Big flat TV sales could lead to big stress on power grid

[Link: McClatchy] "But the bigger picture, many say, is one of unnecessary stress on the nation's electricity supply for years to come."

I read articles like this and I have to chuckle. If we are aware of the stress an appliance like flat screen TV's will place on our power grid, and actually think it will be enough to strain it, how in the world can we be contemplating replacing our auto fleet with electric cars. The electricity requirements for a world full of electric cars, charging away between trips, must be horrendous. Has anyone stopped to wonder where all the new energy is going to come from if our grid is already strained in order to accomodate our TV watching.

Come on folks. Those cute little electric cars are going to need thousands of new power plants (most of them coal fired), all generating vast increases in CO2 emissions and other pollutions associated with power generation, to keep charged up. We are essentially going to be trading the pollution of the existing fleet of internal combustion engines with the pollution of coal powered power plants. This doesn't even include the added energy and pollution required to build and maintain all of these new power stations. We don't have a bunch of electrical energy laying around unused. Our TV's need all they can get.

Peak Oil: The End Of the Oil Age is Near, Deutsche Bank Says

[Link: Environmental Capital - WSJ] "Deutsche Bank expects the electric car to become a truly “disruptive technology” which takes off around the world, sending demand for gasoline into an “inexorable and accelerating decline.”

Five years ago I bought a new car. I had just retired and I wanted to have a car I could depend on in my retirement years. I told my wife that this could possible be the last gasoline powered car we would ever own. Our next car could very well be electric. At the time, we got a good chuckle out of that.

Well, it looks like Deutsche Bank has come to the same conclusion. Predicting the end of the oil age, they say the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine powered car that has come to symbolize the material age that we are living in. The Peak Oilers (myself included) have been saying that the oil age is eminent for some time now but they have been assuming the oil supply will begin to dwindle and we will be forced to give up our addiction whether we like it or not. I think Deutsche Bank is underestimating how many other ways we will find to use the oil if we don't use it in our cars but the point is still made. Whether we run out or just don't want to use it any longer doesn't really matter I guess. we are approaching the end of the petro-road and we should be getting ready for whatever lies beyond.