Opening Plenary Session

Moderator: Ed Kjaer, Southern California Edison

Welcome
Chuck Reed, Mayor of San Jose

• Working on locations to plug-in electric vehicles

PHEVs Today, Tomorrow and Beyond
Steve Specker, President & CEO, Electric Power Research Institute

• EPRI is a collaborative R&D organization for the electric power industry
• By 2030 three key infrastructures should be in place: de-carbonizing generation of electricity, smart grid, electrifying transportation
• Electricity generation is now 70% carbon, but by 2040 could de-carbonize completely through wind, solar, CCS for coal
• Smart grid: enabler to use electricity efficiently. Necessary for EVs. Smart thermostats the get day-ahead, hour-by-hour prices to optimize heating/cooling costs, for instance, to take advantage of wind power
• Electric transportation: we can't get to energy security or a de-carbonized society without electrifying our transportation, especially the passenger automobile. Electricity can be produced in so many ways it is the easiest to de-carbonize
• No new nuclear plants for 10 years, a few new coal plants (but no CCS until 2020) so 70% of our electricity generation is not going to expand for 10 years
• New electric capacity in next 10 years will be wind, natural gas and reduced demand through efficiency
• Today: activist, tomorrow: realist, beyond: optimist

The Environmental Challenge
Peter Schwartz, Cofounder and Chairman, Global Business Network (GBN)

• Climate change proof: weather in Myanmar, rice shortage
• The world is growing richer and we can't deny the worlds poor to have a better standard of living
• In CA 20% of our electricity goes towards moving water
• People want higher standard of living, not a simpler life
• Transportation demand keeps rising (not true, peak travel)
• All ground transportation will move to electric vehicles
• Interesting challenge is to where to get this electricity from
• Highest leverage in the near term is conservation
• The politics to achieve this are not as simple as the technology
• Reality is more coal and more dirty coal until at least 2030
• High price of oil is not due speculation it simply supply and demand
• Climate change is about producing more extreme weather
• "Bangladesh is over, it won't exist in 100 years"
• Kyoto won't have a successor
• Even if the US makes progress, China, India and the developing world have much more severe challenges
• We need to improve the models of climate change because current models aren't very good

GM’s Solutions
Jonathan (Jon) Lauckner, Vice President, Global Program Management, General Motors Corporation  

• 15% of the worlds population will own a vehicle by 2020, that is 1 billion people
• Chinese market will surpass US market by 2014 or sooner
• Petroleum provides 96% of transportation energy
• Will produce Saturn VUE plug-in with 10 electric-only miles that aims for twice the economy of any SUV
• EV1 technology was state-of-the-art 10 years ago but GM is trying to use modern technology in Volt
• Electricity cost is $0.02 per mile (not really)
• NRDC and EPRI says that even if coal is used to run a plug-in with 20 miles of range, CO2 will be 25% lower on a well-to-wheels basis than ICE car.
• Volt production funding was confirmed and will start in 2010
• 78% of all customers drive 40 miles or less per day
• Volt will be charged by 110 volts
• Coulomb Technologies is working on smart charging infrastructure for EVs