The myth of clean e-cars

[Skybird]

http://www.dw.com/en/opinion-the-myth-of-a-clean-electric-car/a-39856708

^This. What he does not even mention is the ecological footstep of the electricity production, which still mainly comes from non-regenerating sources.

I fear the German government - and others as well - nevertheless will force the tax cattle to throw stellar amounts of money out of the window.

[Gargamel]

Yes, it's a well known fact that at one time the prius was the most ecologically devastating car on the market, as the effort to create the batteries was a large pollution generator in china.

But with non-renewable resources becoming more and more expensive, we have no choice but to switch to alternate methods, away from petroleum. Even the most conservative of estimates (by the oil companies none the less), say that petroleum extraction from the ground will be unsustainable within 100 years. Some estimates say as little as 20-30 years. The truth lies somewhere in between, and that falls within some of our lifetimes.

So obviously, we have to transition away from petroleum. Electric vehicles are the obvious choice right now. With the steady improvements in battery efficiency, along with improvements in solar cells, it won't be long before an electric car rivals a gas guzzler in terms of range.

There are a number of other methods too, fuel cells being one of them. This too is a developing field. Another is agro-fuels. Ethanol from plants is an easily producible fuel, and requires minor adjustments in an engine to run it.

I understand the reluctance of the petroleum companies to try to fight and suppress advancements in competing fields. It helps lines their pockets for a longer time. But eventually that will end, sooner rather than later.

I'd rather us (being the world) have systems and technologies already in place and working before that end comes.

The author of this article comes off more of a shill for oil companies, rather than somebody trying to help solve the problem. He only rallies against electric cars, saying how environmentally damaging they are. That is a well know fact, and he is just beating a dead horse. He offer's no helpful insights into alleviating the problems on hand, both with oil and electric. He makes vast assumptions for the populations that live in Germany (Nobody wants a windmill in their back yard? I do!) that leaves few, if any, alternate options. There's always resistance to the location of power lines, no matter what the source. I'm glad they lead with "Opinion" in the title, as is it clearly one man's thoughts on a subject he has not studied fully.

[Skybird]

Sorry, Gargamel, but in Germany we have the absurd situaiton that the electricity becomes the more coslty for the end consumer the more renewable energy gets rpodcued. That is thanks to the absurd, even selfdamaging subsidies for it. Producers get the more subvention per Wh the more of it they produce.

This also has another implication. Take away the subsidies, and you have an energy system that is not only more unstable and causes problems beyond Geraman border in all of Europe, but that also is not comptetitve. It cannot live without subsidies. Additonally we need to buy electricty from neighbourign country who produce it in these nasty nuclear blocks that Gemans hate so much. Nuclear blocks that are older and more dnageorus than the ones in Germany that we took off the grid becasue the Fukushima flooding was spilling through our German streets.

And then there is the nastiness of Lithium mining, but that is a dirty story for itself, I save myself from telling it.

To point out at these quite well-known - but unwanted - facts, does not automatically make you a lobbyist of the combustion engine car industry. It simply is plain reason. And maybe you do not know how much mney gets destroyed and how amny big projects get slammed right aganst the wall in Germany right because of the cluelessness and incompetence of politicians who mistake ideology with circumstances in reality. The "energy turn" in Germany - reminds me of the BER airport, really: years after years of delay, costs explodingand mltiplying, no improvements, and rising doubts that the thing can ever be used. And when it will be used in 2020 or 2021, its capacity will already be far behind the demand. Th comonies not working there, earn formidable profits by the thing beign what it is: an endless milking opportunity. Thats how the German revolution works, too.

Lats time I checked, oil prices was low and falling, btw. The follow-on costs of a fossile-dribve industrx are there, yes. But so are the implicit and the follow-on costs of e-industrialization and battery production. It just collides with Green ideology, and that is why the narration is so unwelcomed by most people.

Ethanol from plants: farmign soil globally is in decline, need for food production is raising however, due to exploding global population levels. It may work nationalyl in a big country like Brazil - for Europe, it is no alternative. Also it needs a huge effort in right the opposite of ecologic/bio farming: you need industrial intensive farming and the ethical willingness to see many people straving to death who cannot eat the food that gets not planted and harvested on these fields.

Renewable energy priruction sees a lot of nsolved - and even growing! - problems over here. And it becomes more and more costly since ten years, from year to year. Nobody else in Europe pays so much for electricity, than the Germans.

And despite the raise in renewables, latest studies tell us that we have not really reduced Germany's emission footprint in this time.

Fauler Zauber.

But hey, nobody forces you not to sink your money into a hopelessly overpriced e-car that looses its value due to battery develoment faster than you can say "what, really?" Loose money, and feel well! :O:

[Gargamel]

Sorry, Gargamel, but in Germany we have the absurd situaiton that the electricity becomes the more coslty for the end consumer the more renewable energy gets rpodcued. That is thanks to the absurd, even selfdamaging subsidies for it. Producers get the more subvention per Wh the more of it they produce.

This also has another implication. Take away the subsidies, and you have an energy system that is not only more unstable and causes problems beyond Geraman border in all of Europe, but that also is not comptetitve. It cannot live without subsidies. Additonally we need to buy electricty from neighbourign country who produce it in these nasty nuclear blocks that Gemans hate so much. Nuclear blocks that are older and more dnageorus than the ones in Germany that we took off the grid becasue the Fukushima flooding was spilling through our German streets.

I had a paragraph written out explaining my ignorance of German Energy Policy, but I deleted it as anything I presented was no more than an assumption, and I knew would get tore apart. Your statements confirmed what I did know, and expanded upon the rest I did not. It does give the authors point of view a bit more clarity that was not there before.

So the German point of view is understandable then. I think some serious changes need to be made to bring solidity to your energy market, but I still don't know enough to offer any suggestions.

I do think that the aversion to Nuclear is not a good idea. First off, nuclear energy has the highest energy density of any non-renewable fuel source known to man. On a magnitude of tens of millions of times greater than anything else we currently have. I'd be curious to your personal opinions on nuclear, and to the opinions the average German has towards it.


Lats time I checked, oil prices was low and falling, btw.

Periodic fluctuations. Just like after the '08 crash, Oil prices were cut in half almost overnight because they were being traded on the markets. Just like the stock market, over time it will always climb.

Ethanol from plants: farmign soil globally is in decline, need for food production is raising however, due to exploding global population levels. It may work nationalyl in a big country like Brazil - for Europe, it is no alternative. Also it needs a huge effort in right the opposite of ecologic/bio farming: you need industrial intensive farming and the ethical willingness to see many people straving to death who cannot eat the food that gets not planted and harvested on these fields.

Very true. But here in the US, we pay farmers to produce less (whole argument on farm subsidies here, but that's not the point). There is still plenty of farm land to go around, just not enough money to pay for it to be successful. If there was enough demand from the oil companies to make ethanol (and who else is better suited to make it?), then there would be enough demand to cover farmers costs and keep the price from crashing on the various crops used. A transition from petroleum to ethanol would require a global effort, not just a local one.



The bottom line is though, within the foreseeable future, without the invention of fusion power, we will have to start relying more and more on renewable power supplies. There is no way around it. There is a finite amount of fossil fuels available to us, it will not be renewed in the time frame we need. While I do care about climate change and the like, finding long term solutions to our energy problems is a much bigger issue than just curbing emissions. They will typically go hand in hand, so working for one usually gets swept in with the other.

[Aktungbby]

https://ecomento.com/guide/hydrogen-fuel-cell-vs-battery-electric-cars-greener/ (https://ecomento.com/guide/hydrogen-fuel-cell-vs-battery-electric-cars-greener/) Having tested a Toyota Mirai and my brother owning a Prius...which he just replaced the batterie$$ on:

In both cases, one must consider the total environmental impact of energy production. This is known as “well-to-wheels” emissions. Electricity has to be generated, while hydrogen has to be separated from other elements and transported to filling stations. California has one of the cleanest grids in the country, and the most electric cars. It also has nine of the 10 public hydrogen fueling stations currently operating. Right now, the Golden State is essentially a “best-case scenario” for electric cars, and an “only-case scenario” for fuel cells.
According to the 2010 California Low Carbon Fuel Standard Final Regulation Order (http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/2009/lcfs09/lcfscombofinal.pdf), fuel-cell cars have an average lifetime greenhouse gas emissions rate of 61.83 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule. This is for hydrogen produced through the popular natural gas reforming process.
Electricity, on the other hand, was determined to have average lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of 41.37g/mj.
All things considered, the inherently simpler process of storing energy in a battery and using it to power a car makes electricity greener than hydrogen.
The myriad variables of the isolation, packaging, transport, and consumption of hydrogen mean its well-to-wheels emissions can vary wildly, while those of battery-electric cars tend to remain consistently low regardless of where the electricity comes from.
That’s not to say that fuel-cell cars don’t have other advantages, but in the emissions battle, the batteries appear to be on top.
There you have it, in a nutshell.
:hmmm:

[Skybird]

Tesla.

http://www.dw.com/en/tesla-unveils-new-e-car-but-is-it-sustainable/a-39842982

I read it as "troubled waters ahead". Difficult to predict whether they make profit with this, or not. I am sceptical about their projections. Their stocks I rate as overrated, and much so.

[propbeanie]

I have a few questions about these "new" technologies...

1. Re-newable? re-cycle? Batteries? What would we rather have? -a. An exhaust plume from a coal-fired power plant that can be "scrubbed", and the earth itself helps breakdown the by-product (trees, grass, etc.), along with vehicles that emit a gas that the trees and grass "consume"? or -b. Heavy metals from the production of lead-acid, or ni-cad, or litium-ion batteries? Folks will say "you can re-use them time and time again!" ee-yeah, like three "re-fresh" cycles, and each one of those cycles produces "pollution", not to mention what heppens after they can't be "re-freshed"... whose landfill does all that go into? Oh, I know, the nuclear waste landfill! Here, they were up in arms about the mercury starting back in the late 60's, and now we've got even heavier, man-made crap now... This is like solar panels and wind "power" mills... a boondoggle. Just changing the nature of the "pollution".

2. Who wants a hydrogen fueling station down the street from their house? Can you say "BOOM!"? "Oh, it's safe! It's just a misunderstood fuel source."

[ikalugin]

I am for closed fuel cycle nuclear.

[Catfish]

^ "closed", you mean like near the coast of Novaja Semlja :03:
And you cannot keep it enclosed, unless you build a big container like in Chernobyl, and stuff it with the toxic waste that cannot be recycled. Any metal that was exposed to radiation, from cooling pipes to cranes, to all kind of equipment, will keep radiating for a some hundred-thousand years.

We do not hear much about it, but Fukushima has become a real problem, they see no way of being able containing the stuff; the radiation is rising and they do not find an explanation. And Chernobyl will be there for millenia to come.. not to speak about all those atmospheric nuclear tests.

[propbeanie]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=2504145#post2504145

posted it over in the music thread since it's good music too... "man, in his infinite wisdom..."

[McBeck]

^ "closed", you mean like near the coast of Novaja Semlja :03:
And you cannot keep it enclosed, unless you build a big container like in Chernobyl, and stuff it with the toxic waste that cannot be recycled. Any metal that was exposed to radiation, from cooling pipes to cranes, to all kind of equipment, will keep radiating for a some hundred-thousand years.

We do not hear much about it, but Fukushima has become a real problem, they see no way of being able containing the stuff; the radiation is rising and they do not find an explanation. And Chernobyl will be there for millenia to come.. not to speak about all those atmospheric nuclear tests.
Those reactors are all based on achient nuclear technology.
I reserve my faith on newer, more compact, modular reactors running at atmospheric pressure.

Unless an electric car runs on nuclear/solar/wind generated electricity it can hardly be called clean.

And I am sick of nuclear not being part of the "green" movement.
Do people know the process involved in building windmills not to speak of solarpanels? Sure, the EROI may be good and they dont produce CO2 once they are up and running, but they have a significant environmental impact in their production.

[Skybird]

Machinery, closed cycles, NEVER are really tight, and free of any leaking. NEVER. Friction is inevtiable where two materials rub against each other. Even if they do it on atomic and subatomic level.

To have a nuclear block in a house, is highly risky. To have it in a car, would be madness. Cars have accidents. Often at devastating speed. We do not want to go the Fallout 4 way of history.

Instead of throwing all German nuclear plants off the grid, older, more dangerous plants throghout Europe should have been switched off. But that is where oyu get when the great Führerin bases her policies mercilessly on opportunism and Wohlfühlgedusel.

[ikalugin]

Instead of throwing all German nuclear plants off the grid, older, more dangerous plants throghout Europe should have been switched off. But that is where oyu get when the great Führerin bases her policies mercilessly on opportunism and Wohlfühlgedusel. The irony is that the original cuts in new construction (of nuclear plants) lead to 2nd generation (ie the dangerous ones) reactors being maintained in use till their lives running out instead of replacing them with (much) safer 3rd generation desighns and so the desighn to cut risks by limiting new construction sort of increased them.

(currently, in the world, 3+ generation desighns just entered use, 4th generation desighns are under construction)