Some Electric Car Drivers Might Spew More CO2 Than Diesel Cars, New Research Shows (bloomberg.com) 469
bricko shares a report from Bloomberg with the caption, "Making batteries is a mess": Beneath the hoods of millions of the clean electric cars rolling onto the world's roads in the next few years will be a dirty battery. Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions, yet their manufacturers are, by and large, making lithium-ion batteries in places with some of the most polluting grids in the world. By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg NEF. Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.
An electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine's emissions. "We're facing a bow wave of additional CO2 emissions," said Andreas Radics, a managing partner at Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors, which argues that for now, drivers in Germany or Poland may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine. The findings, among the more bearish ones around, show that while electric cars are emission-free on the road, they still discharge a lot of the carbon-dioxide that conventional cars do. Just to build each car battery -- weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles -- would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it's made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls' findings. Yet regulators haven't set out clear guidelines on acceptable carbon emissions over the life cycle of electric cars, even as the likes of China, France and the U.K. move toward outright bans of combustion engines. It all has to do with manufacturing. According to estimates of Mercedes-Benz's electric-drive system integration department, manufacturing an electric car pumps out "significantly" more climate-warming gases than a conventional car, which releases only 20 percent of its lifetime CO2 at this stage. "Just switching to renewable energy for manufacturing would slash emissions by 65 percent, according to Transport & Environment," reports Bloomberg. "In Norway, where hydro-electric energy powers practically the entire grid, the Berylls study showed electric cars generate nearly 60 percent less CO2 over their lifetime, compared with even the most efficient fuel-powered vehicles."
An electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine's emissions. "We're facing a bow wave of additional CO2 emissions," said Andreas Radics, a managing partner at Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors, which argues that for now, drivers in Germany or Poland may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine. The findings, among the more bearish ones around, show that while electric cars are emission-free on the road, they still discharge a lot of the carbon-dioxide that conventional cars do. Just to build each car battery -- weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles -- would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it's made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls' findings. Yet regulators haven't set out clear guidelines on acceptable carbon emissions over the life cycle of electric cars, even as the likes of China, France and the U.K. move toward outright bans of combustion engines. It all has to do with manufacturing. According to estimates of Mercedes-Benz's electric-drive system integration department, manufacturing an electric car pumps out "significantly" more climate-warming gases than a conventional car, which releases only 20 percent of its lifetime CO2 at this stage. "Just switching to renewable energy for manufacturing would slash emissions by 65 percent, according to Transport & Environment," reports Bloomberg. "In Norway, where hydro-electric energy powers practically the entire grid, the Berylls study showed electric cars generate nearly 60 percent less CO2 over their lifetime, compared with even the most efficient fuel-powered vehicles."
Does not seem to take into account grid improvemen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does not seem to take into account grid improve (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also only looking at CO2, and ignoring the other pollution. Diesels put out a lot of harmful particulate matter right where people live and breathe.
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That's extremely unlikely, especially considering that Germany has been replacing coal plants with newer, less polluting ones. Plus with the huge amount of solar installed in Germany it's quite likely that if you wanted an electric car for emissions reasons you could get solar PV to charge it too.
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Diesels put out a lot of harmful particulate matter right where people live and breathe.
No more than diesels do [slashdot.org]. And if they're cars without a catalyst, like my 1982 300SD or my lady's 2006 Sprinter, then the soot they DO emit is much larger than the soot that gassers spew out. In fact, nearly all of it is large enough for cilia to sweep it out of pockets in your lungs, and for it to be removed during normal sputum production and expectoration. It's only diesels with catalysts which emit primarily PM2.5 and smaller.
Re:Does not seem to take into account grid improve (Score:4, Informative)
Second the improvements in the grid often take place on the decades scale,
Not really, the US went from 58% coal to 23% coal in the last decade, so the improvement is pretty rapid and with wind, solar, and battery tech really hitting the ramp phase in the mass production cost reduction scale it's likely to accelerate globally. As far as replacement battery cost, Tesla is already down to ~$100/kWh at the pack level so future replacement packs aren't going to be anywhere near $30k unless you're talking a medium duty truck. Also, other than the Leaf which lacks active thermal management almost every EV has way better battery degradation than originally feared.
Re:Does not seem to take into account grid improve (Score:5, Insightful)
Second the improvements in the grid often take place on the decades scale, not necessarily in time to make a large change to vehicles bought today.
The longer we wait to start those improvements the longer it will take to complete.
I remember having a conversation where oil drilling in ANWR came up. I argued that we know that there is oil there, lots of it, and if we went to go get it that would lower energy prices. The person I was conversing with said that drilling in ANWR was pointless because it would take years for oil to flow and make prices go down. Five years later oil price reached record highs. Would oil have still peaked at that point if we drilled in ANWR five years prior? We can't know for sure but it is unlikely to have made it worse.
You want to see CO2 emissions lower in 20 years? Then start building lots of nuclear power plants today. I don't care if it takes 10 years to build a reactor because by not building them we are placing all our faith in solar and wind to save us. That's waiting at port for a ship that might not come. We know we can build a nuclear power plant in less than 5 years because we did this regularly decades ago. The reason it takes so long to build a nuclear power plant today is politics, not technology. Get rid of the politics and make it happen.
Re:Does not seem to take into account grid improve (Score:5, Informative)
"Every so often" is a bit non-specific.
Kia and Hyundai are offering unlimited mileage warranties on their batteries in the US, or 200k km in other regions. Leaf batteries have proven to be good for 350k km+.
Consumer Reports puts the average lifespan of a car at 250k km (150k miles). Obviously there will be outliers either side. So realistically few people will be wearing out their batteries, and for them the most economical and green option will be to get a used pack from a written off car.
The used packs are also highly recyclable.
Bizzarro world (Score:5, Insightful)
Just goes to show you how frightened some people are regarding electric cars. I don't see why so many people (that are not in the gas-powered car industry) are scared of them.
Obviously it's better to concentrate all the emissions at the factories that produce batteries and mitigate the pollution concerns there, rather than at the tail pipe of all the cars that are coming out of the factories.
ObXKCD: https://xkcd.com/437/ [xkcd.com]
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There are plenty of used full electric and plug-in cars on the market now. Plenty of used Volts and Leafs out there, at prices very comparable to other used small sedans. In a few years we will have used Bolts and Model 3s coming into the used market when people trade them in at the 3-5 year mark.
Battery prices continue to drop, but the more I hear the "OMG THE BATTERY IS SOOOOO EXPENSIVE", the more I'm convinced it's ignorance, FUD, or some combination of both. No one says "OMG REPLACING MY ENGINE OR TRANS
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I think that electric is the future
I believe that synthetic liquid fuels are the future of transportation. We won't have electric airplanes. We won't have transoceanic shipping. We might be able to electrify trains but that requires lots of infrastructure which requires lots of costs. Trains will be running on diesel fuels for a very long time. Personal commuter cars are just a part of our transportation needs. Lots of people and goods move by long haul trucks and buses, and those won't be running on electricity any time soon. Electri
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I did the math on that actually (Score:5, Interesting)
For a diesel Volvo vs a Tesla model S, assuming the average 2015 power mix in Europe the break even point is about 28.000Km.
I did take some big shortcuts tho. I compared 100kwh worth of Panasonic LiPo batteries + power to the diesel fuel needed to drive the volvo the same distance using Tesla Model S power usage figures.
There are way to slew this in one or the other direction - for instance I did also add CO2 Equivalent for refining the diesel.
Considering where Berylls Strategy Advisors is located and the fact that the German car companies still have no mass-market ready electric car my guess is that this is fake news and can be disregarded.
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The point of electric cars is missed - again (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that so many people misunderstand the purpose of electric cars? I don't know why for years now on Slashdot we keep getting posts about articles that nitpick about electric car manufacturing. "Ooh, at one place in your manufacturing chain for 1 second you involved coal, so the whole idea is trash." No it's not. First of all, electric cars don't burn gasoline. Big win there. Reducing petroleum use is a Good Thing. Second, with time electricity sources to both charge said vehicles and produce the batteries could come from renewable sources. The fact that we aren't there today doesn't mean we won't be there soon enough. Having production lines in place to make these vehicles is smart and when the production sources are from renewable energy, what will they complain about next?
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No one misunderstands the purpose of the electric car.
People question the value of paying a premium for a supposedly "green" solution.
You're sold a reduction of emissions. Governements subsidize a reduction in emission. If you're not actually reducing emissions, that's a whole lot of money getting spent on things you're not receiving.
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If your primary goal is to be green then why stop at buying the car?
Switch electricity provider to one that only buys renewable energy. Get some solar panels. If you live in one of these few places were somehow electricity production is even dirtier than diesel cars it's not like there isn't anything you can do about it.
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No, the only selling point for an EV is when it's energy use is cheaper than fossil fuels. There are entire sources of bio-diesel, and alcohol-blended gasoline that can reduce the input carbon value, but they still put out carbon. EV's do not put out carbon, so the more EV's there are replacing non-EV's, the less carbon there is being put out on a daily basis, but if the entire world switched to EV's overnight, the Energy capacity to charge the vehicles would increase carbon from having coal/natural gas/etc
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You can bust up used radioactive stuff and split it down to something safe. It just costs a lot of more energy and money.
In some hypothetical future, with very cheap energy, they can tackle this. Sam with using robots to sort landfills for recycling, which many will live to see.
I'll even bet some will whine how this or that city sold off their landfills to robo-companies for pennies on the dollar!
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I'm admitting that I just looked at the summary. So assuming it's accurate...
Why is it that so many people misunderstand the purpose of electric cars? I don't know why for years now on Slashdot we keep getting posts about articles that nitpick about electric car manufacturing. "Ooh, at one place in your manufacturing chain for 1 second you involved coal, so the whole idea is trash." No it's not. First of all, electric cars don't burn gasoline. Big win there. Reducing petroleum use is a Good Thing. Second, with time electricity sources to both charge said vehicles and produce the batteries could come from renewable sources. The fact that we aren't there today doesn't mean we won't be there soon enough. Having production lines in place to make these vehicles is smart and when the production sources are from renewable energy, what will they complain about next?
Well what is the purpose then?
The way I see it, if you're going to get a new car then buying an electric vehicle pushes the technology along and may be slightly better for the environment.
Though, if you're looking to minimize your environmental impact (while still driving) then the old advice is still the best advice, get a smaller used car and run it into the ground.
Which is just a version how the best advice on how to reduce your environmental impact in general, the less money you spend the smaller your e
Germany's strange power strategy (Score:2)
Re:Germany's strange power strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
This is false. Germany still runs majority of its nuclear plants. Less than half was closed after Fukushima (8/17). The current plan is to phase them out as their useful life span ends, and not upgrade/build new ones. This phase out is ongoing and is being constantly postponed at this point as reality of having no chance of meeting CO2 targets with all the coal fired plants they have to run to compensate is starting to dawn on non-crazy parts of environmentalist movement.
The problem is that those closed plants alone accounted for a sizeable chunk of energy, so Germany went from net exporter to net importer overnight, while having to fire up all of its mothballed coal plants, and import from Poland which built up a lot of coal power near German border with correct expectations that Germany will need it.
Thing is though, coal power is still a lot cleaner than gasoline/diesel automotive ICE in almost every metric. A LOT cleaner. Even in just the CO2 aspects, without getting into the whole "particulates, NOx, etc" brouhaha, which is close to zero on modern coal fired plant, but significant and emitted at surface level by automotive ICEs. Which is still one of the major causes of harm to humans in more congested areas that has nothing to do with global warming.
Re:Germany's strange power strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
Even in just the CO2 aspects, without getting into the whole "particulates, NOx, etc" brouhaha, which is close to zero on modern coal fired plant
Not sure where you get that idea, using 3mi/kWh and the average coal plant in my region I figured out that the NOx emissions from an EV running on coal are several times worse than the current EPA standard for passenger vehicles, about as dirty as the dieselgate VWs in fact. Particulates are harder as the PM2.5 and PM5 are going to be in places with low population densities which is probably an overall improvement for health. For CO2 it's close, a hybrid is cleaner than a 3mi/kWh EV when running on coal. But put a reasonable amount of renewables into the mix and use natural gas instead of coal and the EV wins by a large amount.
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But after the Fukushima disaster, they closed down all their nuclear power plants. To make up for it, they have to expand the use of coal
This is false, the decrease in nuclear output has been more than adequately followed by an increase in renewable generation. [cleanenergywire.org]
and buy electricity from nuclear power plants in France
This is also false, Germany has actually shifted into net exports. [renewable-ei.org]
Re:Germany's strange power strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
But after the Fukushima disaster, they closed down all their nuclear power plants.
What did Fukushima have to do with nuclear power in Germany? Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and then a once in 500 year high wave. Are these German nuclear power plants prone to earthquakes? Are they even close enough to an ocean to even have the possibility of a once in a thousand year wave?
Fukushima had nothing to do with nuclear power in Germany. All it did was give an excuse for the already anti-nuke politicians to shut them down. A very weak excuse. If Germany was serious about reducing their CO2 output then they'd keep their nuclear power plants open and build more of them for the future.
The German government has already announced that they'd fail to meet their CO2 reduction goals set during the Paris Agreement. If they kept their nuclear power running then they might have been able to meet their goals.
No nation that wants a modern economy will be able to get one or keep it without nuclear power. That includes Germany.
standard FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:standard FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems like FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I read this article and it seems like the definition of FUD. The headline is "The Dirt on Clean Electric Cars", and there's a lot of largely-irrelevant charts and statistics. The most damning statement they make is:
An electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine’s emissions
Yet further down, they have to admit:
To be sure, other studies show that even in coal-dominant Poland, using an electric car would emit 25 percent less carbon dioxide than a diesel car
So basically, on the worst emitting grids, today, an EV might have about the same emissions as the cleanest diesel; everywhere else they are clearly lower. And the grid in most places is getting steadily cleaner; a diesel made today will not be getting better emissions in 10 years.
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Did you even look at their "research"? (No, because it's behind a login, so you can't see what bullshit they did to get those numbers.)
Re:This seems like FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you're right, I didn't. It does reflect what the Union of Concerned Scientist's calculator shows; in certain areas, an EV currently is not much cleaner than a Prius. In lots of other areas, however, they are quite a lot cleaner.
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-v... [ucsusa.org]
So an EV is not as clean as riding a bike, but if you are going to be driving a car in an area with a reasonably clean grid and want to get the most efficient car you can, you should get an EV.
Bloomberg (Score:2)
Isn't this the same Bloomberg that hasn't shown any evidence that SuperMicro boards were hacked?
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Government mandate (Score:4, Insightful)
"Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions". Not because the market demands it or because their customers want it.
For people who want electric cars, they have their Priuses, Volts, Teslas, etc. That market is served by several manufacturers and it expands as the demand grows. However *every* manufacturer has to comply with government regulations like CAFE and such. So everyone makes at least one "compliance" model to reduce the average fleet emissions to within regulations. Otherwise - fines, more expensive cars, consumers pay more or the company can't compete and goes bankrupt.
Even a driver-friendly company like Mazda, recently had to kiss the ring and announce "compliance" models. Which no customer of their usual fast-and-fun-to-drive cars wants. So these models fill fail in the market and the costs will be paid by the customers.
Re:Government mandate (Score:5, Informative)
"Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions". Not because the market demands it or because their customers want it.
Tesla Model 3 is now the best selling luxury car in America (ref: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04... [cnn.com] ), and is likely to be the best selling car in America, period, by the end of the year. So it seems that the market does demand it.
Prius [Re:Government mandate] (Score:3)
Prius is not an electric car, you fucking idiot.
The Prius Prime [greencarreports.com] (aka "Plug-in Prius") is.
It has an internal combustion back-up for long trips, but unless you do long road trips, it's pure electric.
I don't get it... (Score:2)
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EV production = ~2 years of tailpipe emissions (Score:5, Informative)
BNEF has access to good research and should have written a better article. Instead they've constructed a clickbait article full of gibberish that obscures rather than illuminates what data they do deign to present:
1. An average EV is less polluting, per mile, than even the best gasoline or diesel vehicle.
2. If that EV were built with dirty power, and charged throughout its life with dirty power, it would still be a net win, albeit a small one verging on a tie, on lifetime emissions.
3. We're projected to be be building a whole lot of new EVs.
And there's no mention of the obvious objections to this sort of facile analysis:
1. The average new EV probably displaces a purchase of an average new gasmobile, so the comparison with the most-efficient gasmobile is unrealistic. If the average new EV driver is particularly eco-conscious, and would otherwise be buying a highly-efficient gasmobile, that new driver is probably also sourcing the power from cleaner-than-average supplies, so calculating as if it were charged from the average local grid is unrealistic.
2. Grid carbon intensities are dropping worldwide, and the speed of this drop is accelerating as renewables get cheaper and cheaper relative to fossil-fueled plants. New renewables are cheaper than new thermal power plants almost everywhere, and we're only a few years away from new renewables being cheaper than continuing to fuel an already-built thermal plant in some parts of the world. Over a 15-year lifespan, EVs will keep getting cleaner per-mile, whereas gasmobiles will wear out and become less efficient.
3. While the article focuses on manufacturing emissions, their own graphs show that these correspond to only about 2 years worth of tailpipe emissions. A worthwhile target for reduction, for sure (and one that will happen naturally, as large manufacturers consistently seek to reduce their power costs by buying cheap renewable energy), but not the big target that we should be focusing on. The running costs dominate lifetime emissions, so we should tackle them first (especially as cleaning up electricity generation world-wide would also significantly reduce manufacturing emissions).
BNEF usually produces much better analysis than this. I'm disappointed in them.
Look at the Source (Score:5, Informative)
All the article is saying is if you make dirty batteries, you get a dirty product. The spin on it was impressive saying fuck electric cars. (disclosure - telsa owner)
After some google and linked in stalking, all the partners at the firm Berylls Strategic Advisors are a mouthpiece for the big oil think tank part of the Oliver Wyman firm.
However the partner of Berylls (whom came from Audi and OW) is saying buy diesel cars instead.
We all know German diesel cars are totally very much extremely only the best people clean. re: audi, vw
Garbage comparisons (Score:3)
Just to build each car battery -- weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles -- would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car
10 years to break even Meaning that you know since cars last more than 10 years..... electric cars would beat ICEs under even the most pro ICE environment......
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Got a good laugh (Score:2)
"According to estimates of Mercedes-Benz..."
Well, well, well, if that isn't one of those companies who defrauded their clients and killed thousands of people and still only a handful managers are in jail.
Shouldn't they better shut the fuck up?
did Elmer FUD write this article? (Score:3)
"Some ... might ..."
Just more FUD from the petro and ICE mfgs showing how EVs are bad for everything. Sigh.
A slightly better read:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e... [forbes.com]
(disclaimer: I've only driven an EV for almost 5 years. We've got over 60K combined miles on our LEAF and Model S)
Queue Elon Musk... (Score:2)
It's the short sellers!!!!!
Good information, but missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest advantage of electric cars is not the 3x efficiency, it's not the incredible acceleration, and it's only partly the lack of post-purchase carbon emissions. It's that everything is much more fungible. I do not delude myself that my electric car is not polluting, I get my power from the texas power grid, which is 34% natural gas and 30% coal [scientificamerican.com]. The 3x efficiency combined with getting 28% from less polluting sources is a big step forward, but ultimately just part of the solution.
The main advantage is that it is easier to pressure ERCOT to change their ways than it is to cause millions of texans to change their ways (and buy new vehicles, which itself is pretty nasty for the environment). If the major source of carbon emissions for electric cars is the manufacturers, we can get after them. These entities are capable of working with their governments to come up with a timeline, and a way of managing the expenses to make change happen. Joe Sixpack in his 1967 pickup is unreachable, possibly couldn't afford to fix it if he wanted to, and might not comply if he didn't.
As long as people are driving around with combustion engines, we can pass laws and scream and yell and nothing will change.
Another stupid bloomberg article ... (Score:2)
Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity. ... how many other countries manage that?
Germany does not rely on coal.
We produce 40% of our electricity with renewable and ~10% with nuclear power.
So coal and gas is less than 50%
Bewildering (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a terrible argument, and a poorly written article over on Bloomberg. The writer got themselves so flustered that they couldn't be bothered to proof-read, or make a coherent point that doesn't stretch credulity. I would call this, "panic journalism."
You can't do statistics this way because methods of generating power are shifting. Coal plants are dying off across the world. Part of the problem with this article, not to defend coal, is that there is no one way to measure coal emissions. It depends largely on when the power plants were constructed, what the local regulations are, and the size of the plant. You can't just run an average on it, and hope to be close to the truth of the matter. Even comparing Poland to Belarus is silly. And it gets sillier when you start talking about Germany and France.
But even that is mundane when you put it in the terms stated. Europe, as we all know is working hard to solve the power problem. They're doing it in ways that are a lot more radical than anything we've seen in the US. To start talking about carbon footprints, as they stand today, before the industry has even taken hold is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
Of course, when it comes to panic journalism, that's kinda the point, so I can't fault them for that.
Re:Known for some time (Score:5, Informative)
Hasn't it been known for some time that most CO2 is produced during a vehical's manufacturing rather than during use
Except that's not correct. The average car emits six tons of carbon dioxide per year. A medium-sized car produces 17 tons of carbon dioxide in manufacturing. That is not negligible! But once you've kept your car for three years, then no, more carbon dioxide is produced in driving the car than in making the car.
and the most low carbon approach is to keep trying the same vehicle for as long as possible rather than buying a new electric car.
Maybe. This site https://www.greencarreports.co... [greencarreports.com] says not, but it depends on how you analyze the numbers.
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That is not negligible! But once you've kept your car for three years, then no, more carbon dioxide is produced in driving the car than in making the car.
It's likely better to have all of the energy generation for electric cars done in a central location, even if it's all done with coal power, but simply having an electric car doesn't meant that running it is CO2 free. You wouldn't claim that having an electric car is a good green alternative if the person who owned was charging it with a diesel generator
Re:Known for some time (Score:5, Interesting)
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This kind of trade-off may not be something you'll have to consider in the relatively near future. There are already some hybrid-electric vehicles available which do precisely what you're suggesting here (e.g. Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid). They'll typically get much better gas mileage than a similar gas-only vehicle, and if they're a plug-in hybrid like the Pacifica, they'll also have enough range to use little to no gas for shorter trips.
To provide a personal example, I have a 2017 Chevy Volt. It gets 40mp
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, most of the rest are produced in China in some of the worst locations. To make matters worst, all the lead-acid and li-ion batteries made in China is some of the most polluted on the planet. As such, wind and solar do not play a part for them. So when Tesla goes to China, those batteries will be made/used in China. Compared to a new clean ice vehicle, the Tesla may never fully recoup the massive co2 added
Re:Nope (Score:5, Informative)
Even that is not the case.
From TFS, a "conventional car ... releases only 20 percent of its lifetime CO2 [during manufacturing]", so if an average ICE vehicle produces 24 tonnes of CO2 over its lifecycle, that's 4.2 tonnes for manufacturing and 19.2 tonnes while driving. If a BEV requires 75% more emissions during manufacturing, that's only 3.15 tonnes more.
According to the DoE [energy.gov], an average BEV powered in West Virginia (95.7% coal power) would emit 4.29 tonnes a year, compared to an average ICE emission of 5.19 tonnes/year, a difference of 0.9 tonnes. So the ICEV emissions would exceed the BEV even in the worst-case power mix after just 3.5 years.
This is borne out by numerous [transportenvironment.org] other [ucsusa.org] studies [lowcvp.org.uk].
the transition period (Score:3)
The problem is in some ways worse than stated since they are front loading the CO2 emissions now rather than later.
However, the same is true of corn ethanol. That too doesn't actually reduce CO2 since about as much petroleum energy goes into raising and drying corn as you get out of it.
The argument for Corn Ethanol is NOT that is it less polluting but that it is the leading edge of a transition to other sources of ethanol that are not yet on the market but consume less petroleum. For example, cellulosic e
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Corn ethanol has an EROI of 1.5-3:1 so it does reduce CO2 slightly.
Re:the transition period (Score:5, Insightful)
Corn ethanol makes no sense other than as a subsidy to corn farmers. It's just about the worst choice for a biofuel.
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Way more complicated then what people think.
When we think global warming we normally think about our Car. Because we have to pay for around 10-20 gallons a week we regularly see thousands of cars, and when the weather get cold we see the exhaust coming from the pipe. The automobile is the symbol of pollution.
However it is a major polluter it isn't the biggest one. Even for your personal carbon count. Normally your home is #1 if you are using Oil heat (using that because it is a popular form of heat that is
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I have switch my home to wood pellets, and to keep my home warm for the winter I need 4 tons of pellets. Over the year at best I probably have 10 lbs of Ash. the rest is exhausted out of my home and polluting the air.
In terms of CO2 from your pellet stove/furnace, it isn't pollution.
The CO2 was in the air a year or so ago, became part of a tree, and you released it back into the air. Net result: A slight reduction in atmospheric CO2 from the carbon in the ash.
Re:Known for some time (Score:5, Informative)
About the same amount of CO2 is released from the wood if it decomposes on the surface as if it is burned. Much of it comes from waste, or fast growing hybrid poplar trees.
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This usually coincides with another milestone of being an adult, like getting a job, going off to university, or getting married.
Or an alien robot invasion?
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You mean like from nuclear power? Lowest CO2 energy source we know of, safest energy source we know of, and as "renewable" as solar power because there is enough thorium and uranium on Earth that we'd never be able to burn it all before the sun consumes the planet.
Nuclear: yes, maybe. [Re:Easy fix] (Score:3)
You mean like from nuclear power? Lowest CO2 energy source we know of, safest energy source we know of, and as "renewable" as solar power because there is enough thorium and uranium on Earth that we'd never be able to burn it all before the sun consumes the planet.
I'd like to see somebody start making thorium-fueled nuclear power plants; the hype sure makes it sound like a good solution. But so far it's not being done.
Uranium fueled plants, on the other hand, actually have a pretty limited amount of fuel available-- not a problem with the world currently using only about 2% of its power from nuclear sources (*), but if we went to 100%, there's only about 5 years (!!) of fuel.
Some data:
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-... [phys.org]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/h
Re: (Score:2)
Use renewable sources (Score:5, Informative)
The solution is relatively obvious; manufacture electric cars using energy from solar arrays or other renewable sources. The cost of solar arrays has dropped so much in the last decade that this is practical now; it does mean you'll want to site car manufacturing plants (and more notably, battery manufacturing plants) in locations with abundant solar energy, but that seems doable-- stay out of Seattle, go for Las Vegas. Wait, that's where Tesla's battery plant is sited.
Re: Use renewable sources (Score:5, Informative)
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You forgot Canada. Ontario and Québec are mostly hydro-powered too.
Re: Use renewable sources (Score:2)
Re: Use renewable sources (Score:2)
Don't be disappointed (Score:2)
Re:Don't be disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)
As solar and energy storage get better, the need for large centralized fission plants will fade.
Until that happens we need nuclear power today.
I keep hearing on how we need to act RIGHT NOW on lowering CO2 but when nuclear power is brought up the response is how solar and batteries will be better than nuclear in 5 or 10 years. Well, can we wait for this to happen or do we have to act RIGHT NOW? If we can wait then let's wait, and shut up already on having to act RIGHT NOW. If we can't wait then stop coming up with excuses on why we can't use the safest and lowest CO2 producing energy source we have today.
Oh, but it takes 10 years to finish a nuclear power plant build? Well, then what are we waiting for? Even if we get this new solar technology on the time frame it is promised it will still take years for it to be brought to market and deployed. In the mean time we'll be building an electricity source that can power the factories that will be building these next generation solar collectors.
Here's what I'm suspecting on why solar and wind advocates oppose nuclear power, they can't compete against nuclear power.
I have no problem with wind and solar power, only the people that say we need to use these and not even try with nuclear power. We have seen the US government issue only a handful of permits to build a new nuclear power plant in the last 40 years. Before then they were issuing dozens per year. It's not that people weren't asking for permits, applications were still being submitted. The government simply stopped issuing permits. There's nuclear power plants that have been under the application process for decades and still did not get a permit. Stop this madness, fix the process, and issue some permits already.
Whatever problem one can raise opposing nuclear power is nothing compared to global warming. If global warming is the threat that it's claimed to be then any problems nuclear power might cause are nothing by comparison.
At this point if you oppose nuclear power then you are denying the catastrophic effects of global warming. If we should fear nuclear power more than global warming then global warming cannot be all that bad.
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Geothermal is not clean [wikimedia.org], but at least nobody can blame us.
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Thanks for pointing that out. Next time, we'll try to harness geothermal energy in some way other than "forcing volcanoes to erupt" ;)
(There are actually some CO2 emissions associated with geothermal power, but while they vary by orders of magnitude, they average way less than from fossil fuels. There's also work ongoing toward CO2 reinjection as part of the generation process; we've had great success with the pilot project at Hellisheiði)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The best place to locate EV battery factories would be BC or Quebec in Canada, or Iceland, as they use all green energy. However if you really get into it, the entire continent is connected. So even though BC, Washington, Idaho and Oregon might be green, they are connected to states in the Western Energy Grid that are not, and there are interconnects to the rest of the continent. Likewise with Quebec, Ontario and the New England states.
The goal really needs to be reduction of fossil fuel consumption in the
Transmission losses [Re: Use renewable sources] (Score:2)
However if you really get into it, the entire continent is connected. So even though BC, Washington, Idaho and Oregon might be green, they are connected to states in the Western Energy Grid that are not, and there are interconnects to the rest of the continent.
They are connected, yes, but in fact you don't wheel power over distances of more than a thousand kilometers or two; transmission losses are just too high.
Superconducting transmission could solve that, but it's not implemented yet.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182278-the-worlds-first-superconducting-power-line-paves-the-way-for-billions-of-dollars-in-savings
Re:Transmission losses [Re: Use renewable sources] (Score:4, Interesting)
Buried superconducting conduits might make sense in some niches, but for the long haul stick to HVDC.
HVDC would survive solar storms by design too, not that retrofitting the existing grid to be solar storm immune would be all that costly ... but no one is doing it, because there is no profit motive to do so.
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transmission losses are just too high.
HVDC has transmission losses of about 3% per 1000 km.
The world's longest HVDC runs 3300 km from Xinjiang to Jiangsu. It transmits 12 Gw of power at 1.1 megavolts, with transmission losses of less than 10%.
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Washington State has lots of hydro power, and quite a bit of wind power, so Seattle wouldn't be such a bad area in that regard.
Re:Use renewable sources (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is relatively obvious: don't spread BS (the article in the Slashdot headline).
Whenever I see claims that amount to "science says...", I immediately check to see:
* In what journal was it published?
* What is that journal's reputation?
* How does it compare to the overall corpus of research on the topic?
In this case, the "study" fails at the first bar: there's no study at all. The source of this article is "Berylls Strategy Advisors". There is no peer review. It's simply "take the word of a company that describes its business as "modern premium automotive consulting" and works for major established automakers, primarily "Dieselgate" German automakers". And we're supposed to ignore the (contradicting), actually peer-reviewed research in the process. Most of the latter of which is regardless rapidly obsoleted regardless by the ongoing wave of battery manufacturing energy improvements, which comes hand-in-hand with battery cost reductions.
It's "Swedish Battery 'Study' Part Deux".
But indeed, as you noted, the solution is to manufacture using solar. Which is actually a very popular solution among EV manufacturers. Tesla has started installing the solar roof [teslarati.com] that will entirely power Gigafactory, for example - but they're hardly alone in this regard.
Re:Use renewable sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use renewable sources (Score:4, Insightful)
The article doesn't claim that electric vehicles aren't cleaner in the long run. It categorizes electric vehicles according to the country of manufacture and the country of operation to compute when, in the life of the car, the total CO2 expenditure to build and power the electric vehicle begins to beat the total CO2 expenditure to build and power a high-efficiency diesel vehicle. In countries like Germany, where the primary power grid is still largely coal powered, building and operating an electric vehicle can take ten years before being a net CO2 reduction over a diesel vehicle. In countries with a higher percentage of renewable power, this point is going to be sooner. It's an unavoidable consequence of the production of the power system of an electric car being more energy-intensive than making an IC engine and drivetrain. It does raise another consideration regarding electric vehicles -- if the expected functional lifespan of the battery pack is less than the break-even point, it makes electric vehicles less competitive in this regard, because of the jump in CO2 'cost' for replacing the batteries. This points up the fact that the batteries are the critical design factor in EVs, and that making more efficient and longer-lasting batteries using more efficient production methods is going to be what brings the CO2 footprint of EVs down to a point that makes them clearly superior to IC vehicles at any point in their functional life.
TL;DR, it doesn't demonstrate that EVs are worse than IC vehicles, but that both the production methods and power generation for EVs are fundamental factor in making EVs a more 'environmentally friendly' vehicle -- just buying an EV and thinking that you're immediately doing your part to reduce CO2 emissions may not be true for quite a few years after the purchase, depending on what the power generation in your driving area looks like.
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"Just switching to renewable energy for manufacturing would slash emissions by 65 percent, according to Transport & Environment," reports Bloomberg.
But, hey, let's spend another trillion dollars on "defense" this year.
We certainly needed all that military capability last, year, right?
(And the year before. And the year before that.)
Re: Use renewable sources (Score:4, Funny)
I've decided to stop buying sunscreen because every year I've had the stuff, I've never gotten a sunburn or skin cancer. Clearly it's just not worth it.
Evaporite deposits [Re:Use renewable sources] (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't address the fact that they are raping the earth for the minerals to build these batteries.
Huh? Lithium comes mostly from evaporite deposits. Don't see why you would "rape the Earth" to get at evaporites, which generally don't require deep mining. You want to see what "raping the Earth" means, look at coal mining: https://grist.org/business-tec... [grist.org]
Steel and Aluminum now are some of the most recycled materials there are. And there is plenty of the product left to recycle.
Well, lithium is one of the most easily recycled materials there is. And, of course, not just internal combustion cars, but electric cars are also made out of steel and aluminum.
Not saying Electric is bad, I just prefer honesty when promoting them.
Re: They certainly spew more BS (Score:5, Insightful)
This is for shitty cars by traditional companies that are based in those places where the grid is shit.
Tesla's, no matter what you have to say about them, make their batteries in Reno. That's where the gigs factory is, where solar is king. So, this argument doesn't apply to them. They are also the largest installer of batteries on the planet, so this makes me think this article is oil company FUD.
Re: They certainly spew more BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless I'm misreading the summary, the statistics here are kind of dodgy too. It seems like they're saying that the percentage reduction of CO2 won't be so impressive if the car is manufactured using dirty energy. That's not to say that an electric car won't produce way less CO2 in operation than a diesel one - only that operation is only part of the CO2 footprint of a car. So what? Sure, we need to clean up our power generation grids too. But that's no reason not to be reducing the actual CO2 emissions of the car itself.
And, at the risk of sounding like I'm mixing my liberal rationales, dirty power generation doesn't render us 'powerless' to criticize Saudi Crown Princes who assassinate and dismember their critics willy-nilly. There are other reasons than carbon reduction to wean transportation off of oil...
Re: How about diesel production (Score:2)
Blinded me with (pretend) SCIENCE! (Score:5, Insightful)
That is why science does actual studies
In fact, science does do actual studies... but this isn't one of them. This is an article in a business magazine, which cites a study from Berylls Strategy Advisors, which they list as "a Munich-based automotive consultancy".
So, no, this isn't a scientific study; this is an advocacy piece disguised as a scientific study.
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Yeah, I think that vehicular homicide is not something to brag about.
Re: It's not only the manufacturing... (Score:2)
As to grid in most of west, less than 60% from fossil fuels. In America, coal is less than 30%. So with 40% clean energy ( and growing ), and 30% Nat gas ( was growing, is slowing down ), and
Re:It's not only the manufacturing... (Score:4, Insightful)
An ICE tops out around 30% when it's running at it's peak efficiency. That requires an immaculately maintained engine and operating it within a very narrow part of its functional range. Whenever your ICE vehicle is doing anything other than cruise control at its most efficient speed it is way off that efficiency number. Power plants will spend much more of their lifetime operating at or near peak efficiency than an ICE in a car will. Electric motors are also far more efficient with a much broader functional power band than any ICE. Of course we use transmissions in ICE vehicles to try and get more use out of the narrow operating range, but that adds more moving parts that need maintaining as well as more power losses.
There is also the matter of the amount of energy that goes into processing petroleum so that it can be used as a fuel in a car. The fossil fuels used in most power plants, coal and natural gas, don't require nearly as much processing. There is also a lot of value in centralizing, or outsourcing as you say, the CO2 production. Because the CO2 is being generated at one place instead of thousands of individually maintained tailpipes, it is much easier to control and maintain.
Which brings up the fact that most people don't do much for maintenance on their cars. They might get the oil changed regularly. I knew one guy that had never changed the oil in his Taurus that had over 150K miles, just added a quart here and there. For the most part people only take their cars to a mechanic for a tuneup if something is obviously wrong and interfering with their daily use.
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Tyndall discovered it in 1859 [Re:CO2 ...] (Score:4, Interesting)
I always found it fascinating that CO2 levels moving from 200ppm (0.0002) to 400ppm (0.0004), a change of 0.0002, is the cause of all this warming.
Yes, isn't it fascinating? The fact that small fractions of trace gasses can dominate the atmospheric infrared absorption was discovered by John Tyndall in 1859. https://earthobservatory.nasa.... [nasa.gov]
We now know that this is because the tightly-bound diatomic molecules don't have vibrational modes in the infrared energy range, of course, but at the time, it was indeed quite fascinating that miniscule amounts of water and carbon dioxide could absorb more than the vastly larger concentration of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.
Tyndall was quite an amazing man. He's also the person credited with coming up with the first reasonable answer to the question "why is the sky blue"? https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/e... [bbvaopenmind.com]
(his answer was "scattering", which is right as far as it goes, but of course it took the mathematics of Rayleigh scattering fifty years later to understand the actual details.)
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I always found it fascinating that CO2 levels moving from 200ppm (0.0002) to 400ppm (0.0004), a change of 0.0002, is the cause of all this warming.
If you compressed the atmosphere to a layer of equal density, it would be about 8 km thick. If you're walking outside in the sun, wearing 2mm thick sunglasses, the ratio of sunglass to atmosphere is 0.25ppm.
Do you find it fascinating that 0.25ppm worth of sunglasses blocks most of the light ?
If we moved all the CO2 from the atmosphere to a single pure layer, then 200 ppm would mean a layer of 5 feet, and 400 ppm would be 10 feet. IR works as a "sunglass" for IR.
Re:The environment has too little CO2 (Score:5, Insightful)
What has been happening however is that plants are getting bigger from the increases in CO2, and their nutritional value has been rapidly decreasing, which has a knock-on effect.
That is only half the story. - and the scare-mongering side at that.
Yes, increasing CO2 does decrease nutritional value per unit volume [nih.gov] by about 8%. However, increasing CO2 also [nature.com] cuts water use by 5-20% and increases plant volume by 40%.
So yes, you need to eat 8% more to get the same nutritional value, but you end up with 40% more to start with, so it's not an issue. You can, in fact, feed more people (approximately 28% more people) and also increase your freshwater reserves significantly as well. A higher CO2 level would, in fact, provide a solid food/water bump for the world.