Energy Days at the University of Texas

Each of the panelists received ten minutes for their presentation, a time limit that was waived for the guest from Brookings. UT led off with Michael Webber talking knowledgeably about how plans for the energy future had to meet the basic laws of physics and chemistry, something of which proponents of various schemes in the past had not seemed to be fully aware. Ten minutes wasn’t nearly enough to get a complex idea across, and while Webber was a good speaker, he wasn’t in the same speaking ability league as the professional politician and the two amateurs. Webber needed more of a platform than he was given. Speaking with him afterwards, I discovered that he is pioneering two courses on energy, one graduate and one undergraduate, dreadfully important, overdue and sorely needed. I asked him what books he was using, and for his undergraduate course. He is using Vaclav Smil’s Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties, and for his graduate course he is using Energy, a guidebook, by Janet Ramage. Damned good books, both. Webber was interested that I’d read both books, and confessed that he hadn’t read all of either of them. Ahh, the University of Texas – it hasn’t changed a lick after all these years.

Roger Duncan was on topic and talked about what Austin Energy was doing to reduce petroleum usage. AE’s big plan afoot is plug-in hybrid cars, which were discussed without mentioning the rebate and federal tax credit plans for their purchasers. (Did I read right at $14K per vehicle total??? Definitely a $4K IRS tax credit is in the works.) Also neglected were discussions of worsening air pollution by electric cars – coal doesn’t burn as clean as gasoline in a car engine – a largely unsettled issue of long standing from the scientific/technical side. There’s also the total energy picture of a hybrid car – sure they get better mileage, but they cost a bunch more in energy to manufacture and maintain, what with the electric motors and regular battery pack replacements – more energy gets burned up in the vehicle’s overall lifetime than an equivalent gas-only car, it seems. That’s the key technical question with hybrids; nobody is asking it, and the concomitant follow-up – do hybrids make any real sense? doesn’t ever get asked either. One important point made by Mr. Duncan was that Austin Energy’s energy conservation program had saved the equivalent of a coal-fired electric plant in electric usage in the Austin area, and was therefore saving that much energy use and air pollution, every single day. But, he said, it took 20 years of work for that to happen, and nothing in the world of energy policy was going to take place rapidly. Voice of experience, there. Talking to him afterwards, Mr. Duncan acknowledged that the case for hybrid vehicles was complicated and was not yet made completely from the scientific/technical side. Well then, I said, AE is pushing hybrids because… ” Because it is what we at AE can do to stop our using petroleum.”