The Tata Nano and Jevons Paradox

A small snippet of news to underline the comments that I have made about the Tata Nano. In a normal year automobile sales in India run about 1.5 million cars. The Tata Nano went on sale in April, and over the last two months sales have averaged 100,000 cars a month. Because production was only set to be that many this year, many customers are going to have to wait until production gets geared up next year before they can expect delivery. (And just to remind you it is taking Ford up to 6-months to deliver our Fusion Hybrid, so the Indians are not alone in having a long wait).

This is an illustration of Jevons Paradox, in that making cars cheaper and simpler and thus more efficient is resulting in more sales of cars, and thus an overall increase in gasoline demand. Interestingly most of the cars sold are not baseline (the $2.050 version) but also include air conditioning and power windows.

Peak Oil comes to Climate Change - but I'm coughing again

Saturdays are when I usually wander around the different sites that devote their time to aspects of the Climate Change Debate, looking to see if there is anything interesting or persuasive that might be of interest. You may note that I have added some of these sites to the blogroll – trying to balance out the numbers so that there are the same on each side of the debate. Over at CEJournal Tom Yulsman has just put up a post querying the open-mindedness of those that engage in this topic. He got a boost in readership at his site this week (which is pro-AGW) because he was cited on Climate Depot, (which is anti) but wonders why folk bother looking at the other side of the debate, since most have their minds made up. To answer him, the reason to look is to try and get both sides of the story – unfortunately when articles appear these days, depending on which side is writing them some of the facts may be missed or given an incorrect emphasis. By looking at reports on both sides it is a little easier to tell who is telling the truth, or skirting the facts.

That being said it led me to Joe Romm’s Climate Progress, which appears to have just discovered Peak Oil.. His post is mainly a diatribe against the auto makers of Detroit. But he begins thus:

Readers of Climate Progress understand two inescapable realities that the overwhelming majority of policymakers, the status quo media, and the car companies (with one exception) do not:

Peak oil is inevitably going to drive up gasoline prices to record levels within a few years, driving an inevitable switch to much more fuel-efficient vehicles and non-oil-based alternative fuels, of which by far the cheapest per mile is electricity.
Avoiding catastrophic global warming requires sharp increases in fuel economy and a switch to low carbon fuels — of which there is only one available in quantity: electricity (as explained here).

Deeper within the story he comments on the changes that global warming will impose on auto makers, as follows:

And by the 2020s, every major country will be engaged in a dire effort to avert catastrophic global warming, which by then will be painfully obvious to even the most blinkered conservative. And that in turn will drive enormous but difficult-to-forecast levels of behavior change in the purchase and use of major energy-consuming products — cars being perhaps the most obvious.

Now since this is a Saturday I am going to challenge that latter remark. We have seen, over the past 150 years, roughly consecutive cycles of warming and then cooling for about 30-years each, which I have written about before and which can be seen on the Hadley Temperature plot. Basically it warmed from 1850 to 1880, cooled from 1880 to 1910, warmed from 1910 to 1940, cooled from 1940 to 1970, warmed from 1970 to 2000, and has been cooling since 2000. So if this cycle persists - with cooling to 2030, then by 2020 the world will not be engaged in a “dire effort to avert climate warming”, but will have moved on to more productive ways of spending its time, since by then the demand of folk like Joe to consider the data only over 30-year increments and thus neglect the short-term cooling, will have worn too thin.

But I am also not sure whether I agree with the other half of his argument relative to the future of automobiles. He concludes that the cost of liquid fuels is going to be such that

Within a decade, the only growth segments in car business will be highly fuel-efficient cars, PHEVs, and EVs. Indeed, that isn’t true just of the United States, but also of the biggest new car market — China.

I am cautious about that prediction for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am waiting to see what the real impact of cars such as the Tata Nano is going to be, particularly in the poorer parts of the world. If the market is as large as I suspect, the volumes of cars that are sold will tend to swamp the switch to electrics for at least another decade. We just don’t have the product in place at a viable price for the electric car to make the sorts of levels of change that he is anticipating.

But there is another point that he, one of the stronger advocates against the coal industry, is unwilling to face in this vision of the future. Where is the electricity to come from to fuel not only the increase in industrial demand, but also this supply of energy for the automotive industry? For if he and those of similar disposition reduce the number of coal-fired power stations, and we don’t have time (the 2020’s being merely a decade away) to install a large number of nuclear power plants, what will be the power source for the electricity?

While I expect wind to provide significantly more power than it now does, and solar will continue to be “almost there”” in terms of costs, these renewable sources are not going to be able to meet the burgeoning demand that can be anticipated. The general opinion that seems to prevail is that natural gas is going to come to the rescue. It is assumed capable and ready to replace coal and oil in the generation of power, can provide fuel for vehicles (along the lines of Pickens Plan) and will be the savior of the decade. The only problem would be if that industry were unable to meet the prodigious production demands that are being put upon it. And sadly, that is at least at present a suspicion that is beginning to harden among a number of us who look at the gas numbers. But then that is the subject of other posts, and will remain a matter for discussion on these pages in the months ahead.

(Nate: this was for you!)

Gentle Cough - Jevons Paradox and the Christian Science Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor has a comment on the likelihood of people driving more as fuel efficiency gets better. It notes that in its modern form, the rebound effect, should see folks driving more as the cost per mile declines. After all driving was curtailed when gas prices rose above $4.

The author of the piece (Eoin O'Carroll) worked out, with help, the likely effect.

How big is the actual effect? I asked Jim Kliesch, a clean-vehicle expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has reviewed a number of studies on the subject. He walked me through the math, and we calculated that doubling fuel economy would increase driving for the average person by a little over 7 percent.

“It is certainly not of the magnitude to have any significant impact on energy savings,” he said.

Thereby he believes that Jevons Paradox does not apply to cars and fuel efficiency.

I think he misunderstood the Paradox, so this is what I wrote in a comment at the site.

I believe you misunderstand the application of Jevons Paradox. In his original example, Jevons pointed out (as you note) that increasing the efficiency of a locomotive led to an increase in coal demand for coal, their fuel supply.

But you have considered that increasing efficiency would increase the mileage driven by an individual vehicle. That is not what he said, nor, realistically what will happen. Rather it is that by lowering the cost of locomotives, people used more of them, and thus demand rose, not that an individual locomotive drove more miles.

Relevant to the current debate the example is the Tata Nano - by improving manufacturing efficiency to create a car cheap enough for a lower stratum of Indian society (and later the world) their ability to afford the car will drive up gas consumption.

There are many examples - computers, i-pods, cell phones etc etc. It is in the marrying of price with improved efficiency that provides the engine for the Paradox.

And yes, in its correct mode of use, I expect Jevons Paradox to continue working.

More thoughts while traveling - OPEC, the Tata Nano, and tides

In all fairness, since I was less than totally complementary to British transport services the other day, it is only balanced to note that, while I was hoping to be home in my own bed this evening, I am instead in a hotel in Newark. My flight was cancelled (I presume because of the weather) and despite a heroic effort by one of the Continental reps, because most of the remaining flights out were oversold, here I am. I also discovered that hotels could be oversold, since after being shuttled to this hotel we (the victims) were first told we would be sent on to other hotels. After about ¾ of an hour waiting for a non-appearing shuttle (apparently caught in traffic) the two of us assigned to this hotel were allowed to register.

So with the promise of another early morning (I was at the tube station before the ticket sellers appeared this morning) this will again focus on just a few stories out of the press, rather than the usual. Firstly there was something that I wanted to post from the TWIP that I forgot, and that was this table:

OPEC anticipated production at the beginning of 2009 (Source EIA)

These are the sorts of tables I like to squirrel away for future comparison, since this is the prediction of how close we are to more interesting times. I have always (while blogging) discounted 1 mbd from the Saudi Arabian total, since they count Manifa (at 1 mbd) in these numbers and that field won’t come on stream until they (Aramco) install their own refineries for it. That day is still slipping and how heading beyond 2013. And if you take that number out you might note how close to capacity OPEC was last September before demand, and then supply, was reduced by the recession. If demand picks up this summer, and I need to stare some more at those graphs that I talked about yesterday to see how they develop into the summer, then we may be back under OPEC’s thumb faster than you may realize.

The second thing worthy of note was the story of the Tata, which was in the Daily Telegraph today. It is the promise, for Indian drivers, of an automotive future. With a cost of around 1,300 English pounds ($1,900). The Tata Nano was launched earlier this week, and given a positive test drive result in today’s paper. It is small, barely holds four, without luggage, yet gets 70 mpg, and is within range of a lot of Indian families.

At the test track inside the Tata compound earlier, I struggled to believe it could be possible to get four people inside, with the front passengers able to stretch their legs comfortably. I counted three normal steps as I paced from front wheel to back, and one large Monty Python-style stretch from left wheel to right at the front.

It resembles a bumper car, and its tiny circle means it can turn in a space comparable with a taxi cab in London.

For a skeptic expecting a tinny, bone-shaking ride, it was surprisingly ordinary, an observation which delighted the engineers who created it. Their goal was to create a "proper car", affordable to India's millions of two-wheeler riders, and in that they've succeeded.

The only thing, of course, is that good mileage or not, it will likely provide the avenue into car ownership for a large number of Indians. And with that will come the demand for fuel that must be provided. (The two upper level models will also be air conditioned).

Over on TOD Europe Luis has noted the problems that are arising with the generation of tidal energy from the sea. The first three machines, launched with some fanfare have been out of the water now for some time, and the experiment is losing momentum. Plans for similar units are being made for Morecambe Bay in the UK. A Group of industrial and academic folk has been founded . When three others are added then the total contribution can be as much as 5% of the nation’s electricity demand. But there are some years yet and demanding investments before we see a significant contribution.

Well I am defeated by travel again, so will see you on the morrow.