Imagine running a parking meter backwards and actually being paid to park your car. Along those lines, electric vehicles might one day make money for their owners by providing electrical storage for the nation’s power grid.

With this new idea, Vehicle to Grid (V2G), parked electric vehicles would feed electricity back into the grid on an as-needed basis. While this would require a smart grid as well as smart EVs, imagine the results on, say, a 110 degree day in Phoenix when the grid could pull power out of 150,000 parked electric vehicles rather than generating all of it. V2G also decreases the number of backup generators needed by the grid.

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This is precisely what the Obama Administration wants to avoid with their seven page questionnaire for job seekers.

Applicants are also being asked to hand over all written material - from books and articles to lowly comments on blog posts. They must provide all internet handles, and the URL of professional and personal networking sites.

Remember kidz, the Internet never forgets. You might have deleted that website with the angry Marxist rants and naked, drunken photos of yourself and friends, but chances are Google cache or the Internet Archive has them stashed away somewhere.

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It is amazing and heartening the speed at which these protests are being organized.

There will now be protests in every state, with some states having multiple events. Join the Impact has the all details.

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This is a hoot!

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Lava is destructive. It also creates new land. Look at Hawaii.

Thomas Friedman

The result [of decades of comatose behavior by US automakers] was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

Friedman’s plan: Current management gets fired. Shareholders get nothing. Existing agreements, including union contracts, get torn up. Competent people are hired to run the companies, which will downsize immediately and manufacture hybrids.

Somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

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Maui wind turbines. Lahaina Pali trail. (I took the photo on 12/19/06.)

Hawaii governor Linda Lingle has announced a plan for Hawaii to have 70% clean energy by 2030. It’s a stunning plan, and puts the Aloha State in the forefront of renewable energy, leading the way for other states.

Among the features

- An underseas cable so Maui can send wind energy to Oahu.

- Feed-in tariffs. Yes! This mandates that renewable energy can be sold to utilities at above market rates, something which greatly spurs adoption of renewable energy. Germany has done this with great success with homeowner solar.

- Smart grids and smart meters everywhere.

- Phasing out fossil fuel plants and no new coal plants.

- Encouraging the use of electric vehicles and hybrids by all, including the government.

There’s lots more too. In just a few years, Hawaii has gone from arguably being behind the curve in clean energy to cutting edge leadership. Wow.

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So says Richard Berner, co-head of global economics at Morgan Stanley, adding “We had a huge financial shock that intensified the credit crunch and triggered a sharp downturn.”

Intel, Circuit City , and many others are reporting steep drops in sales the past two months and the US stock market looks poised for another sharp leg down.

CRB/Jeffries Commodities Index

The Big Picture

Doug Kass asks: “Anyone notice that it took the CRB four and a half years to go from 252 to 478 but it took only four months to go from 478 to 252 !”

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