What Electric Car Convenience Is Worth

Results of one study show the electric car attributes that are most important for consumers: driving range, fuel cost savings and charging time. The results are based on a national survey conducted by the researchers, UD professors George Parsons, Willett Kempton and Meryl Gardner, and Michael Hidrue, who recently graduated from UD with a doctoral degree in economics. Lead author Hidrue conducted the research for his dissertation.

The study, which surveyed more than 3,000 people, showed what individuals would be willing to pay for various electric vehicle attributes. For example, as battery charging time decreases from 10 hours to five hours for a 50-mile charge, consumers' willingness to pay is about$427 per hour in reduction time. Drop charging time from five hours to one hour, and consumers would pay an estimated$930 an hour. Decrease the time from one hour to 10 minutes, and they would pay$3,250 per hour.

For driving range, consumers value each additional mile of range at about$75 per mile up to 200 miles, and$35 a mile from 200-300 miles. So, for example, if an electric vehicle has a range of 200 miles and an otherwise equivalent gasoline vehicle has a range of 300, people would require a price discount of about$3,500 for the electric version. That assumes everything else about the vehicle is the same, and clearly there is lower fuel cost with an electric vehicle and often better performance. So all the attributes have to be accounted for in the final analysis of any car.

"This information tells the car manufacturers what people are willing to pay for another unit of distance," Parsons said."It gives them guidance as to what cost levels they need to attain to make the cars competitive in the market."

The researchers found that battery costs would need to decrease substantially without subsidy and with current gas prices for electric cars to become competitive in the market. However, the researchers said, the current$7,500 government tax credit could bridge the gap between electric car costs and consumers' willingness to pay if battery costs decline to$300 a kilowatt hour, the projected 2014 cost level by the Department of Energy. Many analysts believe that goal is within reach.

The team's analysis could also help guide automakers' marketing efforts -- it showed that an individual's likelihood of buying an electric vehicle increases with characteristics such as youth, education and an environmental lifestyle. Income was not important.

In a second recently published study, UD researchers looked at electric vehicle driving range using second-by-second driving records. That study, which is based on a year of driving data from nearly 500 instrumented gasoline vehicles, showed that 9 percent of the vehicles never exceeded 100 miles in a day. For those who are willing to make adaptations six times a year -- borrow a gasoline car, for example -- the 100-mile range would work for 32 percent of drivers.

"It appears that even modest electric vehicles with today's limited battery range, if marketed correctly to segments with appropriate driving behavior, comprise a large enough market for substantial vehicle sales," the authors concluded.

Kempton, who published the driving patterns article with UD marine policy graduate student Nathaniel Pearre and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology, pointed out that U.S. car sales are around 12 million in an average, non-recession year. Nine percent of that would be a million cars per year -- for comparison to current production, for example, Chevy plans to manufacture just 10,000 Volts in 2011.

By this measure, the potential market would justify many more plug-in cars than are currently being produced, Kempton said.

The findings of the two studies were reported online in March and February inResource and Energy EconomicsandTransportation Research, respectively.

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Saving Kenya's Lake Naivasha: Efforts to Improve Sustainability

World-renowned ecologist and conservationist Dr David Harper, from the University of Leicester Department of Biology and his PhD student Ed Morrison, recently showcased their latest work to the Prime Minister of Kenya.

The researchers have just returned from a successful field research visit to Kenya's Rift Valley. There, at Lake Naivasha, where Dr Harper has been researching for nearly 30 years, they were central to the launch of"Imarisha Naivasha" by the Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga.

Ed Morrison demonstrated briquette-making to the Kenyan Prime Minister in a practical fair of processes which help to save water and carbon. This charcoal-saving process, which Morrison is championing around Naivasha, makes fuel from waste paper, cardboard or plant material and, in a country where charcoal is the major source of energy, helps in a small way to save forests.

"Imarisha Naivasha" -- meaning"Empower Naivasha" -- is an initiative, backed by the Prince of Wales' Sustainability Trust, to try to coordinate local industries and communities with government agencies and international NGOs, to restore this damaged lake. Imarisha has come to fruition six years after David Harper first started raising the alarm about the lake's deteriorating ecology, based upon tell-tale signs that others had missed.

Dr Harper said:"It is very easy to come to Lake Naivasha as a visitor or journalist, see all the greenhouses around the lake and immediately just blame flower growing," he said."Local newspaper articles have blamed anything that goes wrong on pesticides from flowers, even though all the evidence shows flower growing to be a very well-controlled industry without risk. Articles have even talked about paint being thrown into the lake, because the water colour has changed. These are natural processes, but ones that have run riot because the lake is over-fertilised by people.

"The real cause of the lake's deterioration" says Harper,"is the same basic cause as everywhere else in the world -- too many people, also using up too much water and wasting most of it because they think it is free." The lake is 2 metres lower than it should be naturally because of water taken out -- but it is to run the taps of the cities, to power the greenest source of energy, a geothermal power station nearby and thousands of small-scale farmers in the catchment -- as well as to grow flowers. Flower growing is critically important to Kenya, it is the biggest earner of foreign exchange -- now above tourism and above coffee and tea. Over half of all roses sold in UK supermarkets come from Naivasha.

"The flower industry is conscientious about the water taken out, most particularly the growers who sell to European supermarkets, because they know that consumer groups can keep a check on the water they use as well as the conditions of their workers.

"Imarisha Naivasha" is the start of a better future for the lake. We are all really optimistic that it will encourage everybody to pull together, reduce their water use and give the lake a chance."

Harper added:"Two European supermarkets, REWE from Germany and Coop from Switzerland are leading the world, funding plans for ecological restoration of lake and wetlands, based upon my advice and that of my colleagues. I was also the major advisor to the Prince of Wales' Sustainability Unit from Clarence House, when they paid a fact-finding visit in September last year. I am very happy to see the fruits of my research now being used to guide the sustainable future of the lake.

"UK supermarkets should realise though, that they are being left behind by the Europeans. The Swiss and the Germans can see that, to make their supply chain sustainable, they need to put some profits back into ecological restoration. British supermarkets need to do more or they could lose the market in a few years time."

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Humanity Can and Must Do More With Less, Experts Urge

Citizens of developed countries consume an average of 16 tons (ranging up to 40 or more tons) of those four key resources per capita. By comparison, the average person in India today consumes four tons per year.

With the growth of both population and prosperity, especially in developing countries, the prospect of much higher resource consumption levels is"far beyond what is likely sustainable" if realized at all given finite world resources, warns the report by UNEP's International Resource Panel.

Already the world is running out of cheap and high quality sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold, the supplies of which, in turn, require ever-rising volumes of fossil fuels and freshwater to produce.

Achieving a rate of resource productivity ("doing more with less") greater than the economic growth rate is the notion behind"decoupling," the panel says. That goal, however, demands an urgent rethink of the links between resource use and economic prosperity, buttressed by a massive investment in technological, financial and social innovation, to at least freeze per capita consumption in wealthy countries and help developing nations follow a more sustainable path.

The trend towards urbanization may help as well, experts note, since cities allow for economies of scale and more efficient service provision. Densely populated places consume fewer resources per capita than sparsely populated ones thanks to economies in such areas as water delivery, housing, waste management and recycling, energy use and transportation, they say.

"Decoupling makes sense on all the economic, social and environmental dials," says UN Under Secretary-General Achim Steiner, UNEP's Executive Director.

"People believe environmental 'bads' are the price we must pay for economic 'goods.' However, we cannot, and need not, continue to act as if this trade-off is inevitable," he says."Decoupling is part of a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy needed in order to stimulate growth, generate decent kinds of employment and eradicate poverty in a way that keeps humanity's footprint within planetary boundaries."

"Next year's Rio+20 meeting represents an opportunity to accelerate and scale-up these 'green shoots' of a Green Economy, which are emerging across the developed and developing world."

The new report from UNEP's International Resource Panel, the fourth in a series, was launched in New York at the annual meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, where sustainable consumption and production are key issues. And it precedes by a year the global UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 meeting (or"Rio+20" in Rio de Janeiro 4-6 June 2012) with its two central themes of a Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and achieving agreement on an international framework for sustainable development.

While the report doesn't offer detailed policy and technology options -- that's for later reports -- it says technologies that have helped humanity extract ever-greater quantities of natural resources need to be re-directed to more efficient ways of using them.

Global average annual per capita resource consumption in year 2000 was 8 to 10 tons, about double the rate of 1900. In 2000, the average rate in industrialized countries (home to one-fifth of world population) was roughly twice the global average and four or five times that of the poorest developing countries.

Global (and national) consumption rates per capita are calculated by dividing total world (and national) extractions of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass by world (and national) population figures.

Rapidly expanding international trade, however, obscures responsibility for resource consumption and associated environmental impacts, the authors note.

Over the past century, pollution controls and other measures have reduced the environmental impacts of economic growth. And, thanks to innovations in manufacturing, product design and energy use -- aided by the rising number of people living more efficient lifestyles in cities -- the global economy has grown faster than resource consumption growth.

Still, those improvements have only been relative. In absolute terms -- with population growth, continuing high levels of consumption in the industrialized countries, and increased demand for material goods, particularly in China, India, Brazil and other quickly-emerging economies -- total resource use grew eight-fold, from 6 billion tons in 1900 to 49 billion tons in 2000. It is now estimated at up to 59 billion tons.

Decoupling is occurring but"at a rate that is insufficient to meet the needs of an equitable and sustainable society," the report says. Between 1980 and 2002, the resources required per$1,000 (U.S.) of economic output fell from 2.1 to 1.6 tons.

The report details progress in four countries where government policy supports decoupling. Germany and Japan have both demonstrated the possibilities.

• Germany has established goals for energy and resource productivity -- aiming to double both by 2020. There are also ambitious 2020 targets for meeting heating, electricity and other energy needs from renewable sources, and the target of a 30 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by that same year.
• Japan is committed to becoming a"Sustainable Society" focused on low carbon, the reduction, reuse and recycling of materials, and harmony with nature. The flow of materials is carefully accounted. Japan's measures"are probably the most advanced examples (of) increasing resource productivity and minimizing negative environmental impacts in practice," the report states.
• South Africa's Constitution requires"ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources." Policies explicitly call for"resource and impact decoupling" and greenhouse-gas emission cuts of 30 to 40 per cent by 2050. Progress, though, is undermined by a growing reliance on exports of coal and other minerals. Its carbon intensity is the world's highest and emissions per person are double the global average.
• China aims to build an"ecological civilization," with resource and environmental concerns top priorities. It has created decoupling indicators and fixed mandatory targets, including a 20 per cent reduction of energy intensity and has run nationwide energy saving and pollution-reduction programs. A National Action Plan on Climate Change targets a 40 to 45 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide intensity by 2020.

China, in particular, is a global test case,"because it wants to continue its rapid economic growth but use resources more sustainably," the report says.

"The measures that China introduces to reconcile these objectives will be of crucial significance for every other developing country with similar policy intentions."

The report emphasizes that cutting the rate of resource consumption and impacts is possible, in theory, if national economic improvement is defined in terms other than physical growth.

"It is time to recognize the limits to the natural resources available to support human development and economic growth," the authors say. Decoupling"will require significant changes in government policies, corporate behaviour, and consumption patterns by the public.… Innovation, even radical innovation, will be required."

The report describes three scenarios whereby developed and developing countries consume resources equitably: 'convergence by 2050'

Scenario 1: Business as usual in developed countries, convergence by others

Per capita resource consumption in the industrialized countries remains stable, as it has for the past three decades, and the rest of the world continues the current trend to catch up. This path leads to annual total consumption of 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass, or 16 tons per capita for a population of 9 billion, by 2050. Says the report: this"represents an unsustainable future in terms of both resource use and emissions, probably exceeding all possible measures of available resources and assessments of limits to the capacity to absorb impacts."

Scenario 2: moderate contraction of consumption in developed countries, convergence by others

Industrialized nations halve average per capita consumption to 8 tons and other countries rise to that level. The result: total world consumption of 70 billion tons in 2050."This scenario presupposes substantial structural change amounting to a new pattern of industrial production and consumption that would be quite different from the traditional resource-intensive Western industrial model," the report says.

This scenario results in global consumption of 70 billion tons by 2050 -- about 40% more annual resource extraction than in 2000. Average emissions of carbon dioxide per capita would rise almost 50% to 1.6 tons per capita and global CO2 emissions would more than double.

Absolute cuts in consumption -- well short of the scale required in scenario two -- have occurred in just a handful of countries, and in some cases only because they have lowered their per capita consumption rate by importing resources from elsewhere.

Scenario 3: tough contraction of consumption in developed countries, converging with others

Industrialized nations reduce per capita consumption by two thirds and other nations remain at current rates, resulting in a global per capita consumption rate of 6 tons and total world consumption of about 50 billion tons, the same as in year 2000.

This scenario would be so restrictive, and so unappealing to politicians, that it"can hardly be addressed as a possible strategic goal," the authors admit.

Yet, even such tough measures would maintain global consumption at levels many scientists still consider unsustainable. Average CO2 per capita emissions would be reduced by roughly 40% to 0.75 tons/capita and global emissions would remain constant at their 2000 level.

"These scenarios challenge our current thinking and assumptions about development," says the report."If investments in developing and developed countries are made today that lock humanity into a business-as-usual or moderately improved resource intensive growth path, the risks of running into ecological and supply constraints will worsen."

"This finding has spurred the International Resource Panel to focus future reports on how to improve resource productivity and find viable alternatives for policy makers."

Challenges ahead include:

• Policymakers and the general public aren't yet convinced of the absolute physical limits to the quantity of resources available for human use.
• The wide discrepancies in per person consumption mean different levels of action are required. Poorer nations, likely the first to feel the impacts of resource shortages, must have a chance to improve conditions in the developed world. But if they emulate a profligate style of growth, they not only expose their economies to supply constraints, the planet's resource bank will go far deeper into the red.
• The best and most easily accessible mineral ores and fossil fuels are being exhausted. New sources are generally more remote and of lower quality. Finding and extracting them takes more energy and increases the environmental impact. About three times more material needs to be moved for the same ore extraction as a century ago, with corresponding increases in land disruption, water impacts and energy use.
• Resource extraction increasingly occurs in countries with lower legal and environmental standards, meaning"environmental impacts per unit of extracted material might become more severe."
• As trade expands, it becomes more difficult to assign responsibility for resource consumption, a crucial consideration if each country is required to limit per capita consumption. Should the reduction of mining and its impacts, for example, be the responsibility of the country where the extraction takes place, the one where the ore is processed into a manufactured product, or the one where that product is consumed?
• A"rebound" effect often leads to increased consumption after energy or manufactured goods become more efficient as consumers take advantage of cost savings to buy something else, or use a device more often -- for example: putting more kilometres on a fuel-efficient car.

Reasons for optimism:

• According to the report, the certainty that resource shortages will eventually preclude business as usual ensures that any country"ahead of the game" by investing in innovation"will clearly reap the benefits when pressures mount for others to change rapidly."
• Developing countries, unburdened by existing technologies, can leapfrog to less resource-intensive processes and goods, as much of Africa has, for example, by bypassing hard-wired telephone services and moving directly to wireless.
• The rising cost of many resources creates an economic imperative to use less -- although, at the same time, higher prices could allow exploitation of more expensive, environmentally hazardous sources such as oil from the high Arctic.
• Urbanization can reduce a population's consumption rate since it makes the provision of services more efficient and"concentrate(s) the knowledge, financial, social and institutional resources required for sustainability oriented innovations." However, the consumption numbers for cities can be artificially low if the urban area depends on energy and resources from the surrounding countryside. In addition, urban dwellers consume more as the economy grows."This captures the dilemma of cities for sustainability," the report states."They drive the global unsustainable use of resources, but they are also where the greatest potential exists for sustainability-oriented innovations."
• Even today, there is a vast difference in resource use rate across countries, even those with the same GDP per capita. This indicates that it is possible for countries to be much more resource productive and still grow their economies.

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Water for Mongolia: How Vital Resource Can Be Efficiently Managed and Used

Mongolia is a country of contrasts– in summer boiling hot, in winter freezing cold; in the north damp, in the south bone dry. One million of its three million inhabitants live tightly packed together in the capital Ulaanbaatar, while the rest of the huge country is largely populated by nomads and their cattle. Providing a clean supply of drinking water across the entire country is a difficult challenge– beginning with the need to lay freeze-proof water pipes over an area of 1.5 million square kilometers. The people in the countryside therefore use water from rivers, or from wells that they dig themselves. But these traditional ways of obtaining water are reaching the limits of their capacity.

In recent decades the periods of rain during the summer months which replenish the reserves of groundwater have become infrequent. They have been replaced by heavy storms unleashing torrents of rain that runs off rapidly without soaking into the ground. At the same time, demand for water has risen with the rapid growth in the country’s population.

"Providing a supply of drinking water is becoming more and more difficult. To create a reliable supply in the long term you have to take many different factors into account and find out how they influence each other," explains Dr. Buren Scharaw from the Fraunhofer Application Center System Technology AST in Ilmenau. Born in Mongolia, he has been working for many years on the a project entitled"Integrated Water Resources Management for Central Asia: Model Region Mongolia", known also as MoMo. Project partners include the universities of Heidelberg and Kassel, Bauhaus University Weimar, the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and various private-sector enterprises. The model region under study by the research scientists is the catchment area for the Kharaa River and Darkhan, a city of 100,000 inhabitants.

Since the start of the project, in 2006, Scharaw has traveled back to his homeland several times. He has examined the quality of the water from public and private wells along with the distribution network, measured the energy consumption of pumps, and investigated the effectiveness of the sewage system. All of the data he has meanwhile collected has been fed into the computer models developed at Fraunhofer AST.

"Our HydroDyn water management solution makes it possible for the first time to visualize the quality as well as the quantity of water resources and to model their future development," the scientist explains. There is plenty of scope for improvement: the water pumps consume lots of energy, the water pipes are in need of repair and nearly half of the drinking water is lost on its way to the consumer because of leaks. Many yurts have their own wells, but the water is often contaminated with bacteria from latrines. What can be done?"Having collected data and produced models we are now preparing proposals that make sense in economical and ecological terms", says Scharaw. His team has developed a software program for the purpose which can determine how the water supply can be sustainably secured using less energy.

To minimize the losses in the drinking water distribution network, the Fraunhofer research scientists have also developed a measuring system for locating leaks. Small sensors detect any drop in pressure in the pipes, enabling leakes to be localized with relatively high precision. Once the leak has been found, that section of the pipe can be repaired.

To reduce contamination in the water supply, and to increase the efficiency of the sewage system, the MoMo scientists are now building a test sewage plant which contains microorganisms in high concentration:"We expect this test facility to deliver good results also during the cold season when the microorganisms are less active. The findings can then be transferred to a future full-scale plant." In three years’ time, when the MoMo project has been completed, the experts intend to present the government administration in Darkhan with a catalogue of measures which will show how the water supply and sewage system can be efficiently and cost-effectively secured. Scharaw regards it as one of his major successes that he prompted the Mongolian authorities to discontinue mining operations in some regions of the Kharaa catchment area– an achievement that extends far beyond improving the drinking water supply in Darkhan.

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It's Not Easy Flying Green: Large Variability in Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Alternative Fuels

However, researchers at MIT say the industry may want to cool its jets and make sure it has examined biofuels' complete carbon footprint before making an all-out push. They say that when a biofuel's origins are factored in -- for example, taking into account whether the fuel is made from palm oil grown in a clear-cut rainforest -- conventional fossil fuels may sometimes be the"greener" choice.

"What we found was that technologies that look very promising could also result in high emissions, if done improperly," says James Hileman, principal research engineer in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, who has published the results of a study conducted with MIT graduate students Russell Stratton and Hsin Min Wong in the online version of the journalEnvironmental Science and Technology."You can't simply say a biofuel is good or bad -- it depends on how it's produced and processed, and that's part of the debate that hasn't been brought forward."

Hileman and his team performed a life-cycle analysis of 14 fuel sources, including conventional petroleum-based jet fuel and"drop-in" biofuels: alternatives that can directly replace conventional fuels with little or no change to existing infrastructure or vehicles. In a previous report for the Federal Aviation Administration's Partnership for Air Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction, they calculated the emissions throughout the life cycle of a biofuel,"from well to wake" -- from acquiring the biomass to transporting it to converting it to fuel, as well as its combustion.

"All those processes require energy," Hileman says,"and that ends up in the release of carbon dioxide."

In the currentEnvironmental Science and Technologypaper, Hileman considered the entire biofuel life cycle of diesel engine fuel compared with jet fuel, and found that changing key parameters can dramatically change the total greenhouse gas emissions from a given biofuel.

Land-locked

In particular, the team found that emissions varied widely depending on the type of land used to grow biofuel components such as soy, palm and rapeseed. For example, Hileman and his team calculated that biofuels derived from palm oil emitted 55 times more carbon dioxide if the palm oil came from a plantation located in a converted rainforest rather than a previously cleared area. Depending on the type of land used, biofuels could ultimately emit 10 times more carbon dioxide than conventional fuel.

"Severe cases of land-use change could make coal-to-liquid fuels look green," says Hileman, noting that by conventional standards,"coal-to-liquid is not a green option."

Hileman says the airline industry needs to account for such scenarios when thinking about how to scale up biofuel production. The problem, he says, is not so much the technology to convert biofuels: Companies like Choren and Rentech have successfully built small-scale biofuel production facilities and are looking to expand in the near future. Rather, Hileman says the challenge is in allocating large swaths of land to cultivate enough biomass, in a sustainable fashion, to feed the growing demand for biofuels.

He says one solution to the land-use problem may be to explore crops like algae and salicornia that don't require deforestation or fertile soil to grow. Scientists are exploring these as a fuel source, particularly since they also do not require fresh water.

Feeding the tank

Total emissions from biofuel production may also be mitigated by a biofuel's byproducts. For example, the process of converting jatropha to biofuel also yields solid biomass: For every kilogram of jatropha oil produced, 0.8 kilograms of meal, 1.1 kilograms of shells and 1.7 kilograms of husks are created. These co-products could be used to produce electricity, for animal feed or as fertilizer. Hileman says that this is a great example of how co-products can have a large impact on the carbon dioxide emissions of a fuel.

Hileman says his analysis is one lens through which policymakers can view biofuel production. In making decisions on how to build infrastructure and resources to support a larger biofuel economy, he says researchers also need to look at the biofuel life cycle in terms of cost and yield.

"We need to have fuels that can be made at an economical price, and at large quantity," Hileman says."Greenhouse gases {are} just part of the equation, and there's a lot of interesting work going on in this field."

The study is the culmination of four years of research by Hileman, Stratton and Wong. The work was funded by the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force Research Labs.

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