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Fossil fuel cars make 'hundreds of times' more waste than electric cars
- hfsp 6y agoChoose your fighter wisely: [ ] ELECTRIC CAR GOOD [ ] ELECTRICITY BAD
- 0goel0 6y agoThis is a hot garbage of a take. No one is saying "ELECTRICITY BAD", but futile uses of electricity (most of which is derived from extremely polluting fossil fuels[1]) is bad. [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/images/outlet-graph-large.jpg https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/images/outle...
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThe vast majority of electrical generation coming online is renewables. The grid is rapidly becoming cleaner, something they does not occur with fossil burning machinery (which burns fossil fuels for its entire lifetime). Electrify everything (EVs, heat pumps, water heating, etc), and we’ll arrive at 100% clean generation and consumption around the same time.
- 0goel0 6y agoThis is verifiably false - https://i.imgur.com/2M67mwx.png https://i.imgur.com/2M67mwx.png Source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
- toomuchtodo 6y agohttps://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46416 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46416 ("Renewables account for most new U.S. electricity generating capacity in 2021", January 2021) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c... https://www.yahoo.com/now/renewables-dominate-u-power-capacity-150000083.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/renewables-dominate-u-power-capaci... ("Renewables To Dominate New U.S. Power Capacity In 2021") https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-renewable-pipeline-poised-to-add-172-5-gw-through-2024-61902543 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... ("US renewable pipeline poised to add 172.5 GW through 2024") https://www.snl.com/articles/406456174.png https://www.snl.com/articles/406456174.png https://www.snl.com/articles/406456177.png https://www.snl.com/articles/406456177.png
- merdadicapra 6y ago> https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46416 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46416 ("Renewables account for most new U.S. electricity generating capacity in 2021", January 2021) emphasis on the word new > https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c... emphasis on "to come online fro Jan 2021 to Dec 2021" > https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... ("US renewable pipeline poised to add 172.5 GW through 2024") From the same article: Solar power in 2019 accounted for 1.8% of U.S. utility-scale generating capacity At the end of 2019, the United States had about 1,100,546 MW—or 1.1 billion kilowatts (kW)—of total utility-scale electricity generating capacity and about 23 million kW of small-scale solar photovoltaic electricity generating capacity from 23 to 172 it's only 7.5 times more you need to increase production 15 times more to reach the current total output.
- allannienhuis 6y agoPerhaps you misinterpreted 'coming online'? The statement refers to NEW energy generation, with the implication that renewable/green energy sources will eventually outpace fossil fuels as old plants are decommissioned and alternatives come online for baseload (batteries/other storage).
- ravi-delia 6y agoIt's also worth noting that the share of energy generated by fossil fuels can continue growing without their respective share of capacity growing, because as power demand grows we don't just build new plants for every additional watt. Instead, the ones that already exist increase their output. So though most of the new capacity is renewable, even for a bit into the future the absolute amount of power generated by fossil fuels will likely increase.
- hfsp 6y agoSorry to challenge your fossil fuels bad take. The grid, and thus electric cars run on fossil fuel. Contrary to your belief, expensive unereliables such as solar, and wind cannot run the grid by definition. Solar and wind are great, when they are up. Case in point: Germany. Shut down carbon free, emission free, reliable, cheap, safe nuclear. Subsidize, install solar, wind. Find out solar & wind are unreliable. Fire up new coal power plants. Increase emissions due to constant ramp up and ramp down of carbon plants (similar to stop and go traffic on the highway). Increase cost. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/10/is-germany-making-too-much-renewable-energy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/10/is-germany-making-too-m...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago> The grid, and thus electric cars run on fossil fuel. Contrary to your belief, expensive unereliables such as solar, and wind cannot run the grid by definition. Solar and wind are great, when they are up. Solar and wind are the cheapest electrical generation technologies, even when backed by battery storage [1]. Not that Germany didn't misstep by shuttering nuclear for coal, but they also have transmission challenges between high renewable potential geographies and load centers [2]. [1] https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-140.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-o... [2] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-stressed-grid-is-causing-trouble-across-europe https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-stress...
- hfsp 6y ago>even when backed by battery storage We have seconds of grid battery storage in the US. >Solar and wind are the cheapest electrical generation technologies What do you think happens 90% of the time when solar & wind are not available in sufficient capacity? People shut off their lights, laundry machine, and heater/air conditioning?
- ravi-delia 6y agoWe absolutely do have far too little grid battery in the US, and we haven't installed enough solar to provide power for most of the day. How do you get from there to 'and therefore we should give up on making more'? The person you replied to linked to something demonstrating that solar is cheap even when counting the cost of sufficient battery storage. Perhaps you disagree with that assessment? If so, the fact that sufficient green power hasn't been built isn't an argument against building more.
- guscost 6y agoFrom an environmental perspective, petrochemical industrial activity is certainly not trivially comparable “by weight” to the industrial activity for using lithium, cobalt, neodymium, etc. That said, I still like this comparison because it is simple, and all that stuff itself needs to be transported all over the world, which makes a big difference.
- hfsp 6y agoThere are enormous environmental and human rare earth mining costs to assumedly "clean" and "green" electric cars, and solar panels. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-....
- ravi-delia 6y agoI feel like that's only surprising with a very naive worldview that everything is either 'good' or 'bad' in all things. It's like people who act all shocked and betrayed that electric cars use grid power.
- nilpunning 6y ago"Only about 30kg of raw material will be lost over the lifecycle of a lithium ion battery used in electric cars once recycling is taken into account, compared with 17,000 litres of oil, according to analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E) seen by the Guardian." The key seems to be "once recycling is taken into account". Does anyone know if many batteries are currently being recycled? Is recycling economically viable without a technological leap?
- rdudek 6y agoThe article is citing Transport & Environment[1] publication on the subject. However, they're only talking about recycling. They neglect to mention how much resources will be needed to generate that energy used to charge those vehicles. 1. https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/batteries-vs-oil-comparison-raw-material-needs https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/batteries-...
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoOr the other materials which an EBV will use - ignoring that makes me think the original report is biased.
- fulafel 6y agoHow could we ensure EVs reduce global short term oil & gas drilling and consumption, instead of just just enabling additional car use on top of fossil powered cars? Developing countries have car ownership numbers rising fast without western style EV subsidies, and it seems US gas guzzlers will stay in circulation for decades fed by cheap fuel there.
- viklove 6y agoSo by your analysis, the EU will be full electric within the next decade or so?
- fulafel 6y agoPeople drive much less and use much more fuel efficient cars in Europe. USA uses more gasoline pet capita than even Saudi Arabia, and 4-5 times what western europeans use: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/articles/52/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/articles/52/
- clanzerom 6y agoYour source is inaccurate: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country Europe uses less oil, but still uses a lot. Thinking that Europeans aren't guilty of carbon emissions is a flawed take. Why didn't you mention Europe in your comment? I'm assuming you live in Europe and think your people are infallible...
- fulafel 6y agoGasoline vs oil overall, to zoom in to cars.
- ravi-delia 6y agoI think that short term oil and gas drilling is only going to decrease from increased green power, probably mostly solar in the current market. In the long run, ideally easily scaled green power drives the price of electricity down low enough that pretty much anything drawing from the grid is cheaper than burning fossil fuels.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agois it possible to have working EVs at say USD 4200 based on indian prices? https://www.renault.co.in/cars/renault-kwid/kwid-price.html https://www.renault.co.in/cars/renault-kwid/kwid-price.html select a random state and city. 400,000 INR. think how the indian consumer sees this EV calculation. 400K via financing is say 10-25% upfront. Then the balance over say 4-6 years. a monthly fuel cost of 5-10K INR + maintenance is "Affordable" for car buyers in india. This is the lowest end of the spectrum. For these people, an EV with 100Km range is more than sufficient because fast chargers are starting to come up but the cars need to be cost competitive. Right now the cheapest EV car in india is around 1.4 Mil INR or 19000 USD. This is a huge jump from the entry barrier into ICE car and an EV. A reasonable mid level car "hyundai i20" starts at ₹ 679,900 or USD 9000.
- tmellon2 6y agoPlease see 'Tiny' EV cars which could work in most small towns and cities in developing countries : https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/ https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/
- johngalt 6y agoNot exactly a fair comparison as it doesn't appear to be counting the generation of the electricity for the EV. However, EV's still win by a large margin. It's a lot easier to make one big powerplant clean, efficient, and cost effective rather than a million little engines that have to make tradeoffs for weight/size/performance etc...
- ravi-delia 6y agoPlus you can power an electric car with solar panels as long as it doesn't have to carry them around. Over time the grid will become more and more green, while gas cars will always have to burn their fuel.
- ben_w 6y agoIn principle you can carry the panels with the car. How useful that is in practice will have to wait for this to actually be released, and this model in particular can’t even in principle serve anyone who drives even a little more than 89% of the miles per year of the mean US driver (12k/13.8k = 88.888…%), but in principle cars can take their PV with them: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/lightyear-one-long-range-solar-powered-ev https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/lightyear-one-long...
- raws 6y agoBut given the right size and efficiency for a panel, a big rollable panel could give you power anywhere in the world which fuel cars could never do.
- giobox 6y agoNot really, as we know the max theoretical power output of solar on earth. Given we know that generally best sun can do is approximately 1kw/square meter, Assuming you had 100 percent efficient conversion (we aren't close to that even with best solar panels today), we know its never going to be great for charging cars who have large energy requirements. Even in the best possible case, very few people are going to charge a car directly from their own private solar source unless no other choices, it's just not remotely time efficient and likely never will be. To charge an empty 75kwh car battery in roughly 1 hr today you would need approximately 225 square meters of solar panel, assuming a pretty good ~30 percent efficiency rate and strong sun. In reality it will likely need even more panels, and this is all before you contend with shade, weather, night storage and so forth. For a car, private solar will likely never work well enough to become mainstream due to aforementioned solar energy transmission limits.
- marshmallow_12 6y agohundreds of times more waste??? I suspect there's some number fudging going on here. Probably to the order of a few hundred. I can confidently state that a metal bookshelf uses 10 times less trees then a wooden one. I just ignore other pertinent facts. Shame on the Guardian.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoSometimes science needs to prove water is wet, because someone else with deep pockets is trying to convince the world that contrary to the obvious, it's dry.
- astrea 6y agooff-topic, but by definition, is water wet? "Covered or saturated with water or another liquid." Would one consider an object covered or saturated in itself?
- esalman 6y agoPeople who advocate for EVs should really opt for public transports if they actually want to make a difference.
- _ph_ 6y agoMost EV owners do advocate for public transport, where feasible. But public transport isn't feasible everywhere. A bus or train filled with a single passenger is definitely more wasteful than a car with a single passenger. More so, when the car is electric, the bus not.
- esalman 6y agoEV also has a long way to go to become feasible. It is currently only feasible in large metro areas, same as public transportation. However, EVs have a long way to go before it becomes affordable for every class of citizens. You also cannot compare the public transportation occupancy in off-peak hours to EV occupancy. They haul orders of magnitude more people during peak hours. Also, they cost less to maintain when you look at the infrastructure (roads and highways etc.)
- beefman 6y agoUnlikely, since their total costs of ownership are similar.
- RugnirViking 6y agoIn what world does the cost of something correlate at all with it's environmental impact?
- beefman 6y agoThe claim here isn't environmental impact (though that is also strongly correlated with cost), it's mass of waste. Moving mass around costs money. Making a factor of "hundreds" disappear would be extremely unusual, and in fact does not occur in this case.
- slk500 6y ago'hundreds of times' that's silly. Car industry once again luring people to buy new cars. Better solution would be making cars that can be repair & standardize easy to replace parts. But all what their doing is to prevent from car fixing on your own & making parts thats fits only to specific one model. Sometimes you can't even change your oil because you need to buy a special tool.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThis seems superficial. Exotic materials going into batteries have their own 'waste' impact.
- Tagbert 6y agoAnd the volumes are tiny compared the waste from oil production and combustion. There are a lot of efforts to get away from cobalt and some of the other problematic materials so their impact will probably not grow linearly with EV adoption.