Make Way For Clean Cars

This week the U.S. Department of Energy’ released its "Quadrennial Technology Review," which calls for a shift in federal research dollars “away from clean electricity and biofuels toward electric vehicles and modernizing the power grid,” according to Reuters. DOE’s reasoning? “We find that DOE is underinvested in the transportation sector relative to the stationary sector (energy efficiency, grid, and electric power). Yet, reliance on oil is the greatest immediate threat to U.S. economic and national security, and also contributes to the long-term threat of climate change.” Click on the image above to see how much the transportation sector factors in the U.S. "energy flow."

As explained by the New York Times Green blog, “The report emphasizes the need to replace oil rather than fuels like coal and natural gas, which are supplanted by electricity-generating solar and wind power. (There is very little oil used to generate electricity in the United States.) And in the quest to replace oil, work on electric vehicles should be prioritized over alternative fuels, the study said.”

-- Reed McManus

Image: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Total energy input in the U.S. in 2009 was approximately 95 quadrillion british thermal units. Of that, 35.27 quads was petroleum, of which 26.98 quads went into transportation.