Ford's new EV truck, Lightning

A look at how Ford’s new EV truck could be a pivot point in electrication in US transport.

The truck can also store 3 days worth of power for a house.

“One in every 16 vehicles on American roads is an F-150, and it is the most used vehicle in 39 states.

The Ford F-150 Lightning, the new electric version of the ur–American pickup truck, will go on sale next spring for $39,974. Because Ford vehicles still qualify for the federal EV tax credit, most Americans will pay a little less than $32,500 for this truck….

…Or more relevant, for our purposes: Ford sells about 900,000 F-150s every year; all automakers collectively sold 250,000 new EVs total last year. “This may be one of the important products in decarbonization,”

…The Lightning can store so much power that, in a blackout, it can supply a house’s normal power usage for three days, according to Ford. If the house conserves power, it can keep the lights on for more than a week, Zhang said. Talking about this feature, Ford employees and Farley himself have referenced the Texas blackouts. The Lightning is a technology of resilience, of climate adaptation…” (from Atlantic piece).

And from Marginal revolution:

“…Security, peace of mind, don’t be left alone in the dark…all great conservative selling points. Note the truck in the picture is powering the house and the chain saw. The husband and wife, their home and their truck, project independence, success and confidence–a power couple–even with a nod to diversity.

The Lightning is also fast with 0-60mph times in line with those of a Porsche 911 circa 2005, it has more carrying capacity (thanks to the smaller electric motors) than a similar gas vehicle, and it can tow a respectable maximum of 10,000 pounds with all the options.

The Lightning might succeed or it might fail but it won’t fail on politics, this is a vehicle a red-blooded, meat-eating skeptic of global warming could love….”

How is the global energy transition going? Smil, JP Morgan

JP Morgan / Vaclav Smil on state of energy transition. A balanced view of the world on where we are on current energy transition.

How is the global energy transition going? Taken together, the aggregate impact of nuclear, hydroelectric and solar/wind generation reduced global reliance on fossil fuels from ~95% of primary energy in 1975 to ~85% in 2020. In other words, energy transitions take a long time and lots of money. The IEA expects fossil fuel reliance to decline at a more rapid pace now, fueled in part by “Big Oil” companies becoming “Big Energy” companiesand by a faster global EV transition.

In 2021 renewables are for the first time expected to garner more capital spending than upstream oil & gas. This process is influenced by diverging costs of capital: 3%-5% for solar and wind, 10%-15% for natural gas and up to 20% for oil projects.

However, the IEA still projects that 70%-75% of global primary energy consumption may be met via fossil fuels in the year 2040. Why don’t rapid wind and solar price declines translate into faster decarbonization? As we will discuss, renewable energy is still mostly used to generate electricity, and electricity as a share of final energy consumption on a global basis is still just 18%.

In other words, direct use of fossil fuels is still the primary mover in the modern world, as the demise of fossil fuels continues to be prematurely declared by energy futurists. As shown in the last three charts, wind/solar capacity is growing and gains in renewable electricity generation are impressive, but in primary energy terms they are much smaller…”

More in the report here.

Consumer green energy default choice is sticky

“Non-monetary incentives that encourage pro-environmental behaviour can contribute to combating climate change. Here, we investigated the effect of green energy defaults in the household and business sectors. In two large-scale field studies in Switzerland of over 200,000 households and 8,000 enterprises, we found that presenting renewable energy to existing customers as the standard option led to around 80% of the household and business sector customers staying with the green default, and the effects were largely stable over a time span of at least four years. Electricity consumption had only a weak effect on default acceptance. Our data do not indicate moral licensing: accepting the green default did not lead to a disproportionate increase in electricity consumption. Compared with men, women in both the household and business sectors were slightly more likely to accept the green default. Overall, non-monetary incentives can be highly effective in both the household and business sectors.” in nature human behvaiour.

Exxon misled?

"This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements ('advertorials') in The New York Times." See Assessing ExxonMobil's climate change communications (1977–2014) by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes. Pdf here. Video abstract below. 

"We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists' academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public. Our content analysis also examines ExxonMobil's discussion of the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets. We find the topic discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials. "

Exxon have on going litigation in this area. Check out Exxon's 20-F for more and a recent NYT piece on the NY State litigation, In June 2017,  “evidence suggests not only that Exxon’s public statements about its risk management practices were false and misleading, but also that Exxon may still be in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing fraudulent scheme on investors and the public.”

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here and ideas on the arts here. On investing try a thought on stock valuations.  Or Ray Dalio on populism and risk.

Vaclav Smil, energy expert. Awesome.

Vaclav Smic is a world leading authority on energy systems and usage. I had the fortune to hear him speak at a CLSA event this week.

See his work and academic credentials here.  His books give more data and insights. These two pieces on energy here (2017 Annual Energy paper with JPM) and here, (A skeptics look at alternative energy) also expand on these notes below in more detail. Bill Gates is a fan. 

My brief impressions are:

We are heading for >2 degree world. Too much is already baked into the pipeline. I] It is unlikely we will bend human behaviour enough by 2050. Energy transitions as can be seen throughout history take a long time (decades).

We need to be prepared to deal with negative catastrophes in places like Bangladesh and Florida. Conversely, it is possible that much of Russia will benefit. One could argue Russia might want to ensure at least a +3 degree warm happens if it was only self interested.

We should think about consuming less. The impact of eating 50 percent less beef in the Developed world would be significant. Turning vegetarian for one day a week could also be very significant in terms of carbon impact.

Smil views improving battery technology as incremental. He cites 100 years of progress since Edison made an improvement. He does not view mass efficient energy storage of the type needed to power a city for one day as likely to come on to the market in the next 20 years. He cites near term the biggest to be completed in 2021 in California as being insufficient to power most cities for more than a few hours.

Smic is optimistic on the impact that moving to natural gas could have. Both in terms of pollution, but also in terms of efficiency. Gas is still FF though.

There are no viable alternatives for producing fertiliser, steel, plastics, and much of the basic materials of the modern world; and flying planes other than fossil fuel use. This leaves likely FF to make up at least 50 percent of worlds energy requirements on an ongoing basis.

Fusion. Commercially - The most optimistic assessment would be "Not in our life time" or perhaps "Never". He cites two world fusion experts.

Cities don't really sleep. However solar and wind in most places are not reliable. This is why even though Germany which now has renewable capacity to match its fossil fuel capacity has not impacted meaningfully its FF use, not its carbon emissions from Energy use.

In many places in the world the grid is not connected. One can't send energy from San Francisco to Texas. Or from Texas to Canada. In some places it can work, Denmark can obtain hydroelectric power from Norway when the wind is not blowing. Few people want high energy transmission lines traversing their backyard or landscape, so the situation is unlikely to rapidly improve.

In discussion, as an aside - We will cure more cancers before we solve the mass electricity storage problems  (I happen to agree with this view on the cancer side, I'll have to rely on Smil on the storage problem)

The return on vaccines is at least 44x.  Eradicating polio has been an amazing world benefit. As an advisor to Bill Gates, this is not a surprise to have this view. The Gates foundation has worked on this for a while now.  Many world human development metrics have vastly improved over the last 25 years (As my infant mortality post shows as well, hopefully more data on this).  You can see the Gates work here and a Smil article on it here.