Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All 775
New submitter countach44 writes "From an article in IEEE's Spectrum magazine: 'Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars begins to look more and more like shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another. We wouldn't expect doctors to endorse such a thing. Should environmentally minded people really revere electric cars?' The author discusses the controversy and social issues behind electric car research and demonstrates what many of us have been thinking: are electric cars really more environmentally friendly than those based on internal combustion engines?"
Reader Jah-Wren Ryel takes issue with one of the sources, and offers a criticism from Fast Company.
Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
We've been saying this for over a decade! (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless we switch to solar, wind and/or nuclear for the bulk of our electricity generation, all electric cars do is concentrate where we burn the hydrocarbons to power them.
LK
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
What about building the cars itself? Battery production pollutes quite a bit.
Geopolitics vs Environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it isn't any cleaner, but I'd rather have my car using power from natural gas or nuclear than other sources that are more likely to come from outside my country. The geopolitics of sending our dollars to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or elsewhere unfriendly isn't a good idea, so even if the pollution level is the same, electric is superior to gasoline/petrol.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
So does lead-acid production yet we've gotten a handle on that. And nobody seems to care about battery pollution when it's for PCs, smartphones and flashlights.
It'll be a while until EVs start increasing that by a significant fraction.
I'm not saying there aren't problems but they are manageable - if the environmental standards are strong and enforced.
In some places, that's a big if, at the moment.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if ALL of the electricity to power EVs was generated from the dirtiest coal plants, it would STILL be cleaner than every single car carrying around its own heavy, petrol burning, ICE. Also you have the benefits of localizing pollution somewhere less populated. This smells like a big oil hit piece.
Now, there is a separate conversation about other forms of transportation being even better than personal automobiles. Trains and even airplanes might be better in some scenarios than everyone racing around pell-mell with their own car, but that's a different issue. If we, as a society, have decided that everyone will be driving their own vehicle, the question is how to make that scenario least damaging; and the answer is electric vehicles.
paul revere on a bicycle (Score:5, Insightful)
"Should environmentally minded people really revere electric cars?"
I'm environmentally minded. Guess what I revere. Yep, you got it, since it's a no-brainer: bicycles. Best machine humans have ever created. Good for the body and good for the earth. I've never owned a car, and I don't want to. I use car sharing programs when I need to drive and bicycle or use public transportation (or both) otherwise.
And before anyone says "Well, but bicycles don't work for everyone: kids, job, blah blah," let me just squash that fallacious argument. Bicycle advocates *never* are saying we *all* have to ride bicycles. Just more of us. Everyone who wants to should feel they can. I bet you want to. Wind in the face, endorphin high, the feeling of doing things with your body, the joy of not destroying the earth to do the daily drudge: who doesn't want that?
Which has multiple benefits (Score:5, Insightful)
The central power station is not making its emissions a few feet from the sidewalk. Its pollution controls aren't restricted by weight or the need for portability.
It's also way more efficient.
Electrifying the vehicle fleet is like modularizing your code. Instead of being tied to petroleum, with an electric fleet you can snap in nuclear, tidal, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, or whatever else turns out to be a good idea.
Re:We've been saying this for over a decade! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if we don't make the switch to cleaner sources, it's still a win. Collecting or cleaning up the emissions at a few thousand power plants should be easier, more efficient and cost-effective than doing it at tens of millions of tailpipes.
Plus, it means that you don't get the smog-forming exhaust and ground-level ozone in your population centers. You also get some noise reduction since EVs are quieter and there's no engine idling.
What is the value of flexibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
While charging your electric car with coal power sounds like a bad deal in the short term. The electric doesn't care where that power comes from, so in the long term that gives us the flexibility to operate an energy economy that is based on a wide range of sources. Also, diversity in the market also means stability and theoretically fair prices. (but we'll probably cock that up)
Re:We've been saying this for over a decade! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a pessimistic point of view.
All other things are equal, one could argue that concentrating the hydrocarbon production might be a good thing, because it at least gives us the opportunity to efficiently process those emissions in one place instead of spewing it from millions of cars (or installing millions of scrubbers). I'm not saying that they WILL do better -- just that they could, and that it would likely be more efficient than anything you could slap onto a few million cars.
Similarly, we would have the ability to start switching everyone to green power if everyone has an electric vehicle. Seen that way, keeping everyone on fossil fuels has a very high opportunity cost, because you can't switch a gasoline motor to solar/wind/nuclear.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think hybrids are a good option. It's essentially a highly efficient fuel vehicle even before they add the batteries, and the batteries smooth out the variations in engine work rather than acting as pure electric motors, plus regenerative braking, plus the feedback to the driver to encourage better driving. So you're still getting all the power from gasoline instead of the power grid, but it uses it more efficiently.
Re:We've been saying this for over a decade! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless we switch to solar, wind and/or nuclear for the bulk of our electricity generation, all electric cars do is concentrate where we burn the hydrocarbons to power them.
and that's a good thing because the concentrated hydrocarbon cremation facilities can generate energy with >80% efficiency, while a car burning the same hydrocarbons generates energy with only 20% efficiency. This means you need to burn about three times as much hydrocarbons if you burn it in the car instead of at a power plant.
The portable power plant you find in a car (internal combustion engine) does not even come close to the efficiency you find in a stationary power plant. The car simply wastes most of the fuel's energy as heat, and then wastes even more energy to get rid of all that heat it by swirling liquid around in a "radiator": a device whose sole purpose is to waste as much energy as possible to prevent the engine from melting itself. What's more, is when you step on the brakes all of the car's kinetic energy is wasted as even more heat. The whole thing is hugely wasteful and inefficient.
Re:paul revere on a bicycle (Score:2, Insightful)
pretty sure you forgot the cost of making a car vs the cost of a bike or running shoes.
Fundamental problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically we keep looking for "green" alternatives that don't require us to be even slightly inconvenienced or to change our lifestyles at all - and it's probably not possible.
Re:Geopolitics vs Environment (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, wouldn't it be preferable for Saudi Arabia and Syria and Egypt to be out of natural resources in 50 years, but the socially-compassionate countries still have theirs?
Yes, because those areas aren't volatile enough yet, we need to have them energy-starved (and likely literally starving) as well, while we Westerners continue to enjoy our remaining energy reserves in front of them. If you think they generate too many terrorists now, just wait for real desperation to set in. You're going to need all those oil reserves for defense...
Seriously though, in the long run there is no "homeland-only solution". Either the entire world figures out how to survive without fossil fuels, or modern civilization mostly collapses when the fossil fuels run out, and we (well, those of thus that survive) go back to a pre-industrial lifestyle. Hoarding fuel only delays the inevitable, whereas developing renewable energy makes the exhaustion of fossil fuels a non-issue.
Re:Geopolitics vs Environment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:paul revere on a bicycle (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that the effort required to put the necessary calories into your body is a lot higher, and less environmentally friendly, than burning a few gallons of gasoline in a car engine.
What makes you sure of that? I think it would depend a lot on what kind of food you ate, and how the food was produced.
But even if it were true, it wouldn't matter... because you were going to eat those calories anyway. So the environmental costs of producing the food are present either way; the only question is whether you want those calories to go towards making you fat, or to be used as part of your transportation and/or recreation.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Please show me any battery chemistry that operates at 100% efficiency, either on charging or discharging.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Electricity is mostly used as an energy transfer medium because it sucks as a method of storage. It does have loss, too, from resistance, inductance, and capacitance of the conductors. Shifting the energy to/from electric/magnetic fields, a typical process for any electric device, also incurs loss. The fact is, per mile driven, it's more efficient to store the carbon on site and burn as needed, than it is to burn it in a plant and transmit the resultant energy down electric power lines.
Energy generation is the real issue. The only zero greenhouse gas emission technology that can generate the scale of power needed is nuclear, and the earth firsters won't go for that. Things like wind and solar are ok as supplements but they cannot possibly meet the current growing energy needs, never mind such needs plus electric cars. The more exotic systems like ocean wave energy are experimental at best. We need a stepping stone if we want to move to all-electric. At the moment, that stepping stone is nuclear. Without it, electric cars are actually worse for the environment than the current situation.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh Wait, that's the inefficiency that is pushed upstream to the coal fired generation plant.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, but this misses the point of EV or fuel cell vehicles. At present, it stands so that these will push power generation to coal or oil fired power plants in many areas.
BUT:
1. Power plants will be transitioned as well, and it is substantially easier to place efficient and centralised greenhouse reducing technologies in a couple of power plants than in 2 billion cars.
2. Fuel will run out, and a transition must be starting now in any case.
3. In some places, most electricity already comes from nuclear / hydro / wind / solar (e.g. France and Sweden).
The transition away from petrol and diesel to battery or fuel cells, is not so much as cutting green house gasses now, it is about enabling a new infrastructure that is easier to control and manage. The being clean argument does however help to sell the electric vehicles now.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Lol. Nope. Charging / discharging the battery, you will take a hit. Transmission over power lines? Taking a hit.
Now, it may, in the long run, be superior to petroleum tech, but let's not start lying.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
It does have loss, too, from resistance, inductance, and capacitance of the conductors. Shifting the energy to/from electric/magnetic fields, a typical process for any electric device, also incurs loss.
Loss from inductance and capacitance is imaginary loss. Any energy you lose to charging up the capacitor or building the magnetic field in the inductor, you gain back when the capacitor is discharged or the field in the inductor is released. The only real loss is resistance. Electrical lines can leak to ground though. It is a bit of a stretch, but I hope that is what you meant.
The fact is, per mile driven, it's more efficient to store the carbon on site and burn as needed, than it is to burn it in a plant and transmit the resultant energy down electric power lines.
That assumes the power plant and the car are of similar efficiency. They aren't. Power plants can use much more efficient external combustion engines and run at the optimal rpms. Under optimal conditions (for the car) the power plant is roughly twice as efficient as a car. Typical conditions favor the power plant even more (because it always runs at optimal). Given all of the losses in getting the power from the plant through the car and to the road, it is a wash for same fuel power. However, large scale power plants don't run on gasoline. If powered from petroleum, they run on natural gas which is a lot easier, cheaper and more efficient to produce.
Energy generation is the real issue. The only zero greenhouse gas emission technology that can generate the scale of power needed is nuclear, and the earth firsters won't go for that. Things like wind and solar are ok as supplements but they cannot possibly meet the current growing energy needs, never mind such needs plus electric cars. The more exotic systems like ocean wave energy are experimental at best. We need a stepping stone if we want to move to all-electric. At the moment, that stepping stone is nuclear. Without it, electric cars are actually worse for the environment than the current situation.
Nobody is suggesting that we switch to a single source energy. The great thing about the energy grid is that you can just keep tacking on more generators as they come online. As more green plants come online, every device powered from the grid is that much greener.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it uses the word will, but it takes time to prepare for the future. It is arguably so that, currently, EV does not really improve that much considering the average electricity plant in the world. But, we cannot ignore the future just because we live today. The fact is that we have to face the realities of today and the inevitabilities of the future.
Granted, an individual cannot really plan for the future in the same way as a society can, which is why a person not switch his brand of cigarets because of long term benefits. However, assuming either your private or public health care system offered you discounts if you switched your cigaret brand (or extra taxes on the old brand), because society see that on the whole, they will save money this way, would the average smoker still not switch, even if he/she saved money here and now?
As I mentioned, a society or a larger organisation have the ability to plan in long term in a way that you as an individual cannot do. Though the society can influence you to make the "right decision" in various ways. Meaning that, even something that may not make sense for an individual today from a utilitarian perspective, will make more sense from a financial perspective. In other words, society can plan for the "will happen" part and ensure that the current realities, at least in financial terms align with the future and the "will happen" part.
In addition to this, the fact is that infrastructure take a lot of time to build. Therefore, in order to build the infrastructure for the future, we need to invest in it today, because rest assured, at current consumption, oil (and natural gas) WILL run out (in reality it will just become ridiculously expensive, but that only gives us some additional time for the transition). When that happens, there better be a working infrastructure for EV (including fuel cells) in place, because neither coal nor nuclear is viable for direct installing in cars.
Regenerative braking and lack of idling engine (Score:4, Insightful)
Two of the biggest benefits to an electric car are:
(1) When you're stopped, your motor doesn't keep running. Think of all the fuel you've wasted either letting your car warm up, or sitting at a light, or stuck in traffic.
(2) Regenerative braking technology converts your momentum back into usable power instead of just wasting it as heat.
These, combined with the fact that your car doesn't care where it gets electricity from, and that a coal plant is still more efficient overall than thousands of independent engines, is precisely why this article is probably OPEC propaganda. :D
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, building a nuclear power plant does involve enormous amounts of carbon released. I believe most of that is from the concrete poured, not from the dozing of land and transportation of construction materials.
Once built a nuclear power plant produces no carbon emissions and can do so for a good portion of a century if properly maintained. It produces enormous amounts of electricity in that time, which more than offsets the carbon emissions from its construction.
The only electric power source that produce less carbon per kilowatt hour produced is hydroelectric. Every other form of electricity either produces more carbon or exists only in the imagination.
Calling nuclear power a zero emission source of electricity may be a bit of exaggeration but it's as close to zero as we are going to get.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:2, Insightful)
Eh? Show me an internal combustion engine that makes it to 35% efficiency. What kind of argument is that.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
All of this. While I agree with the reservations on EVs as 'vehicles of the future', we should not underestimate or, worse, forget, that a car running on petrol, diesel, etc. will always use non-regenerative fuel sources. An EV could - I repeat: - could be running from electricity coming from hydro-energy, wind energy, solar energy ... you name it.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if you believe mining of the uranium ore, purifying and enriching it and producing fuel rods and transporting them and cleaning up the waste and transporting/refining/recycling and storing it does not use any energy ...
If it produces more energy that what "mining of the uranium ore, purifying and enriching it and producing fuel rods and transporting them and cleaning up the waste and transporting/refining/recycling and storing it" needs, your point becomes moot since the process can power itself without generating CO2.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. First, "EVs produce lower global warming emissions ... even when the electricity is produced primarily from coal in regions with the “dirtiest” electricity grids." [ucsusa.org]
Next, most EVs are sold in California [autoblog.com], state in which only 8% of electricity comes from coal [ca.gov]. Furthermore, 39% of plug-in drivers have solar panels [energycenter.org] on their home/garage.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's still better than 30% for a typical ICE, but worse when you combine the 35% efficiency of a coal-fired powerplant with transmission line losses and 60% efficiency of the car itself. That said, we've got way more coal than oil.
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's a factor consumers and policy makers need to be aware off. Where I live in Texas most electricity is produced by coal burning plants. If I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint by carpooling, limiting my travel, and operating a fuel efficient ethanol burning vehicle, and then switch to an all-electric vehicle I might fool myself into thinking that all the energy consumed is clean and green. I might drive more often, longer distances, leave the vehicle running in idle to keep the A/C on, use the vehicle as a portable power source, etc. The impact of such behavior may lead to more total air pollution from the power demanded from the coal burning plants.
Alternatively, if I built my own off-grid power system of wind turbines, solar panels, micro-hydro, and a digester with bio-gas turbine generator, I may end up with an energy surplus if I oversize the system or if I expect a need for all the power sometime in the future. The same frivolous consumption of electricity would not necessarily be as hard on the environment than when tied to a coal burning plant.
When it comes to sustainability there is no one single fix or cure. Energy and resource conservation will alway be an important element. The equipment you own and operate needs to be manufactured with as little embedded energy as possible. Recycling will be important to keep landfills manageable. Reduced use, proper handling, and safe disposal/recycling of hazardous materials will be essential (ideally, moving away from such materials altogether).
Re:Depends on the energy source duh! (Score:5, Insightful)