Plug in hybrids vehicles are certainly the car of the very near future and a core climate solution. And electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence. But I have a long been concerned that General Motors has overdesigned its showcase plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), the Chevy Volt (see “Is a 40-mile all electric range too much?“).

Now a major new study by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, “Impact of battery weight and charging patterns on the economic and environmental benefits of plug-in hybrid vehicles” (PDF here) confirms my basic analysis that plug-ins make sense, but a 40-mile all electric range (AER) does not:

We find that when charged frequently, every 20 miles or less, using average U.S. electricity, small-capacity PHEVs are less expensive and release fewer GHGs than hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) or conventional vehicles….

Large-capacity PHEVs sized for 40 or more miles of electric-only travel are not cost effective in any scenario, although they could minimize GHG emissions for some drivers.

Bloomberg quotes Jeremy Michalek, an engineering professor who led the study: “Forty miles might be a sweet spot for making sure a lot of people get to work without using gasoline, but you’re doing it at a cost that will never be repaid in fuel savings.”

Note that CMU considered a “high gas price” of $6.0 a gallon, which is the equivalent about $200 a barrel, a reasonable high price case for the next decade.

Perhaps the most significant finding for car companies who want to enter the plug-in hybrid business, minimize costs, and frankly crush GM, is something I have thought for a long time — a very short AER can make sense for a large fraction of drivers:

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Even as the appointment of Dr. John Holdren as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is held up by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), new hires at the OSTP have been made. The Wonk Room has learned that two veterans of the Clinton White House have taken top positions at the office, which “serves as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment” for the President.

Thomas Kalil

Thomas Kalil, who was responsible for technology policy at the National Economic Council in the Clinton White House, is the new OSTP associate director for policy. Before joining the Obama White House, Kalil ran the Big Ideas @ Berkeley program at UC Berkeley. Kalil was also a member of California’s Blue Ribbon Nanotechnology Task Force, the scientific advisory board of Nanomix, and Q Network Inc. He has served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences, including the Committee to Facilitate Interdisciplinary Research. As a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Kalil developed a “National Innovation Agenda” and was on the advisory board of Science Progress.

Jim Kohlenberger

Jim Kohlenberger, who was Vice President Al Gore’s senior policy adviser, is the new OSTP chief of staff. As one of Gore’s chief technology policy advisers, Kohlenberger “worked to help pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996, help shape the administration’s hands-off approach to the Internet and e-commerce, and help spearhead administration efforts to bridge the digital divide and connect every classroom to the Internet.” Before joining the OSTP, Kohlenberger was the executive director of the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition, and a senior fellow at the Benton Foundation, where he supported universal broadband service. From 2006 until March of 2008, Kohlenberger lobbied Congress on behalf of the VON Coalition.

From what the Wonk Room has learned, the OSTP has not yet filled the positions of associate director of science or associate director of technology.

So the political future of the conservative movement stagnation and the GOP party is one Bobby Jindal, the creationism-promoting Louisiana Governor, who “sounded creepily like a monologue from Kenneth the Page, 30 Rock‘s bewildered hillbilly,” as Gawker.com illustrated with various video clips. Guest blogger Chris Mooney dismantles Jindal’s most recent eruption of anti-science syndrome, his assault on volcano-monitoring research, in a post first published by Science Progress.

Someone recently asked the conservatives to stop giving me low hanging fruit. It’s true: I’ve been gorged. The attacks on science have been so numerous, so abundant, and so intellectually indefensible, that it is a full time job tracking them, and I’ve rarely been up for it….

But I’ll dive back in for Governor Bobby Jindal, the creationism-promoting conservative rising star who governs my home state of Louisiana. It’s now notorious that Jindal–who, in light of his post, ought to be extremely attuned to the importance of tracking natural disasters–decided to mock volcano preparedness funding in his rebuttal to President Obama’s speech before Congress last week. As Jindal put it, the recently passed stimulus bill contained “$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.”

Just substitute the word “hurricane” for “volcano” here, reread the statement, and be prepared to gasp at Jindal’s striking insensitivity. Indeed, he didn’t even get the facts right: the $140 million appropriation was for “U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities”–and thus not entirely for volcano monitoring.

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Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told E&E TV (see here):

I would doubt that the votes are there this year to pass the kind of bill that we considered last year.

Remember, the bill considered last year was the wholly inadequate, rip-offset heavy Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill (see “Boxer bill update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025“).

In a long interview, Bingaman’s discusses “how the Senate climate process may unfold this year,” how the energy bill will play out, especially the impact of a renewable electricity standard requiring utilities to get 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2021. He also discusses “whether President Obama’s call to double the nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years is feasible in our current economic climate.”

Here are the interview excerpts I think are the most interesting:

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Some of the top polar scientists in the world have concluded (boldface in original):

Our main conclusions so far indicate that there is a very low probability that Arctic sea ice will ever recover. As predicted by all IPCC models, Arctic sea ice is more likely to disappear in summer in the near future. However it seems like this is going to happen much sooner than models predicted, as pointed out by recent observations and data reanalysis undertaken during IPY and the Damocles Integrated Project. The entire Arctic system is evolving to a new super interglacial stage seasonally ice free, and this will have profound consequences for all the elements of the Arctic cryosphere, marine and terrestrial ecosystems and human activities. Both the atmosphere and the ocean circulation and stratification (ventilation) will also be affected.

This is what U.S. experts have been saying for a while (see NSIDC: Arctic melt passes the point of no return, “We hate to say we told you so, but we did”). Though not every scientist got the memo (see here). And this is just one in a long line of climate impacts coming up faster than the models projected (see here for a list).

But what I think is quite interesting is that this is the first time I’ve seen such leading polar scientists elaborate so bluntly the potentially dire consequences of an ice-free arctic:

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The solar panel below powers a series of spotlights that highlight the New Mexico National Guard sign outside the Guard’s compound in Rio Rancho, NM. The Guard is making clean energy the focus of a mission for all its units statewide. This article is reprinted from the Center for American Progress’s “It’s Easy Being Green” series.

In 2007, NPR reported that the U.S. military consumed and purchased 340,000 barrels of oil a day, making it the single-largest purchaser of oil in the world. If the Department of Defense were a country, they said, it would rank about 38th in the world for oil consumption, behind the Philippines. But because of DOD’s size and vast energy expenditures, even small efforts to reduce energy use amount to big savings and improved security, and turning to alternative fuel sources can help significantly reduce the military’s energy footprint. Over the last decade, all branches of the armed forces have committed to significant energy-saving initiatives and increased their use of alternative energy and fuels:

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Although surprisingly little-remarked on, the big story of the year so far — at least from the perspective of the fate of America and all humankind — is the hardening of the conservative movement against every possible strategy for dealing with global warming.

For instance, I don’t think the Obama administration has grasped the implications of the sheer impossibility that it could ever get 67 votes for a climate treaty in the Senate (see NYT article here suggesting they will pursue such a treaty “in a robust way” and my post, “Obama can’t get a global climate treaty ratified, so what should he do instead?“).

Is Obama setting himself up to fail, making Rush Limbaugh’s dream come true?

If you want to tackle global warming, if you want to avert the unimaginable misery of 5.5° to 7°C warming and 850 ppm for the next 100 billion people who walk the planet this millennium, you have only three strategies:

1. Put a serious price on carbon
2. Spend a gazillion dollars on clean technology development and deployment
3. Mandate the use of efficient, cleaner technology.

[And yes, for 450 ppm or lower, you need all three.]

Now even “moderate” conservatives like McCain and Gregg have always opposed even the mildest of mandates — requirements that utilities get a fraction of their power from renewable energy (see “The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma” and “Is a possible 60th Senate seat worth a not-very-green GOP Commerce Secretary?“). Mandates for renewables and more fuel-efficient cars, of course, can’t do much more than stem the rise of emissions, so they are just a piece of the puzzle.

As for the serious carbon price, if it wasn’t obvious from last year’s Senate debate (see here) that Congressional conservatives intend to demagogue to death any price for carbon (from a cap or a tax) — it is certainly clear now that they believe it is not only not a losing issue, but a big winning issue. Listen to one of the conservative movement’s reemerging leaders, Newt “Republicans in Congress turn their lonely eyes to” Gingrich who laid out the demagogic strategy at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in DC on Friday (see here):

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