Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWhere are we going with electric cars? Are we kidding ourselves if every time...
we charge out EVs' batteries, that electricity still comes from power plants burning fossil fuels?
Just read that a major hydrogen rail initiative was just abandoned in Germany because battery power/electricity is cheaper. And we aren't even at that point here as many of our rail systems are still diesel.
What are we really doing? Oil/fossil fuels won't last forever, and it's use is slowly...no, rapidly...heating up the planet.
The three major categories of energy for electricity generation are fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), nuclear energy, and renewable energy sources. Most electricity is generated with steam turbines using fossil fuels, nuclear, biomass, geothermal, and solar thermal energy. Other major electricity generation technologies include gas turbines, hydro turbines, wind turbines, and solar photovoltaics.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
We've got to do better and quickly. How do we get the message across to maga cultists, and Manchin, who vote down every environmental initiatives introduced by progressives?
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Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)
brush
(53,792 posts)If you are looking strictly at fossil fuel consumption, and leave out the general overwhelming negative impacts of automobile-centric planning foisted on us for the last several decades, then electric vehicles consume LESS fossil fuel.
The reason for that is that it is more efficient to have one big honking generator burn fossil fuels and then distribute that as electricity that will be converted into kinetic energy by XXX,XXX electric cars, than it is to take the same energy content in petroleum, refine it into gasoline, and burn that in XXX,XXX internal combustion engines to turn that into kinetic energy.
So if you look at the overall systemic efficiency then, yes, you get more miles/kg of generated CO2 by burning coal in a power plant than by burning gasoline in a large number of individual engines.
There are some other systemic efficiencies in what it takes to manufacture the engines, etc..
But all of this is just a means of keeping an unsustainable infrastructure, premised on car-centric development, afloat in a life raft.
Electric cars are ultimately not sustainable either.
And if someone wants to sell some other system of large-scale electrical generation, then I invite them to build that BEFORE making it a necessary assumption of transportation planning. As a planning principle, "the Lord will provide" is historically not a good one.
brush
(53,792 posts)developing and using non-fossil fuel energy generation even if it's at first more expensive. Which is why I mentioned the rail company in Germany opting out of hydrogen locomotives for battery powered ones.
We have to get past electric cars too and on to the next generation of vehicle power, be it hydrogen, or whatever it turns out to be...maybe nuclear fusion. I didn't think I had to explain that to DUers. See below.
WXYZ Channel 7
https://www.wxyz.com › news › scientists-believe-they...
Dec 13, 2022 — A California laboratory has cracked the code on decades-long research to create a safe and clean energy source using nuclear fusion.
https://www.wxyz.com/news/scientists-believe-theyve-cracked-the-code-to-nuclear-fusion-a-new-renewable-energy-source
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)As noted above:
"As a planning principle, "the Lord will provide" is historically not a good one."
There is not going to be fusion-generated electricity in the grid in your lifetime. I guarantee you that.
It's not a matter of what anyone might "commit to". There is simply no level of "commitment" that makes fusion remotely feasible in the foreseeable future. And there is no "miracle breakthrough" which will do so either.
Believing in the "miracle breakthrough" that is going to "crack the code" on fusion or some other source of energy is the same as believing that UFO aliens are going to show and wave magic wands at all our problems or that Jesus will come back. It's just blind irrational faith.
As a species, WE DO NOT NEED ALL THESE INDIVIDUAL VEHICLES. We have made them a "necessity" by deliberate planning choices going back several decades, which enshrined dependence on automobiles into the fabric of how we have arranged our living circumstances.
The problem we face is not "How do we find a suitable power source for all these individual vehicles?" The problem we face, but do not acknowledge, is "How do we get rid of all these fucking cars that everyone has been forced to need?"
brush
(53,792 posts)come when it comes...it'll probably be a combination of solar, wind, wave, hydrogen or whatever it'll be. EVs recharged by fossil fuel generation are temporary in the long scheme of things.
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)There's not some kind of difference between electricity generated by fossil fuels or electricity generated by unicorn farts.
Transitioning to EV's will require vastly more generating capacity and much sooner than a now-non-existent form of generating electricity.
Technology doesn't just "come" like manna from the sky, so, yes, we have a very good idea of what forms of technology are currently in development and which ones have reasonable prospects of being scaled up to 1000 MW size.
brush
(53,792 posts)Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)I can read what you wrote.
You said, in post 12, "My point is EVs are stop gap to the next generation of vehicles"
What is it you imagine the "next generation of vehicles" to be powered by?
brush
(53,792 posts)EVs are not end of vehicle evolution.
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)No, their only emissions are NOT H2O since they are still internal combustion engines and will generate NOx compounds. That's a common misconception.
But, for the same reason that it is more efficient to run a generator from fossil fuels and to distribute the energy as electricity, it is still a better use of hydrogen to run a central generator and distribute the power as electricity, instead of having to build a hydrogen distribution system from scratch.
The thing about having an electrical grid is that you have a way to distribute ENERGY, from whatever source. It's already there.
Replacing all the gasoline stations with hydrogen stations requires building an entirely new infrastructure for the mass distribution of hydrogen fuel. Which is dumb if you already have a way to keep the hydrogen in central facilities and distribute the energy.
On top of that, you don't seem to get that hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism, not an energy source. You are going to need some other source of energy in order to make the hydrogen by electrolysis of water. What you get back when you use "hydrogen as a fuel" is a fraction of the energy you put into pulling apart the water molecules in the first place.
But if you have some huge-ass way of producing the electricity needed in order to MAKE the hydrogen from water, then you might as well skip the hydrogen and power the cars with whatever you think you are going to be using to make the hydrogen.
The whole reason why the primary emission product is H20 is that you are simply reversing the reaction by which you got the hydrogen in the first place.
So, tell me where you want to get the hydrogen and explain why you can't just power the EV's with that, and skip the hydrogen.
Because if the answer is "I'll use wind, hydropower, solar, nuclear, and/or fusion to make the hydrogen", then I'm baffled as to why you don't simply use those to power the EV's.
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_engine_vehicle
As pure hydrogen does not contain carbon, there are no carbon-based pollutants, such as carbon monoxide (CO) or hydrocarbons (HC), nor is there any carbon dioxide (CO2) in the exhaust. As hydrogen combustion occurs in an atmosphere containing nitrogen and oxygen, however, it can produce oxides of nitrogen known as NOx. In this way, the combustion process is much like other high temperature combustion fuels, such as kerosene, gasoline, diesel or natural gas. As such hydrogen combustion engines are not considered zero emission.
NOx compounds cause acid rain, respiratory illness, and are a greenhouse gas.
hunter
(38,318 posts)I would like to live in a world where ordinary people are not forced to own automobiles.
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)Automobiles are a poverty trap.
Figuring out how to fuel them is not the biggest problem with them, by far.
Think. Again.
(8,189 posts)EV's that rely on batteries that are made from limited resources such as lithium have will obviously be limited in how long we can produce them.
Whereas hydrogen, unlimited because it is produced and then reduced to it's original components which can then be produced again, have an UN-limited time to continue being produced.
Battery EV's ARE just a stop gap, but unfortunately will be pushed on us by profiteering corporations specifically because they are based on the higher profit potential of resources that can be monopolized, the more rare those resources become, the value they will return to those who own the rights to them.
BlueIn_W_Pa
(842 posts)is to force employers to allow work-from-home where appropriate.
NNadir
(33,527 posts)The car CULTure is not sustainable in any form, and delusional reports from journalists about fusion will have no bearing on that fact.
brush
(53,792 posts)evolution of transportation. Or course mass transit is more efficient and desirable but we both know getting the public to give up automobiles will not happen so we should work to develop them, then whatever comes next.
NNadir
(33,527 posts)...that show up in ads posted here and elsewhere are all powered by dangerous fossil fuels rebranded by fossil fuel salespeople and salesbots who show up here and elsewhere for cheap marketing purposes.
A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.
Neither electricity nor hydrogen represent primary energy and the laws of thermodynamics mean that they inherently involve the waste of energy and exergy destruction.
Irrespective of wishful thinking, the car CULTure is not sustainable in any form, but the cost will fall on future generations.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
BlueIn_W_Pa
(842 posts)capturing those pollutants (CO2 included) are FAR easier and economical when done at the source.
ie, capturing CO2 from a plant with such high concentrations is far easier than trying to do carbon capture out of the air.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,504 posts)Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)Is that how one defines "the problem" is suggestive of solutions.
If you define "the problem" as "we need to replace fossil fuels as the energy source for automobiles" then the solution is to find other energy sources for automobiles.
If you define "the problem" as "we are too dependent on automobiles for transportation - which leads to loss of independence and mobility for many people along with environmental destruction caused by roads and suburban sprawl" then the solutions are something else entirely.
The notion that "the future will consist of doing the same things we do now, but differently" is myopic, and fails to take into account that "the problem" is often something other than making marginal changes in order to do the same things the same way.
A good example is to ask people "What is the function of a refrigerator?" In other words, what is "the problem" solved by a refrigerator.
A lot of people will say, "To make or keep things cold" but that's only the chosen "solution" to "to keep food from spoiling".
If you define "the problem" as "how do I keep things cold?" you get one set of solutions.
If you define "the problem" as "how do I keep food from spoiling" there's a much broader range of potential solutions.
Starting back at square one, it is more enlightening to ask "what is the function of an automobile?" and work from there, instead of "how do I make running automobiles marginally more environmentally tolerable?"
hunter
(38,318 posts)Eleven months at the longest stretch without, as I recall. Powdered milk.
I had one great grandmother who considered rural electrification evil. So we had some family experience living without electricity's most enticing benefits.
My great grandma hated indoor plumbing too.
My parents were not so extreme.
bluestateboomer
(505 posts)If all electricity was generated from coal, electric vehicles (EVs) might not be significantly better for the environment BUT
However, there are a few points to consider:
Efficiency: Electric motors are generally more efficient than internal combustion engines. Despite higher emissions at the power plant level, electric vehicles can still be more efficient at converting energy into motion, which could reduce overall emissions per mile traveled.
Emission Control: Power plants might have emission control technologies in place that can reduce pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. This can somewhat mitigate the local air quality impact of coal-fired power generation.
Grid Mix: Real-world electricity generation is often a mix of various sources, including coal, natural gas, renewables (such as solar and wind), and nuclear. As the grid mix shifts towards cleaner energy sources over time, the emissions associated with charging EVs would decrease. The percentage of renewable energy generation is increasing every year.
Transition to Cleaner Energy: It's important to note that energy systems can transition over time. Many countries are working to reduce their reliance on coal and are increasing the share of renewable energy sources in their electricity generation mix. As the grid becomes cleaner, the environmental benefits of electric vehicles become more pronounced.
Technological Advancements: Continued advancements in energy storage, renewable energy generation, and battery technology could also make EVs more environmentally friendly, even when considering coal-based electricity generation.
Ev's are only one part of the climate solution. We need to enhance public transportation systems, generate more renewable energy, as well as restore the biological systems that sustain our planet. We have to move quickly on all fronts. The planet's ability to sustain life is running out of time.
brush
(53,792 posts)NNadir
(33,527 posts)...a significant form of energy has played out. It's a massive deadly failure. The expenditure of trillions of dollars on solar and wind has only resulted in the acceleration of climate change and the highest use of dangerous fossil fuels ever observed.
Think. Again.
(8,189 posts)the highest use of fossil fuels is actually the result of using higher amounts of fossil fuels instead of using other sources of energy.
If we used only solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc, plus hydrogen and batteries for the stored power we need for non-grid connected applications (like transit), we wouldn't be using any fossil fuels.
Blues Heron
(5,938 posts)thats the advantage - if your grid is half renewable, so are the cars charged off it, etc. If your grid nuclear, the evs are using nukes. If its coal, coal. Half gas, half hydro?
brush
(53,792 posts)
Martin68
(22,822 posts)powered cars, resulting in less fossil fuels being used. And second, just as importantly, fossil fuel powered electric generation will gradually be replaced by sustainable power generation methods. Abandoning electric cars because they aren't the perfect immediate solution will not only result in more fossil fuels being consumed, but will guarantee that gas-guzzling cars will remain in service far longer - providing more incentive to pump more oil and gas, and drill new wells.
brush
(53,792 posts)as long as they're powered by fossil fuel burning power plants. And you say I'm missing the point.
Seems some on this board think I'm advocating for fossil fuels and against EVs. Not at all, I'm advocating for research and development of what's next as EVs as they are now, are dependent on power generated by fossil fuel
Miguelito Loveless
(4,465 posts)I have been driving EVs since 2014, and had solar since 2015. Is essence my home and vehicles are "fusion-powered", using our local fusion reactor 8 light minutes away. Last I checked, that reactor has a few billion more years to run, and has zero problems and doesn't require us to spend a nickel to keep it running.
I have a heat pump and don't burn any fossil fuels to run my home or transportation. Solar, when I first looked into it was around $7.00 a watt back in 2005 (rooftop install) before incentives. By 2015 it was $2.75 a watt. Today it is around $1.75. As more people install it, markets of scale make it cheaper still, and I predict it will be under $1 a watt by 2030 (solar farms are already around the sub-$1 figure). Wind is cheaper still, and yes, the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind sometimes doesn't blow, but battery prices are also trending down in price. The grid gets greener every year as costly and inefficient coal plants are replaced with greener generation.
We have the technology, we just need the political will to make the transition. Something that is hard to do with fossil fuel industries spending hundreds of millions to maintain the status quo.
brush
(53,792 posts)EV locomotives instead of hydrogen ones because they are less expensive to run now, showing that hydrogen-powered vehicles already exist (their emissions are H2O believe it or not, a good thing) and that EV are certainly not the final step in the evolution of vehicles. And as oil fluctuates so much in cost, and it won't last forever, other power generation methods have to be developed...as humankind has always done.
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)And, yes, of course they produce H20, because thats what you get when you burn hydrogen.
Most hydrogen on earth is already H20, which means to GET hydrogen, you have to pull those water molecules apart. The energy required to do that is what you get back when you let the hydrogen recombine with atmospheric oxygen.
But you aren't explaining where you think the hydrogen comes from.
Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is an energy storage mechanism. To GET hydrogen, we have to generate electricity to pull water molecules apart. That energy is now available to us by letting the hydrogen again combine with oxygen to produce H2O.
As an energy storage mechanism, hydrogen is pretty dense (in terms of J/g relative to say, a battery) but there's no free hydrogen running around loose. We have to make it either from H20 or from....... petroleum (they aren't called hydrocarbons for nothing, you know).
brush
(53,792 posts)Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)The word "may" is doing some heavy lifting in that headline.
brush
(53,792 posts)Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)Yes, there are hydrogen vehicles.
They do not solve any problems, unfortunately, because it remains more efficient to use electricity to power electric vehicles than to produce hydrogen.
So, the hydrogen fairy is needed in order to come up with a way of making hydrogen at scale in a way that is more efficient than simply using the electricity and skipping the hydrogen.
The problem with automobiles is the AUTOMOBILES, not the fuel.
brush
(53,792 posts)We have to look past them.
Caribbeans
(776 posts)A few of these every 2-300 miles across the southwest US and voila- hydrogen for cars and trucks in that region. No more diesel or petrol. No more billions for Saudi Arabia. No more petrodollar.
Have you heard the cost projections RE: H2 from cheap solar/wind sources? If solar costs ~.01 cents per kWh and it takes around 45-50 kWh for a Kg of hydrogen anyone can do the math. No refining or shipping costs to add. Of course this is all blaspheme to anyone that thinks the US Dollar should be tied to Oil.
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)The idea of building a huge solar power farm to make hydrogen is pretty dumb.
You are generating that much electricity just to pull water apart to make hydrogen, and then you have to transport, store and have an entire refueling infrastructure around hydrogen.
Instead, you can SKIP THE HYDROGEN, and distribute the electricity through the grid which ALREADY EXISTS to charge the electric vehicles.
I don't understand your point about oil. Using solar to generate electricity to charge EV's has nothing to do with oil.
However, the idea of using automobiles as an entire transportation system in the first place, had a lot to do with oil. That is why the notion of trying to figure out "how do we do something designed around cheap oil without the cheap oil" is a stupid project from the get go, instead of "how do we adapt our communities to a transportation system that makes sense." If you want to talk about "blasphemy", you aren't even getting close.
Miguelito Loveless
(4,465 posts)since we are using electricity to create H2, to then convert back into electricity to move the vehicle. This is inefficient and consumes more power than if we just charged a battery and ran from that as we do now with EVs. The amount of power needed to make a kg of H2 which could drive a fuel cell vehicle (which is still an EV, just with a smaller battery) 50 miles, could drive a regular EV 150+ miles.
H2 powered vehicles have been for sale for the last decade alongside EVs, and the winner has been EVs. Almost no one is buying fuel cell vehicles. HFCV are overly complicated, inefficient, expensive, and have virtually no fueling infrastructure.
hunter
(38,318 posts)It's nearly impossible for any affluent person to reduce their personal environmental footprint to "less than average."
Whenever you spend money you are feeding the machine that's destroying the earth.
It's an ethical problem I haven't solved. I've been affluent, at least by global standards, for most of my adult life.
The smallest environmental footprint I ever had was living as a dumpster-diving homeless and semi-homeless young man in my early twenties. I'd rather not repeat that.
Martin68
(22,822 posts)BlueIn_W_Pa
(842 posts)EV trucks and SUVs are 2.5 times the weight of ICE, and sedans are over 30% heavier.
More energy is needed to move EVs simple due to their weight (with current battery tech)
Think. Again.
(8,189 posts)...that's why those who care are engaging in an energy "transition", to get away from burning fossil fuels -for electricity AND for transit.
It wouldn't really do us any much good if we only transitioned our electric grid to non-CO2 energy sources but kept driving gas and diesel vehicles, OR the other way around, would it?
I completely agree with your sense of urgeny:
"We've got to do better and quickly. How do we get the message across to maga cultists, and Manchin, who vote down every environmental initiatives introduced by progressives?"
Well Said!
msongs
(67,420 posts)brush
(53,792 posts)BlueIn_W_Pa
(842 posts)would also decimate the southern hemisphere's environment because of the minerals that are needed
[link:
NNadir
(33,527 posts)...are.
They're useless, having soaked up trillions of dollars for no result.
This stupid fantasy has got to go. It's killing the planet.
Voltaire2
(13,070 posts)How we generate electricity can be improved. Vehicles using fossil fuels will always be using fossil fuels.
This talking point, straight from the FUD playbook, along with it's companions: 'but the tires pollute!' and 'but waddabout those cobalt/lithium etc mining operations!' are all brought to you from the fossil fuel industry to preserve their strangle hold over the global economy.
FUD = Fear Uncertainty Doubt. This is the propaganda technique used for decades by tobacco, fossil fuel, healthcare etc lobbies to derail progress.
hunter
(38,318 posts)That's especially true for the airline industry of the future.
Nobody is going to be flying from San Francisco to Beijing in battery powered airliners.
brush
(53,792 posts)Voltaire2
(13,070 posts)hunter
(38,318 posts)I'll tell people flat out that their support for large scale solar and wind farms is just another flavor of climate change denial -- let's call it "climate change denial light" as in light beer or cigarettes. Self-proclaimed "progressives" are part of the problem too, supporting impractical and expensive "renewable" energy schemes that will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels.
We need to quit cars, it doesn't matter at all what powers these cars, and we need to quit fossil fuels.
Like it or not, nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do.
As we futz around with fossil fuel dependent crap like hydrogen powered trains, solar farms blighting our deserts, and offshore wind, the world burns.
Aggressive gigawatt renewable energy schemes in places like California, Denmark, and Germany have failed. The experiment has been done, the numbers are in, and these real world numbers are readily available for anyone to look at and analyze.
I used to be an anti-nuclear activist. Now I'm not.
The "glass half full" optimism of the renewable energy enthusiasts will not save the world, it only leaves room for the fossil fuel industry to fill the rest of the glass with shit.
LiberaBlueDem
(905 posts)Smaller is more economical.
But will people give up the luxury of large cars?
They will if the true costs of oil are paid at the pump.
About $10 a gallon oughtta do it.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)It did a state-by-state analysis, based on the generation mix, in each state, was it “better” to drive a BEV or a "Weak Hybrid” (like a Prius) or a “Plug-In Hybrid” (like a Volt™) and by how much.
In a state like West Virginia, where the grid was almost 100% coal-fired, driving a weak hybrid was “better” than driving a BEV or PHEV, however, in most of the US, the BEV was better.
The fact that a portion of the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels is offset by the greater efficiency of an EV.
EPA: Explaining Electric & Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Driving Range
The number of miles an EV will travel before the battery needs to be recharged is often less than the distance your gasoline car can travel before being refueled, but typically is still enough to accomplish the average person’s daily driving needs. An electric vehicle’s fuel economy is reported in terms of miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent (MPGe). Think of this as being similar to MPG, but instead of presenting miles per gallon of the vehicle’s fuel type, it represents the number of miles the vehicle can go using a quantity of electricity with the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline. This allows you to compare an EV with a gasoline vehicle even though electricity is not dispensed or burned in terms of gallons.
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