A Solution to the Energy Crisis, Part 1
Phillip Greenspun comments on his blog the possibility of converting cars from gas to electric and the financial ramifications of an immediate changeover:
In practical terms, of course, it is a pipe dream. The sheer logistics of moving hundreds of millions of cars would not be something I would want to be tasked to; also, to have public policy aligned with this sort of movement is unrealistic.
A gradual move over from gas to electric is more realistic– and a move to higher MPG vehicles would be even better. The implementation of this idea in terms of public policy is the difficult part. We know we need to remove our energy dependence, but without the help of the federal government, the energy shift will not happen.
I have an idea to create economic incentives for the transportation industry when it comes to energy. Note: this is not my original idea.
Set a standard, say 30 MPG. Any car that gets better than 30 MPG, give it a 5,000 tax credit. Anything worse, give it a 5,000 tax debit. Formulas can be created to help stabilize the supply and demand of these cars. This creates a strong economic incentive for carmakers to put energy conservation at the top of their list. This solution is revenue neutral, which is a strong point for fiscal conservatives.
This idea will piss off the automakers, and I don’t care. They’ve had 30 years since the last great energy crisis to get their act together. We have (supposedly) the smartest engineers in the world, and there are several technically feasible solutions.
Another significant obstacle would be the problem of fleet vehicles and the industries that rely on inefficient vehicles. A conversion to natural gas would be a simple intermediate-term solution. In California, new fleet vehicles are starting to have the requirement of running on natural gas (a fuel we don’t have to import).
This is one step in the right direction.
