The paper from the primary scientific literature I will discuss tonight in this brief diary is a joint publication from scientists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the University of Minnesota. The reference is Environ. Sci. Technol. 2012, 46, 2018−2024. Environmental Science and Technology is a publication of the American Chemical Society. Here's an excerpt of the paper which is entitled "Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts":
This article’s focus on electric vehicles (EVs: electric cars [e-cars] and electric two-wheelers including electric bicycles and light electric scooters [e-bikes]) in China is motivated in part by their unprecedented rise in popularity (Figure 1). While conventional vehicle (CV) ownership and electricity consumption in China are both increasing rapidly − annual growth rates during the past decade were ∼25% and ∼10%, respectively − e-bike ownership is skyrocketing: 86% annual growth during
the past decade (doubling time: ∼13 months). Ten years ago, e-bikes were nearly unheard of, with vehicle ownership rates 26× lower for e-bikes than for CVs. Today, e-bikes outnumber CVs 2:1. E-bikes in China are the single largest adoption of alternative fuel vehicles in history, with over 100 million vehicles purchased in the past decade, more than all other countries combined.
The bold is mine.
Conventional Vehicles are of course, gasoline and diesel powered vehicles.
The paper is about the comparitive pollution associated in China with conventional petroleum fueled vehicles vs the electrical vehicles. Since the electrification of its transport system is yet another place where China is eating the US lunch, we might see what we can learn from their more advanced technology and see how it might apply to our far more primitive conservative technology, our "drill baby drill" reality.
More below.
First, let's ask why China has so many electric vehicles. The short answer is because they can. China currently controls outright the world supply of lanthanide metals, which are essential for making high strength low weight magnets. China is now the world leader in the production of such magnets, mostly because they recently cut supplies of lanthanides dramatically to the rest of the world.
Tough shit, world.
Lanthanides are also critical to so called nickel metal batteries. I have another diary in preparation on the subject of lanthanum, but it's not going well, but the "metal" in nickel metal batteries is lanthanum. The cost of the 10 kg of lanthanum that is in a Toyota Prius has risen in the last two or three years from about $30 to $500.
Tough shit, world.
Well, you say, at least the Chinese are using electric vehicles themselves, and that has to be good right?
Well, um, um, um...
Like I said, this is a brief diary, and I'll just quote some stuff from the paper:
China’s rapid growth in income − annual GDP increases averaged 9−10% during 1978−20091 − has many impacts, including several with environmental health consequences. Outdoor air pollution causes ∼300,000 premature deaths in China each year.2 For several pollutants, including fine particles (PM2.5), transportation is a significant and growing source of emissions.3 Automobile ownership increased more than an order of magnitude in one decade, from 3 cars per 1000 people in 1998 to at least 39 cars per 1000 people in 2009.1,4 Encouraging motorized transportation is a national strategy for economic and social development in China.5,6
Three hundred thousand deaths per year? You don't say? Surely people care more about these three hundred thousand deaths than say, the Fukushima hysteria that killed no one, right?
Um, no, not really. The world couldn't care less about the 300,000 deaths in China from outdoor air pollution. It's, um, not sexy.
But the electrical vehicle business is saving the day, no?
Um, no.
You see, despite the feeling that everyone has that electricity is, um, magic, and that it comes from a wall socket, it actually matters how the electricity is generated. In China most of the electricity comes from coal fired plants. Of course, you will hear American environmentalists whine loudly about the Chinese coal, burning electricity as they do so, even though the per capita energy consumption of a Chinese citizen is 1/12th of what Americans consume, and even though the United States, with less than 1/4 the population of China burns almost as much coal as China does.
Here's what the paper says:
For EVs, combustion emissions occur where electricity is generated rather than where the vehicle is used.9−11 In China, 85% of electricity production is from fossil fuels, of which ∼90% is from coal. Most electricity generating units (EGUs) in China lack advanced pollution controls. Compared to typical vehicle emissions, EGUs are often located further from population centers; therefore, the exposure and health impacts per mass emitted tend to be lower for EGUs than for CVs.12−15 The net result for China is that it is unclear a priori whether EVs are an environmental health benefit or disbenefit relative to CVs.
Prior research on environmental impacts of EVs in China9,16 and elsewhere17−21 generally compares emission factors or greenhouse gas emissions,22−25 not exposures, intakes, or health effects. Our article works to address this important knowledge gap.
But what about greenhouse gases anyway?
Here's what the paper says:
The order-of-magnitude variability in EGU emission factors by region (Figures S1 and S2) yields the same degree of variability in EV emission factors and with the same spatial pattern (highest in the Northeast because of heavy reliance on
coal). EV emission factors vary by the city they are in (Table S4); we estimate that an e-car (180 Wh km−1)43 in Beijing emits 220 g CO2 km−1, equivalent to a gasoline car with a fuel economy of 9 L (100-km)−1 (or 26 mi gal−1 [mpg]), whereas in Chengdu the same e-car would emit only 135 g CO2 km−1, equivalent to a gasoline car with a fuel economy of 5.6 L (100-km)−1 (or 42 mpg).
.
Um, I might be wrong, but that's not very impressive.
In any case, it is found that the particulate emissions associated with an e-car in China - particulates are the form of air pollution that most readily kill people - not that anyone is likely to develop a Fukushima type fetish about particulates that kill - is 19 times as great for an e-car as it is for a gasoline car.
None of this is meant to imply that gasoline is a good thing, by the way.
It turns out that the health effects of e-cars are not quite as high as advertised.
In the city of Shanghai, the authors estimate, after calculation, that the number of excess deaths each year attributable to air pollution from various transportation options are as follows: Gasoline cars cause about 9 excess deaths per year, diesel cars, about 90 deaths per year, buses, about 32 deaths per year, e-cars, about 26 deaths per year, the latter almost three times as much as a gasoline car if you do the division.
(If you can't add, subtract, multiply or divide, you qualify for membership in Greenpeace.)
The Shanghai winner for the lowest air pollution deaths per year in that city is the e-bike, which causes only 3 excess deaths per year.
One may extrapolate to the rest of China I suppose, and maybe even much of the world.
Americans have this very lazy assed assumption that their electricity is clean that it all comes from the magical wind turbines and solar cells that they've been mindlessly cheering for for the last 50 years, with no real result.
About 4% of US electricity comes from so called "renewable" electricity other than hydroelectricity. Of this, about 60% (or 2.4% overall) comes from wind power, lanthanide dependent though it is, 19% (0.8% overall) from wood burning - a major and serious cause of air pollution around the world - and 8% (0.2% overall) comes from geothermal. Solar energy continues to be an expensive and useless joke played by rich people at the expense of the poor.
So called "renewable" energy in the United States.
Overall US Electrical Generation Sources
If any nation however will phase out coal in the future, should the future exist, it will be China. China has plans to build 500 nuclear plants within the next 30 - 40 years. This is more than the rest of the world has built combined. If I ever publish my diary on lanthanides, I will show that China is likely to lead the world in the area of actinide separations, since their experience with the technological and scientific approaches to "f-elements" is the world's greatest.
Have a nice day tomorrow.