In Your Own Words
There are persistent doubts among progressives, regarding the environmental footprint and role of EVs, in particular w.r.t. global warming. Here are some (anonymized, of course) questions and comments in this vein to recent EV diaries.
...how to power it off of something other than fossil fuels (because otherwise what’s the point?)
Good big-picture question. Answers below.
Yes one of my objections to arguments about new green deals that techno utopians make is that they seem to forget about “externalities.” Like coal burning to make electricity, or diesel tractor digging rare earths, or gas cars bringing workers to build and then service wind and solar farms, coal making the steel that goes into wind turbine structures etc.
Likewise.
AND what about the production and disposal of the batteries? I have read that this is a much bigger problem than electricity produced by fossil fuel. It won’t always be the case presumably, but for the present, it supposedly is a major concern.
This, OTOH, is a classic example of right-wing distortions and exaggerations (fed mostly by oil-lobby professional liars) polluting progressive discourse, Cambridge Analytica style. Unfortunately this happens a lot in EV discussions. If the claim above was anywhere near true, EV production could never get off the ground in any practical manner. But once you find reputable sources like this one, the answer is pretty clear.
Besides, most of our electricity is generated by natural gas and that will not change at any time in the next 50 years… (the commenter lives in a solidly blue state)
You don’t really know that. And we’re pretty screwed if we can’t get it to change sooner in a blue state.
A lot of new generation is solar and wind, but most is still coal and natural gas. Unless charging stations select renewable alternatives, fossil fuels are used and C is being emitted. I expect that it releases more C due to transmission, but haven’t seen the calculations.
Another thoughtful comment in the vein of the first 2. A bit off-target on who emits more with current grid mix (EVs emit far less, it’s a pretty settled issue) — but still the Big Picture question is here front and center: how do EVs help if our grid is fossil-dominated?
Ok, the Answer
Well, the short answer is even with our current average US grid mix, a grid+EV system reduces carbon emissions by a 2x-3x factor (national average) compared with an ICE fleet, because the former is far more efficient than having millions of teensy “petroleum power plants” rolling about — and because US coal usage, the most carbon-heavy component in the mix, has been dropping like a lump of coal.
But the longer and more complete answer is Yes. In fact, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes:
- Yes, we must decarbonize our transportation fleet.
- Yes, we must also decarbonize our electric grid.
- Yes, we must also decarbonize other main sectors such as industry and agriculture.
- And last but not least, Yes, we must prevent our societies from self-inflicting needless political mayhem that either brings to power the worst kind of people, or results in outright war. Because doing items 1-3 on this list is much much harder when that happens.
We must do all that simultaneously. Yes, we must walk, chew gum, talk on the phone, and scan the scenery all at the same time. This, by the way, is the essence of AOC’s Green New Deal blueprint. Specifically, clean grid is clause C in the itemized action plan, clean transportation is H, and manufacturing/agriculture in F-G. No waiting for one to happen before going all-in on the others.
In particular, we cannot wait around driving ICE, until the grid is pure enough to our liking. It will be simply too late. Not in the sense that your particular ICE will be the one that fries the planet beyond repair— but in the sense that the EV economy needs time and a big push in order to eat into the mainstream auto market. If we don’t push it fast and hard now, it won’t hit mainstream soon enough.
Nicely enough though, of the 4 tasks I listed above, grid-cleaning is the one enjoying the biggest momentum and the strongest path to victory, thanks to the advent of renewables and the decline of coal. So it’s a safe assumption that if you get an EV but your grid is not very clean now, it will be substantially cleaner in several years.
Not sure? Here’s the UCS calculation from 7 years earlier. Btw, the improvement is not only due to grid cleaning; EVs themselves have become substantially more efficient, and continue to improve faster than ICE.
So let’s ride on the wave of grid-cleaning success, and add Big Oil to the list of fallen fossil-fuel foes.
Expanding a Bit: Keep It in the Ground, Baby!
The standard Big Picture look at global warming is: how much of the world’s fossil-fuel reserves are we allowed to extract and burn to avoid catastrophic global warming - and how much must stay in the ground?
It is pretty clear that the majority must stay in the ground. But how much is hard to pinpoint, because this question involves a double moving target:
- Almost all new information about global-warming dynamics, particularly in the Arctic, is towards worse outcomes happening faster — continually shrinking our fossil fuel “budget” for avoiding catastrophe;
- New fossil-fuel reserves are found all the time, as well as new technologies for extracting and processing reserves previously thought to be unusable.
The second part is particularly dangerous. Since the term “Peak Oil” was coined in the 1950s, the year when this supposedly imminent exhaustion of world oil reserves would happen was continually pushed forward — but it has always been no more than ~20 years in the future. Extremely convenient if you are an oil company executive needing to whip up motivation (and public $$$$$) for more and more ambitious exploration and extraction. They can even pretend to hate Peak Oil theory, even as it serves them so well.
The only way to undercut this vicious cycle, and to ensure most oil in all its forms is kept in the ground — is for a viable alternative to oil to eat into demand, and quickly. This alternative is readily available now in the form of electric vehicles.