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Is it a fallacy though? It doesn't make sense to buy a new EV if you still have a gas car that's working fine. In the same vein, I wouldn't want to throw out my

Is it a fallacy though? It doesn't make sense to buy a new EV if you still have a gas car that's working fine. In the same vein, I wouldn't want to throw out my gas furnace or water heater to replace with electric, creating waste and requiring the manufacturing of a new unit

bryanlarsen 2y ago
That only applies if you're only going to get less than 1 year of use out of a heat pump. A heat pump has an "embodied CO2" of 1.7t, which is about the same as the annual CO2 emissions of a gas furnace.
epistasis 2y ago
Can you explain how it's not a fallacy? Compare your lifetime emissions of replacing a gas car with an EV now versus at the "end of life" of the gas car. Emissions will always be lower if you replace now rather than later. Imagine if everybody switched to EVs right now, en masse. Emissions over the next decade, and every subsequent decade, would be massively lower. Waiting for every gas car to reach end of life before switching is always going to be higher emissions, always. Similarly, the "waste" already happened when the gas heater was manufactured. There's no additional waste when it's decommissioned. It's a sunk cost, there's no getting that back. The only question is if you switch to lower emissions now, or you switch to lower emissions later. Now, if you bring money into it, sure, there could be a financial motivation to keep emitting higher amounts of emissions. But if you take monetary considerations out of it, it's always better to stop emitting sooner rather than later. I'd love to have some serious push back against this. The best I've ever got is "that doesn't sound right..." without any engagement with the quantitation or the ideas. Which is exactly what I would expect if it was a fallacy.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- relaxing 2y ago
  I think you’re assuming when you switch to EV the ICE car disappears. But more likely it got traded to someone else who has less money, eventually making it possible for someone to own a car who otherwise wouldn’t have. So the emissions stayed the same and you added the carbon embedded in the new EV.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    What would that person have bought otherwise? Another ICE. If Person A kept the ICR there would be two people driving them instead of one ICE, one EV. I do really appreciate shifting this from the "the consumer must make the right choice" to "what choices result in overall better outcomes" but we must do the full accounting.
  - asdf333 2y ago
    not necessarily. if he bought your car and traded up from a real clunker with worse fuel efficiency the net result is likely better.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      And maybe the clunker was junked, orrrrr it was subsequently resold, or put on a ship to the global south and it’s clunkers the whole way down…
      - jdlshore 2y ago
        Cars don’t last forever, and shipping junk cars from the US to the global south doesn’t make economic sense. Eventually there’s a bottom of the chain.
        relaxing 2y ago
        It does and they do. A used car is cheaper to source than a new one which means it can be sold to more consumers at higher margin. Every taxi I rode in the Bahamas was a 2nd gen Jeep Grand Cherokee with the CEL on. The bottom exists, but it’s not here.
- akoboldfrying 2y ago
  > But if you take monetary considerations out of it, it's always better to stop emitting sooner rather than later. No, it might or might not, depending on (a) the embodied emissions of creating the new product and (b) how soon it will be replaced by something even more efficient. It's easiest to understand the importance of point (b) by going to extremes: Suppose that, every week, a new model of EV comes out that uses 99% as much energy as the previous year's model. If some nonzero proportion of electricity is generated from fossil fuels, then ignoring point (b) would imply that the rational thing to do would be to buy the new car each week, regardless of how much CO2 went into building it.
Retric 2y ago
You’re incorrect, buying a new EV when you have an ICE car doesn’t actually destroy the ICE vehicle. There’s a bunch of different possibilities to consider, but if you drive more than the average person buying an EV and selling your ICE is great for the environment. If you rarely drive then keeping an old ICE car out of the hands of a frequent driver has real value etc. As to the environmental impact vs retrofitting an ICE vehicle into an EV, the grid has gotten a lot cleaner over time so many of the old assumptions around EV’s are outdated. Comparing the emissions from extracting, transporting, refining, and then burning gas vs the same with EV’s built with a cleaner grid and more electrified infrastructure now heavy favors EV’s. And these calculations just keep favoring EV’s more every year.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

That only applies if you're only going to get less than 1 year of use out of a heat pump. A heat pump has an "embodied CO2" of 1.7t, which is about the same as the annual CO2 emissions of a gas furnace.

epistasis 2y ago

Can you explain how it's not a fallacy? Compare your lifetime emissions of replacing a gas car with an EV now versus at the "end of life" of the gas car. Emissions will always be lower if you replace now rather than later. Imagine if everybody switched to EVs right now, en masse. Emissions over the next decade, and every subsequent decade, would be massively lower. Waiting for every gas car to reach end of life before switching is always going to be higher emissions, always. Similarly, the "waste" already happened when the gas heater was manufactured. There's no additional waste when it's decommissioned. It's a sunk cost, there's no getting that back. The only question is if you switch to lower emissions now, or you switch to lower emissions later. Now, if you bring money into it, sure, there could be a financial motivation to keep emitting higher amounts of emissions. But if you take monetary considerations out of it, it's always better to stop emitting sooner rather than later. I'd love to have some serious push back against this. The best I've ever got is "that doesn't sound right..." without any engagement with the quantitation or the ideas. Which is exactly what I would expect if it was a fallacy.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
relaxing 2y ago
I think you’re assuming when you switch to EV the ICE car disappears. But more likely it got traded to someone else who has less money, eventually making it possible for someone to own a car who otherwise wouldn’t have. So the emissions stayed the same and you added the carbon embedded in the new EV.
- epistasis 2y ago
  What would that person have bought otherwise? Another ICE. If Person A kept the ICR there would be two people driving them instead of one ICE, one EV. I do really appreciate shifting this from the "the consumer must make the right choice" to "what choices result in overall better outcomes" but we must do the full accounting.
- asdf333 2y ago
  not necessarily. if he bought your car and traded up from a real clunker with worse fuel efficiency the net result is likely better.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    And maybe the clunker was junked, orrrrr it was subsequently resold, or put on a ship to the global south and it’s clunkers the whole way down…
    - jdlshore 2y ago
      Cars don’t last forever, and shipping junk cars from the US to the global south doesn’t make economic sense. Eventually there’s a bottom of the chain.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        It does and they do. A used car is cheaper to source than a new one which means it can be sold to more consumers at higher margin. Every taxi I rode in the Bahamas was a 2nd gen Jeep Grand Cherokee with the CEL on. The bottom exists, but it’s not here.
akoboldfrying 2y ago
> But if you take monetary considerations out of it, it's always better to stop emitting sooner rather than later. No, it might or might not, depending on (a) the embodied emissions of creating the new product and (b) how soon it will be replaced by something even more efficient. It's easiest to understand the importance of point (b) by going to extremes: Suppose that, every week, a new model of EV comes out that uses 99% as much energy as the previous year's model. If some nonzero proportion of electricity is generated from fossil fuels, then ignoring point (b) would imply that the rational thing to do would be to buy the new car each week, regardless of how much CO2 went into building it.

Retric 2y ago

You’re incorrect, buying a new EV when you have an ICE car doesn’t actually destroy the ICE vehicle. There’s a bunch of different possibilities to consider, but if you drive more than the average person buying an EV and selling your ICE is great for the environment. If you rarely drive then keeping an old ICE car out of the hands of a frequent driver has real value etc. As to the environmental impact vs retrofitting an ICE vehicle into an EV, the grid has gotten a lot cleaner over time so many of the old assumptions around EV’s are outdated. Comparing the emissions from extracting, transporting, refining, and then burning gas vs the same with EV’s built with a cleaner grid and more electrified infrastructure now heavy favors EV’s. And these calculations just keep favoring EV’s more every year.