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How would someone in China charge their electric car with clean electricity generated in the United States?

natch 7y ago
Whoosh... Nobody suggested what you are asking about. But it seems you are suggesting that rather than generating electricity locally by sustainable means, it would be a better idea to create synthetic gasoline in the US, then ship that to China for them to burn?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  It costs only 1% of the energy capacity of liquid hydrocarbon fuel to ship it literally around the globe. A penny per dollar of delivered value. The chemical potential energy stored is proved stable for literally hundreds of millions of years. Few electrical energy storage options are useful for more than a few weeks, most operate in the range of seconds to hours. The fuel and its combustion products are remarkably non-toxic (though excess accumulation at the scale of the globe over decades to centuries can be quite problematic). They don't attack or degrade most materials used in the construction of storage, transfer, processing, or utilisation. The source elements are abundant and relatively easily obtained. There is a vast infrastructure and 1-2 centuries' experience in working with and applying the materials. The energy densities by both weight and volume are all but wholly unmatched by nonnuclear energy sources. Only hydrogen, by mass, is higher, and it presents numerous other challenges. Fossil fuels have proved exceedingly problematic. We must stop using them for combustion. Liquid and gaseous hydocarbons are amazingly useful and flexible. While they may be substituted for in some applications, it's likely that a base-level need will remain. Electricity is an amazing power transmission and transformation technology, and is exceedingly useful in informatiin technologies. It does exceeding poor at storage, though, and likely always will, for reasons of basic physics and chemistry.
- ThrustVectoring 7y ago
  >Nobody suggested what you are asking about. That is exactly what I was talking about it my original post. No matter how many cars in the US get replaced with electric ones, China is still going to be building and driving gas-powered ones, and we have limited influence on their domestic policy. >But it seems you are suggesting that rather than generating electricity locally by sustainable means, it would be a better idea to create synthetic gasoline in the US, then ship that to China for them to burn? Not at all. In fact, the very first prerequisite for what I'm talking about is that the US has switched entirely to nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and other non-CO2 emitting power. At that point, there's little the US can do further reduce global CO2 emissions, at which point generating extra electrical capacity and using it to synthesize ICE fuel starts to look really attractive. And again, this isn't something that is necessary or even viable in the short term. Over the long run, however, it seems like an important way that more industrialized nations can lower the CO2 emissions generated by internal activity of less industrialized ones.

Whoosh... Nobody suggested what you are asking about. But it seems you are suggesting that rather than generating electricity locally by sustainable means, it would be a better idea to create synthetic gasoline in the US, then ship that to China for them to burn?

dredmorbius 7y ago
It costs only 1% of the energy capacity of liquid hydrocarbon fuel to ship it literally around the globe. A penny per dollar of delivered value. The chemical potential energy stored is proved stable for literally hundreds of millions of years. Few electrical energy storage options are useful for more than a few weeks, most operate in the range of seconds to hours. The fuel and its combustion products are remarkably non-toxic (though excess accumulation at the scale of the globe over decades to centuries can be quite problematic). They don't attack or degrade most materials used in the construction of storage, transfer, processing, or utilisation. The source elements are abundant and relatively easily obtained. There is a vast infrastructure and 1-2 centuries' experience in working with and applying the materials. The energy densities by both weight and volume are all but wholly unmatched by nonnuclear energy sources. Only hydrogen, by mass, is higher, and it presents numerous other challenges. Fossil fuels have proved exceedingly problematic. We must stop using them for combustion. Liquid and gaseous hydocarbons are amazingly useful and flexible. While they may be substituted for in some applications, it's likely that a base-level need will remain. Electricity is an amazing power transmission and transformation technology, and is exceedingly useful in informatiin technologies. It does exceeding poor at storage, though, and likely always will, for reasons of basic physics and chemistry.
ThrustVectoring 7y ago
>Nobody suggested what you are asking about. That is exactly what I was talking about it my original post. No matter how many cars in the US get replaced with electric ones, China is still going to be building and driving gas-powered ones, and we have limited influence on their domestic policy. >But it seems you are suggesting that rather than generating electricity locally by sustainable means, it would be a better idea to create synthetic gasoline in the US, then ship that to China for them to burn? Not at all. In fact, the very first prerequisite for what I'm talking about is that the US has switched entirely to nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and other non-CO2 emitting power. At that point, there's little the US can do further reduce global CO2 emissions, at which point generating extra electrical capacity and using it to synthesize ICE fuel starts to look really attractive. And again, this isn't something that is necessary or even viable in the short term. Over the long run, however, it seems like an important way that more industrialized nations can lower the CO2 emissions generated by internal activity of less industrialized ones.