Straightforward and Complex

Posted on | June 3, 2010 | No Comments

The Danish Government has taken away all taxes and fees on electric cars until 2015. This has been done in order to make Denmark a leader in electric car systems. Denmark has set the goal to have 400,000 electric cars on its roads in a few years. With a population of five million this may be possible due to the fact that Denmark is the country in the world with the highest taxes and fees on fossil fuel cars. In the United States President Obama has started a program of nuclear power expansion and now the US Senate is discussing a subsidy of 10,000 dollars on electric cars in order to increase the pace of market penetration, and the Senate is also debating a prize for a company that can come up with a battery with substantially higher capacity than the present.

These are simple and straightforward measures that could rapidly increase the number of electric cars and also increase the volume of non-fossil fuels and electricity in these countries. Why then would there be a need for a large scale program?

First, these measures are important and necessary, but not sufficient. Global oil production, and consumption, amount to some 85 million barrels of oil per day. A growth in electric cars from a very low level will not be sufficient in order to replace oil at the rate that production will be reduced after the global peak in oil production.

A number of things need to be achieved in addition to an expansion of electric cars:

- Increase production capacity of electric cars to rapidly make larger volumes available, and make rapid market penetration possible.

- The implementation of smart systems to control charging of cars and replacement batteries in order to optimize the load on the grids.

- Development and rapid implementation of biofuels and vehicles for biofuels, together with distribution systems for these fuels. This will become necessary in order to make use of the large volumes of biological waste and other biological material that is available to reduce the need to invest in new electricity production.

- Reduce the use of electricity and fuels in industrial production systems and buildings in order to reduce the need overall to invest in new production capacity for electricity and fuels.

- Etc…

Many countries are now taking a number of necessary first steps, using technologies that are available or in the development pipe-line. These will need to be followed by even bigger next-steps aimed at expansion of the base of renewable fuels technologies, the volume of vehicles and the measures to reduce the use of energy for industrial production. This will be a big challenge, and it needs to be managed!

Bookmark It