Anecdotally, around 40% of the electricity in Germany was generated from coal in 2018, but in january 2019, a group of federal and state leaders as well as industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists made an agreement to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038.[1]
Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also don't actively decrease our dependency on fossil fuel.
It actually does make sense to burn coal (or oil) in power stations to power electric vehicles.
You'd have to have a very dirty grid and keep it dirty for decades for it to be a bad idea, and in that case you have bigger problems and it's not the EVs at fault.
> Even when the electricity comes from the dirtiest coal-dominated grid, electric vehicles (EVs) still produce less global warming pollution than their conventional counterparts, and with fewer tailpipe emissions (or none at all).
That quote is based on US grids but the general point holds worldwide.
A dirty grid just means the electric car needs to be kept in service a little longer to be greener than an ICE car, but it's still well within the lifetime of the vehicle. It's [roughly, from memory] service life of 12-18 months for a clean grid, and around 5 years for a dirty grid. The above is about how quickly the lower CO2 per mile of an EV offsets the CO2 required to build the car (which mostly means building the battery). Even with a dirty grid, EVs produce much less CO2 per mile than ICE.
Isn't running an internal combustion engine in a car still substantially less efficient than the power plant necessary to charge it, regardless of the fuel?
Not just that, ICE cars emit their shitty exhaust right where lots of people live. Things are generally more complex than breaking it down to a single CO2 number make it appear, and I'm a bit uneasy that recent trend.
Also very dangerous particles go airborne from the use of brake pads. EVs (and hybrids) use mostly regenerative braking, and release almost no such pollution.
You make a good point about brake pads but EVs still release particles from tyre wear, although there is active research on tyres that reduce that source of pollution too.
CO2 emissions are of particular concern right now (and honestly should have been for the past 40 years), so it makes sense that they get a lot of attention. But you're absolutely right that it's not the only kind of pollution, and the others shouldn't be ignored either.
Despite there being 7 billion of us, we seem to struggle with paying attention to more than one problem at a time.
Gasoline burns very cleanly in modern (that is, <10 years) vehicles, with little to no emissions other than CO2, and most importantly, no particulate pollution. Particulate pollution is much worse for diesel vehicles, though.
Compared to those two, though, coal power plants are dirty as hell, and I’d take equivalent amount of car emissions to generate the same power over coal any day.
I code at a hospital, which is in a poor neighborhood. The garbage exhaust on my walk in to work from cheap old cars is unbelievable, to say nothing of 18 wheelers and huge trucks rolling through this poor neighboring neighborhood all day. Kids living there are straight up taking lung and brain damage from that exhaust. So it does grind my gears when people talk about coal EVs being dirtier, they just dont think of poor minority kids who bear the brunt of local city emissions of dirty ICE and diesel.
Also when it's cold outside the "clean" engines are really dirty as the catalytic converter do almost nothing at low temperatures.
"One of its biggest shortcomings is that it only works at a fairly high temperature. When you start your car cold, the catalytic converter does almost nothing to reduce the pollution in your exhaust." [1]
And when it's cold the car usually starts at someone home around where other people live and that's where the pollution ends up.
For diesel engines that operate at lower temperatures this is even worse.
Trucks running dirty diesel aren’t really the same thing as a modern gasoline car.
Particulate pollution from highways and major roads is definitely a real issue and there have been studies done showing a lot of health problems result from living 250-500m or closer to such a road.
But if we’re talking about a modern emissions-compliant gas/petrol ICE vs a coal power plant I’m not sure how that shakes out. Coal power emissions are estimated to have massive health effects that affect millions as well.
(Of course, best solution is electric car powered by nat gas, nuclear, or renewables which don’t emit particulates at all...)
ICE engines are around 20% efficiency I think, while e.g. a gas turbine in a power plant is around 60%. Very little efficiency is lost in transmission cables and in the electric motor, so it is definitely a lot more efficient to use electric cars as a way of burning fossil fuels.
Not to mention that coal plants and gas power plants can be changed to burn biomass or do gasification of biomass. That allows us to avoid fossil fuels entirely. You cannot easily run an internal combustion engine on biomass.
Sure you can produce ethanol or biodiesel from plants, but that is not as attractive as gasifying wood pellet. In particular because the latter does not compete with agricultural land.
”Taking the conversion factor of 2.58 in France into account (see Embodied energy#Electricity), we would find an efficiency of about 0.5/2.58 or 19 %, which corresponds to the order of magnitude of the balance of the combustion vehicles, according to the diagram of the Department of energy (where the efficiency of combustion vehicles is less than 20%). By the way, according to the French energy agency (ADEME), the primary energy consumption of electric vehicles and combustion-powered ones would be approximately equivalent”
I think that even ignores the higher weight of electric cars. Because of that, I think it’s better for the world to buy a small ICE than to buy a Tesla (for the local environment, things are different)
That may well be so, but my conviction is that we need to substantially reduce carbon emissions across the board, and if that's true I don't think replacing gasoline cars with coal powered electricity plants makes a lot of sense, unless maybe the CO2 is captured and stored, but at that point you might as well go nuclear (which I am a proponent of, as the only realistic alternative at this point).
Internal combustion engines pollute the air where I'm living. Moving pollution away from residential areas is a worthwhile task in itself. That makes a lot of sense to me.
I live in a densely populated country. Even a relatively minor accident at a nuclear facility would trigger a huge evacuation (I've seen the disaster control plans), causing major economic harm. Also my country does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly. Nuclear does not look like the sane option here.
fjfaase, your statement "An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine" is very surprising and not at all what I would expect.
Can you cite any sources for that or explain it a bit more?
Aside from particulate matter in exhaust, regenerative braking doesn't produce dust like friction braking does, thus I'd expect electric cars to produce much less dust than ICE vehicles.
Rubber tyres on asphalt produce a fair bit of very fine particulate matter, and are currently ubiquitous in vehicles - I imagine this is what fjfaase was referring to.
That said, the contribution is tiny - on the order of 2.5% of total roadside PM10.
>Also my country does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly.
I don’t think you realize how little there is to deal with. It could easily be exported to a competent country.
It’s shocking how people are willing to effectively endorse burning fossil fuels for base load to destroy the environment over the next 50 years because of something that might be a problem in a few thousand years.
An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine. Thus in that respect they are as poluting. The CO2 and NOx combustion engines produces are not that dangerous to our health. Soot, mainly produced by heavy diesel engines, is also a dangerous form of polution, but most trucks should have filters for those by now.
> An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine.
This is utter nonsense. Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust. You are confusing this with emissions during production. My point is about emissions at the location of a car's use.
> The CO2 and NOx combustion engines produces are not that dangerous to our health.
If this was true, there would have been no diesel scandal at all. However, car exhaust is indeed very dangerous to your health, especially if you live next to heavy traffic.
> Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust.
QUOTE
Traffic related particles can be distinguished into: exhaust traffic related particles, which are emitted
as a result of incomplete fuel combustion and lubricant volatilization during the combustion procedure, and nonexhaust traffic related particles, which are either generated from non-exhaust traffic related sources such as brake,
tyre, clutch and road surface wear or already exist in the environment as deposited material and become
resuspended due to traffic induced turbulence.
It is estimated that exhaust and non-exhaust sources contribute
almost equally to total traffic-related PM10 emissions. However, as exhaust emissions control become stricter,
relative contributions of non-exhaust sources to traffic related emissions will increasingly become more significant.
> It is estimated that exhaust and non-exhaust sources contribute almost equally to total traffic-related PM10 emissions. However, as exhaust emissions control become stricter, relative contributions of non-exhaust sources to traffic related emissions will increasingly become more significant.
So if this "estimate" (i.e. conjecture) is on point, EV produce less than half of the emissions of an ICE car currently (EV have 0 exhaust emissions) and will continue to produce much less even when ICE are somewhat improved (and manufacturers stop defrauding customers). Let's not forget that EV also brake less than ICE cars.
> This is utter nonsense. Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust.
Have you ever changed a tire on Tesla because it was worn down? Where do you think the rubber in the old tire went when it was worn down? Emitted into the environment, that’s where.
The GP is obviously wrong about EVs emitting no fine dust, see my sibling comment, but we're talking about fine dust, i.e. PM10 dust.
The study my comment links to notes that only 0.1-10% (depending on conditions) of tire wear meets that criteria, the rest are all more coarse particles.
Do you think car manufacturers should wait to make electric cars until all power plants have a timeline to convert? Or that power plants should wait until all car manufacturers are switching? Or that they should both act without waiting for the other?
Even with the current mix in the electric grid, electric cars produce quite a bit less CO2 than any combustion engined car and get cleaner as more coal power plants are decommissioned. It is happening perhaps to slow, but it is happening. In 2019 electricity generation from coal was quite a bit down compared to 2018 due to CO2 certificates finally having an effect.
Germany is not building new coal plants so they are not going to burn more coal because of EVs. EVs indeed create more demand for electricity, which is met by deploying more clean energy.
Coal plants stopped being a good option economically decades ago and we are now getting to the point where keeping the existing plants going is also no longer economical. Gas plants are following pretty soon as well.
I think we need plugs where people park their cars at work rather than at homes. As that is the peak for solar power and also the point where power prices go negative in some countries because of excess production. Night time charging unless your grid is mostly nuclear or wind is probably the worst in terms of pollution.
I am not talking about cheap but about pollution. As more cars go electric it would be better if the car charging is done at peak solar. UK is getting out of europe with brexit but the other remaining countries are connecting their grids with each other so even northern european countries would be using more solar even without having much sunlight
Many powerplants run thought the night because they cannot be turned on and off. The most polluting time to use the grid is during peak demand in the evening, when every powerplant has to be brought online, even the most polluting ones.
Northern Europe relies on Wind, not Solar for renewable energy. Yes, we are integratingg powergrid, but you can't pull 100 GW from Spain to UK. Yhat would require absolutely monstrous infrastructure.
What your assertion for night time charging based on?
In the next decade a few million electric cars will be charging of the world's grid. Currently you need peakers most using Fossil fuels for just the evening period with the few million electric cars charging at night you will be needing those plants to run all night long that's my main point. So promoting day time charging during peak solar is the way to. Car batteries are not good enough yet but in the future these same car batteries could be used for peak demand instead of using peaker plants. But to be able to do this the countries need to start planning for this now instead of a decade from now when the duck curve becomes worse. BTW in my first post I did say unless the base load is nuclear and wind.
As far as infrastructure for 100gw solar for UK goes Singapore is planning to buy 10gw of solar power from Australia by undersea cable so the possibilities are there.
I haven't heard of the Singapore project before, that is impressive indeed.
I think the proper way to solve a problem should be smart charging, where the car chooses the cheapest energy through out the day, making much finer decision than a consumer ever could. And grid should be (it usually is) managed in such a way that lowest price corresponds to highest % of clean energy.
We could take this even further: usually the grid responds to demand and predict demand based on past patterns, but we could have a protocol for IoT devices and cars to request power they will need in the future, and ask the grid for the best time to draw power in the next X hour window.
Because despite the low gas prices, solar and wind prices are trending down as efficiencies increase and as economies of scale improve the economics. Prices are already dipping below those prices for new bids.
So, if you are planning a gas plant that needs to be operational for decades, the economic outlook is pretty grim. That's why lots of plans for new gas plans are getting shelved.
Existing plants run quite economically. But when cheaper clean energy becomes available at scale, it becomes more expensive to operate them. Selling expensive energy during low demand is not going to be an option because cheaper energy will be preferred. Spinning plants up during peak demand takes time and battery + solar is already cheaper and faster for that as well. A gas plant that isn't running part of the time is going to be more expensive. That's why a lot of them will be taken out long before their planned end of life.
Currently people are shutting down the most expensive plants first (nuclear & coal) but once that is gone, gas will be next.
None of this adresses the storage problem. Unless/until storage gets a lot cheapet, there are going to be baseline/peaker fossil/nuclear plants. (No peaker nuclear, ofc.)
Solar/wind doesn’t compete with gas because it cannot provide dependable base load.
Solar/wind + massive energy storage is what competes with gas. And in that category it’s not even close to competitive because batteries are still way too expensive.
I keep hearing this. How many twh do you think you need and why? And how much are you willing to pay for it? The sun comes out every day. On a bad day there are clouds and your panels are less effective but still produce power (except in the arctic regions). Wind blows every day somewhere but not necessarily everywhere. Well known facts. However, continent wide black clouds without any wind whatsoever is pretty rare and unlikely to last very long if it happens at all. So instead of storing energy locally, you can absorb a lot of this by moving energy around via wires.
So, you need batteries locally for fluctuations and you can cross connect sites with wires so you can import excess energy from elsewhere. Conveniently when it is cloudy, it's usually also pretty windy. Global warming is oddly helping here by creating even more wind.
So, a combination of a some over capacity, some wires for moving energy around, and some battery for short term fluctuations would be all you need. If it's not enough on the worst days, just add more windmills/solar/batteries. At the rate prices are dropping installing 2-3x the needed capacity would still be cheaper than keeping gas plants around. Those prices are projected to continue to drop of course making the whole thing only even more affordable.
In Germany - as well as in some other countries - the problem is not only generation of electricity, but the capacity to transfer it. There may be lots of renewables, but not way to transfer it to consumers because of not enough capacity in the grid. There is lots of public resistance to expanding the grid (mostly along the lines of "not in my backyard").
Also bringing the necessary capacity for proper charging to the average underground parking of a building costs tens of thousands of Euros per parking spot (numbers I got from the electricity distribution company). That's an investment most people are simply not willing to make especially when renting.
What would be the reason for people to oppose developing the grid, especially as NIMBY? Other than the obvious cost issue, is it the disruption caused by works?
If they quoted you that much money, it sounds like there's a market there ready for disruption. 10k Euros is far too much, especially when you can do the job for many parking spots at once.
To be clear I was referring to shared parking with multiple spots. Where I live one underground parking is spanning multiple houses (I go from the parking directly inside), and there are maybe 3 or 4 in total. The provider would do the work "once and for all", considering everything from replacing the transformers for the additional power, to digging up the trenches and installing the upgraded cabling everywhere, and to every parking spot 11KW charger. The assumption behind this is that all the vehicles in the parking might end up charging at the same time (over night) so everything has to be sized for that.
The electricity provider normally sells the charger with installation for ~2500E. But that is assuming the end-to-end wiring already supports this. With dozens of chargers to install in the same parking the chances that the rest of the network was already so overspeced and up to the task are slim.
The manpower to dig a trench, replace cables and transformers is more or less the same whether you do do it for 10 parking spots or 100. So there's probably a sweet spot between having enough demand to split this between more people but not that much that you need the next level in transformers.
There may be substantial digging works to be done if you need to install new power lines to housing, which is not cheap, and various installation works are costly when done afterwards.
I live in Finland, where it is typical that blocks of flats as well as terraced and single-family houses have parking lots where there already is an electric supply to each car (for the purpose of heating the enging before winter morning starts). Even here it's not directly suitable for charging, because the feeding capacity is OK for warming cars, but not for quick charging. Fuse boxes and feeding cables have to be replaced, at a substantial cost.
People oppose power lines because they just don't want to have them near their house, or run through a forest where they walk.
Some people are afraid of adverse health effects of power lines (claiming cancer issues etc, which are fake news), but often it may also be just that powerlines are considered ugly, and seeing them from your window brings down your property value.
I thought we're talking about the underground power lines that go from a transformer to the house.
Later edit. Ok, that makes sense. For some reason I read it as "upgrading the residential grid to support the extra load of EV charging". There are already HV power distribution lines spanning the country. I understand building new transmission towers would be a NIMBY topic but is it a given that they can't be upgraded to expand the capacity over the same towers?
I was writing about the national power grid in Germany and other countries; basically, the lines at 220 kV or higher, or HVDC, that transfers power from e.g. the wind power stations at North Sea to the consumers and industry that needs electricity in Bavaria.
Likewise for Sweden: there is hydro and other capacity in north, but power grid cannot transfer enough power to users in Skåne (Malmö) so that industrial projects are cancelled.
You can reduce CO2 emissions from an internal combustion by making it more efficient, but there is not way you can ever bring it down to zero.
Thus if you want to ever get to zero, you need to electrify the transport.
We can produce synthetic fuel, but it will be very hard to reach the kind of volumes we have for fossil fuels, hence synthetic fuels should only be used for long range trucks, airplanes etc.
All transport that can be electric should be electric. Transportation make up the bulk of CO2 emissions, so if you don't turn most of it electric, there is no way to get down to zero CO2 emissions.
> You can reduce CO2 emissions from an internal combustion by making it more efficient, but there is not way you can ever bring it down to zero.
You can bring the net environmental impact of CO2 to zero by using a fuel with a carbon neutral cycle, such as biofuels; if you are regrowing as much source material as you are consuming, there is no net emission.
> Thus if you want to ever get to zero, you need to electrify the transport.
Individually, no, but practically, for most transport in use, probably.
Those have been tried and found competing with food production and forest land (which we also need to keep CO2 locked up). Currently they're not a viable strategy as things stand. Perhaps this might change in the future, but the path is not clear. For EVs on the other hand the path is more well defined.
EV have lower CO2 equivalent emissions than comparable ICE vehicles in the majority of places in the US, today, including emissions during manufacturing.
There is absolutely no conflict of goals here. The faster we can transition the better.
At 40% coal provided electricity, electric cars are already way less poluting than combustion engines. Actually even just being powered by an efficient diesel generator would put them on a roughly equal level. So only 40% coal is already a benefit. But of course, we should get rid of our coal plants as quickly as possible. That is the one rather low hanging fruit in reducing the carbon footprint. And I think the 2038 number won't stand, the ramp-down will be far quicker now that climate change has finally gotten more awareness.
So, while not reaching the optimal numbers right now, any electric car bought today will still drive when the coal usage for the grid will be greatly reduced if not completely stopped. Any combustion engined car bought today isn't only worse in emissions already, it won't change, while the electric car gets "cleaner". Also, one should not underestimate the positive effect have on the rollout of reneweables as they can be charged at different times of the day, depending in the supply of reneweable energy.
For all the downvoters: powered by the average German grid, a Tesla emits about 75g CO2/100km. Please show me any combustion engined vehicle that comes even close to those numbers. Of course the "emissions" of the electric cars can only get better from there.
When you add load to a grid that's in the process of decarbonizing, you need to look at the marginal impact. Taking the average energy mix is bad math, because you're delaying the shutdown of the dirtiest sources.
This can get more complicated if you have excess renewable energy generation at times, where the use is essentially free. Not to mention demand dispatch to smooth intermittent renewables.
I'm a big EV fan, but it's important to get the math right, because overstating the impact does disservice to other options. Especially in Germany. When I lived in Berlin for two years, not in the loop, I just used public transport. Most of my friends rode to work.
If you look at marginal impact then BEVs have no emissions, because generating capacity is primarily growing in the renewable energy segment.
In fact there is an even bigger benefits to BEVs: New BEVs are being made to allow sending current the opposite direction. Hence the BEV fleet can be used as a large battery for storing renewable in times of overproduction and selling it back when it is needed.
In other words adopting renewable energy REQUIRES BEVs.
> If you look at marginal impact then BEVs have no emissions, because generating capacity is primarily growing in the renewable energy segment.
This is simply not true. You are tying them together incorrectly. BEVs cause growth in electricity demand, which keeps carbon sources around for longer. Renewable growth displaces carbon sources. The sum may be in the right direction, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't go faster if electricity consumption were lowered.
It's also a bit beside the point, as BEVs are more environmentally friendly even when powered by coal plants. My argument is not at all anti BEV or pro ICE.
> In other words adopting renewable energy REQUIRES BEVs.
Yes, when renewables hit a point where you can't build more for reliability concerns, BEVs performing demand dispatch and even V2G will provide a ton of storage. This is the biggest reason I'm a BEV fan (although PHEVs can also provide much the same role), as dual use of batteries is the only real way to get remotely the storage we're going to need.
But my point is that BEVs, while better than an ICE, shouldn't be thought of as equivalently clean to riding or taking public transport. This isn't a radical position, it's math.
The mix is the right math. After all, you cannot say, which electric device uses which power source. Or suddenly it might be your TV running on pure coal energy - this does not make much sense. The best approximation is, that you apply the average energy mix. Which might be even too pessimistic, as not only a lot of people do power their electric cars with their own solar energy but also it is easy to charge your electric cars especially in those times where the grid is on a relatively low carbon content and even surplus energy needs to be exported.
Of course, there are plenty of better alternatives to cars in many places, especially city centers. But as long as there is a genuine need for cars, they better be electric than combustion engined.
The question that needs to be answered is, what is the marginal impact of taking an ICE off the road and replacing it with a BEV?
Using the current mix of renewables is a form of double counting. No more renewable energy is being fed in to the grid, however more is coming from dirty sources.
Reductio ad absurdum, what happens if all of Germany's cars were BEV overnight? I've seen estimates that the load on the grid would be increased by 20%. Surely you'd agree that using the current mix of renewables would no longer make sense calculating their environmental impact. So why does that change at the margins?
The answer is that it doesn't. The math is the same. With the exceptions we've both pointed out.
At the margins Germany is primarily adding solar and wind. And this solar and wind benefits from having BEVs which can suck up excess production when needed.
It is more a philosophical question. If you add demand to a system should it be counted like a marginal addition, or as the same as the current demand. Most studies on the subject of the full cycle of CO2 emission of EV tend to use average carbon intensity of the electricity. The few studies that use marginal carbon intensity are from mostly biased anti EV, pro fossil fuel sources.
Also it is not always the worse carbonated source that is added when demand surge, for example coal is rather slow to increase, so the grid operator probably kept some hydro power to the rescue, nuclear can ramp up rather quickly too.
If you are really interested in minimizing the carbon intensity of the charge, you can use the api of ElectricityMap that gives you those numbers, and automatically charge your car based on a maximum carbon intensity and some fancy heuristics.
The so-called "average emission factor" method. This method is the existing and historical "default" method currently made available by ADEME: it consists in using a national average emission factor for electricity (this "average" factor also exists by use). This method makes it possible to "attribute" to each French actor its "share" of national emissions and to carry out a balance sheet (this is why it is the method used for regulatory GHG balances). However, this method is not suitable for properly assessing the impact of an action plan: it does not take into account the fact that changing the consumption curve or the production fleet modifies the structure of the energy mix itself, and therefore the average CO2 content per kWh.
The so-called "marginal" method: this method was published in 2007 by ADEME-RTE but is no longer institutionally relevant, although it is still used by some independent actors. This method is based on the principles of optimizing the electricity production fleet (merit order principles): at each moment, an upward (or downward) change in consumption leads to an increase (decrease) in production from the so-called "marginal" means, i.e. from the means available at lower cost at that moment: the means of production can thus be classified from the least expensive to the most expensive (variable production cost), this is what is called the "merit order". If we consider the emission factor of the marginal means of production, we are talking about the marginal CO2 content of electricity. In 2007, RTE and ADEME reported marginal values ranging from 450 g CO2/kWh (for base uses) to 700g CO2/kWh (for peak uses). This method is adapted to the consequential reasoning of modifying production or consumption, and therefore to the evaluation of the impact of actions on the electricity system, but this reasoning is valid at the margin: actions that would have a very significant impact (e. g. significant modification of the nuclear fleet, new use such as the electric vehicle), and that would significantly modify the stack of means of production cannot be evaluated with this method.
The so-called "incremental" method: this method has not been officially published by ADEME but has been the subject of various proposals from energy companies and professional associations. It is based on the idea that for some structuring actions, a "marginal" reasoning (mathematical notion of a value derived from the CO2 content of a kWh) is no longer valid, and that in this case it is necessary to use the comparison of 2 supply/demand balance scenarios (the no-action scenario and the action scenario) and to compare the GHG emissions associated with these 2 scenarios. The resulting value of this method depends on the extent of the system modification (upward or downward, in energy and power). This method, which is the most complex but also the most theoretically accurate, should therefore be used when the marginal method is outside its field of validity.
> It is more a philosophical question. If you add demand to a system should it be counted like a marginal addition, or as the same as the current demand.
This is true in general - if I buy a TV, and my neighbor already has one, should my TV be counted under marginal excess consumption and therefore more dirty than his? I would personally say absolutely not, but I've read (and disagreed with) analogous arguments to the contrary.
But if you're deciding between the relative merits of building a BEV or ICE, that's not really the same situation. The marginal load on the grid is entirely optional - you can just skip it and build a petrol car instead. It's not a philosophical question of whether your neighbour's TV set should be accounted for under a different energy mix than your Tesla just because it was there first.
It's a pragmatic question. We do A, X is the marginal impact. We do B, Y is the marginal impact. As a society, subsidize X proportional to the extent that X < Y.
Now there's no wiggle room in this argument that leaves BEVs worse off. The studies that have argued that made laughable assumptions.
> Most studies on the subject of the full cycle of CO2 emission of EV tend to use average carbon intensity of the electricity. The few studies that use marginal carbon intensity are from mostly biased anti EV, pro fossil fuel sources.
This doesn't surprise me at all. But I don't think it's quite proof that the average carbon intensity is the correct method - I think there's a strong bias for people in the field, whether unconscious or not, to encourage BEV adoption and not provide ammunition to the many groups that irrationally or for vested interests oppose it. Wherever there are decisions to be made in methodology that are both justifiable, even the most reasoned researcher will reach for the one that aligns with their beliefs.
Not to mention the potential backlash. I've made here quite reasoned arguments (of course there's room for disagreement), am in favor of BEVs and each of my posts have been downvoted more than once. There's significant social pressure among crowds like this to not be seen in any way anti environmental, even if it means erasing some of the finer points running contrary to what is still an obvious conclusion.
And it is an obvious conclusion. BEVs are the future that can't come soon enough.
A good diesel generator should have the peak efficiency of a diesel engine of about 40%. A diesel car can hit the same peak, but only at a certain speed/power output. So the average efficiency is about 20%. So there is a quite a marging for charging losses.
The weight of an electric car usually is a minor component in the consumption, most is the aerodynamic drag. On top of that, electric cars can get about 60% of their kinetic energy back by using their motor as a generator.
> Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also don't actively decrease our dependency on fossil fuel.
Of course, but it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. The sooner we switch to electric cars, the earlier the right incentives and levels of demand are in place to upgrade our electricity generation and grid.
However, it is up to you which utility to use. There are plenty which will not just do the basic green washing of buying certificates but also build their own green capacity in line with demand.
The "green washing" is paying for building green capacity in the EEA. It's your you & your coal-burning local utility sending money to sustainable power stations elsewhere in the EEA.
Not gonna happen, Poland barely has enough power to sustain itself, with so little energy investment that we are going to experience serious deficits in the next decade during electricity consumption peaks (mainly hot summer days with AC systems at full capacity).
There are some plans to build new coal units, but these obviously meet with a lot of justified protest. There are also plans to build nuclear units, but only in some undefined distant future and they could meet with protest too. And renewables are gaining ground too slowly to replace coal (which will be shutting down over time due to brown coal depletion, environmental impact and aging technology). Not that wind and solar can completely replace fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro – the variance in output is too great and beyond our control at the moment.
Personally, I think major investment in nuclear would be best. It would cost a lot though, there's no way around that. But environmental impact would be greatly limited and a Europe–wide effort could significantly reduce costs. Unfortunately it seems that it's not gonna happen, with Germany for example irrationally shutting down plants after Fukushima was hit with a tsunami (as if there was any risk of a natural disaster in Germany).
Funny how that keeps being said about most of Germany's neighbouring countries... usually the claim is they'd import nuclear energy from France. Also funny how, in net terms, this never happens, and Germany has pretty consistently been a net exporter of electricity.
I wouldn't trust Germany's management to make any rational decisions about energy. They've been shutting down nuclear power plants for the past few years... What are they going to do in 2038, spends the nights in cold and darkness when the sun isn't shining, or be Putin's puppets dependent on Russian gas?
Germany is a very densely populated country (go take a look at map). Even a relatively minor accident at a nuclear facility would trigger a huge evacuation (I've seen the disaster control plans), causing major economic harm. Germany also does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly. Currently, nuclear does not look like the sane option for Germany.
They suddenly in few years closed all nuclear which imcreased all need for coal. Its dirty decision 2038 is not enough. If they closed all coal and wait with nuclear to 2038 that would make sense. Coal barons need to sell that stuff quicky before it looses value. I am sure they will somehow artificilially increase cost of coal energy in upcoming years.
Nuclear never was a very large part of the German grid and currently the nuclear capacity is like 10% of the daily peak load. So while shutting down the nuclear power plants does make a carbon-free grid a bit more difficult, it won't make a huge difference. Most nuclear power plants would have been scheduled for decommission in the late 20ies or early 30is at maximum anyway.
The existing plants are getting older, we still don't have any permanent storage nor is any in sight. Finally, it was already agreed in the early 2000s, that Germany should phase out nuclear energy and an end date was set for the mid-20ies. The Fukushima disaster only accellerated the plans for phasing out nuclear.
The energy is supposed to come from reneweable sources. Just from 2018 to 2019 their contribution to the grid jumped from 40 to over 45% due to coal becoming less attractive. There are no plants to net import energy into Germany. Up today we have been net exporters of electric energy. Of course, going forward the European grid will play a larger role, as it is a great way of balancing local fluctuations in wind and sun.
> They suddenly in few years closed all nuclear which imcreased all need for coal.
Since the decision to close nuclear plants was taken the proportion of German electrical generation supplied by coal has been cut in half. So, no, it didn't increase demand for coal.
What happens to heavy-metal-laced (and somewhat radioactive, too) ash from coal, by comparison? I suspect it's similarly big problem, just not such a political scare, more ways to sweep it under rug/export/etc.
We do not have unquestionable alternatives to nuclear in Germany for generating electricity to power an industrial country on a stable rate. The demand for power will additionally grow with adoption of electric cars. For densely populated industrial country in Germany’s climate zone using renewables can be disasterous - we already pay too much for electricity, wind and solar panels are space-inefficient, we does not seem to be able to build grid infrastructure to efficiently support them.
We know and can build secure nuclear power plants - we made great progress there. They will help Germany to shut coal plants faster and buy time to research and develop alternatives, maybe we will get to fusion power plants in our lifetime.
Also, there is a problem that there are no serious healthy discussions about it now in Germany: loud voices prevail, the moderate people are afraid to share different opinions; a single large party in conservative opposition, AfD, does deny human impact on the climate change, so they cannot be a moderate voice of sanity.
May it be that investing in renewables is not a good focus for Germany now, are there better areas that we should focus on to save the planet?
Wind does not take up much space. You can place them in agricultural areas, at seas or even in mountain highlands.
Solar placed on roofs or over parking spaces does not compete with anything for space either. Even installing it on grasslands is less terrible than it seems, it does not create deserts because enough sunlight gets through between the panels to let planets grow in the shade.
It makes a lot more sense to build gas power plants as a stop gap measure. Built them to support gasification of biomass. Thus you can due feel them with natural gas or biomass as needed. This is much faster to get going and cheaper than nuclear.
With nuclear you spend such an enormous amount of money building it, that there is not going back on the decision afterwards. Nuclear power plants are having enormous cost overruns and they keep the project going because they don't want tens of billions of euros to be for nothing.
I'd say build gas power plants to buy some time to get the grid working better. Some coal plants can be converted to biomass plants.
France isn't much different, except that most contamination might hit Germany with the prevailing western winds :p. The only real difference is, that France went very strongly into nuclear energy and have some more modern reactors as they continued to build nuclear power plants a bit longer than Germany. But they are facing the same fundamental problems, their plants are aging and some have to be switched off as they just get too old and a maintenance nightmare.
As France is no longer building many reacteors - I think they have one in construction, quite over budget - they will face the same decisions as Germany did.
France is much less densely populated. Like I said, look at a map. Find a place in Germany where you can put a nuclear plant so that closing off an area with a radius of 30km doesn't affect major economical centers. Do the same with France and you will see the difference. Maybe you could litter the state of Brandenburg with nuclear plants. But then again, surrounding your capital would be a bad idea.
Germany is a net electricity exporter. So there is no large scale import of electricity of any kind into Germany. Of course, based on supply and demand, it might temporarily import electricity from other countires. Most overlooked though is, that like with car traffic, Germany is rather central in Europe. So a lot of electricity crosses Germany. A lot of the French nuclear energy is exported to Germany at the same time Germany is exporting the same amount (or more) to Austria or Belgium.
Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also don't actively decrease our dependency on fossil fuel.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Coal_power