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Yes, fossil fuel power plants are more efficient than ICE, but not meaningfully more [1] > The total WTW efficiency of gasoline ICEV ranges between 11-27 %, >

Yes, fossil fuel power plants are more efficient than ICE, but not meaningfully more [1] > The total WTW efficiency of gasoline ICEV ranges between 11-27 %, > diesel ICEV ranges from 25 % to 37 % > The EV fed by a natural gas power plant shows the highest WTW efficiency which ranges from 13 % to 31 % > While the EV supplied by coal-fired and diesel power plants have approximately the same WTW efficiency ranging between 13 % to 27 % and 12 % to 25 %, respectively So yes, EVs are slightly greener but the distinction isn't that big when you're talking about global warming (like 10-20% better). When powered by renewables/nuclear/hydro the efficiency is substantially better but even more important is that it's carbon free. As for your bloomberg piece, it's an impressive piece of fiction. The scenario outlined of replacing ALL cars with EVs by 2030, doubling renewable capacity & replacing coal with natural gas still only has our carbon footprint reduced by 30%. But there's no way we're going to reach that. EVs represent ~1% of cars on the road in the US and politicians are talking about banning sales of new ICE vehicles only in 2035. That's a huge amount of cars on the road and it's likely that existing ICE vehicles will be maintained & there will be massive resistance to banning them outright. So maybe we might get to 100% EVs on the road by 2050. We're not replacing fossil fuels in our energy grid with renewables by then - it's just technically not possible. [1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020SJRUE..24..669A/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020SJRUE..24..669A/abstra...

iwontberude 3y ago
Don't forget there is infrastructure and losses due to heat between the power plant and the car charging port.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I believe that’s accounted for in these numbers, no? Wheel to wheel efficiency I believe is all losses between source and moving the car, although it’s unclear if WTW includes transportation costs for fuels (id imagine yes based on the name but would require further reading)
  - iwontberude 3y ago
    I did some more digging and the T & D is definitely captured in WTW. Thanks for saying it.
robocat 3y ago
What matters is where the extra electricity comes from. It is a fair presumption that all the electricity produced is used. I'm not even considering peakers or load following generators; instead it is often about new sources: gas, wind, solar. Add one car, and what sources over months provide that marginal increase in electricity consumption? For example incorrect sibling comment: > ~40% of electricity at this point is renewable Wrong because the renewable sources are usually already used by existing electricity customers. E.g. in New Zealand at times if there is extra consumption on the network we sometimes start up our one coal station! The extra load uses coal as a source. Or if we have a dry year, our lakes provide less electricity so the extra load is often supplied by gas. We are installing new wind and solar but very slowly. I have a friend working to get a solar farm installed - but government red tape is causing problems (Labour not interested, and National seems uninterested) How can governments screw shit up so much!
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I don’t know that it’s necessarily government red tape. Hooking up a variable power supplier like wind or solar is tricky and failure to do it correctly can take down the grid. Do you have specific examples of what “useless” red tape here looks like? I don’t believe Nee Zealand is unique here. The marginal approach you propose is interesting but I don’t know that it’s all that helpful / informative. If more cars get plugged in that would be reflected in the total energy and the energy mix anyway. Who cares about attributing it to EVS directly. And yeah, we’re not installing solar / wind fast enough to keep up with getting ICE vehicles off the road as that’s an insane amount of new energy production the grid would have to support (and plenty of people charge overnight when solar is useless and the grid isn’t set up to use the cars as batteries). Nuclear is the only choice to scale up 0 carbon energy but renewable advocates seem to have a lot of resistance to acknowledging this fact. That’s why oil companies are so pro renewables - all the data shows fossil fuel use goes up even with increasing solar installations because they eat other energy sources (coal, bio, some hydro) but overall consumption of oil and gas keeps increasing because renewables can’t keep up with growth.
  - robocat 3y ago

iwontberude 3y ago

Don't forget there is infrastructure and losses due to heat between the power plant and the car charging port.

vlovich123 3y ago
I believe that’s accounted for in these numbers, no? Wheel to wheel efficiency I believe is all losses between source and moving the car, although it’s unclear if WTW includes transportation costs for fuels (id imagine yes based on the name but would require further reading)
- iwontberude 3y ago
  I did some more digging and the T & D is definitely captured in WTW. Thanks for saying it.

robocat 3y ago

What matters is where the extra electricity comes from. It is a fair presumption that all the electricity produced is used. I'm not even considering peakers or load following generators; instead it is often about new sources: gas, wind, solar. Add one car, and what sources over months provide that marginal increase in electricity consumption? For example incorrect sibling comment: > ~40% of electricity at this point is renewable Wrong because the renewable sources are usually already used by existing electricity customers. E.g. in New Zealand at times if there is extra consumption on the network we sometimes start up our one coal station! The extra load uses coal as a source. Or if we have a dry year, our lakes provide less electricity so the extra load is often supplied by gas. We are installing new wind and solar but very slowly. I have a friend working to get a solar farm installed - but government red tape is causing problems (Labour not interested, and National seems uninterested) How can governments screw shit up so much!

vlovich123 3y ago
I don’t know that it’s necessarily government red tape. Hooking up a variable power supplier like wind or solar is tricky and failure to do it correctly can take down the grid. Do you have specific examples of what “useless” red tape here looks like? I don’t believe Nee Zealand is unique here. The marginal approach you propose is interesting but I don’t know that it’s all that helpful / informative. If more cars get plugged in that would be reflected in the total energy and the energy mix anyway. Who cares about attributing it to EVS directly. And yeah, we’re not installing solar / wind fast enough to keep up with getting ICE vehicles off the road as that’s an insane amount of new energy production the grid would have to support (and plenty of people charge overnight when solar is useless and the grid isn’t set up to use the cars as batteries). Nuclear is the only choice to scale up 0 carbon energy but renewable advocates seem to have a lot of resistance to acknowledging this fact. That’s why oil companies are so pro renewables - all the data shows fossil fuel use goes up even with increasing solar installations because they eat other energy sources (coal, bio, some hydro) but overall consumption of oil and gas keeps increasing because renewables can’t keep up with growth.
- robocat 3y ago