bulk of pollution coming out of coal plants these days is CO2 which
> is of importance to the greenhouse effect. But the pollution controls on
> coal plants today are very serious. Much better maintained that what's on
> a typical car.

It's relative, a coal fired plant *does* belch a lot more pollution than
a nuke plant, or even a NG fired plant I think.

>
> There are certainly NG
> > fired plants and a smattering of hydro, but nuke and coal ate the bulk
> > of it.
> >
> > The location of the power plant as you made note of has less-than-zero
> > relevance to it's pollution output. Whether it's located in the middle
> > of downtown or in the middle of a desert it's the technology, not the
> > location that affects pollution.
> >
>
> That isn't really true since transmission line losses must be taken into
> account.
> A plant far away has to produce more power to make up for the line losses
> than once close by.

Technically true although a relatively small factor, also the OP was
implying that a power plant located far away from a city would somehow
be less polluting.

>
> > I'll also note that while technologies such as solar and wind have
> > plenty of potential, with the current available technology they both
> > cause more environmental impact and/or damage than a comparable capacity
> > nuke or NG plant. This is largely due to the low energy density and
> > conversion efficiency which causes them to occupy a significantly larger
> > footprint.
> >
>
> For wind power, the bulk of this "environmental impact" is visual. Sure,
> if you locate the turbines right in the middle of a bird migration route,
> you might have trouble. But a wind farm can be put 500 miles away and
> nobody will see it.

Two problems with that idea:

1. There are few places in this country or the world for that matter
that are 500 miles away from a population. Somebody *will* see it.

2. If you do find a place 500mi away that also means 500mi of
transmission lines for people to complain about.

>
> A nuke plant needs a lot of water which means riverfront property is
> often used, this generally puts it in a highly visible place. You also need
> a big staff of people and access to rail lines and such, which means
> it's going to be close to a population center.

I don't believe the current reactor designs require as much cooling
water as the decades old and obsolete designs that are running today.
You also do not need a particularly large staff for operation either,
and you bring in contractors for planned maint. Rail lines are not
limited to population centers either.

>
> > Hydro while location limited has reasonable efficiencies and energy
> > density, but once again there is a lot of resistance from
> > environmentalists to even existing hydro plants. Perhaps they're afraid
> > they'll end up without anything to complain about...
> >
>
> No, it's because your trading one industry for another. The salmon runs on
> the Columbia River before it was dammed were so thick you could practically
> walk across the river on the backs of fish during a fish run. They are a
> shadow
> today of what they used to be despite fish ladders and a big hatchery
> program.

Life is about tradeoffs, do you want a dam and hydro plant or a belching
coal plant? Pick one, since the power will have to be produced one way
or another.

>
> >
> > Cruising range of an electric vehicle is only one part of the issue,
> > recharge time is a much larger issue. Even with a cruising range of
> > 100mi an electric vehicle could be reasonable *if* it could recharge in
> > the 5 min it takes to refuel a gasoline vehicle. Perhaps a battery
> > exchange station system could solve that problem. It works with electric
> > forklifts in warehouses. Cylinder exchange has long been common for
> > industrial gasses and is now common for consumer propane.
> >
> > The next issue for electric vehicles is capacity - not for cruising
> > range, but for cargo. Most electric vehicles are fully taxed carrying
> > two adults and some groceries. It's not that vehicles with higher
> > capacities can't be built, but the efficiencies start going down again.
> > This limits the practicality of electric cars to commuting and grocery
> > use for the most part (for consumers anyway).
> >
> > Commuting use of electric vehicles, while more efficient than gasoline
> > is still quite inefficient. For commuter transit, the most efficient
> > transport is a quality mass transit system. Unfortunately a quality mass
> > transit system requires a huge upfront capital investment which it seems
> > nobody is prepared to make.
> >
>
> I think that it's a given that long-haul interstate trucking isn't going to
> be depending on electric vehicles for some time.
>
> But a mass-transit system is not more efficient than a network of electric
> vehicles, it is far less efficient. It is also far more costly to the
> society
> for most cities.
>
> For mass transit to work in a city you need 2 things in my experience:
> 1) flat or generally flat topography. 2) Extremely high development
> density.
>
> Mass transit doesen't work in a city unless people are willing to do a
> lot of walking. New York City is a case in point, most New Yorkers
> walk far more than most other city residents do. Same goes for London.
> Both these cities are pretty flat. This sort of thing doesen't work in a
> city like San Francisco which is built on a hill.
>
> When you have a city like, for example, Los Angeles, or Seattle, you do
> not have sufficient density - most of the places people need to go are
> different,
> not walkable, and so if you put them all in mass transit you are wasting
> many
> hours of people's time, losing a lot of productivity.
>
> These cities are condusive to automobiles and there really isn't anything
> wrong with that. Electric cars work out very well in those areas.

Mass transit is not limited by topography, although it can impact the
initial costs. Same with population density, you don't have to be able
to walk from your house to the rail/subway/bus line, you can drive to a
hub.

Don't underestimate the benefit of getting the lard-ass population
walking a little more to use mass transit either.

Another thing to consider is that a sizable portion of the population is
needlessly commuting to begin with. There are quite a few jobs where
there is little or no legitimate reason a person has to travel into an
office. We need to educate some of the "old school" companies to the
very real benefits of a work-from-home workforce. I work from home
myself for a rather large company that has realized the benefits.

>
> > A conventional plant can produce x megawatts continuously, whereas a
> > solar plant needs about 4 times the instantaneous output of a
> > conventional plant to have the same production. Wind and tidal have
> > similar limitations. So for comparison with say a 100MW conventional
> > plant you would need something like a 400MW solar plant to generate the
> > same amount of power. A 400MW solar plant with even the best
> > solar-thermal technology would likely cover 10x more ground or more than
> > a conventional 100MW plant.
> >
>
> Conventional nuke plants often have long periods of time where they are down
> and not producing power.

Note that I said a conventional plant, that includes nuke, coal, NG and
oil. All types of plants have maint. down time and it generally involves
a fraction of the plant at a time. It is rare that a conventional plant
of any type is operating below 50% capacity since these plants have
multiple generating units and maint. is scheduled on one at a time.

About the only renewable technology that does not generally require much
maint. down time is solar PV and at 5% efficiency it is currently
laughable in MW scale. PV is not likely to be feasible outside of home
distributed generation for decades.

Hydro, Wind, solar thermal and geo thermal all require comparable maint.
periods to conventional since all involve rotating mass, bearings and
other mechanical components.

Once you realize that all plants need similar maint. you're back to all
of the renewable sources, with the possible exception of geo thermal,
requiring 4x the size for comparable energy production.

>
> > >
> > > > Add in the fact
> > > > that they are an energy losing item as well and you see why they are
> not
> > > > really big sellers.
> > > >
> > >
> > > This is just idiocy. Energy losing? They are so much more
> > > efficient at making power from fuel than burning that fuel
> > > that it's not even funny. They aren't big sellers now because
> > > they're still in development and generating units are fairly
> > > expensive. However, they are being installed in large commercial
> > > operations around the world because the increased power effiency
> > > makes them a good investment for the mid-term. As the technology
> > > develops the costs per kWh will come down substantially. How many
> > > steam engines did Watt sell when he started designing them? How
> > > many cars were sold in 1900? How many airplanes flew in 1930?
> > > How many jet engines were on planes in 1950? How many people had
> > > personal computers in 1970? How many people were
> > > on the internet in 1980? How many people had cellphones in 1990?
> > > How many people will be driving all electric cars in 2020? How
> > > much power will be generated by burning fossil fuels in 2050?
> >
> > Fuel cells are more than "fairly expensive" at the moment. In another
> > decade they might be more affordable, but now you'd pay tens of
> > thousands for even a smaller unit.
> >
> > What really needs to be done *now* is 1. replace (capacity wise) all of
> > the fossil fueled power plants (coal in particular) with clean safe
> > current generation nuclear plants and 2. start replacing the old first
> > generation nuclear plants with renewable source plants on a practical
> > scale.
> >
>
> Wrong. First of all nuke plants have no answer for high level waste
> generation,
> while I personally think they ought to just reprocess it and shoot what's
> left over into the Sun, it's not practical.
>
> There is of course plenty of answers - high level waste could be buried in
> a subduction zone, in Yucca Mountain, etc. Fine - for the pro-Nuke people,
> I say go ahead once you get the high level waste disposal site. But if
> you think your going to just be able to leave your spent fuel rods in a pool
> on the property of the nuke plant - which all current nuke power plants
> in the US are doing - then forget it.

Only partially true. The plants are currently storing spent fuel
locally, but this is not out of choice. When these plants were build the
government committed to dealing with the waste and has allowed the
paranoid set to obstruct the construction of a facility.

There is little risk of terrorists taking advantage of US reactors or
waste shipments for an attack. Security and safety measures on such
things are much higher in this country than in much of the rest of the
world. Terrorist look for "soft" targets and it would be far easier for
them to procure radioactive materials elsewhere and bring them to the
US.

The paranoid anti nuke folks will of course try to hype anything they
can to get attention, but that does not make the terrorist threat any
more legitimate than most of their other arguments.

I'll note that in all the decades of nuclear energy production there has
only been one truly significant accident in the entire world - Chernobyl
- and that plant was generations in design behind the already obsolete
ones operation in the US and the controls and safety systems were also
generations behind what is currently operating in the US.

Yes, there was Three Mile Island, and yes it was a serious accident for
the plant, but the safety design *did* work in the end and there was no
lasting impact to the area. The current generation reactor designs are
far more advanced and even less likely to have a significant accident,
having benefited from the decades of experience with the current plants.

>
> The real answer - even though people mostly don't believe it - is
> wind. According to the DoE, wind could cover 1.5 times all
> generation needs in the US, see he
>
> http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhy...potential.html
>
> Plenty here for electric cars.

Well, if you really want to build the number of wind plants that would
at least solve the cell tower issue. The hundreds of thousands of wind
towers that would be required would cover the US nicely.

I suspect that if we were to rush and start building wind plants all
over the place without a couple large scale test projects and some time
to study them we would likely find some undesired effects. The same
thing has happened with numerous other environmental knee-jerk reactions
in the past. Examples: the MTBE that was *required* to be added to
gasoline in a knee-jerk effort to reduce pollution, the push for
artificial cork as a "green" alternative to natural cork which actually
caused the destruction of cork plantations when the producers switched
to different crops as cork prices fell. Both cases of environmental
pushes without proper study.

>
> >
> > One thing that I note is that very few of the environmentalists the you
> > see protesting one thing or another are actually doing anything about
> > using alternate energy in their own lives.
>
> That is because nowadays the environmentalists hire professional
> protesters.
>
> Haven't you ever wondered how those environmental marches
> in front of the White House can turn up 100,000 people who
> seem to come out of nowhere, then disappear? There is an entire
> industry now built around paying protestors and there is an entire
> culture of people who spend all their time just travelling from city
> to city, protesting things.
>
> Of course if you ask them they would insist that nobody is paying them
> a salary, and that is true. But ask them where they got the money for
> their last meal, their last busride from the last place they protested at,
> etc. and you will find that most of thes people out there marching, have
> no money to their name, and instead are housed, fed, and shuttled around
> by this infrastructure. In short, we are talking professional bums. It's
> a great deal for them since their only responsibility is to show up and
> wave a sign and in exchange they get to travel for free.

I can't disagree there and it is a rather repulsive phenomenon. There is
a second component to it as well, which is thrill seekers who protest
simply for the conflict.

>
> > I was young then, but I
> > remember back in the mid 70s when people were actually interested in
> > developing renewable technology and a lot of people were building their
> > own solar collectors and whatnot.
> >
> > Today I see a lot of people whining for someone to produce renewable
> > energy for them, but they are unwilling / unable to do anything for
> > themselves. The basic technology hasn't changed much, it is still
> > entirely possible to build a practical working solar heating system for
> > your home with materials and tools that are all available at your local
> > Home Depot or Lowe's.
> >
>
> The reason you don't hear much about this is that you can save more money
> by spending your dollars on insulating hot water pipes, insulating your
> home,
> and so on than by building a solar collector. So that is where those
> dollars
> are going now. Why do you think people are all up in arms now buying those
> radon/carbon monoxide/etc. detectors? It is because they are all now living
> in
> homes that have almost sealed environments.
>
> What is the point of building a big solar collector and dumping hundreds to
> thousands of BTU's per month into a home that is so drafty that the energy
> just flies right back out the window?

The point is that anyone serious about being "green" will be doing both.
Insulation is the first step and is not particularly expensive. The
savings gained from the insulation helps fund the next step to solar
collectors. A competent DIY can insulate and add solar collectors to an
average side house for a few $k at most. The real problem is that lack
of competent DIYs.

>
> > Personally I try to be reasonably efficient in my use of resources.
> > Being a techie I've always been big on practical recycling, i.e.
> > salvaging and rebuilding old equipment that would otherwise end up
> > scrapped. I for the most part buy used business PCs which are quite
> > adequate for the many uses I have, even my CAD system and keep more
> > waste out of the landfills. I repair items myself instead of throwing
> > them out and buying new ones.
> >
>
> Unfortunately, though, this just delays them going into the landfill.
> Another
> really big problem now is too many manufacturers using plastic cases for
> computers. The real answer is when your buying new hardware, insist on
> steel cases (besides the recyclability and increased durability, they have
> far
> better radio shielding) and when disposing, remove the circuit boards and
> plastic and send the sheetmetal to the furnace.

Yes and no, even if it ends up in the landfill in the end it is still a
net benefit if the useful life of the product is doubled. Also the
longer that the product is kept in service the greater the change that
the infrastructure will be in place to recycle it properly.

There is no issue with recyclability of plastics either. Plastics are
quite recyclable as long as they are separated properly and these days
virtually all larger plastic components are marked as to the type. Those
components that are not marked or are too small to be marked are still
recyclable at a lower grade which can be used for shipping containers
and similar uses.

Metal case also do not necessarily have better radio shielding than
metal cases. Quality products with plastic cases have a conductive
shielding coating applied on the inside of the case which is just as
effective as a metal case.

>
> > I'm not real big on some of the consumer recycling efforts though since
> > some are "feel good" exercises that really have no practical benefit.
> >
> > A prime example of this "feel good" recycling is glass. Glass is
> > basically melted sand, sand as a resource is not under the slightest
> > threat. In order to recycle glass it has to be collected and transported
> > to a plant using the same or more energy as it would take to get raw
> > materials due to the efficiency of bulk transport vs. local collection.
> > The recycles glass then has to be melted to reuse and it takes about the
> > same amount of energy there as well. Used glass in a landfill is about
> > as inert as it gets and has no environmental impact. The end result is
> > essentially a loss due to the transport efficiencies and labor costs.
> >
>
> This isn't strictly the case. While you are correct when you are looking
> at "mixed color" glass, this is not the case with clear glass. Clear glass
> is in demand - for one thing, to get glass from sand you have to introduce
> some glass into the furnace to get the melting process going. It is in fact
> cheaper to recycle clear glass from bottles if you can source separate
> it into containers of clear glass only. (NOT mixed clear plate glass and
> container glass, it must be all container glass and all clear, because
> container
> glass melts at a lower temp than sand or plate glass, and thus is cheaper to
> reuse then to do the sand melting thing)
>
> And also the big thing that glass recycling ignores is that a glass
> container is
> washable and reusable. Back in the "olden days" when people used to get
> milk
> delivered, dairies all reused glass milk bottles.
>
> If the United States really gave a crap about consumer packaging recycling
> they would mandate standard sizes and dimensions for glass consumer
> packaging, and mandate water soluble glue for paper labels. For one thing
> this would save an enormous amount of money
> since glass containers would not have to be custom manufactured, and
> metal lids would all be the same sizes. manufacturers would of course still
> be free to print their own labels and differentiate their products that way.
> And recycling would be easy - you just wash the returned containers and
> the labels are washed off, and you have a glass container that is ready to
> be reused for your product and your label. A container can take dozens of
> washings before it would start etching and have to be scrapped.
>
> As for other kinds of recycling, the consumer recycling for steel, (tin
> cans)
> aluminum, and for paper is worthwhile. Plastic recycling isn't generally
> worthwhile
> except for plastic shipping peanuts, but once again, if the government
> really
> gave a **** about this they would mandate a set of standard plastic
> materials
> used for consumer containers. Right now for example, there is no law banning
> use of PVC plastic in PET containers, (bottle caps for example) and small
> quantities of PVC present can destroy an entire load of PET for recycling.
> There is also no law banning paper labels on plastic containers either, and
> these can also be a problem.
>
> One other issue with recycling is if you do enough of it, it will reduce the
> waste stream volume which means you don't have to setup new landfills
> as often. In some areas this is no problem, in others where land is at a
> premium, it is a very big problem.
>
> The biggest problem with the consumer recycling is that too many consumers
> are lazy *******s and won't source-separate their recycling.
>
> Ted

I didn't say that all recycling was pointless, certainly metals and
plastics are worthwhile. Metals do take less energy to recycle than to
mine and refine initially. Plastics other than packing peanuts do
recycle well, just look at all of the composite decking that it produced
from mill scraps and milk jugs.

Paper is somewhat marginal in that it is biodegradable and renewable.
It's likely that recycling paper into paper is marginal where recycling
paper into different products such as cellulose insulation is more
beneficial. Glass is probably the worst example as the current recycling
is still a marginal proposition.

Refilling of glass containers certainly did work in the past and could
work again. It's not even a real issue of standardizing as all glass
containers could be collected intact and brought to an automated central
facility for initial washing and sorting. Machines are far more capable
than humans of recognizing the different container shapes and sorting
them to be sent back to the products manufacturer for final cleaning and
refilling. All that would be required would be for each manufacturer to
email a copy of the CAD print for their product package to the sorting
administration.

Pete C.

JazzMan > wrote in article
>...
>
>
> What's really funny is that because the CAFE standards have
> been frozen at 1980's levels and with the burgeoning sales
> of gas-sucking SUVs the actual amount of taxes being collected
> per vehicle mile are higher now than they ever have been. So,
> where's all the extra money going? It's being siphoned off to
> pay for invasions of other countries and trying to make up
> the shortfalls caused by the massive tax cuts awarded the
> wealthiest people in the country. Follow the money, that's
> the key, and the money goes to the hydrocarbon fuels industry.
>


Or, perhaps, it will be siphoned off to pay for the disposal of of all the
hazardous waste contained in the batteries and computerized controls in
these hybrids and full-electrics....if such a fuel-tax surplus actually
DOES exist....which I doubt.

I'm afraid I AM following the money.......right down the toilet with these
hybrids....