GREENHAWXX

Mike GCC points - again! - to an interesting article on plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) homebrews, this time from the CSM:

With engineering students at the University of California at Davis, Professor Frank has spent more than a decade turning production vehicles into plug-in hybrids using off-the-shelf parts. "We just built a high-performance plug-in hybrid Ford Explorer," he says. "It's 325 horsepower - 200 of that horsepower is electric and 125 is gasoline. This car goes like a rocket, but still gets double the fuel economy of a regular hybrid. And for the first 50 miles it is all electric - zero emissions."

That's enough for many drivers to complete their daily commute. Compared with conventional cars, the annual fuel consumption of the modified cars "is only about 10 percent, because you're using gas so infrequently," he says. "Our studies show [that] the average person would only go to the gas station six times a year compared with maybe 35 times a year."

Built on a stock Explorer platform, the hybrid retains all its original interior space. There is also more space in the engine compartment because the vehicle lacks moving parts like a fan belt, generator, water pump, and even a transmission. Because it has fewer than one-fifth the number of moving parts of a conventional SUV, the hybrid's weight, even with a heavier battery, stays the same. Assembly is simpler and reliability, better. In production, it might cost $40,000 or less, he says.

Toyota flew his Explorer to its research facilities in Japan so engineers could pore over the vehicle. "There's no question in my mind that Toyota has plans for a plug-in hybrid right now, but they aren't talking about it," he says...

Meanwhile, a not-for-profit outfit called CalCars in San Francisco is modifying two Priuses by adding more battery power and a plug. The group has discovered an empty space under the hatch near the current battery that looks almost as if Toyota intended to do this itself one day. "We hope to get significantly more miles per gallon with the additional battery power," says Felix Kramer, the group's founder. "Our purpose is to show Toyota that there is demand for this kind of vehicle."

More juicy gossip and useful information as well within.  The article also quotes the likable-yet-vaguely-sinister James Woolsey, one of the most visible of the "green neo-con" lobbyists discussed in a recent Slate piece that includes this hilarious cartoon (via Crumb Trail):

((     "I AM SOOOOO ANGRY AT THOSE ARAB DICTATORSHIPS!!!!  I AM REALLY GONNA GET THEM!!!"   ))

|/

...a curious transformation is occurring in Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.

The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a conference in Washington that America has become dependent on oil that is imported from countries that, "by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said, makes reducing oil imports "a national security imperative."

I'm kind of predisposed to like the IAGS b/c they are the only think tank/lobbying group that does what they do, supporting both a more activist energy policy and the GWOT - and I'm, like, you know, kind of wishy-washy but affirmative on both counts.  They're well-connected, and I'm glad that they've taken up the cause of plug-in hybrids, which really is a big ticket, high-impact/near term kind of technology. 

Ethanol and biofuels, on the other hand, already get far more political mileage than they're worth.  Ethanol provides only marginal benefits in terms of energy independence, and the environmental costs of the production process generally outweigh the environmental benefits of substituting it for gasoline.  It's not surprising, exactly - James Woolsey isn't actually an environmentalist or anything, nor does he probably give a shit - but it'll be a shame if we finally manage to muster the political willpower necessary to put together the long-awaited federal Energy Bill only to have it dominated by costly, hugely inefficient biofuel programs. 

You can't stop ethanol, of course, you can only hope to contain it - it's too well-entrenched politically to take off the energy agenda at this stage.  Still, I'm optimistic (natch) that the ethanol lobby will provide a valuable service in helping to put wider issues of US energy consumption on the political map, and hopeful that other, more useful energy technologies will manage to jump on the bandwagon.  In the long, or even medium term, genuinely worthwhile vehicle technologies will make pretenders to the throne like ethanol obselete pretty quickly.  Uh, probably.  Gary Jones has a less forgiving and more trenchant analysis of the greenhawks that includes a rather Barnettish deconstruction of the whole concept of energy security in a globalizing, modernizing, interconnected &c world:

It doesn't matter at all if the US buys petroleum from Islamic theocracies. Developing nations such as China will be happy to buy it if the US declines. There would be a brief dip in prices if the change was sudden, but even that won't happen since it can't be done quickly. ... 

The idea of energy security is naive. To achieve it means isolation, refusal to trade with the world in any goods not just petroleum. That way lies madness as well as depression. Energy flows around the world in every product and service. It is only engagement with rest of the world, both the part we like and the part that hates us, that offers hope for security and peace. We must treat with the developing world to allow them to develop. There will be growing pains, analogies of teenage tantrums as societies and cultures are destabilized by emergence from less developed conditions. Just as no child can become an adult without passing through the confused years neither can societies.

Just as parents and other adults in the community must remain engaged with kids as they grow, and suffer when they lash out, so must the developed world remain engaged with the developing, including the skin heads, rag heads, goths, greasers and whatever other rebellious poses the more troubled ones strike. It is neither pleasant nor safe but it is not optional. It doesn't go away when ignored, it gets worse.