The worsening nuclear crisis in Japan raises questions. What would be the consequences of shutting down nuclear reactors in the U.S.? In light of fresh doubts about the wisdom of nuclear power, is swapping out the U.S. vehicle fleet with all-electric vehicles realistic?

The chart below shows what the U.S. energy mix is today, and what the U.S. Energy Information Agency projects it to be over the next 25 years. The nuclear and coal part of the mix are expected to drop only a bit, coal from 45% to 43% and nuclear from 20% to 17%.

[Note that 43% of 5+ trillion kilowatt hours per year is a lot more than 45% of the 4+ trillion kilowatt hours coal accounts for today - meaning coal consumption in electricity generation is thus expected to increase substantially.  So much for doing anything about global warming.]

The University of California, Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology has published a technical brief which considers three scenarios for “maximum penetration” of electric cars into the market, projecting market share of new cars at 2015, 2020, 2025, and 2030 under differing cost assumptions.

The “market” in the above chart is defined as those likely to buy electric vehicles – 20% of the total market is excluded as not likely to buy electric vehicles.

Under the baseline scenario, 81 million electric vehicles would be on the road by 2030; under the operator-subsidized scenario, 151 million.

The U.C. study calculates that by 2030 the fleet of electric cars is estimated to require between 190 and 350 million megawatt hours of electricity per year. Currently, electricity generation in the U.S. totals around 4 billion megawatt hours per year. Powering an electric car fleet would require that the U.S. increase electricity generating capacity by 4.75%-8.75% by 2030. And that’s assuming no growth in electricity usage elsewhere in the economy, despite population and presumably economic growth.

In 2009, U.S. nuclear plants generated 798.7 billion kilowatt hours (or 7,987 million kilowatt hours) from 104 commercial nuclear generating units; “nuclear generating units” in the U.S. thus average 7.68 megawatt hours per year in output. The 602 coal power plants in the U.S. produce on average ~3.88 megawatt hours per year. Powering the projected U.S. electric car fleet would therefore require building 25-46 additional “nuclear generating units” by 2030. Or 50-90 coal-fired power plants.

Renewable sources, including wind and solar, currently account for about 10% of U.S. electricity generation – but two thirds of existing renewable capacity is hydroelectric, which is about tapped out and even under threat of decline. Solar and wind together account for only a little over 2% of renewable electric energy – about 72,000 megawatt hours per year. Powering the projected electric fleet from solar and wind alone would require increasing our solar and wind capacity by a factor of 2,500 – 5,000. Just to power electric cars,  nothing else: no growth, no phasing out of nuclear or decommissioning aging plants, no shutting down of CO2-emitting coal plants.

Phasing out nuclear power while we are still able so to as avoid catastrophic accidents, and phasing out coal to save the planet as we know it, would seem to be of a bit higher priority than powering our go-carts.

Challenging times indeed. Replacing our gasoline-powered cars with electric cars is about the last thing we should be focusing on.

The Environmental Law Institute recently conducted a review of U.S. government fossil fuel and renewable energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008. The findings are presented in the paper, Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-2008 – and illustrated in the graphic “Energy Subsidies Black, Not Green.”

Key findings include:

• The vast majority of federal subsidies for fossil fuels and renewable energy supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases when used as fuel.
• The federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Subsidies to fossil fuels – approximately $72 billion over the study period, as opposed to $29 billion for renewables.
• Almost half of the subsidies for renewables went to corn-based ethanol [which at best has a barely positive EROEI, and whose climate and environmental consequences are questionable].
• The largest subsidies to fossil fuels were written into the U.S. Tax Code as permanent provisions. By comparison, many subsidies for renewables are time-limited initiatives implemented through energy bills, with expiration dates that limit their usefulness to the renewables industry.
• The vast majority of subsidy dollars to fossil fuels can be attributed to just a handful of tax breaks, such as the Foreign Tax Credit ($15.3 billion) and the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels ($14.1 billion, though this credit has since been phased out).

Last year governments world-wide provided $43 – $46 billion of support to renewable energy through subsidies such as tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices known as feed-in tariffs, and alternative energy credits.

Sounds pretty good, right?

But not so fast. In 2008, governments provided $557 billion in subsidies to fossil fuels.

An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is at least ten times the subsidy for renewables.

NRDC has an interactive Renewable Energy Map for the U.S. that is pretty cool.

The map displays the renewable energy possibilities across the country (solar, wind, cellulosic biomass, and biogas) and shows both existing and planned facilities. You can click on a state to get a closer look.

John Gear says:

Might as well map magic pony potential (high wherever horses are found) . . . The NRDC must not feel much like defending natural resources any more if they’re buying into the cellulosic pipedream.

He’s right, of course. There’s no way any “bio” source can ever be “renewable” in the sense that “bio” sources will satisfy the energy expectations we’ve become accustomed to as a result of our exploitation of fossil fuels.

A new Roadmap published by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment sketches out the route the world’s largest exporter plans to take to switch over completely to renewable energy. The objective? Get Germany running on renewable energy by 2050.

In 2008, renewables accounted for 7.3% of Germany’s primary energy consumption. That figure is slated to increase to 33% by 2020, with wind energy contributing the most. The Roadmap estimates that by 2030, as much as 50% of Germany’s electricity will be coming from renewable energy sources. In twenty years time, a smart grid interconnected with the entire European electricity grid will be in place. Solar energy will be imported via Italy from the solar thermal plants operating in the sun-drenched deserts of North Africa.

A raft of new energy efficiency measures, including the construction of a smart grid, should reduce the country’s primary energy consumption by 28% in the next twenty years, saving billions in energy costs.

While Germany is already acting, the U.S. is beginning to wake up. The US interior department reported wind turbines off US coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the country’s current electricity demand.

As Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar observed:

More than three-fourths of the nation’s electricity demand comes from coastal states and the wind potential off the coasts of the lower 48 states actually exceeds our entire U.S. electricity demand.

The Executive Summary is supposedly online at http://www.doi.gov/ocs, but I haven’t been able to find it.  The Interior Department’s website needs lots of work if it is to be user-friendly.