A silver lining to high gas prices...

[trekbiker]

even though I'm swearing at paying over $40 to fill my tank I think these high gas prices are a good thing in that they will accelerate new technologies to reduce our societies dependence on fossil fuels..

important developments are happening right now in nanotechnology that will greatly improve solar power generation. But the biggest thing that is going to happen soon are new developments in plug in hybrids. Lithium battery technology is making these PHEV's more practical and nanotech may lead to new battery technology breakthrus. I suspect Toyota's next generation of Prius will be a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) maybe even as soon as 2007



http://www.evworld.com/electrichybrid.cfm

"In the case of Energy CS's Electric Hybrid Prius, the engineering teams estimates that the car, if carefully driven, can get between 120-to-180 mpg; while using only 115-150 Whr per mile. The last part, Watt hours per mile, is important. Here's why.

The 9kWh Lithium-ion pack provides enough energy to propel the car at freeway speeds for about 60 miles or so -- a really exciting improvement. At that point, the car returns to normal hybrid operation, running the gasoline engine for most of the time and getting about 50 mpg.

In effect, you didn't burn a little over one gallon of gasoline for the first 60 miles or so. Instead, you consumed something less than 9kWh of electricity. Why less than 9kWh? It's a safety and durability precaution so you won't fully discharge the battery and shorten its life. So, let's say you used 80% of the 9kWh. That's 7.2 kiloWatt hours.

Now comes the fun part. Let's say you live in a city where electricity costs you 10 cents a kilowatt hour. To travel that 60 miles, it cost you 72 cents compared to the current national average price of gasoline at about $2.20/gallon in the US (as of April 2, 2005). In effect, for the same $2.20, you could drive up to 180 miles -- on three successive days, of course -- giving you the equivalent of 180 miles per gallon."

[mattclearing]

1. Maybe, but what if your electricity is fueled by coal?

Better get some wind turbines.

[skids]

3. Still cleaner.

...but that's not really the issue here. Plug-in hybrids are an enabling technology that open the way to using renewable electricity sources. The more options a car user has in flexibly choosing their fuel, the more opportunity there is for future carbon load reduction.

Anyway, I wouldn't say that Li-ion based plug-in hybrids are a really big development in renewables -- they are great in that they get people thinking, so they are a good in a PR sort of way, but the biggest developments right now are the "sliver" grown silicon fabrication technique that halves wafer production costs, 100+ suns concentrated PV cells with 37%+ efficiency, and further up the pipeline the nanotube sheets (which is what I think the OP is referring to as a major development) will no doubt have a huge impact on just about everything we make. Thermoelectrics cheap enough to do automotive waste heat recovery would also be a huge boost for the trucking industry (and home cogen combined heat and power applications). We'll see if fab costs come down on those.

Plug-in hybrids will become more of a permanent fixture if/when battery technology improves -- vanadium redox batteries look particularly promising for this purpose because they don't get damaged by deep cycling like the Li-ion batteries (and most other technologies) do.

High mileage diesel hybrids (e.g. not pickup trucks) would also help.

[wtmusic]

2. not to mention

just plain driving less, or riding that Trek bike :)