ELECTRIC CARS HOLD KEY TO CLIMATE-CHANGE BATTLE

       THE KEY TO climate change control lies in improved technology. We need to find new ways to produce and use energy, meet our food needs, transport ourselves, as well as heat and cool our homes that will allow us to cut back on oil, gas, coal, nitrogen-based fertiliser and other sources of the climate-changing greenhouse gases.
       There are enough good options available to suggest that the world can accomplish the goal of controlling climate change at a reasonable cost (perhaps 1 per cent of global income per year) while enabling the world economy to continue to grow and raise living standards. One of the most exciting developments on the horizon is the new generation of electric automobiles.
       In the earliest days of the sutomobile in the late 19th century, many kinds of cars competed with each other - stean, battery and internal combustion engine (ICE). The gasoline and diesel-powered internal combustion engines won with the success of the Model T, which first rolled off of the assembly line in 1908. One hundred years later, competition is again stirring.
       The age of electric vehicles is upon us. The Toyota Prius, a hybrid-electric vehicle first introduced in Japan in 1997, marked an initial breakthrough. By connecting a small generator and rechargeable battery to the braking system of a standard car, the hybrid augments the normal engine with a battery-powered motor. Petrol mileage is sufficiently enhanced to make the hybrid commercially viable and fuel seving vehicles will become even more commercially viable when consumers are taxed for the carbon dioxide they emit from their vehicles.
       Much more innovation is on the way, led by General Motors' plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt, at the end of 2010. While the Prius is a normal ICE automobile with a small motor, the Volt will be an electric vehicle with an engine alongside.
       The Volt's battery will be a cutting-edge, high-performance lithium-ion battery, which promises a range of 65 kilometres per charge and a six-hour recharge time drawing from a normal wall socket. Based on typical driving patterns, the Volt will get so many kilometre on the battery that it will achieve around 370 kilometres per gallon of petrol!
       Larry Burns, the visionary head of GM's research and development until his retirement recently, sees the electric vehicle as much more than an opportunity to save petrol, important as that is. According to Burns, the electric-vehicle age will reshape the energy grid, redefine driving patterns and generally improve the quality of life in urban areas, where most of the world's population will live and drive.
       First, there will be many types of electric vehicles, including the plug-in hybrid, the all-battery vehicle, and vehicles powered by the hydrogen fuel cell, essentially a battery fed by an external source of hydrogen. These different vehicles will be able to tap into countless energy sources.
       Solar, wind or nuclear power - all free of CO2 emissions - can feed the power grid that will recharge the batteries. Similarly, these renewable energy sources can be used to split water into hydrogen and hydroxylion, and then use the hydrogen to power the hydrogen fuel cell.
       Second, the storage capacity of the vehicle fleet will play an important role in stabilising the power grid. Not only will battery-powered vehicles draw power from the electricity grid during recharging, but when parked, they can also feed additional power back into the grid during periods of peak demand, the automobile fleet will become part of the overall power grid, and will be managed efficiently (and remotely) to optimise the timing of recharging from and returning power to the grid.
       Third, electric-powered vehicles will open up a new world of "smart" vehicles, in which sensor systems and vehicle-to-vehicle communications will enable collision protection, traffic routing and remote management of the vehicle. The integration of information technology and the vehicle's propulsion system will thereby introduce new standards of safety, convenience and maintenance.
       These are visionary ideas, yet they are within technological reach. But implementing these concepts will require new forms of public-private partnership.
       Automakers, utility companies, broadband providers and government road builders will each have to contribute to an integrated system. All of these sectors will require new ways of competing and cooperating with the others. The public sector will have to put forward funding to enable the new generation of vehicles to reach commercialisation through R&D outlays, consumer subsidies and support for complementary infrastructure (for example, outlets for recharging in public places).
       The new age of the electric vehicle exemplifies the powerful opportunities that we can grasp as we make our way from the unsustainnable fossil-fuel age to a new age of sustainable technologies. Our climate negotiators today bicker with each other because they view the climate challenge only in negative terms: who will pay to reduce fossil-fuel use?
       Yet Burns's vision for the automobile reminds us that the transition to sustainaility can bring real breakthroughs in the quality of life. This is true not only in automobiles, but also in the choice of energy systems, building designes, urban planning and food systems (remambering that food production and transport account for around one-sixth of total greenhouse gas emissions).
       We need to rethink the climate challenge as an opportunity for global brain storming and cooperation on a series of technological breakthroughs to achieve sustainable develpment. By harnessing cutting-edge engineering and new kinds of public-private partnerships, we can hasten worldwide transition to sustainable technologies, with benefits for rich and poor countries alike - and thereby find the basis for global agreements on climate change that have so far proven elusive.

       JEFFREY D SACHS is professor fo economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also a special adviser to United Nations' secretary-general for the Millenium Development Goals.