We were encouraged last week by the bipartisan 19-4 vote in the Senate Energy &
Natural Resources Committee for S.3495, The Promoting Electric Vehicles Act of
2010, an evolution of the Electric Vehicle Deployment Act legislation developed
by http://www.electrificationcoalition.org . But as of now its provisions have
been KO'd (knocked out) of the developing "small energy package" that is
replacing any broad action on climate change. Advocates are mobilizing to
encourage messages to the Senate Leadership, especially Majority Leader Harry
Reid, not to drop these provisions. Making this leadership strategy more
questionable is the inclusion of a major push for natural gas for
transportation, which we talk about below, followed with pointers for what you
can do.

(Shortly after it goes out on email, this posting will also be viewable at
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html -- there you can add CalCars-News to
your RSS feed.)

SENATOR REID'S CHALLENGE: The Majority Leader's actions effectively leave it up
to those who support PHEVs and EVs to see if the broader EV community can muster
political support to add the plug-in vehicle tax credits and other provisions to
add to the natural gas vehicle tax credits that made their way into the draft
bill. These include:

* Support for S.3495 to promote broad deployment of plug-in vehicles;
* National tax incentives for vehicles and infrastructure, including
reinstatement of credits for medium and heavy-duty vehicles (included in S.2854,
the Kohl-Hatch bill amending the IRS code);
* Making tax credits available to tax-exempt entities such as organizations and
municipalities.

As we post this, the leadership's bill has not yet been made public. There's
still time to have your voices heard.

As advocates of "cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity," we've been focusing on
oil as the main alternative. But if natural gas as a primary solution for an
energy transportation policy, we won't have gotten very far. Below we explain
some of that. We follow that with the statement by the Electrification Coalition
and how you can contact Senator Reid.

THE REAL STORY ABOUT NATURAL GAS: The most important thing to understand about
NG is that it is A NON-RENEWABLE FOSSIL FUEL. Nowadays, the campaign to promote
NG is increasingly misleading. Uninformed people hear that the fuel is called
"natural." They see TV ads and buses on city streets powered by "America's Clean
Energy." It sounds like a benign fuel with substantial domestic supplies. In
Washington, the natural gas companies are spending money, while the electricity
industry sleeps. Every policy junkie in Washington who read's Politico's Morning
Energy report gets two ads from America's Natural Gas Alliance.

In the days when the main concern was "air pollution," NG was an obvious
improvement. The chart at an industry website,
http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp shows NG is 12x better than
gasoline on particulates, and almost 400x better than coal. It's 5x better than
gasoline or coal on nitrogen oxides (smog precursor).

GREENHOUSE GASES: But these days we're most worried about CO2. There the
benefits are far smaller. NG is only 20-30% lower than gasoline! At the same
NaturalGas.org page, citing the U.S. Energy Information Agency, NG has 71.3% as
much CO2 as oil. At another U.S. Government energy source, the benefit is even
lower: NG at the pipeline has 74.8% the carbon content of motor gasoline.
(Source: http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Spreadsheets/TableB_16.xls from the
Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Transportation
Energy Data Book.These numbers don't include the GHGs used to bring the fuel
from the well to the wheels (pipelines and trucks vs. pipelines and
compression/liquifaction.) And the State of California's Low Carbon Fuel
Standard analyses uses numbers closer to 20%.

For large vehicles, if we had no other option, we would chose natural gas over
gasoline. But we see as the best long-term strategy to electrify as many
gasoline/diesel miles as possible then use the cleanest liquid fuel possible for
the range extension, evolving that as soon as possible to renewable low-carbon
biofuels. The best use of NG would be in large power plants to displace coal
rather than in inefficient internal combustion engines.

AS A "FUEL FROM HELL," NATURAL GAS COMES FROM DRILLING. With all the promotion
of NG, we're only now beginning to hear about the dark downside of hydraulic
fracturing or "fracking"-- using millions of gallons of water mixed with
undisclosed chemicals and sand to release natural gas. This is the subject of an
acclaimed new documentary, Gasland, still airing on HBO. And last week saw signs
of the growing controversy as communities across dozens of states located on
top of the cast Marcellus Shale Formation, an "unconventional natural gas
reserve" across 10 states face gold-rush style leasing pressures and are
reporting to the Environmental Protection Agency groundwater contamination and
other consequences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/energy-environment/24gas.html

This provides the context in which oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens spent $50
million pushing his Pickens Plan. (Pickens also likes wind energy, another of
his businesses, and has spoken well of plug-in vehicles, but they're sidelines.)
Washington observers are crediting his efforts with making natural gas the
winner and plug-in vehicles the loser in the Senate.


CORPORATIONS ADOPTING NATURAL GAS: While we've been working to gain credibility
and support for the companies that are converting vehicles to electricity, we're
seeing announcements for often more expensive conversions to natural gas.
Verizon has bought 501 Ford E-250 cargo vans to convert to run on compressed
natural gas.
http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2010/06/aiming-to-lower-its-co2-footpri\
nt-verizon-buys-501-ford-vans-to-convert-to-cng.html . That report says Ford has
shipped 3,000 vans "equipped for natural gas conversions" in the past seven
months. And Chrysler, following Fiat's lead, is now looking at natural gas as an
alternative to electrification
http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2010/06/chrysler-eyeing-natural-gas-as-\
interim-green-stragegy.html

THE ELECTRIFICATION COALITION'S RESPONSE TO THE LEADERSHIP'S ACTIONS

http://www.electrificationcoalition.org/news-ec-energy-bill.php
An Energy Bill That Does Not Include Electrification With Not Improve Energy
Security

WASHINGTON – July 22, 2010 Robbie Diamond, president of the Electrification
Coalition, released the following statement today in response to news reports
outlining the energy bill expected to reach the Senate floor next week:

"The Senate is making a dramatic mistake if the energy bill that is debated next
week does not include the bipartisan electrification provisions that only
yesterday were overwhelmingly voted out of committee. After the last three
months of watching oil spill into the Gulf, it would be stunning if the energy
bill does not include electrification, which represents the only way to
fundamentally affect our oil consumption. Republicans and Democrats alike
support electrification, and they should have the opportunity to vote on it. An
oil bill that does not include electrification cannot truly be said to improve
our energy security."

On May 27, Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate introduced
legislation designed to advance the wide-scale deployment of electric vehicles
and to develop the infrastructure needed to support them. The Senate bill,
entitled the "Electric Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010" was introduced by
Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
The House legislation, entitled the "Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of
2010," was cosponsored by House Select Committee on Energy Independence and
Global Warming Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), Rep. Anna
Eshoo (D-CA), and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA). A version of the legislation was
approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on an overwhelming
bipartisan 19-4 vote on July 21.

The legislation echoes recommendations put forward by the Electrification
Coalition, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit group of business leaders committed to
promoting policies and actions that facilitate the deployment of electric
vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and
national security dangers caused by our nation's dependence on petroleum. The
EC's Electrification Roadmap, released in November 2009, proposed a set of
policies in which geographic areas would compete to be selected as
electrification deployment communities: specific areas in which targeted,
temporary financial incentives are employed so that all of the elements of an
electrified transportation system are deployed simultaneously.

You can send a short message along the lines of "include S.3495, The Promoting
Electric Vehicles Act of 2010 in the energy package so we can get off fossil
fuels sooner" by email to Senator Reid at
http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

You can also use voice your support through the Electrification Coalition's
website to contact your elected officials
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6867/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=3579


-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --