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| EV-based road transportation is not viable |
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| coppice:
--- Quote from: vad on January 23, 2024, 03:05:51 pm --- --- Quote from: tautech on January 23, 2024, 02:42:31 am ---And keep burning coal to charge them. Or as witnessed in a recent WA trip, most of their power is from gas turbines...... --- End quote --- They are using less and less coal in Europe, often replacing it with renewables. Here's how it works: A forest is uprooted in the United States, timber is processed into fuel pellets, shipped to another continent, using petrol and diesel fuels for transportation. In Europe, customers burn these fuel pellets, generating power, including for BEVs. Customers are happy because CO2 from burning renewable biofuels is allegedly better than CO2 from locally mined coal in places like Germany. Perhaps the quantum properties of a carbon atom that comes from a recently alive tree are better than the quantum properties of a carbon atom that comes from coal. --- End quote --- I live not too far from the Drax power station in Yorkshire which runs on virgin US forestry. Its very much a WTF topic in most conversations. Its fully renewable energy in the view of people in power, clinging to anything that makes their "moves towards net zero" look better. |
| PlainName:
[Edit to make clear this is about the chip-powered charging stations, not generic umpty-gigawatt power stations.] You cannot switch from one means to another in the blink of an eye. It's almost as difficult to do it piecemeal too, hence there is massive inertia to keep things more or less as they are. So, bearing that in mind... You gotta start somewhere and it's no good killing oil and switching entirely to electrics if there is (relatively) nothing to consume that. And there won't be consumers if there is nothing to consume. Classic chicken and egg. So why not get the provision going somehow and let the consumers build up (meantime reducing consumption for non-preferred supplies). Once that's all working you can switch the backend to whatever you fancy. Currently, wood chips shipped across the globe allow for the generators to be generating, and once your consumers just consume electricity you can bugger about with how you generate it. Hell, use coal if you want, or gas or chips or solar or shit - your consumers won't notice or care. I would see a good case for having charging stations using petrol, just to get the charging stations in place and used. Later, they can be wired to the grid and/or use whatever the green source du jour is, but many tiny steps is better than a huge leap usually. |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: PlainName on January 23, 2024, 03:27:42 pm ---[Edit to make clear this is about the chip-powered charging stations, not generic umpty-gigawatt power stations.] You cannot switch from one means to another in the blink of an eye. It's almost as difficult to do it piecemeal too, hence there is massive inertia to keep things more or less as they are. So, bearing that in mind... You gotta start somewhere and it's no good killing oil and switching entirely to electrics if there is (relatively) nothing to consume that. And there won't be consumers if there is nothing to consume. Classic chicken and egg. So why not get the provision going somehow and let the consumers build up (meantime reducing consumption for non-preferred supplies). Once that's all working you can switch the backend to whatever you fancy. Currently, wood chips shipped across the globe allow for the generators to be generating, and once your consumers just consume electricity you can bugger about with how you generate it. Hell, use coal if you want, or gas or chips or solar or shit - your consumers won't notice or care. I would see a good case for having charging stations using petrol, just to get the charging stations in place and used. Later, they can be wired to the grid and/or use whatever the green source du jour is, but many tiny steps is better than a huge leap usually. --- End quote --- Yup. Even an electric vehicle running off the UK grid with its mix of gas, tiny bit of coal, wind, nuclear, biomass etc. has a carbon footprint of around 250 grams CO2eq per kWh. That is around 60 grams per vehicle mile, around a third of a petrol car. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, EVs are not "the solution" to climate change, they represent one of the many ways we can seek to decarbonise road transport, and would be combined with longer vehicle lifecycles, improved battery manufacturing techniques, more public transport provision, more cycling provision, more opportunities for hybrid/remote working and so on. It seems the anti-green people mostly think in binary, something is either dirty or clean; and anything that is not completely clean, is dirty, and therefore not worth considering. |
| vad:
The inconvenient truth is that tons of CO2 are thrown into the atmosphere before an EV's first charge. The actual emission values are not reported by the industry and are estimated in a range from 30 to 200 kg of CO2 per kWh capacity of the battery, depending on the mining and manufacturing process. Taking the midpoint of 115 kg/kWh would estimate 9 metric tons of CO2 for a typical Tesla Model 3. If a person believes that CO2 emissions are bad for the climate and, for that reason, opts for a BEV, he/she is kidding him/herself. The person prepays the emissions by allowing mining companies in Africa and battery manufacturing companies in China to pollute the atmosphere with many tons of CO2 before the car even leaves the manufacturing plant. Whether the prepayment is justifiable, due to presumably lower carbon emissions per mile driven compared to an ICE vehicle, depends on many factors, such as the make and model of the specific BEV and alternative ICE vehicle, lifetime of the vehicles, driver's habits, average miles driven, local climate, electricity source, energy required to dispose of the vehicle and its hazardous materials, driver’s luck, etc. As I mentioned in a parallel thread, a tradie who would swap a RAM 1500 for a Cybertruck and drive 50K miles per year would probably cause fewer carbon emissions over the lifetime of the vehicle, assuming the car is kept for several years and doesn't get into minor accidents causing battery damage or deformation requiring replacement. However, a casual, climate-concerned driver with low annual mileage might be better off keeping their current VW Golf instead of trading it for a Chinese-made Tesla Model 3 to be faithful to their beliefs. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: coppice on January 23, 2024, 03:21:56 pm --- --- Quote from: vad on January 23, 2024, 03:05:51 pm --- --- Quote from: tautech on January 23, 2024, 02:42:31 am ---And keep burning coal to charge them. Or as witnessed in a recent WA trip, most of their power is from gas turbines...... --- End quote --- They are using less and less coal in Europe, often replacing it with renewables. Here's how it works: A forest is uprooted in the United States, timber is processed into fuel pellets, shipped to another continent, using petrol and diesel fuels for transportation. In Europe, customers burn these fuel pellets, generating power, including for BEVs. Customers are happy because CO2 from burning renewable biofuels is allegedly better than CO2 from locally mined coal in places like Germany. Perhaps the quantum properties of a carbon atom that comes from a recently alive tree are better than the quantum properties of a carbon atom that comes from coal. --- End quote --- I live not too far from the Drax power station in Yorkshire which runs on virgin US forestry. Its very much a WTF topic in most conversations. Its fully renewable energy in the view of people in power, clinging to anything that makes their "moves towards net zero" look better. --- End quote --- And soon to get £40e9(!) to employ carbon capture storage :( https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/16/drax-gets-go-ahead-for-carbon-capture-project-at-estimated-40bn-cost-to-bill-payers Without Drax we would be in a bind. Currently a 4 reactors are unexpectedly offline, and even though wind power is high we are still importing >7GW of electricity. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses A lot of German "coal" is actually brown lignite, an especially polluting source. |
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