A new post containing a cartoon from Josh will appear every hour. At the end of the 24 hours, everything will be collated on a single page. Readers are encouraged to post skeptical arguments below, as well as offer comments on what has been seen from the Climate Reality Project so far.
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I wonder why Al doesn’t drive an electric car everywhere?
The real problem is that the majority of electric power comes from coal or natural gas, so unless you have a wind turbine or solar panel connected to your car, you don’t know where that electricity’s been.
Besides, leaving the motor running and the air conditioner on so that you can make a quick getaway from those pesky reporters wanting to ask inconvenient questions quickly draws down the car battery.
National Post · Lorne Gunter
On Thursday, former U. S. vice-president Al Gore delivered a major address calling on his country to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years. By 2018, U. S. electricity and fuel should come entirely from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources,” he said. Tickets to the event encouraged attendees to “please use public transit, bicycling or other climate-friendly means” to reach the lecture hall.
So how did Mr. Gore and his retinue arrive? In two Lincoln Town Cars and a full-sized SUV that sat idling with the air conditioners blasting while the Gore party was inside.
It was 34 C in Washington. Al Gore can’t be expected to get into an overheated vehicle after he’s worked up a sweat telling others how to save the planet.
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I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing EV’s running out of juice in busy traffic.
Niels says:
September 15, 2011 at 1:17 pm
The way to go is more direct democracy, as we have in my country….
I’m sooooooo glad I don’t live in a democracy. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.
I have a constitution that protects me from the “consensus”.
You might ask “how’s that working for ya?”
I can say “better than any where else in this world”
We’re allies on the subject of Carbon Cult skepticism, so please take this as a minor nitpick.
We have to get our terminology correct. Today, in the 21st century, electricity is an energy product, it is not an energy source. Every single ‘electron’ (well, actually the electric potential) is generated from other means. Therefore there are no electric cars, but mostly coal-fired cars. Naturally there are some natural gas-fired cars, nuke-fired cars and hydro-fired cars as well. These are all hardly efficient replacements for the existing fleet of mostly petroleum-fired of automobiles.
That previous paragraph is not an attack on so-called electric cars, just a statement of precision. The best case scenario with so-called electric cars is that you merely move the firing process (and the pollution) upstream in a unified location and then transmit the 2nd generation energy product ( electricity ) down long wires with a presumably acceptable loss there along the way, which in turn requires more ‘firing’ at the source to compensate, which helps push so-called electric cars into the ironic circumstance of using more fossil fuels than if we didn’t have them in the first place. But I am still not against them, as long as they are not subsidized at all. I see no way that electric cars do anything except increase the net use of energy, that is, we shall use more energy in total than we would without them.
Someday humans will tap the seemingly infinite electric potential found in the atmosphere which we see discharged as lightning during storms, perhaps with gigantic lightning rods that are tens or hundreds of miles tall creating giant battery terminals using some currently unknown theory. I would call that electricity an actual energy source, well, at least compared to today’s implementation.
@Blade, by “pure electric car” I meant a car that only runs on electricity from an onboard storage medium, as opposed to a hybrid or ICE car.
For more information regarding the efficiency I refer you to this paper:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/TeslaReading.pdf
It no longer exists at teslamotors.com because they they need to “revise it to reflect current industry conditions and statistics” whatever that means. Here’s a quote:
“The energy cycle (charging and then discharging) of the lithium-ion batteries in the Tesla Roadster is about 86% efficient. This means that for every 100 mega-joules of electricity used to charge such a battery, only 86 mega- joules of electricity are available from the battery to power the car’s motor. Thus, the “electrical-outlet-to-wheel” energy efficiency of the Tesla Roadster is 2.53 km/MJ x 86% = 2.18 km/MJ.
The most efficient way to produce electricity is with a “combined cycle” natural gas-fired electric generator. (A combined cycle generator combusts the gas in a high-efficiency gas turbine, and uses the waste heat of this turbine to make steam, which turns a second turbine – both turbines turning electric generators.) The best of these generators today is the General Electric “H-System” generator, which is 60% efficient,9 which means that 40% of the energy content of the natural gas is wasted in generation.
Natural gas recovery is 97.5% efficient, and processing is also 97.5% efficient.10 Electricity is then transported over the electric grid, which has an average efficiency of 92%,11 giving us a “well-to-electric-outlet” efficiency of 60% x 92% x 97.5% x 97.5% = 52.5%.”
Now 52.5% does not mean that “electric cars do anything except increase the net use of energy” as you write. Actually it is a more efficient use of energy, and I’m not nitpicking here 🙂
Niels
Niels says:
September 16, 2011 at 7:58 am
@Blade, by “pure electric car” I meant a car that only runs on electricity from an onboard storage medium, as opposed to a hybrid or ICE car.
For more information regarding the efficiency I refer you to this paper:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/TeslaReading.pdf
It no longer exists at teslamotors.com because they they need to “revise it to reflect current industry conditions and statistics” whatever that means. Here’s a quote:
“The energy cycle (charging and then discharging) of the lithium-ion batteries in the Tesla Roadster is about 86% efficient. This means that for every 100 mega-joules of electricity used to charge such a battery, only 86 mega- joules of electricity are available from the battery to power the car’s motor. Thus, the “electrical-outlet-to-wheel” energy efficiency of the Tesla Roadster is 2.53 km/MJ x 86% = 2.18 km/MJ.
The most efficient way to produce electricity is with a “combined cycle” natural gas-fired electric generator. (A combined cycle generator combusts the gas in a high-efficiency gas turbine, and uses the waste heat of this turbine to make steam, which turns a second turbine – both turbines turning electric generators.) The best of these generators today is the General Electric “H-System” generator, which is 60% efficient,9 which means that 40% of the energy content of the natural gas is wasted in generation.
Natural gas recovery is 97.5% efficient, and processing is also 97.5% efficient.10 Electricity is then transported over the electric grid, which has an average efficiency of 92%,11 giving us a “well-to-electric-outlet” efficiency of 60% x 92% x 97.5% x 97.5% = 52.5%.”
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You forgot the 86% efficiency of the batteries themselves. I would also add that your assumption of a combined cycle is an optimistic one. Sure, 60% is achievable, but much of the baseload capacity in this country and Europe is not combined cycle and its efficiency is more like 35%. When you plug that into your efficiency waterfall you get: 35%*92%*97.5%*97.5%*86%=26.3% which is not that far off what can be achieved with a gas ICE and well below what can be delivered by a modern diesel. Of course there are additional losses in the motor, but then there are additional losses in the transmissions of a modern ICE as well. Then there is the issue of the conditions under which you expect to operate your EV. Under extreme heat (Arizona or Texas summer) or cold (Minnesota winter) the efficiency drops, so that 86% is also likely to be an overstatement of what you can actually achieve.
As others have posted, I’m not against EV’s, but I am against subsidies, and I just don’t think the economics will make sense for at least another decade. I think it makes far more sense to invest in shale gas and migrate our fleet to CH4 than to overcome the amazingly stubborn realities of the shortcomings of batteries.
Blade said: “You forgot the 86% efficiency of the batteries themselves.”
Well, no. The figure of 52.5% is, as the paper clearly says: “well-to-lectric-outlet” efficiency. The paper indicates the well to wheel efficiency by comparing it to a Prius:
“Taking into account the well-to-electric-outlet efficiency of electricity production and the electrical-outlet-to- wheel efficiency of the Tesla Roadster, the well-to-wheel energy efficiency of the Tesla Roadster is 2.18 km/MJ x 52.5% = 1.14 km/MJ, or double the efficiency of the Toyota Prius.”
Note that the 86% efficiency of the batteries are taken into account when calculating the 2.18 Km/MJ.
Bottom line, according to the paper” is that if you compare “well-to-wheel” efficiency electric cars are twice as good as even hybrids.
Now, I did not write the paper, so don’t shoot the messenger. Perhaps you should read the paper first?It is only 10 pages with 23 references.
I agree the comparison is not completely fair because everybody is not using Gas and Steam Generators. Anyway, Irsching 4 in Bavaria has just broken the record and achieved 60.75% efficiency. Compared to Coal 31%, Nuclear: 35% and modern coal 45%.
I’ll post here when, and if, I get my Model S., sometime late 2012 og early 2013 …
I look forward to the day when EVs are more widely available and affordable. And I hope Niels does get his Model S.
But, instead on harping on EVs subsidies and loan guarantees, why don’t we demand that the oil companies return, with interest, the hundreds of billions they’ve been given?