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We do have the energy. The US spends enough energy on transportation that the entire world could have refrigeration. The US spends 28% of total energy consump

We do have the energy. The US spends enough energy on transportation that the entire world could have refrigeration. The US spends 28% of total energy consumption on transportation. 93.33 Quadrillion BTUs x .28 / 3142 (BTUs per kWh) / 365 (days per year) = 22.8B kWh per day. BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. We could have the same standard of living and just not use gas-powered vehicles and save ~22.8B kWh per day. If I'm doing my math right, that's more than enough energy for 3B households to have refrigeration. The problem isn't that we don't have enough energy. The problem is that most of the world is really poor. In the simplest of terms - you can't get much cheaper energy at scale than $0.10 per kWh. A lot of households are living on $2 per day. They can maybe afford 5% for refrigeration - but a refrigerator only lasts 7 years or so and costs $200+. That's another $0.08 per day. That's pushing 10% for refrigeration. I don't think they can afford it. And when you're that poor - you're probably not going to be able to get electricity reliably for $0.10 per kWh... When you're that poor, $0.18 = close to half the calories you need for the day. I don't think you can just shift that to refrigeration. What are you going to refrigerate anyway?

WalterBright 4y ago
> BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV. A much more realistic figure is 2x.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  Which then ignores the efficiency of the generation of gasoline, which takes lots of energy input to refine it into the form useful for ICE vehicles.. You can play this game all day long, depending on which figure you want to land on. Efficiency is nice but the reason it hasn't mattered at all is that it is more about what is readily available and cheaply exploited.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    My google doctorate says that energy efficiency of refining is 90%. And you ignored the energy efficiency of mining coal. > You can play this game all day long And you should, to be serious about CO2 emissions reduction. Otherwise, we're all just fooling ourselves.
    - CraigJPerry 4y ago
      But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle. If the BEV is running with their 2kw heating turned up full blast in addition to running down the road, and there was a heat loss of around 2-5% while charging the car then We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE. Then there’s the electricity supply which ranges from 0 refinement loss and 50% thermal efficiency (natural gas fired power plant) to NaN% for nuclear, wind and solar. A BEV charging right this minute in the UK is consuming energy originating from 25% gas, 25% nuclear, 25% wind, 5% solar (its 6:30pm). It could be more than 5x when you compare with ICE fuel supply / refinement / storage / delivery.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        > But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle. Right. Now factor in the losses in thermodynamic electric power generation to fuel the EV. > We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE. Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70%.
        onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        It's 10% or less for solar, wind, nuclear, etc...
        CraigJPerry 4y ago
        >> Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70% What? There’s 70% loss in the process of generating electricity? Where does that occur?
- CraigJPerry 4y ago
  >> A much more realistic figure is 2x That sounds well off. How much energy is required to refine fuel suitable for use in an ICE vehicle? Gas and oil fired power plants use a far less refined fuel. How much energy is required to get the fuel to the vehicle? Gas and oil plants are usually connected via high efficiency transport mechanisms like pipelines rather than ships or road transport. Vehicle engines are only in the region of 20-35% thermal efficiency but the average across all gas fired plants in the uk is 50% and drops to 42% for oil fired. I don’t know for sure but only 2x smells to me.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    See my other reply.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      What other reply? You talk about refining. There's 10% lost in refining. X% lost in extraction and Y% lost in transmission (shipping, pipes, etc). Solar => Grid => Car Battery is less than 10% lost usually. Obviously it can vary a lot - so can oil extraction, shipping and refining... This means Solar => Grid => Car battery is >5x as efficient as Oil in ground => Pipes => Refinery => Pipes => Gas Station => Car. Once the energy is in the car, we know the BEV is 5x more efficient. We also know Solar => Car is SUBSTANTIALLY more efficient at transferring BTUs into the car than the gasoline infrastructure. In reality, it's probably closer to 10x as efficient than 2x.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Solar and wind have so far not been nearly adequate to charge existing EVs, let alone what would be necessary if we all converted to EVs. Given the reluctance to expand nuclear power, we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time.
        CraigJPerry 4y ago
        >> we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time Even if you never used wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, etc. then you’d still be ahead in the BEV case. An oil power plant has around 42% thermal efficiency. A gas one 50%+ an ICE is only up to 35% but in the US it’s significantly lower on average. Neither of which have tailpipe emissions in populated areas unlike ICE. But we do also use wind, solar, nuclear etc as power sources for BEV.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  That's about right from my arithmetic, assuming you charge from a fossil fuel grid. I charge from onsite solar. Still, 2x is a big improvement.
- adrianN 4y ago
  You can either pump a kWh of oil out of the ground, or you can collect a kWh of solar energy with a PV panel.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Being EXTREMELY generous to gasoline and ICE - and realistic that most BEVs aren't charging using 0% fossil fuels - you can get to 3.14x. To get to 2x, you'll need to assume the average BEV is substantially less efficient than a Tesla - that all gasoline is refined at the most efficient refinery - that all ICE cars get Prius mileage - that it takes 0 energy to extract and transmit / ship oil - and probably that the majority of your electricity is coming from coal.
pxmpxm 4y ago
There is about no way what you wrote can possibly be true; with 5x efficiency gain we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them. If there was a net energy gain going to EV, the adoption rates would be through the roof rather than ~1% we are seeing currently.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-than-ice-vehicles-cer/#:~:text=Altogether%2C%20BEVs%20are%20far%20more,and%20an%20internal%20combustion%20engine https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-th....
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    This compares gas -> motion with battery -> motions. To close the loop, we’d have to incorporate the generation efficiency. That will still yield an impressive number, but not 5x.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Solar => Car battery you only lose about 10% of energy. You lose more than that in refining oil to gasoline. And a lot more when factoring in extraction + transportation + point of sale. Closing the loop makes solar => car even more efficient, not less. Sure, if we want to be dumb and extract oil to power inefficient turbines to generate electricity this becomes a talking point. But not many people are building new oil power plants for a reason...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them The consumer captures these purported gains, not the manufacturer.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
zanny 4y ago
What is more efficient than all the cars is electrified rail. That is an order of magnitude more energy efficient, more if you can manage to get near capacity high frequency trains. A lot of our energy expenditure is lifestyle satisfying. Asia and the better cities in Europe demonstrate you can build dense cities with excellent transit as an alternative to car dependency, but the US fairly universally rejects it from both sides - white flight to suburbs and their perpetual expansion and the inability to actually build dense and transit oriented housing, hell most places use zoning codes to actively prevent its development. We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything, but the willpower is very much not there, largely because of corporate interference that bred this climate that transit is for poor people and to own a car is to "succeed" in life. Its such an awful, backwards culture perpetuated by the profit motive over possibly the survival of the society.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything You are absolutely right, zero emission private aircraft would be much better. Let's build a world where everyone can have that if they want instead of placing nihilistic limits on things.
  - wittycardio 4y ago
    Some of us prefer to live in reality
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      Things will get better, not worse. Just watch. Nihilists need to sit on the sidelines where they belong.
      - wittycardio 4y ago
        I'm not a nihilist, I believe in technological progress. It's just not a magic pill that absolves us of all responsibility.
Frost1x 4y ago
The problem is storing and moving the energy. We could theoretically capture lightning strikes (electrostatic discharge) and store those to power things. There's plenty of renewable energy out there, we just can't capture it efficiently, store it very efficiently, or move it around very efficiently. As such as rely on power sources that provide output rates were good at capturing energy from: fossil fuels stored as energy, nuclear fission, solar (fusion, sort of, we're not that efficient at it), hydroelectric (kinetic/gravity, solar/nuclear from the sun), and geothermal (which is just partly just fission again). A lot of stuff just dissipates into the environment and we only capture a small bit of it. With all that said I think humanity will always grow beyond its means in terms everyone having a desirable amount of energy and materials to meet a certain standard of living.
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
When you're that poor do you need a fridge, or do you 'just' need access to a fridge? It's a massive waste if you're living on such a little and you literally only need to keep a handful of things cool. I wonder if you can have a community fridge with different sized compartments so you can pay for access to the amount of space you need; to me those is like using a launderette rather than paying for a washing machine.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  You’re thinking too far down the line. The article mentions this but its worth repeating: even the people producing and selling food don’t have access to refrigeration so a lot of the food they have spoils and goes to waste. That’s the first thing that needs to change. After that better roads and transport networks would help even more. Those things can at least get them out of food poverty and will also have second order effects that will increase economic output and put more money into people’s pockets. Household appliances come much later after you’ve established a working economy and infrastructure.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Is it economically possible to make these investments? Something makes me think when you're this poor - investing in better roads isn't viable. For one, wouldn't rail be way more efficient?
    - towaway15463 4y ago
      Check out the railways that currently exist in Africa and the ones that were built by China and get back to me on that.

WalterBright 4y ago

> BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV. A much more realistic figure is 2x.

stefan_ 4y ago
Which then ignores the efficiency of the generation of gasoline, which takes lots of energy input to refine it into the form useful for ICE vehicles.. You can play this game all day long, depending on which figure you want to land on. Efficiency is nice but the reason it hasn't mattered at all is that it is more about what is readily available and cheaply exploited.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  My google doctorate says that energy efficiency of refining is 90%. And you ignored the energy efficiency of mining coal. > You can play this game all day long And you should, to be serious about CO2 emissions reduction. Otherwise, we're all just fooling ourselves.
  - CraigJPerry 4y ago
    But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle. If the BEV is running with their 2kw heating turned up full blast in addition to running down the road, and there was a heat loss of around 2-5% while charging the car then We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE. Then there’s the electricity supply which ranges from 0 refinement loss and 50% thermal efficiency (natural gas fired power plant) to NaN% for nuclear, wind and solar. A BEV charging right this minute in the UK is consuming energy originating from 25% gas, 25% nuclear, 25% wind, 5% solar (its 6:30pm). It could be more than 5x when you compare with ICE fuel supply / refinement / storage / delivery.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle. Right. Now factor in the losses in thermodynamic electric power generation to fuel the EV. > We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE. Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70%.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        It's 10% or less for solar, wind, nuclear, etc...
      - CraigJPerry 4y ago
        >> Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70% What? There’s 70% loss in the process of generating electricity? Where does that occur?
CraigJPerry 4y ago
>> A much more realistic figure is 2x That sounds well off. How much energy is required to refine fuel suitable for use in an ICE vehicle? Gas and oil fired power plants use a far less refined fuel. How much energy is required to get the fuel to the vehicle? Gas and oil plants are usually connected via high efficiency transport mechanisms like pipelines rather than ships or road transport. Vehicle engines are only in the region of 20-35% thermal efficiency but the average across all gas fired plants in the uk is 50% and drops to 42% for oil fired. I don’t know for sure but only 2x smells to me.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  See my other reply.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    What other reply? You talk about refining. There's 10% lost in refining. X% lost in extraction and Y% lost in transmission (shipping, pipes, etc). Solar => Grid => Car Battery is less than 10% lost usually. Obviously it can vary a lot - so can oil extraction, shipping and refining... This means Solar => Grid => Car battery is >5x as efficient as Oil in ground => Pipes => Refinery => Pipes => Gas Station => Car. Once the energy is in the car, we know the BEV is 5x more efficient. We also know Solar => Car is SUBSTANTIALLY more efficient at transferring BTUs into the car than the gasoline infrastructure. In reality, it's probably closer to 10x as efficient than 2x.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Solar and wind have so far not been nearly adequate to charge existing EVs, let alone what would be necessary if we all converted to EVs. Given the reluctance to expand nuclear power, we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time.
      - CraigJPerry 4y ago
        >> we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time Even if you never used wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, etc. then you’d still be ahead in the BEV case. An oil power plant has around 42% thermal efficiency. A gas one 50%+ an ICE is only up to 35% but in the US it’s significantly lower on average. Neither of which have tailpipe emissions in populated areas unlike ICE. But we do also use wind, solar, nuclear etc as power sources for BEV.
zbrozek 4y ago
That's about right from my arithmetic, assuming you charge from a fossil fuel grid. I charge from onsite solar. Still, 2x is a big improvement.
adrianN 4y ago
You can either pump a kWh of oil out of the ground, or you can collect a kWh of solar energy with a PV panel.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Being EXTREMELY generous to gasoline and ICE - and realistic that most BEVs aren't charging using 0% fossil fuels - you can get to 3.14x. To get to 2x, you'll need to assume the average BEV is substantially less efficient than a Tesla - that all gasoline is refined at the most efficient refinery - that all ICE cars get Prius mileage - that it takes 0 energy to extract and transmit / ship oil - and probably that the majority of your electricity is coming from coal.

pxmpxm 4y ago

There is about no way what you wrote can possibly be true; with 5x efficiency gain we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them. If there was a net energy gain going to EV, the adoption rates would be through the roof rather than ~1% we are seeing currently.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-than-ice-vehicles-cer/#:~:text=Altogether%2C%20BEVs%20are%20far%20more,and%20an%20internal%20combustion%20engine https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-th....
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  This compares gas -> motion with battery -> motions. To close the loop, we’d have to incorporate the generation efficiency. That will still yield an impressive number, but not 5x.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Solar => Car battery you only lose about 10% of energy. You lose more than that in refining oil to gasoline. And a lot more when factoring in extraction + transportation + point of sale. Closing the loop makes solar => car even more efficient, not less. Sure, if we want to be dumb and extract oil to power inefficient turbines to generate electricity this becomes a talking point. But not many people are building new oil power plants for a reason...
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them The consumer captures these purported gains, not the manufacturer.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago

zanny 4y ago

What is more efficient than all the cars is electrified rail. That is an order of magnitude more energy efficient, more if you can manage to get near capacity high frequency trains. A lot of our energy expenditure is lifestyle satisfying. Asia and the better cities in Europe demonstrate you can build dense cities with excellent transit as an alternative to car dependency, but the US fairly universally rejects it from both sides - white flight to suburbs and their perpetual expansion and the inability to actually build dense and transit oriented housing, hell most places use zoning codes to actively prevent its development. We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything, but the willpower is very much not there, largely because of corporate interference that bred this climate that transit is for poor people and to own a car is to "succeed" in life. Its such an awful, backwards culture perpetuated by the profit motive over possibly the survival of the society.

osigurdson 4y ago
>> We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything You are absolutely right, zero emission private aircraft would be much better. Let's build a world where everyone can have that if they want instead of placing nihilistic limits on things.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  Some of us prefer to live in reality
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    Things will get better, not worse. Just watch. Nihilists need to sit on the sidelines where they belong.
    - wittycardio 4y ago
      I'm not a nihilist, I believe in technological progress. It's just not a magic pill that absolves us of all responsibility.

Frost1x 4y ago

The problem is storing and moving the energy. We could theoretically capture lightning strikes (electrostatic discharge) and store those to power things. There's plenty of renewable energy out there, we just can't capture it efficiently, store it very efficiently, or move it around very efficiently. As such as rely on power sources that provide output rates were good at capturing energy from: fossil fuels stored as energy, nuclear fission, solar (fusion, sort of, we're not that efficient at it), hydroelectric (kinetic/gravity, solar/nuclear from the sun), and geothermal (which is just partly just fission again). A lot of stuff just dissipates into the environment and we only capture a small bit of it. With all that said I think humanity will always grow beyond its means in terms everyone having a desirable amount of energy and materials to meet a certain standard of living.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago

When you're that poor do you need a fridge, or do you 'just' need access to a fridge? It's a massive waste if you're living on such a little and you literally only need to keep a handful of things cool. I wonder if you can have a community fridge with different sized compartments so you can pay for access to the amount of space you need; to me those is like using a launderette rather than paying for a washing machine.

towaway15463 4y ago
You’re thinking too far down the line. The article mentions this but its worth repeating: even the people producing and selling food don’t have access to refrigeration so a lot of the food they have spoils and goes to waste. That’s the first thing that needs to change. After that better roads and transport networks would help even more. Those things can at least get them out of food poverty and will also have second order effects that will increase economic output and put more money into people’s pockets. Household appliances come much later after you’ve established a working economy and infrastructure.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Is it economically possible to make these investments? Something makes me think when you're this poor - investing in better roads isn't viable. For one, wouldn't rail be way more efficient?
  - towaway15463 4y ago
    Check out the railways that currently exist in Africa and the ones that were built by China and get back to me on that.