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Who's going to be first to extend the deadline when they realise there isnt the infrastructure, generating capacity or desire from public for this?
by drumhead 4y ago
Who's going to be first to extend the deadline when they realise there isnt the infrastructure, generating capacity or desire from public for this?
- akmarinov 4y agoThis gives us enough time to start building out that infrastructure and generating capacity gradually until then.
- geraldwhen 4y agoThere is not nearly enough energy production in Europe for this unless the 240M car owners in Europe mostly all abandon their vehicles.
- Robotbeat 4y agoIn the Us, we used to double electricity production every decade from the 1940s through the 1970s. Electrification only needs about 50% more electricity and it’ll take about 3-4 decades from now for all vehicles (new and old) to be electrified.
- eldaisfish 4y agoI have some bad news for you. Most electricity growth happening in the west is variable renewable energy like wind and solar. That is not firm capacity and electrifying sectors like transport and heat will double, triple or quadruple electrical energy consumption. Now, consider average wind speeds in a year like 2015 where for around six months, average wind speeds across north america were well below seasonal averages. Electrification needs 50% more electricity? Complete nonsense.
- Robotbeat 4y agoContext was electrification of vehicles, and yes, we only need about 50% more for that. And it isn’t “complete nonsense.” It takes about 10kWh to displace one gallon of gasoline (gasoline car gets around 30-40mpg, an electric car like a Model 3 gets 4miles per kWh). The US currently consumes about 575 GW electricity on average over a year. The US consumes about 369 million gallons of gasoline per day, which works out to about 154GW steady state average electricity. Increase that by, say, 10-20% to account for distribution and charging (not counting the fact that this is offset by electricity being delivered by wires and not by fuel trucks which need fuel themselves), and we’re at 32% of US electricity to displace all the gasoline we consume. Gasoline accounts for most transport fuel (diesel is about 128 million gallons per day in the US), so yeah, I’d say I’m pretty close to 50% of current electricity. Battery-electric vehicles are better able to flexibly adjust use of electricity during time of day than other large electric loads like air conditioning (which tend to be used en masse at the same time of day with little flexibility) that drove much of the growth in electricity demand when we were doubling electricity production every decade, so I’d say we’re pretty well off overall. So what’s the need for histrionics about “complete nonsense”?
- eldaisfish 4y agoI don't even where to begin with an "analysis" like this. First, your units are wrong. You've confused power with energy. The US consumes around 4,000 terawatt hours of electrical energy per year. That is 4,000,000 gigawatt hours. The rest of this calculation, like the original claim, is complete nonsense. EVs will easily double or triple electrical energy consumption.
- Robotbeat 4y agoNope, I used correct units. 4TWh/year (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect... not 4000TWh) is a unit of power (energy per unit time) and is about 475GW average. Hour and year are both units of time so those units cancel out with a unitless factor of 8760 (roughly, as there are leap years, etc). I didn’t make mistakes in my calculation (except using 575GW in my calculation instead of 475GW), EVs won’t require drastically more power on average (again, gasoline displacement requires about 30% more electricity, as I showed).
- rtkwe 4y agoThe ban is just for new sales so the transition isn't a cliff, it will smear over at least an additional 10-20+ years (probably more like 30+) as the remaining gas cars slowly break down and electric cars become the main available option.
- akmarinov 4y agoYeah, that's why I said increase gradually. Surely you don't expect to have enough energy production tomorrow to cover all 240M owners? We can get there in 12 years + the 10-15 after that'll clear out all the ICE vehicles to cover all 240M.
- geraldwhen 4y agoCan I see the math on that? Unless efficiency improves dramatically that does not seem feasible.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y agoNo it absolutely does not. You need more like 50 years for that.
- concordDance 4y agoSeems very unlikely it'd take 50 years to double the number of power plants. Yes, things take a lot longer now than in the 50s, but it's still at most a decade to build one unless its nuclear. And it can be substantially sped up if there's a pressing need.
- akmarinov 4y agoNot really, no. Look at 10 years ago in the UK - in 2012 solar generation amounted to 750 MW, at the end of 2020 it was 13.5 GW
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoYes nameplate power output of solar power plant. How much actual energy was generated?
- xiphias2 4y agoYup. Europe has 1 year to switch from gas to LNG its significant part of natural gas usage. Increasing the grid bandwidth by 50% is a much smaller change.
- silvestrov 4y agoeven if they extend the deadline it will then be much easier to add an extra tax on non-electric cars. This will make it an competive advantage for car makers to switch over early.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoThat will only damage poor people, unable to buy EVs, subsequently voting for autocratic populists.
- silvestrov 4y agoEVs will be cheaper in 2035. It is more than 10 years from today. Look at how much batteries have fallen in price in the past 10 years: https://www.statista.com/chart/23807/lithium-ion-battery-prices/ https://www.statista.com/chart/23807/lithium-ion-battery-pri...
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoIt actually reversed and going back up, so no they are going to be expensive. https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicles-prices-expensive-cheaper-automakers-batteries-lithium-supply-demand-2022-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicles-prices-exp...
- Robotbeat 4y agoWe used to double generating capacity every year in the US for like 3 decades in a row. Electrification of vehicles increasing electricity needs by about 50%. But a ban on NEW fossil fuel vehicles would then take two decades to trickle down to all vehicles. So overall, there’s the better part of 3-4 decades to transition generating capacity.
- concordDance 4y agoWait, the US electrical generation capacity increased by a factor of a billion in 30 years? I know industrialization was fast but was it really that fast?
- MediumOwl 4y agoPrevious commenter doesn't say which year they're talking about, but at least from after 1950, it's wrong: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... EDIT: they answered somewhere else, they mean every decade from 1940 to 1970. Which seems about correct, and also not particularly relevant.
- Robotbeat 4y agoHow is it not relevant? Growing electricity production by very large relative amounts in short periods of time has historical precedence if even greater relative and faster growth, and I would consider that pretty relevant when discussing such things.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoYou know the old afage, the close the dealine looms, the more productivity increases. If there are no deadlines, this will never get done