Are Electric Cars Really That Polluting?

Did you read the entire article?

 

Concluding paragraph:
"Yes, we need better battery technology. Yes, we need to recycle metals. Yes, we need to put in place all of the conservation and efficiency strategies we have, but electric vehicles can be a major benefit in our quest to reign in our worst of our effects on this planet."

It is a reasonable pro-EV piece.

 

Yes you missed a lot.

It was a pro plug in opinion piece.

It seemed to argue against the IEEE anti- plug-in piece "Unclean at any speed", arguing that the mining pollution also is in many parts of our lives, and not just in plug-ins. That it really is poorly accounted for, and the emissions during use are more important for vehicles. That puts bad assumptions in the IEEE and CNW "research" in proper perspective.

The next bit is about the other attack on plug-ins that if you use today's grid that ghg is higher than gas cars. It is the IEEE piece, not the forbes opion piece against it that pushes biking, walking, and mass transit. Here Conca, the Forbes guest writer, states these are good, but hard to do, we must look to making cars better. Conca suggests cleaning the grid and more plug-ins will help, and even 100 Million plug-ins are a small part of the grid.

 

NPR also gave this issue some play yesterday--but I can't find a link to it right now. They did not give the figures debunking the Zehner's "Unclean at Any Speed" arguments as much prominence as the Forbes article does.

 

It was on Here & Now @ 1pm CST but I missed it too. Replay here: 2013 July 29 | Here & Now

 

The part that should be examined is the stated 100 million EVs in just 27 years.

 

It isn't "proven" yet but I think the case can be made that BEV and PHEV cars will last longer on the roads than pure ICE cars.

First, in a PHEV, such as the PIP, when you get to, say, 150,001 miles and maybe the battery doesn't hold a lot of charge, what do you have? Answer...you have a regular Prius with only 75K miles (for example) on the engine and a battery that is likely much better than a regular Prius battery. The car will just keep going and going and going...
<insert bunny here>

In a BEV the motors will last nearly forever. If enough of the same car model are sold it will be relatively cheap to refurbish multiple old batteries to keep a car running, even if at a reduced range for along time. It will be a different skillset for a car mechanic, but there is good reason to think that all the expensive parts besides the battery will last a good deal longer.

Mike

 

It's possible it came from one of the linked source, but I think it's just a large number the author used for illustrative purposes. A counter point to "how will we charge all those EVs" agruements. If the number of plug ins did manage to get that high, the electricity needed for them is a lot, but is still a small fraction of power the nation generates.

 

I like Hill's argument -- that we are arguing molehills while ignoring the elephant in the room.

As for molehills, the Forbes author sets up a straw-man:
ICE is not 40 mpg 'optimistically' when my Prius vagon is 50 mpg
EV is not 250 Wh/mile 'conservatively.'
Coal plants are not 800 mg CO2/kWh, they are 1000 mg CO2/kWh and that does not include upstream costs. He also neglects transmission and AC/DC losses that amount to some 25% of the source energy lost through the chain.
And most importantly, the author completely ignores opportunity costs. Lest we forget, EVs are highly subsidized and still considerably more expensive than alternatives like the Prius.

 

Definitely a number to question, but if fewer are built then the Zalman fear that coal is going to fuel these cars is even less likely. We don't need to even address his claim that chemicals to make solar panels lead to global warming.

Let's just say half and half, as we have been building, 5% of new power to the grid, for cars comes half from natural gas ccgt and half from wind turbines. That is an easy amount to build. That by any ones measure would reduce the ghg impact of plug ins to less than half the ghg of sticking with gasoline powered vehicles. Although wind turbines are more expensive today, by 2040 no one knows the cost of natural gas will be, and those turbines be close to paid off

 

Think of the unusually high resale value it could have, knowing that popping in a new battery-pack brings it back to a revitalized status. Of course, all those years from now, a better battery could be used instead...

 

I very much liked this NPR interview with Zehner, better than the IEEE article we had.

 

ALL forms of mechanised transport are highly subsidised. When you consider total cost of ownership over the life of the vehicle, and factor in all costs and externalities, I'm not so sure EVs are the most expensive choice.

 

You're right, that's way off......it'll probably be more in the neighborhood of 200 million or so (including PHEVs)

 

No if you don't count the exotics, its probably the Escalade and Lexus LS hybrids. That is if you account for pollution during R&D, factory equipment, etc.

 

I doubt that we'd have to build much new capacity for the 1st 50-100 million EV's or so, provided we get all of them to plug in at night, with some sort of carrot/stick incentive/penalty to enforce this.
Some food for thought:
We currently have 100 GW of nuclear power. Most of these sit idle at night, and they can't be easily throttled up or down.
Assume we define "off-peak" as between 12am-6am, which is 6 hours. Depending on the grid, we could even define it as 11pm-7am, or 8 hours. But let's just use 6.
Well, 100 GW is enough to provide 2000 watts for 5o million EVs/PHEVs. Assume 10% line losses and 10% loss between charger and battery.
So, 1620 watts makes it into the battery x 6 hours = 9.72 kwh.
This is more than the Volt carries as useable capacity, and -depending on the size of the EV- should be enough to cover most Americans' daily commute....50 million!
Add to that, by selling power overnight, nuclear power plants become more financially attractive, as they are able to sell more energy, and amortize their large capital costs over many more hours.
And by the time we get to 50 million EVs, we will of course have many more wind turbines (which are being built now for purposes other than powering EVs). Most are being built in the midwest, where the wind blows strongest at night. We'll likely have 100+ GW of wind by this time. Again, powering EVs opens up a whole new market for the turbines, and greatly increases their economics favorability.
So, I do believe we can get to close to 100 million EVs with minimum GHGs (mainly nuke/wind power) and capital expenditure, but again this depends on most or all of the charging being done overnight.

 

Let me stop you right there. Let's consider where these cars are going. California will be a heavy state for plug-ins, and currently buys about 1/3 of them. Of its two nuclear power plants, San Onofre just permanently shut down, and diablo canyon's license expires in 2025. Diablo canyon is built on a fault line and many don't believe PG&E built it to withstand a earthquake that is likely on that fault. Awful design, over budget, and hopefully will be shut down instead of having its license renewed. That leaves California with 0 nuclear power plants after 2025 when the bulk of plug-ins arrive. Right now they import a great deal of power from out of state. They need to build more power, and these will include renewables but not likely nuclear, and definitely not coal. Plug-ins make the economics of wind better, and that needs to be backed up by fast cycling natural gas (or biogas). That means at a minimum many of the old inefficient steam natural gas power plants need to be replaced with fast cycling ccgt, or california can continue as inefficiency importing power, which will in 10 years lead to another set of black outs. California doesn't need to build new power just for BEVs, but BEVs can help them make better choices for the grid upgrades and for the power they need to build anyway.

Texas will be in the top 5 in plug-in adoption. Texas's nuclear seems much more secure than california's, but it is only 12% of ERCOT, so it will not be a high percentage of plug-in fuel. Coal peaked in 2010 at 39.5%. There is still a little coal being built in ERCOT, but much will remain off during the winter, and many plants will shut down beginning in 2018. Last year it was down to 34% coal. Texas is very uneven, burning more gas in hotter years for air conditioning. A price spike for natural gas may increase coal use back towards 2010 levels. Higher peaks in the summer allow coal plants to pollute more. In 2011 we had to import some power from mexico. Texas needs more peak power, not more night power, but night demand makes the economics for wind better. New wind and natural gas are much cheaper today than new nuclear or coal. BEV forecasts are part of the future mix forecast, and more BEVs mean more wind can be built economically versus natural gas.

Nuclear plants are extremely risky investments in 2013 in the USA. That may change, but the only way a new one gets built is large government subsidies.

+1

 

Really, where did you hear/read this?

Here is the demand in CA today:


California ISO -
Today&#39;s Outlook Details



The minimum demand is ~23 GW at 4am. The peak is ~34 GW at 5pm. The valley is about 2/3rds of the peak. Every region around the country has some similar peak and valley. The nuke plants, coal plants and some NG stay online providing the baseload all night. During the day peaking plants (mostly NG) startup to provide the difference.
Of course hydro, where available, may provide baseload as well.

Mike