Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Electric buses were seen as a joke at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago when the Chinese manufacturer BYD showed an early model. Suddenly, buses with battery-powered motors are a serious matter with the potential to revolutionize city transport -- and add to the forces reshaping the energy industry. With China leading the way, making the traditional smog-belching diesel behemoth run on electricity is starting to eat away at fossil fuel demand. The numbers are staggering. China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country's entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters -- the equivalent of London's entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance. All this is starting to make an observable reduction in fuel demand. And because they consume 30 times more fuel than average sized cars, their impact on energy use so far has become much greater than the than the passenger sedans produced companies from Tesla to Toyota. For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations. This year, the volume of fuel buses take off the market may rise 37 percent to 279,000 barrels a day, about as much oil as Greece consumes, according to BNEF.

Comments

Not zero emission in China yet.

[nicolaiplum]

Those electric buses are not yet zero emission in China - where most of the electricity is generated by coal.

They can be zero emission, when solar- or hydro-powered.

Diesel buses will never be zero emission.

But after you have the electric bus, you must close the coal mine, turn off the gas pipeline, and shut down the thermal power plant. Otherwise you just moved the emissions around a little.

Re:Not zero emission in China yet.

[spun]

One big scrubber on one chimney is much easier and cheaper than a million such scrubbers on car exhaust pipes. Also, China currently has twice the kilowatts of renewable energy as the US does. They are the world leader in green energy, a place that could have, and should have been ours. But we're a corporate kleptocracy and have a vested interest in denying the need for green power.

Re: Not zero emission in China yet.

[info6568]

There is an important detail. Even if the electricity it is being produced with coal or petroleum, an electricity power plant can be optimized and the method to produce the energy can be closely monitored. However, it is impossible to guarantee that half million diesel buses are working correctly and the individual method to use the energy in each independent combustion engine it is extremely ineficient. Then, it is an improvement. Also, it is easier, as other reader described, to replace the coal plants than to run around looking for all these thousands of diesel machines.

Re:Not zero emission in China yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, China currently has twice the kilowatts of renewable energy as the US does

China is building nuclear power plants as fast as it could, and it is adding wind turbines and solar panels in more and more places, and is upgrading its national electricity grid at a furious pace

China adopts the 'green' - ideology not because it likes to be green, but because it is forced to, for its own survival

China knows that it can't and must not rely on fossil fuel too heavily, as over 90% of the fossil fuel it uses it imports from abroad --- with most of those oil / LNG tanker vessels passing through the Strait of Malacca (from the Middle East) which can easily become a military choking point if any crisis happens

Re: Not zero emission in China yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

US is IMPRESSIVE!!!!! We are even No1 in pollution per capita! Good to see us WINNING again! Couldnâ(TM)t have done it without trump! Make coal great again!

China is so far behind on emissions they produce less than half our emissions LOL.

USA USA USA!

Re:Not zero emission in China yet.

[tsa]

Just not being dependent on someone else for energy has so many plusses it's even worth it if it costs more. And with green energy you get a much better environment as an extra! It really has almost only plusses.

Re:Not zero emission in China yet.

[gweihir]

The motivation does actually not matter much. They are doing it and they are gaining a lot of insight and experience doing it. Experience and insight that others lack. Just look at examples like Germany, which apparently cannot build Airports anymore, or the US that has trouble keeping its electrical grid functioning. That is extreme loss of former capabilities right there. In large scale engineering (just like in any engineering really), you need to keep doing it to be able to keep doing it. Much of the West seems to have forgotten that.

Re:Not zero emission in China yet.

[thegarbz]

Generalising "factories" is disingenius. You're right the vast problem is factories. However the long tail pipe is not a nearby factory, it's a distributed power network across the country.

By the way before you say it doesn't work like that you should consider that it's not only the factories that are incredibly sub par in China, the shitty old diesel busses are too (a typical replacement program isn't throwing out new Euro 4 busses). Don't underestimate just how much of a difference it makes getting these old belchers out of the city.

For all the problems that were still there after 2008 note that the air quality in China has steaily been improving over the past 5 years.

Re:Boo hoo.

[Zontar The Mindless]

"Perfect" should not be the enemy of "good".

I've been spending a month or two a year in China for the last decade or so, and the air there is definitely a lot cleaner than it was in 2007.

As another poster already pointed out, it's heaps easier to put one scrubber on one smokestack than it is to put a million of them on a million automobiles. And it seems to be proving effective.

One of Europe's major goals...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

...is to create a comprehensive network of electrically powered public transport infrastructure. Spain is already the country with the highest per capita number of high-speed rail Km's in the world, and most EU countries now have extensive electric rail networks. Diesel public transport, by comparison, is slow, heavy, unreliable, and expensive but even that's cheaper and cleaner than individuals driving themselves to work each day.

American-style suburbia, with its heavy reliance on individuals driving themselves to work, is one of the most inefficient and polluting urban planning models devised in recent history. It's also an obscene waste of people's time when they have to sit idling in traffic jams every day.

On the other hand, China is by far the most aggressive investor in renewable energy. India isn't dragging its feet either. The USA is getting left behind and falling even further behind with its current stable genius in the Whitehouse. Without a sensible, well-informed, coherent energy policy, guess who's heading for a 2nd world economy pretty soon?

Re:Boo hoo.

[rogoshen1]

yep.

Not to mention on individual vehicles you get yahoos removing emission reducing equipment (such as catalytic converter) for a slight improvement in performance or those fucks in diesel trucks wanting to 'roll coal' and leave a huge smokescreen behind them.

What a creative definition of "hurting"

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Given that world oil production is around 35 billion barrels a year, 279,000 barrels isn't even a blip on anyone's radar.

Re:What a creative definition of "hurting"

[Eloking]

That's 279,000 barrels *per day*.

That's over 100 million barrels *per year*.

Just try, if you can, to picture 100 million barrels of oil. Just how massive a quantity that is. It's a big deal.

That's why I hate with number figure, it doesn't give a good picture.

Sure it's a big number, but if it covered like 0.000001% of the world production, than no matter how big the number is it's irrelevant.

The actual percentage is 0.3%. At first, it does look irrelevent.

But an AC pointed out that the world consumption grow by 0.7% during the 2016-2017 period. So this could hinder about half of the "grow" of the oil industry. Considering the importance of grow in any company in this century, it is pretty major.

Re:Clickbait headline again...maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

96 million/day

so about a third of a percent.

but if it's an accelerating trend (7 years to 1/3 percent, 8 years to .4 percent), and it's not a proven tech, so it may spread to other countries, I bet they're watching it with some nervousness.

If it can handle buses, local delivery is next (Tesla truck for example).

growth 2016-2017 was .7%, so this in theory is hitting growth significantly.

(growth sourced here, daily use 2016 on a google search)
https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=000gfs0000000000000000000000000000vg&c=4100000002000060000000000000g000200000000000000001&tl_id=5-A&vs=INTL.53-1-AFRC-TBPD.A&vo=0&v=H&end=2017

Re:Boo hoo.

[drinkypoo]

Most high flow cats (including mine) require MIL eliminators.

In the VAG/Bosch world, that could be programmed away. I don't know about your rustang. The only car I ever put a high-flow cat on only had one O2 sensor, a pre-OBD-II 240SX. That was CARB legal. Now I'm driving a pre-facelift D2 A8, which has the same exhaust they used on the S8 which tells me I don't need any more of it and it's definitely not limiting output. Post-facelift cars have cats and pre-cats. However, for all D2 A8s there are software fixes to patch away the downstream cats entirely so that you can run whatever you want, or nothing...

Re:Boo hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Burning a flag -> hateful political speech

Burning a flag such that the burning embers purposely fall on someone and risk hurting them -> assault