The Missing Metrics of Clean Energy

The title to this post might be obscure, but it sums up something that has bothered me for a while now. We all hear a lot about various kinds of “alternative” or “clean” energy, including biodiesel (and ethanol supplemented) fuels, electric cars, “clean” coal, wind, and solar power. But clearly they are all not created equal and come with different costs and benefits. While it seems clear that solar and wind power technology would be a complete positive influx to the electricity grid, because wind passes through blades which power turbines generating electricity, and photons are absorbed by photo-electric cells and converted into electricity (less the energy expense of building and maintaining the wind or solar power plants), other technologies are a mixed bag.

Take electric cars for instance. You would plug your electric car into a power outlet overnight to re-charge the battery. When you drive it around, you are not emitting any pollutants, merely de-charging the battery. But where does the power come from? Power plants which are currently mostly powered by coal, which are mostly very dirty.

The metrics are missing. Metrics are simply statistics or numbers that measure performance or efficiency. Here, the relevant metrics would be: (1) Which method, burning coal to produce electricity, or burning gasoline in internal combustion engines (combined with whatever power is consumed to refine oil into gasoline) is most efficient at producing energy? (2) Which pollutes more? I have never seen the metrics, and it is extremely disturbing to me, because how can we make intelligent decisions if we do not have real or at least approximate numbers? They have got to be out there or be able to be calculated.

The missing metrics for biodiesel fuels and using ethanol to supplement gasoline for trucks and cars is probably most troublesome to me. Most of our biodiesel fuels and ethanol come from corn and other agricultural products. Well, how are those products grown? We use an awful lot of gas and electricity to power farm equipment and to produce, transport, and refine all of these grains into fuel. What is the net effect here? Also, I am highly suspicious of this particular “green” fuel, because a vested interest—big agriculture and its big subsidies—is implicated.

In the case of electric cars, I have read interviews with manufacturers of electric cars who acknowledge the “long tailpipe” dilemma described above and declare that the solution is a next step of marketing solar panels to owners to power their own cars at home. The idea is that the individual consumer, with his solar panel (photo-voltaic electronic device and battery) generates his own power. That would be great—but it is clearly deceptive to say that electric cars move us anywhere closer to a greener, less polluting outcome alone. Unless the metrics tell us something different; i.e., that it really is more efficient to produce power in electrical power plants rather than internal combustion engines.

There are two very obvious factors at play here: efficiency and pollution. Which source of energy is most efficient (i.e., produces the most energy for the least cost)? Which is least polluting?

Until we have solid answers to those questions, we cannot make intelligent decisions about green alternatives, other than the strict “zero sum” technologies, like solar and wind power.