BOULDER, Colo.--When President Obama said that he wanted to put 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015, it sounded good to many people worried about the effects of fossil fuels.
But when you consider that there are currently about 230 million vehicles on the road in the United States alone, you realize that Obama's goal amounts to less than one half of 1 percent--hardly what's going to move the U.S. into a post-gas future.
Project Get Ready, an initiative of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is trying to help cities get ready for an electric-car future.
(Credit: Project Get Ready)Still, to the people at Project Get Ready, an initiative of the Rocky Mountain Institute, anything that can jump-start a culture trajectory away from fossil fuels is a good thing. And that's why Project Get Ready is starting to work with cities around the country to prepare them, their communities, utilities and merchants for a day when the electric car is not only a viable option but a significant piece of the transportation puzzle.
On Road Trip 2009, I stopped in Boulder to talk with Matt Mattila, one of the leaders of Project Get Ready. I wanted to hear whether he and his team really think that electric cars can become a dominant fixture on our roads and in our cities.
The answer? Not anytime soon, but if we all work together to prepare, it may well happen in the not too, too distant future. But it will take serious thought, cooperation among various constituencies, and a willingness to think long term.
Don't make Chevy Volt a disaster
One of the most important goals has to be, Mattila argued, that electric-car ventures currently under way not fail before they can even get off the ground. That means that by the time a car like the much-heralded Chevy Volt starts to roll off production lines in a year or two, that there be enough of an infrastructure in place to handle them.
To Mattila, one major consideration is the thinking that's going to go on in the board rooms of companies like General Motors and other car makers, which are going to look at the market and the cultural environment and say: We're getting these new cars ready, so make sure there's enough charging stations, easy-to-get permits, consumer education and fleet buy-in. The point? So that, "when Chevy hands its billion-dollar Volt off, it's not going to be a big disaster because there's nowhere to plug it in," Mattila said.
That's where Project Get Ready comes into play, he said. The idea is to work on spreading awareness of what it takes to have an infrastructure for electric cars so that enough cities around the country feel like it's worth the effort to prepare for that future.
As well, it's important to address the chicken-and-egg problem: If consumers don't feel they have places to plug in their new electric cars, they won't buy them. And if people won't buy them, car makers won't make them.
"These few years are critical," Mattila said, "so focus on making (the coming launches) great, so that early adopters evangelize" electric cars and the experience of driving and maintaining them.
But, of course, there's nowhere in the United States that is ready for this yet. So Project Get Ready considers its major task to try to identify the gap that exists in understanding what it takes, and bringing all the various players to the table: city planners, local coalitions, nonprofits and, last, but not least, big utilities.
"They have to be part of the (solution)," Mattila said of the utilities. "If thousands of cars are going to be plugged into their grid, they need to know who's going to be plugged in, and at what rate."
Most will plug in at home
One thing that the electric car has going for it, according to Mattila, is that 80 percent of the charging up that will be done will be done at home or at the office. Many people who own such cars will install a charging station at home, taking some of the burden off the public infrastructure.
"But what can we do to make people see that there are public charging stations" as well, said Mattila. "It's getting people comfortable with seeing them out there" in public.
That's not going to be possible, of course, unless cities, large merchants, and/or utility companies feel there is an economic incentive to make the substantial investment in widespread charging stations.
Today, however, there is a lot of public money available for such projects. Mattila said that as much as half of the costs of charging stations can be offset by government funding. As well, it's a young market without a lot of competition, so some companies making charging stations are installing them for free to try to establish a market.
Others are following a cell phone business model and are installing the charging stations for free, but charging access fees for using them. And still others feel they will only make money by charging for the installation. The folks at Project Get Ready clearly see that merchants may have the most to gain by investing in the infrastructure.
"Our approach is to make a real business case," Mattila said, "so that Gold's Gym and UA Theaters (and such companies) have a real incentive to put them in on their own."
The reason? So that cities don't have to pay for everything.
At the same time, Mattila said that utility companies are looking at a huge windfall when it comes to electric cars and the power they will require. "There could be a huge opportunity for utilities," he said, "to own the boxes and install them and say, 'We can determine when you get energy...how much you get and how much you pay."
The idea there, he added, is that the utilities can ensure that if people plug in during high-demand periods, they pay a premium.
Still, despite the potential economic advantages to utility companies, Mattila said that Project Get Ready's research suggests that the most common models for electric-car infrastructure will be cities and large merchants paying for it.
"The Wal-Marts of the world (can do it to) fulfill the promise of being more green," he said. To them, "it's a drop in the bucket, so they view it as a loss leader to get people coming into the store to buy things."
In that scenario, he added, you might someday see a charging station at every parking spot in a Wal-Mart lot.
More efficient and less expensive
When the Volt comes out, it is expected to be fairly expensive, along the lines of a standard-engine luxury vehicle. So to Mattila, the goal has to be to survive the early adopter stage and get to a point where not only are the second-generation Volts affordable for a larger consumer base, but where there are enough public charging stations available to handle future generations of less expensive electric cars with smaller batteries and shorter driving ranges.
Some people want the green car of tomorrow to be a hydrogen fuel vehicle, Mattila acknowledged, but added that there's no existing hydrogen infrastructure. "The entire country's wired," he said, touting electric cars, "and we can plug in just about anywhere."
Despite his full-time efforts on behalf of a world full of electric cars, Mattila is not entirely optimistic about what he sees.
He does say that he sees maturity in the market in 10 or 15 years and that by 2030 electric cars may well make up a significant percentage of cars on the road. But that's a long time from now.
"I'd say I'm more on the skeptical side...at least when I attend conferences and preach to our choir," he explained. "We try to rein in our people (and) look at the barriers and try to address them, rather than focus on what would be good if we had millions and millions of these things being sold."
Still, Project Get Ready has started ongoing conversations with cities like Houston, Raleigh, N.C., Indianapolis, Portland, and Denver and is in unofficial talks with half a dozen more, all in an effort to inform decision-makers about what they have to do to prepare.
Ultimately, Mattila said, Project Get Ready's five-year plan is to put the country on a trajectory to get off of fossil fuels.
"It's hard to be motivated by something that the next generation is going to benefit from," he explained, "but if we can demonstrate (the profit motivation) then maybe people will get on board. We don't want it to be a sacrifice."
Road Trip 2009 hit 1,000 miles in the beautiful town of Glenwood Springs, Colo.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo.--It still feels like Road Trip 2009 has just started, but I've already hit 1,000 miles. Unlike Road Trip 2008, where I hit the 1,000-mile milestone while driving along a nondescript section of forested, deep South highway, this time the odometer turned over to four figures while I was rolling slowly in the Audi Q7 TDI "clean diesel" SUV I'm road-testing down a picturesque lane full of high-priced houses with fantastic views of the Rocky Mountains.
I like to use each of the thousand-mile points along the way as an excuse to blog about what has happened on Road Trip since the last such point. I suppose it's kind of arbitrary, and perhaps on my next trip I could just as well blog about where I'm at when I hit 843 miles, 1,843 miles, 2,843 miles and so on. But I'm a fan of round numbers; what can I do?
The odometer rolls over to 1,000 miles on the Audi Q7 TDI that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman is driving around on Road Trip 2009.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)On Road Trip 2009, the first thousand miles has certainly been full of interesting stops, with a lot of variety.
I began by visiting the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colo., and learning about founder Amory Lovins' highly-efficient house in that high Rockies town. The house, which focuses on finding ways to reduce power consumption, produces more renewable energy than it uses, allowing it to feed electricity back into the grid. Also, because of its use of a greenhouse, it features banana trees that can even produce fruit at over 8,000 feet of altitude.
I also visited Boulder, Colo., and among other things, I talked to the folks at Transition Boulder County, a nonprofit focusing on how to help local communities figure out how to thrive in what they say is a not-too-distant future in which the world has passed peak oil production.
In Boulder, I also talked to a scientist at the University of Colorado who is spearheading a nearly half-billion dollar project to investigate what happened to Mars' atmosphere in an attempt to find out if the Red Planet once was able to support life.
Then I moved on to Colorado Springs, where I spent several days doing a number of things.
First, I arrived at the United States Air Force Academy for a day witnessing the in-processing of the class of 2013, a group of 1,376 new basic cadets who are willing to endure four years of hard work and at least a year of humiliation at the hands of their older classmates for the chance to serve in the "Long Blue Line."
The next day, I had a very rare opportunity to visit Cheyenne Mountain, the underground facility also known as "America's Fortress," where NORAD and many other arms of the U.S. defense and military community maintain command centers and other facilities. The focus of my visit, however, was on the infrastructure of Cheyenne Mountain.
And then, before I left Colorado Springs, I returned to the Air Force Academy to watch dozens of firemen (and women) compete in the Firefighter Combat Challenge, a nationwide tour that pits teams against each other in a bid to show who is the strongest, fastest, and best at the many tasks these brave public servants have to perform on a daily basis.
Now I'm already well on my way to the next thousand miles. Where will I be the next time those three zeroes show up on the odometer? Only time will tell.
For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
This is the front of the greenhouse at the home of Rocky Mountain Institute founder Amory Lovins.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SNOWMASS, Colo.--Residential living doesn't get much more efficient than this.
Here, out in the country not far from the ritz and glamour of Aspen, you're more likely to find ranchers and wide-open farmland than movie stars. But what you will find, at the original headquarters of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit sustainability think tank, is a house that could teach us all a few lessons in energy efficiency and comfort.
It is the home of RMI founder Amory Lovins and also serves as office space--though RMI's official headquarters is now nearby in Snowmass on a ranch property formerly owned by the late John Denver. The house has a series of systems built into it that are designed to provide all the power it needs, maintain a steady, comfortable temperature, keep it well lit, and even grow bananas at 8,000 feet.
As part of Road Trip 2009, my trek through the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions in search of the most interesting destinations, I got a tour of the facility Monday from RMI public relations manager Cory Lowe (see video below, which may require high volume). Lowe explained that the house is a manifestation of one of the nonprofit's three main focus areas. RMI consults worldwide on energy, transportation, and building issues. The house serves as a kind of physical portfolio piece for the latter.
Indeed, it is a prime example of one of RMI's chief directives: efficiency first, and then renewables. In other words, do everything you can to cut power usage and then supply what's still needed with renewable energy sources.
Among RMI's other projects are a $500 million retrofit and efficiency upgrade for New York City's Empire State Building and a long-term plan to help cities prepare for what many expect to be a future filled with electric cars.
But here in the wide-open spaces of Snowmass, the focus is on sustainable living. And from the moment you walk onto the property, you get a sense of what RMI is all about.
On the roof, which was built in 1982 but recently went through a significant renovation, is a "hodge-podge" of photo-voltaic panels. In the past, they provided a great deal of the building's electric power. But since the renovation and the addition of a new, large-scale set of solar panels, the house is now thought to be capable of producing 9.8 kilowatt hours, which is more power than it uses.
Part of that is due to two smaller solar panels that are installed on the far left side of the building's roof and which are designed to track the sun throughout the day. Most solar panels are south-facing and stationary, but thanks to a small tracking antenna mounted on their top-right corners, these two panels are able to stay in sync with the sun all day, meaning they provide 40 percent more power than traditional panels, Lowe said. They are also able to point to the brightest spot in the sky on cloudy days, meaning that even when it's overcast, they can still maximize their power production.
Of course, energy efficiency doesn't come just from generating electricity. It also comes from the reduction in the use of energy. As a result, the house was designed so that it has no furnace and no traditional heating systems.
I said that the house reminded me of Earthships, a style of off-the-grid sustainable housing that are popular in places like New Mexico and that I wrote about during Road Trip 2007.
Lowe explained that, in fact, many of the design elements of the RMI house were "stolen" from Earthships. But after walking through the Snowmass house, I think that it's clear RMI took the concepts much further.
Both, however, are based on the idea of thermal mass, or the collection of heat in things like dirt, clay, concrete, water and plants. That's why both Earthships and the RMI house have large greenhouses as central features. But where the Earthships I visited near Taos, N.M., tended to have a very narrow greenhouse in front of south-facing windows, the RMI house had a very large, deep greenhouse that, in fact, is the building's central space.
An Earthship, as seen near Taos, N.M., is an off-the-grid type of housing that relies, like the RMI house, on thermal mass for heating.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)In addition, the greenhouse here is filled with gorgeous landscaping that includes a brook, a tiny pond filled with fish, a lot of cement in the floor and walkways, a fair amount of dirt and several banana trees.
The idea, explained Lowe, is that all these elements together form the thermal mass, which is designed to absorb heat for about six warm months, and then slowly release it during the colder months. This means that when the temperatures outside begin to drop--or get downright frosty in the high Rockies winter--the house stays comfortable without a furnace.
That, of course, is very similar to an Earthship. But Earthships require two main elements that the RMI house doesn't have and doesn't need: a back wall made mainly out of tires packed tight with dirt, and a hillside on the north side of the building that the house is built up against. By contrast, the RMI house was built out in the open.
The RMI house also requires no traditional water heater. Instead, it has a large, south-facing panel on the roof that is lined with pipes filled with an anti-freeze. As the sun warms the pipes, they warm the building's water supply through a heat exchange process. Like everything else here, this means that hot water is on demand at any time without the use of any externally provided power. If the water temperature isn't high enough, it can be boosted with a small, supplemental, solar-powered heater.
Another component of the house's use of efficient systems is a pair of what are known as Solatubes. On the roof, the house has mounted what look like very small chimneys, but which are actually a form of skylight. Underneath, two large, well-insulated tubes snake down inside the building, inside of which are a series of reflective mirrors. Finally, the tubes open up into the house's main hallway, providing a bath of sunlight that is filtered with a long screen. The upshot is that sunlight is directed into what would otherwise be a dark section of the house, without the need for a huge skylight.
Solatubes are not innovations unique to RMI, of course. Rather, they are popular all around the world. But they are yet another example of something that can be added to the average house to improve conditions without requiring additional power.
The light here is provided by two Solatubes mounted on the roof of the house.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)All told, RMI's house is designed to keep energy use low, provide what power it does need--and hopefully, feed some back to the grid. Lovins also directed that the house be outfitted with technology to help analyze every bit of power usage so that the RMI folks there can see, at any time, how it's performing. Part of that, Lowe explained, had to do with a desire to be as transparent as possible. He didn't say so explicitly, but my sense was that because the house is a showpiece for RMI's work, Lovins wanted to be able to show the world how the systems are performing.
And all around the house, the systems are on display. In the bathroom, there is a low-flow toilet, and a high-efficiency hand dryer. In the kitchen, the refrigerator and freezer have thick doors and walls for better insulation. And while the house used to use natural gas, allowing for a gas stove, it now features an electric stove.
There's also several rooms with rounded walls, which, Lowe said, are stronger than straight walls, and which help with sound aesthetics.
Ultimately, the idea is both for RMI's team to live and work in one of the most efficient and comfortable houses in the world, and for the think tank to be able to show to potential clients what is possible.
But it's not just about making the world better, Lowe explained. For RMI to convince its corporate clients to get on board, the firm has to make the case that the kinds of innovations featured in the house are also economically viable--that efficiency and sustainability can offer significant cost savings over legacy systems.
Still, when you're the one living, or working, in such a building, you want to know that your investment is worth the trouble.
"In order to live efficiently, you don't have to suffer," Lowe said. "Amory's old saying is, 'Hot showers and cold beer. You don't want to give them up just to live more efficiently.'"
For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation, and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
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