Slashdot Mirror
Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All
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.
Yes that's true. But it seems to be also true that the battery is quite recyclable. Thus, as we end up with more electric vehicles ending their life cycle the environmental costs of newer vehicles will be mitigated through the recycling of older electric cars.
Stipulating that at present *every* method does not include all the externalities, the actual cost of any product, method or system reflects the environmental cost to the extent that the cost has been de-externalized. One way that happens is that, increasingly, cleanup costs are charged to and paid for by the producer/shipper and their insurance companies. And reporting is at least one, maybe two orders of magnitude better than it was 30 years ago. That _should_ be true for oil, for wind, for solar, etc. And it is increasingly true. At this point it's probably more true for oil than for any of the others (I suspect coal is still getting a break but I dunno.)
One example of externalities not presently charged to the electric vehicle industry is the lack of cleanup and mitigation in Canada and Russia around the big nickel mining areas, where according to legend 100s of square miles of territory are devoid of living vegetation. (/.ers: is this true? I keep hearing it...)
As it turns out, shipping the oil is not one of the bigger costs of oil. IIRC from two-three years ago, the cost of shipping is only about 18c per gallon (US cost). I think the actual bulk-carrier-tanker-ship part of that is only two or three cents - my memory may have failed me on that but Wikipedia agrees. That includes the cost of insurance and the overall amortized risk to the companies involved (if it were not, the companies would have been out of business long ago). Which means that it includes the costs to the companies including fines and mitigation costs, of all the oil spills and other pollution. It also includes the costs of the newer double-hull ships with additional spill prevention and mitigation equipment that is now required. One cost that isn't being included yet is the smokestack pollution from the tankers, and all other shipping.
To the extent that externalities of all the methods are included, that cost demonstrates that pollution is actually not a very large problem for oil _compared to total production_, so electric vehicles and their power sources (wind, whatever) will have to work hard to match the true cost/benefit of oil.
Discussion: people don't realize the sheer volume of oil that goes through the system every day - counting fuel and products, around 150 million barrels (6+ billion gallons, 24+ billion liters) per day. As of 2000, the total amount spilled in 20 years in the US from causes was about 300 million gallons (about 1/576000 over 20 years), and had decreased by 50% in that 20 years. The rate has continued to decrease since then. This is equivalent to about 2/100 of one cc out of a barrel - or an invisible speck that pops out of a bubble when you open a carbonated beverage and little bubbles pop.
note: some of this data was loosely adapted from this analysis. Also, a USA Today article followed that trend - from 2005 to 2009, there were an average of 22 spills per year of more than 50 barrels (down from some 8000 in 1980. This is not to excuse, but to provide perspective. Interestingly, the New England states had the highest number of spills per square mile 1980-2002.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Perhaps you should RTFA, which points out that, in the UK, power stations are only about 36% efficient at delivering energy to end users. Add in the 80% efficiency of an electric car and now you have something similar to that of a gas (petrol)-powered car.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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's just not true, as long as you're considering fixed power plants that are efficient, e.g. nuclear. Other renewable sources can also be considered efficient even if they're not (e.g. solar) because the energy is effectively 'free' so it doesn't matter how much goes to waste.
The inefficiency is always at the chemical energy to (whatever) conversion stage, once it's in electrical form, it can be transmitted relatively efficiently and certainly traction motors are very very efficient compared to IC engines.
You do realize that solar power is another example of 'causes more pollution during production than it will ever save during its lifetime' right?
Funny, that's not what some think
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.
That is straight up bullshit. If you covered 2% of the Sahara Desert in solar panels, it would generate enough electricity to replace every power plant and combustion engine in the world.
Transmitting the power from the sahara to the rest of the world is obviously a stupid idea, but it demonstrates that solar power really is capable of generating large amounts of power. A few hundred installations spread around the world easily cover our needs. Energy storage is also relatively straightforward, for example you can collect solar energy as heat and store it with a high temperature liquid for long periods of time (molten glass for example, is stable at around 5,000 degrees celsius and easily stored in big ceramic tanks - expose water to that and generate power from the steam, just as you would do in a nuclear power plant). Another option, which is being used in the USA today, is to pump water into a dam with solar panels, and release water from the dam through a hydro power plant.
Wrong.
Sweden is about 50/50 hydro/nuclear and some wind at the margin. The nuclear plants have been upgraded recently and added capacity comparable to a new power plant.
With wind being expanded Sweden mostly exports electricity.