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Some Electric Car Drivers Might Spew More CO2 Than Diesel Cars, New Research Shows (bloomberg.com)
bricko shares a report from Bloomberg with the caption, "Making batteries is a mess": Beneath the hoods of millions of the clean electric cars rolling onto the world's roads in the next few years will be a dirty battery. Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions, yet their manufacturers are, by and large, making lithium-ion batteries in places with some of the most polluting grids in the world. By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg NEF. Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.
An electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine's emissions. "We're facing a bow wave of additional CO2 emissions," said Andreas Radics, a managing partner at Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors, which argues that for now, drivers in Germany or Poland may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine. The findings, among the more bearish ones around, show that while electric cars are emission-free on the road, they still discharge a lot of the carbon-dioxide that conventional cars do. Just to build each car battery -- weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles -- would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it's made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls' findings. Yet regulators haven't set out clear guidelines on acceptable carbon emissions over the life cycle of electric cars, even as the likes of China, France and the U.K. move toward outright bans of combustion engines. It all has to do with manufacturing. According to estimates of Mercedes-Benz's electric-drive system integration department, manufacturing an electric car pumps out "significantly" more climate-warming gases than a conventional car, which releases only 20 percent of its lifetime CO2 at this stage. "Just switching to renewable energy for manufacturing would slash emissions by 65 percent, according to Transport & Environment," reports Bloomberg. "In Norway, where hydro-electric energy powers practically the entire grid, the Berylls study showed electric cars generate nearly 60 percent less CO2 over their lifetime, compared with even the most efficient fuel-powered vehicles."
An electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine's emissions. "We're facing a bow wave of additional CO2 emissions," said Andreas Radics, a managing partner at Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors, which argues that for now, drivers in Germany or Poland may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine. The findings, among the more bearish ones around, show that while electric cars are emission-free on the road, they still discharge a lot of the carbon-dioxide that conventional cars do. Just to build each car battery -- weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles -- would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it's made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls' findings. Yet regulators haven't set out clear guidelines on acceptable carbon emissions over the life cycle of electric cars, even as the likes of China, France and the U.K. move toward outright bans of combustion engines. It all has to do with manufacturing. According to estimates of Mercedes-Benz's electric-drive system integration department, manufacturing an electric car pumps out "significantly" more climate-warming gases than a conventional car, which releases only 20 percent of its lifetime CO2 at this stage. "Just switching to renewable energy for manufacturing would slash emissions by 65 percent, according to Transport & Environment," reports Bloomberg. "In Norway, where hydro-electric energy powers practically the entire grid, the Berylls study showed electric cars generate nearly 60 percent less CO2 over their lifetime, compared with even the most efficient fuel-powered vehicles."
This doesn't seem to take into account that many grids are rapidly improving in terms of how much solar and wind they have in the grids. If an electric car hits breakeven compared to a highly efficient diesel car given 5 years given current rates for example, then in practice we should expect that to happen even earlier. Moreover, electric cars have very long potential lifespans since they contain few moving parts (there's correspondingly less maintenance on an electric car than on an ICE car). Of course, the most efficient thing to do is still to not have a car, and use public transport; unfortunately for many people that isn't a practical option.
Just goes to show you how frightened some people are regarding electric cars. I don't see why so many people (that are not in the gas-powered car industry) are scared of them.
Obviously it's better to concentrate all the emissions at the factories that produce batteries and mitigate the pollution concerns there, rather than at the tail pipe of all the cars that are coming out of the factories.
ObXKCD: https://xkcd.com/437/
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm admitting that I just looked at the summary. So assuming it's accurate...
Why is it that so many people misunderstand the purpose of electric cars? I don't know why for years now on Slashdot we keep getting posts about articles that nitpick about electric car manufacturing. "Ooh, at one place in your manufacturing chain for 1 second you involved coal, so the whole idea is trash." No it's not. First of all, electric cars don't burn gasoline. Big win there. Reducing petroleum use is a Good Thing. Second, with time electricity sources to both charge said vehicles and produce the batteries could come from renewable sources. The fact that we aren't there today doesn't mean we won't be there soon enough. Having production lines in place to make these vehicles is smart and when the production sources are from renewable energy, what will they complain about next?
This is standard FUD. Of course you can do twisted calculations where you penalize battery production for the fact that existing electricity and transportation systems burn coal and hydrocarbons and claim that we can't build new electric transportation infrastructure because it requires energy. But their option of sticking with hydrocarbons is a long term disaster, both because of CO2 and because it keeps getting more expensive and energy intensive to extract hydrocarbons. If you also penalize hydrocarbon burning for the waste and pollution produced by oil extraction, batteries still end up ahead in the current US or European economies (on emissions, not yet on cost). If we as a global society plan to shift to sustainable CO2 emissions, we have to switch to driving less, and using renewable electricity for the driving we do.
OK, I read this article and it seems like the definition of FUD. The headline is "The Dirt on Clean Electric Cars", and there's a lot of largely-irrelevant charts and statistics. The most damning statement they make is:
An electric vehicle in Germany would take more than 10 years to break even with an efficient combustion engine’s emissions
Yet further down, they have to admit:
To be sure, other studies show that even in coal-dominant Poland, using an electric car would emit 25 percent less carbon dioxide than a diesel car
So basically, on the worst emitting grids, today, an EV might have about the same emissions as the cleanest diesel; everywhere else they are clearly lower. And the grid in most places is getting steadily cleaner; a diesel made today will not be getting better emissions in 10 years.
U should have read the article and listened. It all depends on Where and how the battery is made. For example, we own a model S. The cells came from Japan. Ok clean. Not great, not bad. However, the model is in not just in Nevada, BUT Tesla is adding massive solar to power the manufacturing of the cells and batteries, and about 1/2 of the drive train. Supposedly, they have added batteries to run the plant at night ( also get cheap charge and help in daytime ). The model 3 is not only the cleanest made car, but likely one of the cleanest made product.
And yes, most of the rest are produced in China in some of the worst locations. To make matters worst, all the lead-acid and li-ion batteries made in China is some of the most polluted on the planet. As such, wind and solar do not play a part for them. So when Tesla goes to China, those batteries will be made/used in China. Compared to a new clean ice vehicle, the Tesla may never fully recoup the massive co2 added
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions". Not because the market demands it or because their customers want it.
For people who want electric cars, they have their Priuses, Volts, Teslas, etc. That market is served by several manufacturers and it expands as the demand grows. However *every* manufacturer has to comply with government regulations like CAFE and such. So everyone makes at least one "compliance" model to reduce the average fleet emissions to within regulations. Otherwise - fines, more expensive cars, consumers pay more or the company can't compete and goes bankrupt.
Even a driver-friendly company like Mazda, recently had to kiss the ring and announce "compliance" models. Which no customer of their usual fast-and-fun-to-drive cars wants. So these models fill fail in the market and the costs will be paid by the customers.
The solution is relatively obvious: don't spread BS (the article in the Slashdot headline).
Whenever I see claims that amount to "science says...", I immediately check to see:
* In what journal was it published?
* What is that journal's reputation?
* How does it compare to the overall corpus of research on the topic?
In this case, the "study" fails at the first bar: there's no study at all. The source of this article is "Berylls Strategy Advisors". There is no peer review. It's simply "take the word of a company that describes its business as "modern premium automotive consulting" and works for major established automakers, primarily "Dieselgate" German automakers". And we're supposed to ignore the (contradicting), actually peer-reviewed research in the process. Most of the latter of which is regardless rapidly obsoleted regardless by the ongoing wave of battery manufacturing energy improvements, which comes hand-in-hand with battery cost reductions.
It's "Swedish Battery 'Study' Part Deux".
But indeed, as you noted, the solution is to manufacture using solar. Which is actually a very popular solution among EV manufacturers. Tesla has started installing the solar roof that will entirely power Gigafactory, for example - but they're hardly alone in this regard.
"What is the difference between a Ponzi Scheme and an Investment Bank?" -- Jon Stewart
The best place to locate EV battery factories would be BC or Quebec in Canada, or Iceland, as they use all green energy. However if you really get into it, the entire continent is connected. So even though BC, Washington, Idaho and Oregon might be green, they are connected to states in the Western Energy Grid that are not, and there are interconnects to the rest of the continent. Likewise with Quebec, Ontario and the New England states.
The goal really needs to be reduction of fossil fuel consumption in the places that produce the EV batteries instead of trying to move the EV battery factories. This is what carbon taxes were designed to do, but politically untenable.
If Trump wanted a real win with NAFTA 2.0, he should have thrown away his "climate change is a hoax" narrative and used it as a beating stick against China with "Chinese goods are only cheap because they produce so much more greenhouse gases that destroy our way of life"
That is why science does actual studies
In fact, science does do actual studies... but this isn't one of them. This is an article in a business magazine, which cites a study from Berylls Strategy Advisors, which they list as "a Munich-based automotive consultancy".
So, no, this isn't a scientific study; this is an advocacy piece disguised as a scientific study.
Also, what happened to this? Did the 50% carbon TCO reduction disappear? Who cares about the small increase caused by battery manufacturing when the total decrease is so much greater?
Ezekiel 23:20
An ICE tops out around 30% when it's running at it's peak efficiency. That requires an immaculately maintained engine and operating it within a very narrow part of its functional range. Whenever your ICE vehicle is doing anything other than cruise control at its most efficient speed it is way off that efficiency number. Power plants will spend much more of their lifetime operating at or near peak efficiency than an ICE in a car will. Electric motors are also far more efficient with a much broader functional power band than any ICE. Of course we use transmissions in ICE vehicles to try and get more use out of the narrow operating range, but that adds more moving parts that need maintaining as well as more power losses.
There is also the matter of the amount of energy that goes into processing petroleum so that it can be used as a fuel in a car. The fossil fuels used in most power plants, coal and natural gas, don't require nearly as much processing. There is also a lot of value in centralizing, or outsourcing as you say, the CO2 production. Because the CO2 is being generated at one place instead of thousands of individually maintained tailpipes, it is much easier to control and maintain.
Which brings up the fact that most people don't do much for maintenance on their cars. They might get the oil changed regularly. I knew one guy that had never changed the oil in his Taurus that had over 150K miles, just added a quart here and there. For the most part people only take their cars to a mechanic for a tuneup if something is obviously wrong and interfering with their daily use.
This doesn't address the fact that they are raping the earth for the minerals to build these batteries.
Huh? Lithium comes mostly from evaporite deposits. Don't see why you would "rape the Earth" to get at evaporites, which generally don't require deep mining. You want to see what "raping the Earth" means, look at coal mining: https://grist.org/business-tec...
Steel and Aluminum now are some of the most recycled materials there are. And there is plenty of the product left to recycle.
Well, lithium is one of the most easily recycled materials there is. And, of course, not just internal combustion cars, but electric cars are also made out of steel and aluminum.
Not saying Electric is bad, I just prefer honesty when promoting them.
The article doesn't claim that electric vehicles aren't cleaner in the long run. It categorizes electric vehicles according to the country of manufacture and the country of operation to compute when, in the life of the car, the total CO2 expenditure to build and power the electric vehicle begins to beat the total CO2 expenditure to build and power a high-efficiency diesel vehicle. In countries like Germany, where the primary power grid is still largely coal powered, building and operating an electric vehicle can take ten years before being a net CO2 reduction over a diesel vehicle. In countries with a higher percentage of renewable power, this point is going to be sooner. It's an unavoidable consequence of the production of the power system of an electric car being more energy-intensive than making an IC engine and drivetrain. It does raise another consideration regarding electric vehicles -- if the expected functional lifespan of the battery pack is less than the break-even point, it makes electric vehicles less competitive in this regard, because of the jump in CO2 'cost' for replacing the batteries. This points up the fact that the batteries are the critical design factor in EVs, and that making more efficient and longer-lasting batteries using more efficient production methods is going to be what brings the CO2 footprint of EVs down to a point that makes them clearly superior to IC vehicles at any point in their functional life.
TL;DR, it doesn't demonstrate that EVs are worse than IC vehicles, but that both the production methods and power generation for EVs are fundamental factor in making EVs a more 'environmentally friendly' vehicle -- just buying an EV and thinking that you're immediately doing your part to reduce CO2 emissions may not be true for quite a few years after the purchase, depending on what the power generation in your driving area looks like.
This is for shitty cars by traditional companies that are based in those places where the grid is shit.
Tesla's, no matter what you have to say about them, make their batteries in Reno. That's where the gigs factory is, where solar is king. So, this argument doesn't apply to them. They are also the largest installer of batteries on the planet, so this makes me think this article is oil company FUD.
This is the ultimate result of going down the rabbit hole of, "externalities".
Regardless of the validity of TFA, there are steps we need to take, as a species, if we want any hope of not continuing to create our own extinction-level event.
1. Phase out all fossil fuel use. Do what you have to, to develop alternatives for all forms of transportation.
2. Develop safe nuclear power plant design. In parallel, continue to develop and refine battery technologies.
3. Tell the NIMBYs to STFU, and make that stick. (Yes, I'm saying: shove it down their throats. Too fucking bad for them, our species is at stake here.)
4. While 2 and 3 are in progress, continue to develop and deploy 'renewables' (solar, wind, etc). Mandate rooftop solar on new homes, provide incentives for existing homes.
5. While 4 is in progress: tell power companies who whine and cry about it to STFU, and make it stick. Yes, shove it down their throats, too.
6. Stay calm, and carry on.
7. Human race survives (i.e., profit!)
I have no doubt the above will pain many and produce all sorts of hate and complaints. Tough shit, I say. A little pain now is much easier to deal with than the wars over resources and liveable land later, when it's too fucking late to do anything about the mess we've made for ourselves.
Likelihood of this all happening according to my rough outline? Not gods-be-damned likely. But many of you know I'm right. Unless someone comes up with a way for me to survive to be several hundred years old, I'll never know if we, as a species, wises up soon enough to save itself. But I have to say it all anyway. Good luck, humans, you're going to need it.
Second the improvements in the grid often take place on the decades scale, not necessarily in time to make a large change to vehicles bought today.
The longer we wait to start those improvements the longer it will take to complete.
I remember having a conversation where oil drilling in ANWR came up. I argued that we know that there is oil there, lots of it, and if we went to go get it that would lower energy prices. The person I was conversing with said that drilling in ANWR was pointless because it would take years for oil to flow and make prices go down. Five years later oil price reached record highs. Would oil have still peaked at that point if we drilled in ANWR five years prior? We can't know for sure but it is unlikely to have made it worse.
You want to see CO2 emissions lower in 20 years? Then start building lots of nuclear power plants today. I don't care if it takes 10 years to build a reactor because by not building them we are placing all our faith in solar and wind to save us. That's waiting at port for a ship that might not come. We know we can build a nuclear power plant in less than 5 years because we did this regularly decades ago. The reason it takes so long to build a nuclear power plant today is politics, not technology. Get rid of the politics and make it happen.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
As solar and energy storage get better, the need for large centralized fission plants will fade.
Until that happens we need nuclear power today.
I keep hearing on how we need to act RIGHT NOW on lowering CO2 but when nuclear power is brought up the response is how solar and batteries will be better than nuclear in 5 or 10 years. Well, can we wait for this to happen or do we have to act RIGHT NOW? If we can wait then let's wait, and shut up already on having to act RIGHT NOW. If we can't wait then stop coming up with excuses on why we can't use the safest and lowest CO2 producing energy source we have today.
Oh, but it takes 10 years to finish a nuclear power plant build? Well, then what are we waiting for? Even if we get this new solar technology on the time frame it is promised it will still take years for it to be brought to market and deployed. In the mean time we'll be building an electricity source that can power the factories that will be building these next generation solar collectors.
Here's what I'm suspecting on why solar and wind advocates oppose nuclear power, they can't compete against nuclear power.
I have no problem with wind and solar power, only the people that say we need to use these and not even try with nuclear power. We have seen the US government issue only a handful of permits to build a new nuclear power plant in the last 40 years. Before then they were issuing dozens per year. It's not that people weren't asking for permits, applications were still being submitted. The government simply stopped issuing permits. There's nuclear power plants that have been under the application process for decades and still did not get a permit. Stop this madness, fix the process, and issue some permits already.
Whatever problem one can raise opposing nuclear power is nothing compared to global warming. If global warming is the threat that it's claimed to be then any problems nuclear power might cause are nothing by comparison.
At this point if you oppose nuclear power then you are denying the catastrophic effects of global warming. If we should fear nuclear power more than global warming then global warming cannot be all that bad.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Corn ethanol makes no sense other than as a subsidy to corn farmers. It's just about the worst choice for a biofuel.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What has been happening however is that plants are getting bigger from the increases in CO2, and their nutritional value has been rapidly decreasing, which has a knock-on effect.
That is only half the story. - and the scare-mongering side at that.
Yes, increasing CO2 does decrease nutritional value per unit volume by about 8%. However, increasing CO2 also cuts water use by 5-20% and increases plant volume by 40%.
So yes, you need to eat 8% more to get the same nutritional value, but you end up with 40% more to start with, so it's not an issue. You can, in fact, feed more people (approximately 28% more people) and also increase your freshwater reserves significantly as well. A higher CO2 level would, in fact, provide a solid food/water bump for the world.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Unless I'm misreading the summary, the statistics here are kind of dodgy too. It seems like they're saying that the percentage reduction of CO2 won't be so impressive if the car is manufactured using dirty energy. That's not to say that an electric car won't produce way less CO2 in operation than a diesel one - only that operation is only part of the CO2 footprint of a car. So what? Sure, we need to clean up our power generation grids too. But that's no reason not to be reducing the actual CO2 emissions of the car itself.
And, at the risk of sounding like I'm mixing my liberal rationales, dirty power generation doesn't render us 'powerless' to criticize Saudi Crown Princes who assassinate and dismember their critics willy-nilly. There are other reasons than carbon reduction to wean transportation off of oil...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
But after the Fukushima disaster, they closed down all their nuclear power plants.
What did Fukushima have to do with nuclear power in Germany? Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and then a once in 500 year high wave. Are these German nuclear power plants prone to earthquakes? Are they even close enough to an ocean to even have the possibility of a once in a thousand year wave?
Fukushima had nothing to do with nuclear power in Germany. All it did was give an excuse for the already anti-nuke politicians to shut them down. A very weak excuse. If Germany was serious about reducing their CO2 output then they'd keep their nuclear power plants open and build more of them for the future.
The German government has already announced that they'd fail to meet their CO2 reduction goals set during the Paris Agreement. If they kept their nuclear power running then they might have been able to meet their goals.
No nation that wants a modern economy will be able to get one or keep it without nuclear power. That includes Germany.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.