3 ms·

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply ownership, and should have used the indefinite article "a" diesel, not "your" diesel. If you take the existing grid, and add a bu

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply ownership, and should have used the indefinite article "a" diesel, not "your" diesel. If you take the existing grid, and add a bunch of load to it, and also add a bunch of renewables, the grid is still cleaner. For the set pollution outputs, the amount of power generated is higher. Pollution per unit power is less. And the point I was making is that it doesn't matter, even if coal was where the additional power came from (and it absolutely will not be), it's still cleaner than current ICE cars (that's the link I cited in the previous post)

reitzensteinm 7y ago
Right, I am 100% on the same page that EVs even when powered by coal power plants are better. No brainer, let's get it done. But you aren't thinking clearly about where the power for EVs is coming from. I'm going to attempt to illustrate with some made up numbers for simplicity. This year, we have: * 100 TWh electricity consumption * 100 TWh gasoline consumption The electricity is generated via: * 20 TWh from renewables, growing by 10 TWh a year * 80 TWh from fossil fuels, shrinking by 10 TWh a year This system will reach 100% renewable consumption after 8 years, having consumed 80 + 70 + 60 ... = 360 TWh of electricity generated via fossil fuels, and gasoline containing 800 TWh. Now if we could switch the system over to 100% EVs this year (to make the math easier), let's assume we can replace gasoline containing 100 TWh with 20 TWh of electricity. The capacity for this generation comes from our existing fossil fuel plants, which were in the process of shutting down. Our consumption is now: * 120 TWh electricity Generated via: * 20 TWh from renewables, growing by 10 TWh a year * 100 TWh from fossil fuels, shrinking by 10 TWh a year This alternate system will reach 100% renewable consumption after 10 years, having consumed 100 + 90 + 80 ... = 550 TWh of electricity generated via fossil fuels. Even on an aggressive renewable ramp (which should be more favorable than reality), the addition of load from EVs has caused 52% more consumption of electricity from fossil fuels over the course of the ramp. This is still a significant reduction in carbon emissions, as the power plants burning fossil fuels are more efficient, and it's worth doing. But it is not correct to say that the EVs are powered in part by renewables until near the end of the ramp. Any amount of renewable energy you feed the EVs is simply being taken from elsewhere in the grid. Now, you could ramp up renewables more quickly to make up the shortfall, but you could have done that anyway. The only real connection they have is that EVs can dispatch demand and even send power back in to the grid from their batteries, in order to allow the grid to remain stable as more intermittent sources of power are added to the grid. In places where wind and solar have caused an excess of energy, like Germany on occasion as discussed by a sibling commenter, or at times in my own Australia, you can start to attribute that otherwise wasted energy to fueling EVs.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

Right, I am 100% on the same page that EVs even when powered by coal power plants are better. No brainer, let's get it done. But you aren't thinking clearly about where the power for EVs is coming from. I'm going to attempt to illustrate with some made up numbers for simplicity. This year, we have: * 100 TWh electricity consumption * 100 TWh gasoline consumption The electricity is generated via: * 20 TWh from renewables, growing by 10 TWh a year * 80 TWh from fossil fuels, shrinking by 10 TWh a year This system will reach 100% renewable consumption after 8 years, having consumed 80 + 70 + 60 ... = 360 TWh of electricity generated via fossil fuels, and gasoline containing 800 TWh. Now if we could switch the system over to 100% EVs this year (to make the math easier), let's assume we can replace gasoline containing 100 TWh with 20 TWh of electricity. The capacity for this generation comes from our existing fossil fuel plants, which were in the process of shutting down. Our consumption is now: * 120 TWh electricity Generated via: * 20 TWh from renewables, growing by 10 TWh a year * 100 TWh from fossil fuels, shrinking by 10 TWh a year This alternate system will reach 100% renewable consumption after 10 years, having consumed 100 + 90 + 80 ... = 550 TWh of electricity generated via fossil fuels. Even on an aggressive renewable ramp (which should be more favorable than reality), the addition of load from EVs has caused 52% more consumption of electricity from fossil fuels over the course of the ramp. This is still a significant reduction in carbon emissions, as the power plants burning fossil fuels are more efficient, and it's worth doing. But it is not correct to say that the EVs are powered in part by renewables until near the end of the ramp. Any amount of renewable energy you feed the EVs is simply being taken from elsewhere in the grid. Now, you could ramp up renewables more quickly to make up the shortfall, but you could have done that anyway. The only real connection they have is that EVs can dispatch demand and even send power back in to the grid from their batteries, in order to allow the grid to remain stable as more intermittent sources of power are added to the grid. In places where wind and solar have caused an excess of energy, like Germany on occasion as discussed by a sibling commenter, or at times in my own Australia, you can start to attribute that otherwise wasted energy to fueling EVs.