Where's the Power Coming From?

Let's posit that electric cars like the Chevy Volt are tremendously successful and are bought up in droves. How and where exactly is the energy that these electric cars rely upon produced? The power isn't coming out of thin air. It has to be generated somewhere, and there are costs associated with the production and transmission to the end user.

Much of the country relies on coal for power. Nuclear power produces a fraction, and wind and solar produce a fraction of the power necessary to wean the nation off its dependency on oil. This chart shows where our energy comes from, and what it's used for.

Petroleum, natural gas, and coal account for more than 80% of the energy used by the nation. Petroleum is the primary energy source for transportation (95%), and this is the energy source that electric vehicles are supposed to displace.

There haven't been any new nuclear power licenses issued since 1996 according to the Energy Information Administration. Don't expect any new nuclear power plants to come online anytime soon, even though a nuclear power plant would produce more power than several coal powered plants combined, and on a smaller footprint.

That means that other energy sources have to be considered. Natural gas and coal are the backbone of electric energy production, but they too produce greenhouse gases, which leaves hydropower and other alternative energy sources, including solar.

There are several methods for collecting solar power, including using solar cells and Parabolic trough technology. A Spanish company is currently attempting to build the world's largest solar collector energy facility in the world in Arizona. The 280mw system would sit on 1,900 acres but the system would be able to produce power even after the sun goes down because it would store energy in the form of molten salt, which would release energy for several hours after dark.

However, compared to the limited size of a nuclear power footprint, the smallest of which could fit into a small building and yet power 20,000 homes, and you can expect to see opposition to such plans because of how it would alter the local environment - whether the views or the local ecosystem. We see similar opposition to wind power on similar grounds - they take up tremendous expanses of land and create visual pollution, and could negatively affect local ecosystems, including migratory wildlife.

Yet, despite Arizona sitting in the middle of the nation's sun belt, where conditions are ripe for solar power development, it would appear that politics is thwarting further development.

Arizona officials are complaining that the federal government short-changed their sunny state when it designated “solar energy study zones” to accelerate development of solar power plants in Western states.

In July, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management identified 16,492 acres in Arizona suitable for the solar study zones — compared to 351,049 acres in California, 149,375 acres in Nevada and 120,584 acres in New Mexico.

“We have concerns regarding the process used to select solar zones in Arizona, and the resulting paucity of Arizona land identified for study,” wrote Kristin K. Mayes, chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator, in an Aug. 3 letter to the federal task force managing the solar energy study zones.

The science is taking a back seat to the technological advancements and energy development of alternative energy, despite claims that the current Administration would change things. The more things have changed, the more they're the same.

That brings us to a major drawback on solar power - it simply isn't feasible for most of the world because it doesn't receive sufficient amounts of sun, whether because it is too far from the equator or is in part of the world that sees too few sunny days. Solar can be only a partial solution, which relies on other power sources that are based on more stable energy sources.