“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,” Niclas Rolander, Jesper Starn, and Elisabeth Behrmann report for Bloomberg. “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.”
“‘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,” Rolander, Starn, and Behrmann report. “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.”
“‘It will come down to where is the battery made, how is it made, and even where do we get our electric power from,’ said Henrik Fisker, chief executive officer and chairman of Fisker Inc., a California-based developer of electric vehicles,” Rolander, Starn, and Behrmann report. “As it is now, manufacturing an electric car pumps out ‘significantly’ more climate-warming gases than a conventional car, which releases only 20 percent of its lifetime C02 at this stage, according to estimates of Mercedes-Benz’s electric-drive system integration department.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Noise pollution, however, is immediately reduced, regardless of battery origin or electric grid power sources.
SEE ALSO:
The Battery Issue: The past, present, and future of the lithium-ion battery – August 13, 2018
Apple launches $300 million China Clean Energy Fund – July 13, 2018
Apple paves the way for breakthrough carbon-free aluminum smelting method – May 10, 2018
Apple now globally powered by 100 percent renewable energy – April 9, 2018
Apple to stick with environmental pledges despite President Trump’s gutting of Obama’s climate change orders – March 30, 2017
State-of-the-art floating solar island brings Apple’s clean energy program to Japan – March 8, 2017
Greenpeace: Apple again the world’s most environmentally friendly tech company – January 10, 2017
Apple continues supply chain transparency as Trump administration considers suspending conflict mineral requirements – March 27, 2017
Apple announces environmental progress in China; applauds supplier commitment to clean energy – August 17, 2016
Apple VP Jackson visits ‘solar mamas’ in Rajasthan – May 19, 2016
Apple will run all its operations in Singapore on solar power – November 17, 2015
Greenpeace: Apple is tech’s greenest – May 15, 2015
Greenpeace: Apple leading the way in creating a greener, more sustainable internet – April 2, 2014
Greenpeace praises Apple for reducing use of conflict minerals – February 13, 2014
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Hahahaha
Dirty battery factories have nothing to do with good intentions. It’s just greed.
In contrast, Tesla’s gigafactory is 100% powered by an on-site solar installation.
The road to entinction is paved with Dodo Bird brains, like yours
More often than not, electricity is a fossil fuel.
Natural Gas isn’t a bad choice as we transition to sustainablility. There us no logical argument to sustain coal which is both more expensive and more dirty.
Still carbon… a less expensive prostitute.
Not as much as you may think. Last I checked, fossil fuels accounted for only 68% of worldwide electricity generation. Of the fossil fuels, coal and oil are in steep decline and natural gas is the preferred economic choice in most regions. Solar and wind are seeing double digit growth everywhere.
If i was a leader, I’d want the new growing industries to be successful. At the very least, having more tech and more options would be a good thing for the future. But if there is no national leadership, then why act surprised when innovative companies push new disruptive products? Why act surprised when state and local governments set their own standards to solve their well documented pollution issues? One would have to be very ignorant not to see the shit spewed out of diesel trucks as harmful to health and ecology. My guess is that oil and coal executives don’t live within 100 miles from their mines, derricks, and refineries. They can afford to choose healthier locales for their multiple mansions.
Coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear make up 82% of American electric power. At night time, solar provides zero American power and so these evil carbon based sources must be there to supply electricity to liberals. And also when the sun doesn’t shine. Sun and wind are essentially joke forms of power. The world would not operate without carbon based electricity. Or nuclear.
Last I checked 68% is well over hallf, leaving 32% as non fossil fuel. At best electricity as a moderately good band-aid.
Frankly I would much prefer a hydrogen economy, using nuclear as the intermittent band aid.
Kent, the issue here isn’t whether the world can drop all polluting sources of power tonight and continue on tomorrow with nothing but renewable sources. Nobody believes that. It is whether electric vehicles are already a reasonable replacement for diesel.
Even if 100% of the electricity used to charge the batteries comes from coal plants of only average efficiency, the CO2 emissions per vehicle/mile would still be less than for individual diesel engines. Big power plants are inherently more efficient than small ones, as the chart above (from a diesel apologist) shows.
Besides, very few car batteries are recharged with 100% coal electricity. In Texas it would be 32% (on a relatively calm day), and in California 7%. In Norway and most of Canada, it would be 0%, and it is also be 0% for car owners with their own solar arrays or wind turbines. Comparing the CO2 operating emissions (much less Nx and soot) for electric and diesel cars in one of those places would generate a divide by zero error.
We do not need to wait until renewable power can provide 100% of our needs to take advantage of the efficiencies that it can already provide. We are not holding off on the use of chemotherapy until it can cure every cancer patient. Use as a chemical feed stock is a better use for coal and oil than burning it to fire steam boilers, so we should be moving in that direction.
You keep harping on the storage problem. Electricity need not be generated locally; a significant share of PG&E power used in Southern California is generated by the Columbia River. My local interconnect network (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) covers an area the size of France. The sun is shining somewhere in that area an average of 13 hours a day, and the wind is blowing somewhere in Texas all the time. We don’t have much appropriate topography for pumped storage reservoirs, but much of the country does.
Until the storage problem is solved, quick-response natural gas turbines provide a better answer to the “what if the sun isn’t shining or the wind blowing” problem than coal-fired steam boilers that have to be kept fired all the time in case they are needed.
To repeat, nobody claims that carbon-based electricity can be eliminated worldwide overnight. They do claim that replacing diesel vehicles with electric has benefits even today that can only improve with time.
Your statistics about Texas and Norway and California are not correct. California gets huge amounts of electricity from outside of California because its own laws prevent it from producing enough power for its own needs. So it buys power at night from other states that are not so stupid and locked in on solar and wind, both of which require excess capacity of coal and nat gas be built to satisfy demand when it is dark and no wind. These sources of power are by definition unreliable.
Second, I don’t believe that power plants are necessarily cleaner than diesel engines. By the way, when did California last approve a coal or natural gas or nuclear power plant?
You’re right. I was looking at old data. California does not get 7% of its electricity from coal. The correct figure is 4.1%. That includes power from out-of-state as well as local generation. In addition, there is 9.3% “unspecified” because it is bought off the grid and cannot be traced back to a specific source. A part of that might come from coal. Even if ALL of it did, and it doesn’t, that would still mean that only 13.4% of California energy use came from coal.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html
The 32% figure for Texas is correct.
As for power plants being cleaner than Diesel engines, just look at the chart in the article, used to illustrate the best case for diesel over electric. It clearly shows that operational CO2 emissions are lower for electric (although the article argues that the savings never catch up with the emissions from manufacture).
This is important question. But after reading the article it seems to be comparing apples with oranges. Where is the data on the cost of exploring drilling, refining, transporting, diesel? If you’re going to factor in the lifecycle cost of manufacturing electric battery storage, the same environmental costs on the diesel side of the equation should be included too for any kind of meaningful comparison.
Of course
The major advantage of electric vehicles here is that the production of excess CO2 is LOCALIZED to the battery factory, and is therefore easier and cheaper to deal with (due mostly to economies of scale). A single, fixed source of pollution is far easier to remediate than hundreds of thousands of mobile sources, none of which you have control of once they leave the factory.
“…that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.”
Or are you only going to use the initial charge in the battery and throw it away? I suspect most people will recharge their batteries using electricity generated from coal and other fossil fuels.
“I suspect most people will recharge their batteries using electricity generated from coal and other fossil fuels”.
You are correct. But it’s also correct that diesel engines emit four times the amount of non-combusted hydrocarbons that gasoline engines emit. And that black soot is not good for the lungs.
It just proves that, while everyone can argue the pros and cons of the various power generation method for road vehicles, there is currently no perfect solution.
Personally, I’m hanging my hopes on fusion/flux capacitor technology. /s
Exactly, the downside for diesel is the production of health damaging small particles.
The downside of solar is zero power at night. And when its cloudy. And fried birds. And the fact it could never compete on cost without massive government subsidies. Other than these things its great.
Kent, you are entirely misinformed. Solar is already cost competitive across the south.
Since you pretend not to understand how the electrical grid works, here’s a clue: power is routed where it is needed when it is needed. Nighttime demand is relatively low. Clean natgas from Colorado and Hydro from Niagara or Pacific NW easily fills in coast to coast when wind or solar is not kicking out the watts. To top it all off, municipal demands such as freshwater and sewage plants can reschedule their power demands when power is cheap and available rather than sticking to a fixed schedule based on when coal shipments used to be delivered.
You might consider learning more about the industry rather than spouting off obsolete notions of how electric utilities used to work a generation ago.
Andy, the article – if you read it – complains about the CO2 generated by battery MANUFACTURE – not usage. But the same argument goes for any electric source; if it’s from a polluting source, it’s easier to deal with the pollutants at a small number of fixed sources than a huge number of mobile sources.
The major issue that this writer neglects out is that the Tesla batteries are not being produced in Germany or Poland. They are being produced in Nevada with soon to be 100% solar power. Mercedes is going to produce their batteries in Alabama. Basically, this is a stupid article that uses assumptions that are 100% incorrect.
“Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.”
“It will come down to where is the battery made, how is it made, and even where do we get our electric power from.”
Sounds to me like they did take it into account. And if “drivers in Germany or Poland” are getting engines/batteries from Nevada or Alabama, they also”may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine.” Just because it may not directly apply to you in the US doesn’t mean it is 100% incorrect.
The charts (prepared by diesel advocates) make several best-case assumptions that are not necessarily valid:
1. All the batteries are going to be made in third-world countries that rely almost exclusively on high-emissions coal plants. As noted above, they might be made in places that rely on renewables, hydropower, nuclear, natural gas, or even on coal plants with advanced emissions controls. Most countries, even in the third world, are headed in that direction.
2. That the cars are going to be made in Germany or some other country that currently relies largely on legacy coal plants for industrial power.
3. That the vehicle will be driven only 9000 miles/year for 10 years. and will be recharged exclusively with power from legacy coal generators, That may be true in Germany, which moved away from nuclear without having an immediate alternative to legacy coal plants. It would not be true in California, where only about 7% of the electricity comes from coal, or in several European countries that are phasing out coal completely. It will probably not even be true in Germany at the end of the 10 years.
4. Across the entire 10-year life of the cars, they are both going to be maintained to preserve their original fuel economy. In the real world, old diesels use more fuel and generate more particulates as they grow less efficient.
5. Neither car will be running the air conditioning more to compensate for higher temperatures towards the end of the 10 years.
Batteries can be recycled and the critical materials recovered with a high degree of efficiency.
Try recycling the burned diesel fuel byproducts into diesel fuel…
This is another example of an analysis tailored to produce the desired outcome. Unfortunately, the world (and the U.S., especially) is full of stupid people who thrive on sound bites that reinforce their established viewpoints. They don’t care if the information is factual…they just want to be “right,” even when they are clearly wrong.
“Batteries can be recycled and the critical materials recovered with a high degree of efficiency.”
Hmmm, I’ve not heard this. Got a link (or links) to back this up?
The data is not hard to find. No electric vehicle battery is thrown away. At the end of its useful life, all manufacturers recycle them for you.
This headline has more to do with the source of electricity in different countries rather than the electric vehicles themselves.
Note the example shown of an electric vehicle in Norway, which runs on electricity generated without the use of fossil fuels ( 95% of their electricity is generated from hydropower ). Taking into account the extra carbon used in the manufacturing process of the car, it only takes about 20 months to become better than that diesel. Germany generates it’s electricity predominately from fossil fuels ( they have large resources of coal and lignite ) offering a marked contrast with Norway. Each European country has varying natural resources and therefore different mixes of energy production, but most are reducing reliance on fossil based fuels.
Electrically powered cars are part of the way forward, but carbon-free electricity generation makes the use of electric vehicles massively more beneficial.
One word, diesel-gate. German car companies lied about the efficiency of their diesel cars. People went to jail and big fines were paid. Do we now trust this “report” with qualifiers like “might” and “may”. I wonder how good the assumptions used are and what was left out to reach the conclusion they wanted
Pure BS. What about all the noise insulation in a gas car that you don’t need in an electric mufflers, catalytic converters, piping? What about the motor oil you don’t need in an electric car that won’t be improperly disposed of? What about the Antifreeze that you don’t need in an electric car that won’t be spilled across parking lots and yards? What about the power steering fluid you don’t need in most electric cars? What about the fact that soon (10 – 20 years) we will be able to power electric cars with ZERO emmission solar and wind generation created at our homes. This is just FUD distributed by the incumbent polluting infrastructure that wants just a few more years to milk profit at the cost of the environment….
What about all the enormous toxic batteries that will one day need to be disposed of…. where ? Its not all roses. In 20 years the batteries are still going to be toxic waste.
It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant people can be about battery tech.
Here’s what Toyota does with Prius batteries: https://www.toyota.com.au/hybrid/battery-recycling
Funny how the rabid right hasn’t chosen to lie about Apple batteries, which users can recycle for free at any Apple shoppe. Is it the mission of republicans to turn natural resources into landfill fodder at breakneck pace?
Let’s assume lithium batteries were toxic and nonrecyclable, and that all future electricity will be coal generation (all untrue).
Would you prefer to have your toxic waste scrubbed at the power plant, as coal plants do today, or do you prefer your diesel toxins belched out in front of your child’s bus stop? Would you prefer that oil and diesel spills occur on every navigable body of water or would you prefer that your hypothetical non recycled battery keep its toxins inside its sealed box?
Wise regulation, just like in kindergarten, requires people to clean up their own messes. Let electric car makers figure out how to manage their businesses but do the same for fossil fuels. Then you will see how many trillions of dollars the fossil fuel industries have spent undermining reasonable regulation at the expense of us all.
It helps to take a forward long term view of these things rather than assuming the tweet from a bought politician who has obviously been working for dirty entrenched industries is telling the full truth.
What a joke. They sandbag the study by assuming cars are drive a mere 15,000 kilometer a year or mere 9000 miles. No wonder the carbon output of a diesel is so low, because the damn cars are barely being driven according to the study
Boost that to 15,000 MILES a year, and electric will easily win. And electric will win more and more as more renewable energy comes on line.
Bet you this study was funded by diesel car makers.
The article assumes that most — or all — electric vehicle owners fuel their vehicles exclusively with grid power. As a Tesla Model 3 owner with a 10kWp solar array and two Powerwall batteries, I can assure you and the author that his presumption is erroneous. I schedule my car to charge over the weekend from noon (after the sun has recharged my Powerwalls) until 6:00 PM so that the only electrons flowing into the battery come from my solar array. With over 300 miles (482+ km) of range, I only need to charge my car once or twice during the weekend.
While I can’t speak to the ratio of electric vehicle owners with vs. without solar, many of my friends and acquaintances have arrays on their homes. Plus, I’ve talked to several new Model 3 owners who’ve invested (or will invest) in a solar array because of their vehicle purchase. I’m hoping more new electric vehicle owners are enticed to add solar to their homes. After owning my first electric car, the multi-beneficial results of harvesting more electrons from the sun are obvious.
It’s the humans, stupid!
B.S. Electric is the way to go to help save this planet and future generations of our children.
So, a dirty car built in a clean factory is cleaner than a clean car built in a dirty factory. Good to know.
Now, let’s talk about Tesla: clean cars built in clean factories, plus clean power from consumer solar, also built in clean factories.
OK. Where will all these huge toxic batteries end up when they are dead ? Poisoning the earth, somewhere….
Power of any origin creates some sort of pollution. Unless you intend to walk or swim everywhere you go, any form of transport create some level of pollution.
The ultimate question, that no one as far as I am concerned has proved is whether an increase in CO2 is actually harmful, considering every person & plant on the planet needs it to live, And people exhale it every breath. The planet is actually greener due to CO2… Food grows more.. etc…
Sadly you are mistaken as to final effect. As CO2 increases at a sustained rate unprecedented in measurable history, the planet temperature is rising in a manner that has already accelerated desertification and massive storms that destroy previously fertile land. Governments of course bear the burden of bailing out coastal zones that in a few generations will be underwater. That is precisely why governments need to be proactive to coordinate sustainability plans and , yes, regulations. Just as the road in front of your home has a speed limit for your personal safety, rhe globe needs to moderate its temperature. Humans are not incidental bystanders in all this. You can’t burn through millenia of dinosaur juice in 200 years and then pretend there was no effect on the climate.
The article points out that world over clean electric cars is a crapshoot at best. No one can say definitively whether it is best as of now. Buyer beware…
It would seem to me that MDN has a not so subtle anti-Tesla bias. Pretty much every story about Tesla covered here has been negative. MDN has. O obligation to cover Tesla since this is an Apple-specific site but when every Tesla story covered here in the past few months has been negative, I begin to smell a rat.
This article is no exception. For the record, it is possible for an electric car to be dirtier than a diesel. If all the electricity used during production and use of the car comes from coal, and the car is driven sufficiently few miles, you can construct a scenario where the well to wheel emissions of the electric car is greater than that of the diesel car.
However, this scenario is becoming less and less likely. Electric grids all over the world are becoming cleaner. For example, look at what happened in the US over the past decade or so. Around 10-15 years ago, over half the US electricity supply came from coal. Today that number is down to around a third, natural gas makes up another third and the rest is made up of non-polluting sources. Note that I did not use the word ‘clean’ since nuclear power, while non polluting, is hardly clean. Every country is going in this direction – China included.
Even though natural gas is a fossil fuel, producing electricity from it results in far fewer emissions than any gas or diesel internal combustion engine. If an electric car is manufactured using electricity that comes from the same mix of sources as we currently have in the US and if the car is charged using the same mix of sources, it will produce fewer emissions than any gas or diesel car. When it comes to emissions, only the most efficient hybrids will be competitive.
As the percentage of renewables in the US power supply continues to rise, the advantage that electric cars enjoy will continue to grow. Of course the US grid is not homogeneous. Some parts of the US have moved towards renewables faster than others and some are still heavily dependent on coal. In the latter case, an electric car may not be your best option. However with electric cars, there is a clear path towards a near-zero emissions future. With fossil fuel cars, there isn’t.
– HCE
Right has this report totally ignored the great Diesel scandal or did they simply not get th email. Co2 is far from the worst aspects of what Diesels churn out as we now know even when one ignores the corupt figures producers have been caught out lying about on that.
No Mac News Here.
But since MDN loves delving into inflammatory divisive politics, I can only add that the article that MDN choses to cherry pick makes several bad assumptions.
First: There is no such thing as a “dirty battery”. This is label pasting and it immediately belies the author as a biased twit. Old batteries may have used rare earth elements and acid, but those are _not_what modern transportation batteries use today. Batteries today can, and are, recycled. Often there are strict laws to ensure this is done. Diesel in any form is by nature dirty.
The author assumes that 10 million internal combusion engines would be perfectly maintained, emitting no more pollution at the end of their usable lives as when they rolled out of the factory. This is fantasy. Internal combustion engines (ICE) require maintenance. Powerplants require maintenance too, but that is professionally done by law. What is cheaper, ensuring all ICEs on the road are well maintained or properly maintaining a handful of powerplants? Battery powered cars require basically no maintenance and burn no fuel when sitting at inefficient traffic signals.
Then we have the static thinking pervasive in this article. The electrical power grid is evolving to use more renewable power, especially in Germany and other progressive high tech nations. Net metering is allowing individuals around the world to *LIBERTARIAN* free themselves from the dependency of some foreign inefficient power generator if they choose to. Importing hydrocarbons from a foreign nation is bad security plan, no? Even if you love carbon pollution, the trends are dramatic: coal is in massive decline and global renewable energy installations are growing rapidly to replace them because the coal plants are not economical and have reached end of life. The author should see that.
Vehicle sales trends are another issue. The number of vehicles sold in Poland are close to irrelevant compared to nations like the USA and China, nations whose power choices today will dominate the climate impact in years to come. The author seems to think that someone who buys a swanky new electric car in a 2nd world polluting power grid nation will rely 100% on that grid. Nope. Environmentalists with money are installing their own solar panels or donating to environmental causes to offset carbon emisssions. Nations like the USA that have anywhere from 2 to 6 cars per household will have a much bigger impact than in eastern Europe, where one modest car per household is the norm.
Then the author of course ignores the dramatically different use cases of rural versus urban population growth, local pollution issues versus global emissions issues, technological progress, etc. He literally manufactured a contrived scenario in an attempt to discredit electric cars, when each year a new electric car achieves more and more. Never mind the fact that humans are migrating to congested cities in record numbers year after year in search of good paying jobs.
Coal is dying due to its being uneconomic compared to cleaner natural gas, or in sunny regions solar, or in windy regions wind power. The coal industry keeps claiming that “clean coal” is possible via smokestack scrubbers and carbon sequestration. It they are honest and truly believe that their “clean coal” schemes are nonpolluting and economical, then this destroys the assumptions baked into this article. Can’t have it both ways.
Diesel is also dying not primarily because of CO2 or economics but because of NOx, particulate emissions, and the resultant health effects in urban areas. Diesel fumes literally eat away historic sandstone buildings in Europe. Asthma and lung disease rates are high and climbing in some diesel-powered cities. Are those costs taken into account by diesel proponents? Never.
In your children’s lifetimes, urban areas will make ICE engines both uneconomical and unwanted. Parking already makes private car ownership a luxury in the world’s biggest cities. The author, perhaps a rural American who thinks that the privilege to own and operate an oversized diesel SUV is a constitutional right, appears not to understand this.
I smell MDN moving toward politics where clicks are probably more, now that Apple is no longer a controversial and heartwarming story of how a beleaguered company rises up from the ashes against all odds.
Then MDN needs to retire its unprofitable google ad powered tech blog and follow its true calling as a political propagandist. Why keep going through the motions
Google ads should provide some income. Maybe MDN can do both: One blog for politics and another blog for Apple.
One would think that the fossil fuel industries (if their people are so smart) would be researching for ways to utilize their resources for something other than burning them to generate power.
Look at what Booker T. Washington did with the lowly peanut.
“The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea, because of the staggering environmental pollution from mining and material disposal, if all energy was derived from renewables and batteries.”
– James Hansen, formerly of NASA, 2018
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/26/thirty-years-later-what-needs-change-our-approach-climate-change/dUhizA5ubUSzJLJVZqv6GP/story.html
Nobody has ever proposed “renewables alone” in the short term.
NASA isn’t exactly known for being a power expert either. For the last 30 years, this SOCIALIST agency has done nothing but burn taxpayers cash.
Anybody with a brain has advocated that governments stop subsidizing fossil fuels and moon shots and get out of the way for sustainable technical innovation. Governments are overwhelmingly owned by incumbent corporations so the big bad evil regulations they whine about was actually written by themselves to prevent new market entrants. Now in the US, corruption is near a historic high. Looks like the current administration won its election by gerrymandering and lying to coal miners. Trump has his lips so firmly wrapped around Saudi Arabian cock, he cannot imagine a plan for powering his nation without foreign oil. Thus other forward thinking nations will be light years ahead with cost effective clean infrastructure before the USA wakes up. A drive through any small town in the US proves the debts are out of control, you yanks can’t even pave your streets. You’ll still be sucking the last drops of your SOCIALIST “strategic national petroleum reserve” when the rest of the world zips around on clean flying Jetsons pods.
NASA is dead. It has been replaced by private companies funded by Apple’s tech rivals.
“Nobody has ever proposed “renewables alone” in the short term.”
They propose renewables alone in the near future otherwise, bad weather will be more common.
“Anybody with a brain has advocated that governments stop subsidizing fossil fuels and moon shots and get out of the way for sustainable technical innovation.”
If renewable energy was so great and cheap, it wouldn’t need to be heavily government subsidized. It’s a shitty energy ‘solution’ unless you want to live with intermittent power.
Cramer,
That is a truly bizarre quotation out of context. Hansen is the guy who first testified to Congress about global warming in 1988. Both within NASA and since his retirement, he has been the most prominent public opponent of fossil fuels such as both coal and petroleum.
His solution is to raise taxes on all fossil fuels high enough to force a movement to conservation and nuclear. He doesn’t oppose renewables; he just insists that they are not even a partial solution without the other steps.
To suggest that Hansen would oppose restrictions on diesel cars is absurd.
I did not (nor intended to) suggest “that Hansen would oppose restrictions on diesel cars.”
I’m just pointing out that intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar aren’t viable energy solutions.
“I’m just pointing out that intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar aren’t viable energy solutions.”
Exactly right. The green dreamers are often ignorant of the facts…
James Hansen is a stooge for the dying nuclear power industry, which has been shown uneconomical even before Fukishima exposed the weaknesses of recent nuke plant design. Thats why there hasn’t been hardly any new nukes built in 3 decades. It costs so much more for nuke power plant construction and fuel, plus the army to guard the spent nuclear fuel, that nuclear electricity makes no sense at all.
Speaking of which, how’s the cleanup going at Hanford? That should be an embarrassment. One would think that somebody in America would want to get that disaster contained pronto.
It would cost American taxpayers less to reroof all their buildings with solar panels than it will to build one new nuclear power plant and a secure nuke storage site that will permanently store all the scattered nuclear waste than nobody wants to know about. Tweet that out, Hansen.
Sooner than later, electricity will have to be 100% renewables. It is economical today. Transportation and home heating will be oil and gas for two generations to come. Electric cars only make sense in urban settings but that too will evolve.
Sarah,
It costs more for nukes to be built in large part because of enviro lawsuits and regulations which are used precisely to delay their construction and/or make them more expensive.
What effect did increasing enviro regulations have on manufacturing in the 70s and on? They helped close plants here and their jobs moved offshore. Regs are a way of moving jobs to outer countries and the rich people who back, finance, or run these companies, profit. Indeed, the environmental movement is by a large, a product of rich people, families, and foundations (Rockefeller, Steyer, Soros, and many others).
By the way, I’m no fan of nuclear because of the waste issue and safety issue. I also don’t thin CO2 is pollution, it’s plant and tree food. And it’s also not the earth’s temperature control knob or bad weather control knob.
Wind and solar aren’t going to give us 24/7/365 energy by themselves. Come up with something better and I’m on board.
Oh! I know! If enough politicians can be corralled into a factory, their hot air could be used as a source to power Apple battery manufacture. CEOs would pay top dollar for air from the likes of Obama and Trump, not so much from Bush who spoke in clipped sentences.
Gee… you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Who knew?
It should also be noted that no matter how pro-coal Trump is, he doesn’t have the cash to bail out the obsolete industry.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/trumps-coal-rescue-is-getting-more-complicated/
The Trump administration’s desire to subsidize coal (read: market manipulation, formerly a bad thing among conservative circles) is stalled because he doesn’t have the money to do so. In 2018, the right wing tax giveaway that was sold as a miracle economic plan that would pay for itself has ballooned the federal deficit 17%, for a grand total of $779 billion in the red. Brilliant businessman Trump is already overspending and wants massive increases in military overspending, even while he is too stupid to relocate F-22 airplanes that were sitting ducks for Hurricane Michael to damage.
But we digress. The USA has an ugly debt problem and can’t afford to bail out industries that cannot justify their continued existence. Even though coal is near and dear to Trump’s circa 1880 mindset, the electricity industry has moved on. In 2017, US utilities shut down about 9,000 megawatts of coal plants. 14,000 megawatts are slated to be closed in 2018. Gas and renewables are easily replacing coal at a lower cost. There is only one major coal importer left: China. Trump claims he wants to stop China’s economic abuse of the USA. By doing what, giving them coal?
Gasoline and electricity will continue to power cars for decades to come. Coal will not.
Conventional and dirty nuke power is also obsolete; It’s just that the Socialist nuke power industry and its adherents, OKA investors, do not want to bury that dying corpse prematurely until its tailings irradiate more and more land and water and air. It’s Socialist program because Congress has indemnified it from any pain, suffering, and damage caused as a result of accidents. But at least Apple is on the right track.
I call BS here. Data used for the “report” is not available. Did it take into account the carbon and environmental pollution to extract the palladium/platinum for the catalytic converters of a regular car? I doubt it. (see TomInTulsa above for myriad more examples). Did it take into account the CO2 emissions required to produce the diesel fuel, transport it etc? I doubt it. God help us if that’s made from tar sands, too. “Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.” Odd, given Tesla’s production volume, I thought that was currently Nevada.
More holes than Swiss cheese in this piece of conjecture.
BTW, more than 95% of the electricity I use for my Nissan Leaf comes from solar power generated from my own panels. The carbon footprint of my solar system itself paid back in mere months.
Tax pollution is way up with the electric cars currently each getting a $7500 subsidy from the American taxpayer. All so white liberals can drive coal powered cars. Yes, coal and natural gas are the prime suppliers of electric power in the US, at 62%. Add nuclear and that is 82% of America’s power from sources hated by Democrats.
If the most successful company in the world can be green, so can car manufacturing companies. Give it a little time. The only issue that matters is not the dumb dialogue that we’re destroying the planet. Wake up! The planet will be fine. It’s destroying us! This problem’s solution is the next big economy.