The Electricity Problem of Electric Cars
I wrote a wee piece on 'face-ache-book' saying:
The sooner we get rid of those big, noisy, polluting, death machines on wheels the better! …are you getting it that I dont like cars? Get ready for it folks. Cars, as we know them now, will shortly become museum pieces. Replaced by much smaller, single seater, much less noisy, slower, electric vehicles… possibly self driven, with anti-crash technology. And by that i meant EVERYONE will have to use a small single seater. Clearly some people with large families and equipment etc will use bigger vehicles. That does not defeat the basic point - cause even those larger vehicles will be electric, safer, less noisy, etc. and yes they will be strong enough to pull heavy stuff ...
This caused a lot of old fashioned thinking 'petrol heads' to defend cars as they are now, with insightful comments such as 'electric cars are dumb', and 'they will take away our independence.'
Oh brother...
However, there appears to be various problems with the idea of how we will generate the electricity to power cars if 90% of them use electricity. Firstly, i agree that there ARE problems here. Basic answer: we will have to deal with those and sort them out as best we can. It will probably be difficult and we will do some things wrong. But its better than carrying on with the present car system. So, those various problems can not be used to say ‘keep cars as they are now’.
Here are some of the issues in more detail:
Problem 1
The power plants providing that energy aren’t emission-free. So, some say that if the power in your region is generated mostly by coal-fired then the electric cars in that area are connected to that pollution. Thats a good point. As Green Transportation admit: "if electric cars are secretly coal fired dirty monstrosities, aren't we fooling ourselves? Why would environmentally conscious people driving electric cars want more coal to be burned? We don't. Burning coal kinda negates the whole purpose of getting the electric car, doesn't it?".
As to the figures now: “The US gets about a third of its electricity from coal-fired power, IEA says (others say 50%) and more than 40% of total electricity worldwide comes from burning coal.” …But if your region uses a lot of renewable solar and wind energy, like California, then electric vehicle are more clean. Also, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) believes that despite a fossil-fuel-dependent grid, electric cars are, on balance, better for the environment. “There are no areas of the country where electric vehicles have higher global warming emissions than the average new gasoline vehicle,” ....Using UCS’s formula, a Tesla Model X charging in the Los Altos Whole Foods garage achieves a fuel efficiency equivalent to 81 miles per gallon – far higher than a gas-powered car."
Green Transportation insists that: "A proper accounting of emissions footprint shows that, in the U.S. and many countries, electric cars, even running on coal powered electricity, are cleaner than gasoline compatriots." and the future looks good too, as: 'The good news is that soon enough it will become economically viable to select solar power systems. At that point the electrical utilities will surely increase their investments in solar and even wind systems, because it will simply be the best business decision to do so."
Problem 2
The manufacturing process for the vehicles can cause a lot of pollution, especially when their batteries are taken into account.
ShrinkThatFootprint website studied the figures and note that, yes electric cars contain more material than gasoline cars, and therefore requires more resources (minerals and energy) to build. Therefore, the environmental impact to build them is higher. but the conclude that the environmental savings from not burning gasoline more than make up for this increased impact.
An article in Wired, notes that there is clearly an issue to be taken into account here: "The lithium in the batteries, for example, is super light and conductive—that’s how you get a lot of energy without adding a lot of weight. Other, rare metals are sprinkled throughout the car, mostly in the magnets that are in everything from the headlights to the on-board electronics.But those rare metals come from somewhere—often, from environmentally destructive mines... Even solar panels depend on rare metals that have to be dug out of the earth and processed in less-than-green ways..."
And the UCS agree: "....manufacturing an electric vehicle generates more carbon emissions than building a conventional car, mostly because of its battery.." However, they conclude: "....when you add all the environmental impacts, they still come out in favor of electric vehicles....even when you add in emissions from battery manufacturing, EVs generate half the emissions of a conventional car over the course of its life..."
Because, gasoline doesn’t exist in a vacuum, either, they also cause harm at various stages: Refining, processing, and transporting gas add emissions that car owners must factor into their overall carbon footprint,and which 90% of them rarely do, as we can see by the 'denial complex' that seems to haunt many of them, as they refuse to see the damage that cars do at present. But they do. An article in The Guardian notes that: "gasoline and diesel cars also emit nitrogen and sulfur compounds that contribute to acid rain and form tiny airborne particles that spoil air quality and contribute to strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases, including asthma. Air pollution is one of the world’s most urgent environmental hazards, causing more than 3m premature deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. The Chinese government has repeatedly announced its commitment to develop electric vehicles, partly because of air pollution concerns."
Also, while we have to admit that in respect to CO2 there may be problems to be tackled with electric vehicles (EV) we can also say:..."that EVs do not emit particulates, NOx and SOx into congested urgan areas where people are exposed to them like fossil-fuel vehicles do. Fossil fuel powered cars need tranmissions lines for petroleum producting, refining sites, oil wells and other extraction sites. They also have batteries in them too. Lad Acid. Rare earths in magnets for speakers. If "life cycle" (up and down supply chain) impacts are going to be brought into play for EVs, then the same full life-cycle analysis needs to be done for combustion engine vehicles too."
Other make the point that it is better to burn the fossil fuels at those few central power generators, than in millions of cars in ever area: "Burning fossil fuels in a power plant is approx 40% efficient. Cars burning fossil fuels are around 15-25% efficient. Therefore it is twice as efficient to burn fossil fuels centrally than it is to burn them in cars. Transporting these fossil fuels to all of the petrol stations around the country also takes up a lot of resources, using fuel tankers that are around 15% efficient. Transporting electricity over the national grid is incredibly efficient as the infrastructure is already in place. So even if the electricity is generated by fossil fuels, which ideally it won't be in the future, electric cars are a massive leap forward compared to regular vehicles and will only get better as they become mainstream. "
"As an added bonus, we are not burning these fossil fuels on our streets, outside schools and in our town centres so we will reduce the 40,000 deaths a year caused by air pollution in the UK. There is also the advantage that the pollution is localised, so it can be dealt with when technology allows. It is easier to install better filters on a power plant, than improve thousands of privately owned vehicles. Eventually, you also replace the power plant and all pollution is eliminated."
Problem 3
What are we going to do with all those discarded batteries? Isn't that going to be a huge problem? Again this is a problem we need to contend with and Green Transportation tells us: "... battery recyclers are piloting technologies to recover a lot of materials from those batteries, says Shanika Amarakoon, a researcher at the firm Abt Associates who partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency ...The more batteries that are out there, in various devices, the more interest there is in figuring out how to recycle them or to recapture rare earth metals...According to Tesla’s spokesperson, the company already recycles all battery packs returned to it and plans to do more. The hope is that if you’re getting people to buy a lot of electric vehicles, you’re going to push on the technology too..."
So, it seems that the idea that 'green cars are not green' s tactic is mainly a deliberately spread myth to make us throw up our hands, and give up on driving an electric car. The issues are known, admitted, being dealt with and will decrease in the future. So, they can nopt be used as an argument for keeping cars the way they are now.
And for all those petrol heads who get in a tiffy about their beloved metal moving boxes becoming outdated…hard (yellow) lines.
Technology, concern for the making a good environment, world resources, and even your old favourite ‘basic common sense’ are all against you. Get with the 21st C and embrace better transport! Big gas cars are for big conservatives, full of gas and talking crap. In about 2030 or 2040 you will finally be saying:
“Ah.. this cleaner, quieter, safer way IS better, actually.”
Info from these articles:
https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/evs-need-clean-electricity.html
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/08/electric-car-emissions-climate-change
I wrote a wee piece on 'face-ache-book' saying:
The sooner we get rid of those big, noisy, polluting, death machines on wheels the better! …are you getting it that I dont like cars? Get ready for it folks. Cars, as we know them now, will shortly become museum pieces. Replaced by much smaller, single seater, much less noisy, slower, electric vehicles… possibly self driven, with anti-crash technology. And by that i meant EVERYONE will have to use a small single seater. Clearly some people with large families and equipment etc will use bigger vehicles. That does not defeat the basic point - cause even those larger vehicles will be electric, safer, less noisy, etc. and yes they will be strong enough to pull heavy stuff ...
This caused a lot of old fashioned thinking 'petrol heads' to defend cars as they are now, with insightful comments such as 'electric cars are dumb', and 'they will take away our independence.'
Oh brother...
However, there appears to be various problems with the idea of how we will generate the electricity to power cars if 90% of them use electricity. Firstly, i agree that there ARE problems here. Basic answer: we will have to deal with those and sort them out as best we can. It will probably be difficult and we will do some things wrong. But its better than carrying on with the present car system. So, those various problems can not be used to say ‘keep cars as they are now’.
Here are some of the issues in more detail:
Problem 1
The power plants providing that energy aren’t emission-free. So, some say that if the power in your region is generated mostly by coal-fired then the electric cars in that area are connected to that pollution. Thats a good point. As Green Transportation admit: "if electric cars are secretly coal fired dirty monstrosities, aren't we fooling ourselves? Why would environmentally conscious people driving electric cars want more coal to be burned? We don't. Burning coal kinda negates the whole purpose of getting the electric car, doesn't it?".
As to the figures now: “The US gets about a third of its electricity from coal-fired power, IEA says (others say 50%) and more than 40% of total electricity worldwide comes from burning coal.” …But if your region uses a lot of renewable solar and wind energy, like California, then electric vehicle are more clean. Also, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) believes that despite a fossil-fuel-dependent grid, electric cars are, on balance, better for the environment. “There are no areas of the country where electric vehicles have higher global warming emissions than the average new gasoline vehicle,” ....Using UCS’s formula, a Tesla Model X charging in the Los Altos Whole Foods garage achieves a fuel efficiency equivalent to 81 miles per gallon – far higher than a gas-powered car."
Green Transportation insists that: "A proper accounting of emissions footprint shows that, in the U.S. and many countries, electric cars, even running on coal powered electricity, are cleaner than gasoline compatriots." and the future looks good too, as: 'The good news is that soon enough it will become economically viable to select solar power systems. At that point the electrical utilities will surely increase their investments in solar and even wind systems, because it will simply be the best business decision to do so."
Problem 2
The manufacturing process for the vehicles can cause a lot of pollution, especially when their batteries are taken into account.
ShrinkThatFootprint website studied the figures and note that, yes electric cars contain more material than gasoline cars, and therefore requires more resources (minerals and energy) to build. Therefore, the environmental impact to build them is higher. but the conclude that the environmental savings from not burning gasoline more than make up for this increased impact.
An article in Wired, notes that there is clearly an issue to be taken into account here: "The lithium in the batteries, for example, is super light and conductive—that’s how you get a lot of energy without adding a lot of weight. Other, rare metals are sprinkled throughout the car, mostly in the magnets that are in everything from the headlights to the on-board electronics.But those rare metals come from somewhere—often, from environmentally destructive mines... Even solar panels depend on rare metals that have to be dug out of the earth and processed in less-than-green ways..."
And the UCS agree: "....manufacturing an electric vehicle generates more carbon emissions than building a conventional car, mostly because of its battery.." However, they conclude: "....when you add all the environmental impacts, they still come out in favor of electric vehicles....even when you add in emissions from battery manufacturing, EVs generate half the emissions of a conventional car over the course of its life..."
Because, gasoline doesn’t exist in a vacuum, either, they also cause harm at various stages: Refining, processing, and transporting gas add emissions that car owners must factor into their overall carbon footprint,and which 90% of them rarely do, as we can see by the 'denial complex' that seems to haunt many of them, as they refuse to see the damage that cars do at present. But they do. An article in The Guardian notes that: "gasoline and diesel cars also emit nitrogen and sulfur compounds that contribute to acid rain and form tiny airborne particles that spoil air quality and contribute to strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases, including asthma. Air pollution is one of the world’s most urgent environmental hazards, causing more than 3m premature deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. The Chinese government has repeatedly announced its commitment to develop electric vehicles, partly because of air pollution concerns."
Also, while we have to admit that in respect to CO2 there may be problems to be tackled with electric vehicles (EV) we can also say:..."that EVs do not emit particulates, NOx and SOx into congested urgan areas where people are exposed to them like fossil-fuel vehicles do. Fossil fuel powered cars need tranmissions lines for petroleum producting, refining sites, oil wells and other extraction sites. They also have batteries in them too. Lad Acid. Rare earths in magnets for speakers. If "life cycle" (up and down supply chain) impacts are going to be brought into play for EVs, then the same full life-cycle analysis needs to be done for combustion engine vehicles too."
Other make the point that it is better to burn the fossil fuels at those few central power generators, than in millions of cars in ever area: "Burning fossil fuels in a power plant is approx 40% efficient. Cars burning fossil fuels are around 15-25% efficient. Therefore it is twice as efficient to burn fossil fuels centrally than it is to burn them in cars. Transporting these fossil fuels to all of the petrol stations around the country also takes up a lot of resources, using fuel tankers that are around 15% efficient. Transporting electricity over the national grid is incredibly efficient as the infrastructure is already in place. So even if the electricity is generated by fossil fuels, which ideally it won't be in the future, electric cars are a massive leap forward compared to regular vehicles and will only get better as they become mainstream. "
"As an added bonus, we are not burning these fossil fuels on our streets, outside schools and in our town centres so we will reduce the 40,000 deaths a year caused by air pollution in the UK. There is also the advantage that the pollution is localised, so it can be dealt with when technology allows. It is easier to install better filters on a power plant, than improve thousands of privately owned vehicles. Eventually, you also replace the power plant and all pollution is eliminated."
Problem 3
What are we going to do with all those discarded batteries? Isn't that going to be a huge problem? Again this is a problem we need to contend with and Green Transportation tells us: "... battery recyclers are piloting technologies to recover a lot of materials from those batteries, says Shanika Amarakoon, a researcher at the firm Abt Associates who partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency ...The more batteries that are out there, in various devices, the more interest there is in figuring out how to recycle them or to recapture rare earth metals...According to Tesla’s spokesperson, the company already recycles all battery packs returned to it and plans to do more. The hope is that if you’re getting people to buy a lot of electric vehicles, you’re going to push on the technology too..."
So, it seems that the idea that 'green cars are not green' s tactic is mainly a deliberately spread myth to make us throw up our hands, and give up on driving an electric car. The issues are known, admitted, being dealt with and will decrease in the future. So, they can nopt be used as an argument for keeping cars the way they are now.
And for all those petrol heads who get in a tiffy about their beloved metal moving boxes becoming outdated…hard (yellow) lines.
Technology, concern for the making a good environment, world resources, and even your old favourite ‘basic common sense’ are all against you. Get with the 21st C and embrace better transport! Big gas cars are for big conservatives, full of gas and talking crap. In about 2030 or 2040 you will finally be saying:
“Ah.. this cleaner, quieter, safer way IS better, actually.”
Info from these articles:
https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/evs-need-clean-electricity.html
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/08/electric-car-emissions-climate-change