[McGINNIS] Ready or not, here they come. Thousands of new electric vehicles are about to hit the roads, but is the country prepared?

[PAUL MITCHELL, CEO, ENERGY SYSTEMS NETWORK] We have outlets in every garage. We have outlets in every parking facility, at every building.

[McGINNIS] From California to the heartland to New York City, a look at whether we're ready for the next EV revolution.

EVs are supposed to help wean us off foreign oil, but can that really be done? What would it take? T. Boone Pickens mixes it up with the American Petroleum Institute's Sara Banaszak and Senator Tom Carper.

Plus, it's called the ultimate energy source -- fusion power. How close are we? From the world's leading fusion scientists...

[STEWART PRAGER] It's nearly a perfect energy source.

[McGINNIS] To amateur innovators.

[MARK SUPPES] I bought this whole thing on eBay.

[McGINNIS] The race to fusion. This is "energyNOW!"

Good morning, I'm Susan McGinnis. Welcome to a brand-new show, "energyNOW!" It's unlike anything else on television -- a news magazine dedicated exclusively to the critical energy issues that we face now and in the future. Each week, we'll bring you compelling, engaging, in-depth stories from across America and the globe and help put it all into perspective for you. We'll also hear from a wide spectrum of experts, news makers, contributors, and bloggers who will debate the issues and help explain how they impact your life. And our companion Web site, energynow.com, will go above, beyond, and behind the story, providing you with even more depth -- full versions of interviews, opinions from across America, and lots of other extras. So, let's get started.

Up first, keeping you plugged in to the top energy news. The deepwater drilling moratorium could be lifted before it's supposed to expire November 30th. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has issued new safety standards for wells and blowout preventers a month early, and that could pave the way for new deepwater permits, but Salazar says he won't lift the ban until he's sure deepwater drilling risks are minimized.

[Crowd chanting]

[McGINNIS] About 100 people were arrested outside the White House, demanding the president end mountaintop removal coal mining. That method uses explosives to blast away hilltops to get to coal veins and dumps the debris into valleys and streams below. The EPA is deciding whether to let Arch Coal develop what would be the largest mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia. That decision could signal whether mountaintop mining has a future.

And President Obama told Rolling Stone magazine he'll help fight for climate and energy legislation next year, but said it may have to be broken into chunks to get through Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has slated one of those chunks for floor debate this year, a bill offering tax incentives for natural gas and electric-powered vehicles. And now you're plugged in.

And a new Washington Post poll shows that more than half of those surveyed said they wouldn't buy or lease an EV. Well, we've been down the EV road before. In the late '90s, carmakers rolled out the first generation of mass-produced electric vehicles, but they weren't supported, not by the automakers, the infrastructure, or the government. Ready or not, here they come again. In this week's "energyNOW!" Spotlight, Lee Patrick Sullivan takes a look at what's different today.

[SULLIVAN] Paul Scott isn't waiting for the next EV revolution. He's been leading his own quiet one for the past eight years.

[SCOTT] Well, it's just like any other car. You just turn the key, and you're on. [No engine noise]

[SULLIVAN] It's on right now.

[SCOTT] That's all there is to it.

[SULLIVAN] He's one of the few hundred people who still own a Toyota RAV4 electric vehicle. He rescued it from an early grave in the last days of the first EV revolution.

So this is a 2002, and it's hard to believe that this is a relic.

[SCOTT] Yeah, I know, I love showing the motor to everybody because it's so clean. You can see there's a little dust there, but this is a car with 84,000 miles on it, and there's no grease or oil or anything anywhere, just dust.

[SULLIVAN] In that other EV revolution nearly a decade ago, the lack of compatible charging stations was a major reason cars like Paul's RAV4 EV and General Motors' EV1 were unplugged by the automakers.

But with the new EV revolution, all that has changed. And it's all because of this -- the J1772. I know that name probably bores you to tears, but in the EV world, it is cause for celebration. You see, for the first time ever, all automakers have agreed on a single plug to charge every electric car.

And that's a big deal, because before the end of the year, the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf will hit showrooms, and a slew of other EVs are scheduled to plug in in the next year. Right now there are fewer than 2,000 EVs on American roads. It's estimated that there will be more than 2 million in the next five years. And all will be using the same plug.

And the number of those charging stations will also increase. In the days of the first EV revolution, there were 500 nationwide. In the San Francisco Bay area alone, there will be more than 3,000 new charging stations installed before the year's end. Outside San Francisco's City Hall, public charging stations are already in place to accommodate some of the EVs that are being test-marketed here. And as we were talking with someone from the city's Office of Sustainability, a plug-in Prius not yet on the market pulled up and plugged in.

Your colleague Lowell just came up, plugged in the car, walked away, and that's all? He didn't have any special training on how to plug in this car?

[JOHANAH PARTIN, SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY] Basically, you saw how easy it is. It's just a regular plug and you plug it in.

[SULLIVAN] So, he's not an electrician.

[PARTIN] He happens to be an electrician, but you don't have to be an electrician. I'm not an electrician, and I was trained in about 2 minutes to be able to do this.

[SULLIVAN] But it's going to take a lot longer than 2 minutes to be fully charged. Now, there will be three types of charging stations. The first, or level 1, will look a lot like the outlets you have in your house, because they basically are. It's also called a "trickle charge," and for good reason. If you have a 100-mile-range battery like the one that's in the Nissan Leaf, it's going to take you 20 hours to charge your battery from depleted to full.

Level 2, like this one right here, will be 220 volts. It will charge the same battery in 8 hours. These will be the ones that will be deployed in people's homes. The cost will be free to $2,000, depending on local incentives. These will also be deployed in shopping center parking lots throughout the country, but here's the good news. It most likely will be free to charge your car at those charging stations.

Now, we would love to show you a level 3 charger, but they're not available yet. When they are, they will be 480 volts. You'll be able to charge that same battery in about 15 minutes. You will find these at dedicated charging stations, the EV version of a gas station.

In Indianapolis, there's an ambitious plan to make it one of the most EV friendly cities in the country.

[PAUL MITCHELL, CEO, ENERGY SYSTEMS NETWORK] There is sort of an EV renaissance taking place in the state of Indiana, and Indianapolis is right at the center of that.

[SULLIVAN] You're really starting from ground zero.

[MITCHELL] We are, but at the same time, the electrical infrastructure is everywhere. We have outlets in every garage, we have outlets in every parking facility, at every building, so the ability to tap into the existing electric grid makes it an easier task to get charging infrastructure into the public realm.

[SULLIVAN] Indianapolis officials say chargers will be installed this month for fleet vehicles. Next year, they will roll them out for homes and businesses.

Having public charging stations where people work and shop is great for inside the city, because the distances people drive is much shorter, but what about once you get outside of Indianapolis?

We met Sally Smiley at a local diner. We asked her about the new crop of electric cars with the top battery range of about 100 miles that would need 20 hours to recharge from a home outlet. She doesn't think an EV would be a good fit for her.

[SMILEY] Until they really have a better handle on these electric cars, I don't think I would buy one.

[SULLIVAN] She lives in an area where the closest Walmart is 30 miles from her house, and her elderly mother lives 45 miles away.

[SMILEY] I just don't know because what if I...had an emergency and I had to go an extra 20 miles or 30 miles? And it's an emergency, so I don't know that I would do that.

[SULLIVAN] EVs are also going to be a challenge in New York City. That's where Marissa Jedell would love to replace her 2002 Subaru with an electric car but doesn't see it happening. You see, Marissa, like 65% of drivers that live in Manhattan, parks her car on the street, sometimes several blocks from her home.

[JEDELL] I know that there's no way I would be able to run a wire of any sort across five blocks of traffic and pedestrians walking, so... I don't think that would be possible at all.

[SULLIVAN] And that's why the city of New York is installing charging stations at many of the city's public garages and parking lots. We stopped by the city's first federally funded charging station. It's in Midtown Manhattan. And the owner's offering free charges until the end of the year.

If EV sales do, indeed, get to two million in the next couple of years, it's important to put that into perspective. There are more than 250 million cars in this country, all with a life span of about 15 years.

[MARK DUVALL, ELECTRIC POWER RESEARCH INSTITUTE] This is a march. It will take a while to convert a significant part of the vehicle population over to electricity.

[SULLIVAN] And while Sally Smiley says, "No, thanks," and Marissa says, "No driveway," Paul Scott says his friends are lining up to get their hands on an EV.

You're not going to be alone in the EV world anymore.

[SCOTT] And I'll be so happy when that happens. So many of my friends have signed up for the Leaf, and a lot of them are waiting for the Volt as well. And they're dying to get their hands on an electric car.

[SULLIVAN] Lee Patrick Sullivan, "energyNOW!"

[McGINNIS] By the way, since Lee did his interview with Paul Scott, Scott has decided to put his money where his mouth is. He recently started working as a salesman for the Nissan Leaf. That's a look at how electric vehicles could affect energy now. Now let's take a step back in time to watch how the world viewed EVs and energy then in 1967 in this old British newsreel about the electric Comuta car.

[MAN] Cheaper, more convenient motoring is the dream of every car owner in Britain. The Comuta -- Ford's prototype electric runabout -- could well be one of the answers to that dream. At present, there are only two of them in the world, this one being demonstrated, and one in America. In a few years, there's the strong prospect of seeing millions of them on the roads. It's just as likely you'll own one like this or one of several others which are being developed.

[McGINNIS] Well, the Comuta never made it to the showroom floor. Ford says it was a concept car. When fully charged, it could go 40 miles at an average 25 miles an hour, and if that car looked small to you, it's because it was. The Comuta was just 6'8" long, a full 2 feet shorter than today's Smart Car.

Coming up on "energyNOW!" can electric vehicles one day get us off our dependence on foreign oil? And will we ever be able to really kick the habit? We'll mix it up with T. Boone Pickens, Senator Tom Carper, and Sara Banaszak of the American Petroleum Institute.

Plus, unlocking the power of the Sun. What's called the holy grail of energy -- fusion power. From the world's leading scientists to backyard fusionists, how close are we?

[BREAK]

[GIRL] We're fighting for a day when we can all breathe easier. We're fighting to make every section a smoke-free section. For a day when even vehicles quit smoking. We're fighting for clear skies over every city and healthy lungs throughout the country. The American Lung Association isn't just fighting for air, we're fighting for all the things that make it worth breathing. Join us in the fight at FightingForAir.org.

[END BREAK]

[McGINNIS] Earlier, we told you about new electric vehicles headed for showrooms, seen as one answer to our dependence on foreign oil. Joining us now for theMIX, and a look at whether we can ever break our insatiable oil habit and what it might take, from Dallas, CEO of BP Capital, Boone Pickens, and here in the "energyNOW!" studios, Delaware Senator Tom Carper. He's behind a bill right now aimed at eliminating America's dependence on foreign oil by 2030. Sara Banaszak is Senior Economist with the American Petroleum Institute. Welcome to all of you.

Boone, I want to start with you, because EVs are a part of the Pickens plan. What kind of dent do you think these could make? Anything significant? 250 million cars on the road right now.

[PICKENS] Well, I mean, any help that we can do with American vehicles and American fuel. We've got to get on our own resources. So this would be one -- It's not the solution, but it could certainly help. You know, but what we don't want to do is get off of Saudi oil and get on a Chinese battery.

[McGINNIS] Talking about EVs, there's so much momentum behind them. Are there any hard numbers as far as the kind of dent these can make when it comes to foreign oil and over what time period? Because the big question is, are we ever going to buy them? Is the consumer going to buy them? Because look at the prices of electric vehicles right now. The Volt is looking at about $41,000. Nissan Leaf, more than $32,000. This is before a rebate, though. The Focus, Ford tells us that price is going to be in line with the Nissan Leaf. Do you think enough people are going to be able to afford them to make a difference in foreign oil?

[CARPER] Pretty expensive until you add in the tax credit. We'll offer a tax credit of about $6,000 or $7,000 for these vehicles. Most of the electric vehicles that are going to be sold will not be just strictly electric vehicles. They'll be flex-fuel plug-in hybrid vehicles.

[McGINNIS] A new survey says 53% of Americans -- this was out just last week -- say they wouldn't buy an electric vehicle. Are any numbers coming out of API that say we're expecting EVs to have this kind of dent in oil demand?

[BANASZAK] What we've seen over time is that these energy transitions occur over very long periods of time. You look at the rise of coal, the rise of oil, you're talking 30, 40, 50 years. And when you think about all the infrastructure change-out that needs to occur, the competitive pricing that needs to occur in the long run without the tax incentives, and the evolution of how often does somebody buy a new car that roll out of the infrastructure. We expect it to take time.

[McGINNIS] Does API believe we need to move off of oil?

[BANASZAK] I think there's a place for oil in our future. First of all, it's doing a lot more than just fueling our transportation. You're going to go to the hospital and get clean medical products that prevent infection because you have clean, sterile plastics that come from petroleum, so you can't just discount oil.

[PICKENS] My concern is security. And we import 5 million barrels a day from the Mideast. But let's say there are 8 million heavy-duty 18-wheelers. If those go to natural gas, that will cut OPEC in half.

[McGINNIS] I want to show you guys some of the countries where most of our imported oil comes from, and some folks may be surprised by this, that a third of our imports come from Canada and Mexico. Another third comes from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela.

Senator Carper, is your biggest concern where the dollars are going, the countries that are importing from, or simply the vast amount of dollars that are going elsewhere?

[CARPER] Our nation's trade deficit is down from about $700 billion in 2008...

[McGINNIS] This is half our trade deficit goes to oil.

[CARPER] To about $500 billion now -- about half of it is oil. It's not sustainable for us to have trade deficits that large.

[McGINNIS] How about this solution that seems to be the only proven answer to reducing consumption and demand for foreign oil -- I guess we do know how much of a political hot potato this is -- higher gas prices. It works, but it's not going to happen, is it?

[CARPER] Robert Samuelson has suggested, why don't we raise the gas tax like a penny a month, for a period of a year or two?

[McGINNIS] Let people adjust over time.

[CARPER] Then when they're thinking about the next car or truck or van, it sends a price signal, it says, "Look, the price is trending up."

[McGINNIS] So you'd be in favor of that?

[CARPER] Oh, yes.

[BANASZAK] The tricky consideration is that there are people, rural people, who are low-income and rely on this form of transportation. So they're going to be -- in a way, as you do that, you're imposing an increasingly more recessive tax on the lowest income, whereas many --

[McGINNIS] There's no task that doesn't have pain for some group.

[CARPER] When you move from a vehicle that's getting 20 miles per gallon to one that's, I guess, 40 miles per gallon, and you pay an extra 10 or 20 cents per gallon of gas, you save money, in the end, if you're buying a more energy-efficient vehicle.

[McGINNIS] Give us a reality check, Boone. We have Daniel Yergin from CERA, a well-known oil expert talking about, foreign oil independence is never going to happen.

[PICKENS] I would propose that we have a North American energy alliance and work together with Mexico, Canada, and the United States. We can provide things for them; they can help us. They have the oil; we are in need of oil.

But go back to the numbers. There's 85 million barrels of oil produced every day. We use 21 million of that. We import 13 million of our 21 million. But we're using 25% of all the oil with only 4% of the population. That is not sustainable. You're going to have to figure out something different than that.

[McGINNIS] We have to end it there. Thanks for your insight. Boone Pickens from Dallas, Sara Banaszak from API, and Senator Tom Carper, we appreciate it.

[CARPER] From Delaware.

[McGINNIS] From Delaware -- our alma mater. Thank you.

And still ahead, new kinds of cars could mean a new kind of sticker shock. Is it just too confusing for consumers?

Plus, a look inside some of the world's biggest energy labs trying to unlock the secret of the Sun -- fusion energy. Next, on "energyNOW!"

[BREAK]

Uh!

[ANNOUNCER] Movement. Along with weight loss, it's one of the many ways to fight osteoarthritis pain. For more information on managing pain, go to fightarthritispain.org.

[END BREAK]

[McGINNIS] Time for the "energyNOW!" hotZONE, where we take a look at the one news maker or one story that stands out this week. And this week, it's the EPA's proposed new fuel economy stickers for new cars. They're not going over very well. In a survey, a lot of people said they were confused by the labels. One gives detailed info on fuel efficiency, including comparing one car's efficiency to others'. It also gives information on electric and gas, gas only, when it's fully charged, when electricity's used up, on greenhouse gases, and more. The other proposed sticker gives an environmental grade like a school report card -- A+ to D. Folks surveyed didn't like that one either. If you would like to weigh in, go to fueleconomy.gov to offer your feedback, but with all of those numbers, maybe they'll take your mind off the sticker prices.

It's often called the holy grail of energy, promising cheap, abundant, and clean energy for the planet -- fusion power. It's the same thing that powers the Sun and the stars. We followed those in search of that holy grail in this energyNEXT.

[DOC BROWN] Do you mean we're out of gas?

[MARTY McFLY] Yeah, it's no big deal. We got Mr. Fusion, right?

[McGINNIS] For "Back to the Future" fans...

[DOC BROWN] I need fuel!

[McGINNIS] Fusion is what powered the DeLorean. For scientists and engineers in the real world, it's an elusive form of energy they've worked for decades trying to perfect. From Stan Milora, who runs the Fusion Energy Division at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee...

[MILORA] We could have an inexhaustible source of energy.

[McGINNIS] To Mark Suppes, a so-called amateur fusionist who built his own mini-lab in New York City.

[SUPPES] This is just right there. It might just be right there, it might not be, but it might be so close.

[McGINNIS] By day, Suppes is a Web designer for fashion giant Gucci in Manhattan.

[SUPPES] Okay, so this is ready to go.

[McGINNIS] By night, he's busy at his lab, working on what many think is the ultimate energy source. In its most basic form, fusion occurs when the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms are forced together and fused to form a helium atom. When they fuse, they release energy. It's what has Suppes and about three dozen other amateur fusionists nationwide building tabletop devices at home.

[SUPPES] I've always been really fascinated with physics and chemistry and all the hard sciences, and I am self-educated.

[McGINNIS] Fusion first caught Suppes' attention when he saw a Google video featuring the late fusion scientist Dr. Robert Bussard.

[SUPPES] This video that Dr. Bussard gave, "Should Google Go Nuclear?" and I was really taken with it because it seemed like the first kind of innovation in the fusion space in a really long time.

[McGINNIS] That was enough to get him to sink $40,000 of his own savings into this lab and equipment.

[SUPPES] I bought this whole thing on eBay.

[McGINNIS] About seven months later, Suppes claims he achieved fusion.

[SUPPES] There it is. And the positive ions are all rushing into the center and colliding head-on, and so that's what gives you -- when they do it enough times, you get the fusion.

[McGINNIS] What excites you the most about the potential for fusion energy?

[SUPPES] I mean, this is so exciting on so many levels. Like, how is it not exciting? This is like, if you do this, it changes everything forever. It solves the energy problem. It solves the energy problem.

[McGINNIS] But can tabletop experiments like this really overcome the massive barriers to fusion encountered so far? Namely, to produce not one fusion reaction, or even a few million per second -- some experiments have -- but billions and billions in a controlled reaction that's self-sustaining, producing more energy than goes in and keeps doing that predictably for months or years at a time.

That's what brought us to Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where some of the nation's top fusion scientists and engineers have been studying fusion energy for decades.

[MILORA] It's simple, in principle, but it's very hard to achieve in practice.

[McGINNIS] Stan Milora knows how hard fusion is to achieve. He started in this field 36 years ago.

[MILORA] You have to have, essentially, astronomical temperatures to make this reaction to proceed very rapidly. So we're talking about temperatures that are 10 times higher than the temperature of the core of the Sun.

[McGINNIS] That's upwards of 150 million degrees to make fusion work on earth, also called "a star in a jar."

[MILORA] So that's the real challenge, is how do you heat it to those astronomical temperatures and then how do you confine it, keep it from getting out of the bottle, essentially?

[McGINNIS] The challenge is alluring enough that it brought together seven of the world's leading powers to agree to a joint nuclear facility, the culmination of 20 years of negotiation on a massive experimental reactor. Construction started this year in the south of France. It's called the ITER, for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Ned Sauthoff of Oakridge National Lab took me inside the fusion process.

[SAUTHOFF] You and I are going to be shadows, and the plasma is going to be bright.

[McGINNIS] With a massive screen that felt more like I was in an IMAX movie than a fusion lab.

[SAUTHOFF] You can imagine you're now the plasma, and you're approaching an antenna, which is launching about 20 million watts of power, just like comes out of a television station, but 10,000 times as much. And so these waves go and heat the plasma. When the plasma gets hot enough, then the parts of the plasma start hitting each other, sticking together, fusing, and then release energy. Our game here is to get ITER just big enough that it becomes nearly self-sustaining.

[McGINNIS] Here's a look at fusion research in the real world. This is the NSTX fusion device here at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab in New Jersey. This is a $200 million facility, where scientists deal with temperatures up to 50 million degrees, in experiments that will ultimately produce fusion energy.

Stewart Prager at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab says fusion is near a breakthrough and could be a game changer for the global energy picture.

[PRAGER] Fusion could have a transformative effect on the world. Because it's a limitless source of energy. It has a zero contribution to greenhouse gases. It's entirely clean. It's safe -- there's no chance of any runaway reaction. And the fuel comes from seawater, so it's available to all nations. So hopefully it will reduce the conflict over natural resources, so it's nearly a perfect energy source.

[McGINNIS] Critics argue against the billions spent and yet to be spent on fusion research, saying energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal are far more achievable on commercial scale far sooner.

Still, Milora and other believers say the ITER facility in France is worth the expense because it will lead to the final goal.

[MILORA] It's the penultimate step to a demonstration fusion reactor, where you'll actually deliver electricity, and then eventually that would grow into commercial fusion reactors.

[McGINNIS] Milora sees a day when fusion energy provides about 30% of the world's energy.

So you're pretty confident that in our lifetime, we will see this as a source of energy that can be sustained?

[MILORA] Yes, sure. I think about 2050, we should be able to introduce fusion on a commercial scale. By about 2035, we should start building demonstration fusion reactors. So you'll see electricity being demonstrated about 2035.

[McGINNIS] Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, Mark Suppes keeps tinkering, trying to be the one who does it. For now, still holding on to his day job at Gucci.

You want to change the world?

[SUPPES] Absolutely.

[McGINNIS] And you think you can?

[SUPPES] I mean, I'm going to try. You know? It's like, who knows what's possible? But you've got to try.

[McGINNIS] Sitting with Suppes, you can really feel the enthusiasm that he has for his work. Talking with him, he is genuine. Right now, he's trying to raise $200 million so he can take this on as a full-time job and build a full-size break-even reactor. I'm not sure how his neighbors in New York City or how Gucci is going to feel about that.

That's it for this week's "energyNOW!" Coming up next week, California claims clean energy leadership, but is that creating jobs for the state or costing them? On November 2nd, California voters decide whether to keep the most ambitious climate change law in the nation. And I'll talk with UN environment ambassador and actor Don Cheadle on what the world can do to combat climate change. We'll see you then.

In the meantime, check us out online at energynow.com. It is full of stuff you didn't see on the show. "energyNOW!" is also on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We invite your feedback. We'll see you next week. Enjoy your Sunday.

[END SHOW]