Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve written before about the insanity of the “Net-Zero By 2050” push in a post called “Bright Green Impossibilities“. Today I thought I’d talk about a different impossibility, that of changing all of our land-based transportation (light vehicles, plus our buses and heavy trucks) to being battery powered.
Here’s how I went about it. I use the computer language R for my calculations. I used a few functions to do my conversions, as follows:
# joules to watt-hours
j2whr=function(x) x*0.0002777777777
# gallons of gas to kilowatt-hours
galgas2kwh=function(gal) gal*j2wh(130927880)/1000
# gallons of diesel to kilowatt-hours
galdiesel2kwh=function(gal) gal*j2wh(146765930)/1000
# calculates the months from now to some future date
monthstodate=function(thedate) {
if (is.double(thedate)) thedate = paste0(thedate,"-01-01")
as.double(as.Date(thedate)-Sys.Date())/(365.25/12)
}
# terawatt-hours per year used to gigawatts generation needed
twh2gw=function(twh,peakfactor=2,capfactor=1,transmission=.95) (twh/hrsperyear*1e3*peakfactor)/capfactor/transmission
The first function converts joules to watt-hours. The next two convert gallons of diesel and gasoline to their energy content in kilowatt-hours.
The next function calculates the number of months until some date in the future. And the final function converts terawatt-hours of electricity used in a year to the amount of gigawatts of generation needed. It takes into account
• a peak factor to account for the fact that peak usage needs to be covered and is generally about twice average usage.
• a capacity factor to cover downtimes for maintenance, and
• a transmission loss factor.
Then I went and got the figures for the number of miles driven and gallons of fuel used in the US in 2017 from the US Department of Transportation. Now, it’s very likely that by 2050 many more miles will be driven … how many? Well, this document says about 50% – 60% more miles, so I’ll use 40% as a conservative number.
With that in hand, here are my calculations. We can’t just divide total miles driven by electric vehicle miles per kilowatt-hour, because we need to figure in the trucks and buses as well. So the first part of my calculation is to figure out the difference between the energy used per mile for light cars and that used for trucks.
In the following, the lines starting with “>” and a hashmark are comments, the lines starting with just “>” are instructions to the computer, and the lines starting with the “[1]” are the computer output.
> # miles driven light cars/trucks > (light_miles=2877378e6) [1] 2.877378e+12 > # miles driven heavy trucks > (heavy_miles=297593e6) [1] 2.97593e+11 > # gallons gas light vehicles > (light_gal=129178914e3) [1] 1.291789e+11 > # gallons diesel heavy trucks > (heavy_gal=45963416e3) [1] 4.596342e+10 > # kwh in gas used, light vehicles > (light_kwh=galgas2kwh(light_gal)) [1] 4.698089e+12 > # kwh in diesel used, trucks > (heavy_kwh=galdiesel2kwh(heavy_gal)) [1] 1.873851e+12 > # miles per kwh light vehicles > (light_mpkwh=light_miles/light_kwh) [1] 0.6124571 > # miles per kwh trucks > (heavy_mpkwh=heavy_miles/heavy_kwh) [1] 0.1588136 > # extra kwh for trucks > (truckextra=light_mpkwh/heavy_mpkwh) [1] 3.856453
OK, so that’s the first part. Heavy trucks use about 3.9 times the energy per mile as light cars.
Next, we need to calculate the amount of electricity we’ll need. The wall-to-wheels efficiency of light electric cars is about 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. Note that this is less than the battery-to-wheels efficiency because of losses in the transformer used to charge the battery and the losses in the battery itself in the form of heat.
> # electric vehicle miles per kilowatt-hour > (ev_milesperkwh=2.5) [1] 2.5
From this point, we need to divide the estimated miles driven in 2050 by the relevant miles per kilowatt-hour to get the total power needed.
> # kwh needed, electric light vehicles > (light_kwh=light_miles*milesinc/ev_milesperkwh) [1] 1.611332e+12 > # kwh needed, electric heavy vehicles > (heavy_kwh=heavy_miles*milesinc*truckextra/ev_milesperkwh) [1] 6.426858e+11 > # total terawatthours needed/yr > (tot_twh=(light_kwh+heavy_kwh)/1e9) [1] 2254.018
So we’ll need ~ 2,250 terawatt-hours of electricity per year to move the people and the goods around. And how much new generation will this require? Well, by comparison, the US currently uses about 3,800 terawatt-hours per year, so we’ll need a huge, unimaginable 60% increase … and that just for electric cars and trucks and nothing more.
How much generating capacity will that take? Here you go:
> # gigawatts new generation needed > (generation_needed=twh2gw(tot_twh,capfactor = .95)) [1] 569.8329
We’ll need an additional ~ 570 gigawatts of generating capacity. And how long do we have to do that?
The only currently available technology capable of delivering that is nuclear. And it takes about ten years from conception to completion for a nuclear power plant.
Figure 1. Timeline from feasibility studies to actual startup for a new nuclear power plant.
So that means we have only until 2040 to begin the power plants we need by 2050. How many do we need?
> # months from now until 2040 > (time_available=round(monthstodate(2040))) [1] 215 > > # gigawatts of new power plants needed per month > (round(generation_needed/time_available,1)) [1] 2.7
So … to provide for an all-electric transportation fleet, starting tomorrow we’d have to build a new 2.7 GW nuclear power plant each and every month for the next 215 months … and those are huge plants, 20% larger than the giant Diablo Canyon power plant in Californa that the eco-fools are planning to shut down.
( … gotta love California. We can’t even keep the lights on now, and the idiots in charge want to shut down Diablo Canyon and require only electric cars to be sold in the state after 2035 … but I digress.)
Oh, and besides building 215 new giant nuclear power plants at the rate of one per month every month for the next 18 years starting this month, we’d need to upsize our entire power grid by 60% from end to end, all the way from the generators down to the transformers and the electric wires feeding your house.
I’m sorry, but doing all of that is politically, practically, logistically, and financially impossible.
And what will it accomplish? Sweet Fanny Adams, as our British cousins say. The entire US could go net-zero tomorrow, and even if we accept the alarmists’ hysterical figures, the temperature difference it would make in 2050 is too small to even be measured … we’d be throwing trillions down a rathole and we’d get nothing in return.
Well, except for greatly increased taxes and much higher energy prices …
The stoopid, it burns.
w.
My Usual Request: When you comment, QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so we are not left in mystery as to who and what you are talking about.
“The stoopid, it burns.”
Willis, you under-estimate the problem. Some of our enemies are stupid, but far more are greedy.
Yep. Psychopaths don’t care that it can’t be done, or that millions of elderly will die of cold, as long as they make money.
Technically, the psychopaths are planning on about 95% of everyone kicking off in the not distant future, so cold, heat, starvation, or mass civil unrest, it’s all the same in the end.
Not only do they need THAT MUCH additional Generation to replace Fossil Fuel and effectively electrify the transportation sector but, like the 50 – 70,000 gallon tanks buried at fueling stations, they will need an equivalent amount of Battery Storage to allow for reasonably quick recharging of the EVs. Then there is the needed Copper mining to build out the Electric fleet and replace existing ICE vehicles plus the elements needed for their batteries
Space! Don’t forget that you will need acres – if not square miles – to replace the capacity of a set of fuel pumps with battery chargers. All of these things are so basic it just goes to show how thick most people are that they don’t see it. I suppose that is why you still see people wearing ineffective masks outside.
You will need acres for the batteries and Square Miles for the solar arrays to recharge them daily. But at least the energy will be free so recharging should cost next to nothing /snark
… and afterwards, they all die of a plague that arose from an uncleaned phone booth …
That is exactly correct, Chaswarnertoo. The objective is set an unobtainable goal that maximizes the transfer of wealth and power to the cronies running the scheme.
And that is why we will not see in all likelihood ANY significant nuclear power in the mix, let alone 100% of the new demand. Probably more will be wasted on fusion pipe-dreams than will be spent on nuclear fission that actually works.
Hey, hold on one cotton-pickin minute, Fusion power is a mere 30 years away, just like it has been for 60 years + year on year!!! 😉
Well we recently got 5 seconds of some possible fusion power. How long can it take to build that out to a permanently functioning power source?
30 years.
What about Rossi and LENR. Back in the day, buying a cold fusion device at Home Depot for next-to-nothing was imminent – 2010ish, I think. I haven’t looked but, I assume that they are there on the shelf just waiting to be plugged in.
Alan, Why not a generation or two of fission power while fusion power is being researched and developed?
Exactly, witness the COVID fiasco.
When the greedy make bad decisions so they can feed their greed by burdening their poorer fellows, that action places them amongst the extremely stupid.
Yes, because an unexamined assumption they make is that their wealth will insulate them from the consequences. In reality, they are getting a free ride from the infrastructure and supply lines built to accommodate the middle-class. If the middle-class disappears, the things that support them will disappear also. So, when the wealthy want to be driven to the airport or to where they dock their yacht, the chauffeur will have to find a gas station (or charging station) that is still in operation to top off the limousine. Good luck with that. Even if they have an electric limousine, and solar panels on their roof, they may find that the recent inclement weather has caused the failure of external power and the PVs aren’t producing anything. What if their main backup battery dies, and there aren’t new batteries being manufactured because the average person can’t afford them? What if the technicians needed to replace the battery can’t find diesel for their big truck?
There is little correlation between wealth and intelligence. As the Clintons and Bidens demonstrate so aptly, it is more a matter of fraud and larceny. Anyone who is driven by greed and ignore their “poorer fellows” hasn’t thought it through.
I remember once driving through Baja on a GSA field trip. I observed that the poor but industrious people cut and re-planted ocotillo cactus to make a thorny fence to protect what little they had from being stolen. Those with more money would build 8′ high adobe walls with broken bottles embedded in the top to discourage thieves. That is the world that the unthinking wealthy will bring upon themselves. They will need to quarter, and feed, armed guards on their properties to protect themselves and their property from the formerly middle-class, but still armed, people around them. Just where the ‘wealthy’ will get their food is another issue. Whether they realize it or not, the wealthy need the middle-class.
As history has repeatedly shown, if the “armed guards” are not adequately rewarded on a regular basis, their loyalty will soon start to show its limitations!!!
“Who will guard the guards?”
Or in the original Latin;
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Looks like “corrupt” should be added to stupid and greedy. Think of the amount of money flying around now, a lot of it tax money, and there’s no way it is all accounted for.
It is really not tax money in the US, it is money made up of electrons created by the Fed.
Thus INFLATION!
Killing all savings in the bank or under your mattress.
Inflation is just a stealth tax. Instead of directly taking your wealth by directly taking part of your bank account, government takes your wealth by making what you do have, worth less.
It’s a shame we can’t bottle stoopidity and use it to heat our homes and power transportation. 🙂 There would be an endless supply.
And it’s renewable!
Just make babies and the send them to public schools. When they graduate, they can enroll in Journalism School.
By 2050, we will have enough stoopidity to power the colonization of the entire Solar system.
–
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Wait up… how will we do that graduating all journalists and no rocket scientists? Worse, what could possibly go wrong when I have to call a plumber and the plumber was a journalism major?
People… We.Are.So.Screwed.
The enemies are within the gates.
The managers of big businesses have one aim…to make more money for their particular business . If you know your product is profitable but harmful but still “legal” you sell it. A large US pharmaceutical company had no compunction selling addictive opioid “painkillers” to the citizens of the US.
So if making a profit involves [appearing to] going green and woke they will do it….nothing to do with saving the planet or little furry creatures or underground millipedes. If they needed to sell their grandmothers they would. They certainly have no problem selling their souls.
So more wind turbines please with a top up of solar panels and only LGBTQIA+ staff.
Look how virtuous we are.
There nothing wrong with opioids, they are very effective at dealing with pain.
The problem comes when they are over prescribed.
The communists really have won. They have managed to convince most of the country that all business people are evil.
Mark’s point can’t be overstated. The last time I had oral surgery (more painful than any other I’ve had, including a double hernia), the surgeon prescribed a 30 day supply of opioids! If you are still having severe pain more than 3 or 4 days afterwards, something is wrong; get to the emergency room. I had to throw most of them out, but some people are just not smart enough to know that you don’t have to keep using them for the entire month. That’s long enough to get hooked on them. When I explained this to the surgeon, he just shrugged and said that was “standard practice”.
Don’t blame the doctors. The problem lies elsewhere. See my post, “The Law Of Unintended Opiates“.
w.
Can’t get there, the link seems to be broken.
Thanks for the notification, Frank, link fixed.
w.
I do believe a fair number of Net Zero advocates know it will not work, and just want to crash industrial society. The Simple Life!
Plague,famine, poverty, and war are more likely.
How many of the greens would know how to feed themselves without grocery stores? “Be careful what you wish for!”
The only greens I know that could feed themselves also don’t want anything to do with government or with investing in unreliable power or even power at all.
But Clyde, the Grocery Store is Old Normal.
They will Build Back Better into glorious people’s communal food banks.
And don’t forget they want to cash in before the next 30 years. Just like Al Gore and others have cashed in over the last 30 years.
(Not to mention the political side of this. How many have gained power and authority from this CAGW scare at the cost of our Freedoms and prosperity?)
Certain Communist countries are taking advantage and probably encouraging the Western worlds weakness and stupidity in containing the elites power over the msm with greed .
Climate change is just another cog in the wheel turning the average person inside out .
A substantial number of the so called elites, are pushing communism/socialism because they believe that these systems will at last grant them the power they believe they are entitled to.
The point to remember is that if it cannot happen it won’t happen.
The people pushing this know that as well.
After all, even if the West did achieve Net Zero but China / India / Russia don’t, then we achieve none of our climate goals. And those countries have consistently shot down any such measures at every COP for twenty years. Often with support from Brazil and KSA too.
So these sums are interesting but purely academically. This is really about how Greens can embezzle funds. Whether those are Green NGOs, businesses or politicians.
What would be the point of Greenpeace if we all decided to just adapt to however the climate changes (or the weather happens) regardless of the cause?
Greenpis would just find another lie to push there existence down the road.
Greenpeace/Redwar are simply another far-left advocate/activist organisation who gave up all pretence about saving the planet when they kicked out the founding members including the marvellous Dr Patrick Moore!!! They promote global Socialism, just so long as they are the ones in charge!!!
Excellent points. There’s a lot of (mostly taxpayers’) money to be had for spouting Green nonsense. The politicians will push this green cr*p for as long as they think there are votes in it, whatever the cost, because they’ve convinced themselves that they are being virtuous.
Exactly. To a politician, being elected is THE virtue.
You ask that when I comment I quote your exact words.
So:-
“The stoopid, it burns.”
You are so right.
(Best to all.)
Willis? The only way battery powered vehicles will become widely used is if those vehicles are equipped with ICE motors running generators to charge said batteries. You know this. I know this. Greentards know this. Yet they will continue to push their fairy fart and unicorn dust stoopidity anyway. It is a religious dogma issue now, just like jihad. And hoping the arsonists are staying away from where ya’ll live, they seem to be merrily lighting up central Cali again.
For the record, my lovely daughter-in-law runs a Hyundai hybrid car & I think it’s great, & hybrids are the way forward as far as I can see, as they utilise the best of both worlds, petrol/gasoline on the highways/freeways, electric in towns reducing pollution!!! Having said that, I am slightly concerned that when our armed forces are forced to all (except Russia & China of course) go electric, how the devil are we going to attempt to maintain world peace??? Can you imagine it?……..”Hey, cease fire hold your attack we need a few tanks to be recharged before we can continue giving you Russkis a good whipping, lets restart in say, a few hours???”. Just a thought!!!
I know several people with hybrids of different makes and they like them, only complaint is lack of size/cargo capacity. One friend drives his from DC to Cape Cod, drives around on the Cape for the week and refuels in Connecticut on the way home. So they are worth the investment, if you only need a small size vehicle. Won’t work for me and millions of other Americans and others around the world.
I’ve always been told that hybrids were the worst of both worlds b/c they have double the complexity and double the systems that can break. Which, may be true as far as it goes, but seems like they’re doing pretty good for those that have them.
rip
My friend who drives out to Cape is a power and control systems engineer(0ne of the very few I have ever met I would trust with anything more complicated than pouring piss out of a boot) and he thoroughly researched it first. Only serious problem they have had is the on-the-column windshield wiper control.
With full credit to Wikipedia, whose authors and editors are primarily left-leaners…notice the numbers nuclear power plants needed. So peer reviewed info….
What jumps out of that calculation is the author/s? think 32,850 wind turbines could produce as much power as fifty nuclear plants.
Say what?
link
As far as I can tell, wind power is relatively cheap, unless it matters when you get your electricity. So I’m willing to believe that, in theory, 32,850 windmills could produce as much power as fifty nuclear plants.
There is the EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) cliff. link Since it does matter when we get our electricity, relying on wind power would propel us back into the stone age. The energy cost of constructing windmills and backup systems wouldn’t leave sufficient energy to power a technologically advanced society.
So, I’m darn certain that, in reality, 32,850 windmills are not equivalent to 50 nuclear plants.
Not quite the Stone Age, but certainly medieval Holland.
I presume you mean 1.6×10^20 joule, or 1.6×10**20 joule.
1.6×10E20 is easier if you don’t have latex
I’m allergic to latex. 🙂
LaTex on an up caret can have consequences….
Yes, and the phrase “safe sex” is an oxymoron.
Think of the children. I see many opportunities for stimulus and bailout bills with borrowed money between now and 2050. It’s the Argentine Fiscal and Monetary Plan in action or E-Peronism.
It also fits the profile of a plan cooked up in Venezuela.
Yikes!!! Thanks, Willis!
To take this another step, we could figure the cost of this. How much does it cost to build a 2.7 GW power plant? What does it cost to build 215 of them? How much does it cost to beef up the grid 60%?
Current costs of new nukes are on the order of $8 billion per GW, or $21.6 billion per 2.7 GW power plant. So 215 of them would cost about $4.6 trillion. Beefing up the grid? No clue.
w.
then there’s the rest of the planet- assuming every nation wants to be net zero – of course that won’t happen- but it would be nice to estimate the cost for the entire planet to be net zero
Even using scientific notation I cannot count that high. X*E^umpteenth.
And, it isn’t just the cost in currency at today’s prices. As resources get scarce, prices will escalate — Biden Inflation. In some cases there simply may not be enough of critical resources. To resort to extracting the necessary resources from the ocean or common rocks would require access to energy that brings Rud’s equation into play.
Been there, done that.
w.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/27/bright-green-impossibilities/
But if every nation wanted to be Net Zero, it would happen. And the net result would be zero, all dead, formerly productive fields filled with dead windmills and broken solar generators, and no people. Net Zero!
If some country actually had the will to fight against the NGOs and their own inertia to start that level of construction the price per GW would drop substantially.
Even in a one off construction a lot of the cost is dealing with regulatory delays or government’s changing their mind every few years and trying to scuttle the construction.
Thorcom thinks they could build 100GW a year, for the same price as coal power, simply based on the engineering requirements.
Thorcon
It’s the same idea as SMRs (Small Modular Reactor). Do the design and regulatory approval once and then mass produce.
Thorcon touts a project in Indonesia but I can’t find any specific dates.
If the-powers-that-be actually wanted nuclear power, the projects would be happening a lot faster. Maybe China will light a fire under everyone else’s butts. link
“And it takes about ten years from conception to completion for a nuclear power plant.”
You can be sure they would be permitted in batches of a hundred plants at a time if the greens were to accept nuclear to save face when it’s realized the whole sc@m is going to fall apart otherwise. They already have shown they don’t care about birds, bats, and other life forms really, so permitting should be easy. They have already started to say nice things about nuclear and the EU has recently floated a trial balloon re Nuke and gas being “sustainable” whatever that means, after the total energy balls-up they created.
Yeah they know they need an exit strategy at this point
I’m Sure there will be enough money left over after the war with Russia for all of that.
John, I saw the news clips with trainnloads of tanks and armored vehicles being delivered to Ukraine, but didnt see tank cars of diesel and gas. I guess they plan on buying it cheap from Russia.
Willis: Yes, what the stupid greenies say they want to do is impossible. Sadly, once they figure this out, they will pivot to “well we don’t need all those cars and trucks and miles driven anyway. We’ll just put our resources into public transit and move stuff by efficient trains and boats. People can walk or ride bicycles (maybe horses) to get around. etc.”. This is how socialism/communism works. The people need to sacrifice for the good of the people. Prosperity and quality of life are over rated. If you think this isn’t where they’re headed, just peruse the World Economic Forum website.
Just want to clarify that, for example, the Diablo plant you mentioned is comprised of two reactors. (2 Westinghouse 4-loop PWRs rated at 1100MW) So the timeframe to build the 2.7GW version is going to significantly longer than noted by the IAEA’s guideline. Maybe not twice as long…but consider that all multi-unit sites in operation had a lag of at least a couple years between startups of the reactors.
rip
At one point I worked on building and updating power plants. Many years ago, I was told it costs about an equal amount to create the grid for a power plant as it did to build the power plant. Don’t know if that is still accurate or not.
I can foresee a spontaneous outbreak of ICE Convoy protests all around the world in 2035.
(either that, or citizens seize and impound all politicians’ personal transport conveyances, and make them just use rickshaws instead. Pulled by Greens of course)
“The wall-to-wheels efficiency of light electric cars is about 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. “
Curious about where you got this number.
My own measurments on my Nissan Leaf gives more than 3 miles per kWh.
Yeah, but you have to get behind and push it for that extra half a mile, right?
It depends on operating conditions. My buddy once boasted that his ICE got 60 mpg. Yeah, well once, downhill, with the wind at his back, and no traffic. We had the same model and year car and I would never have made that claim. Just saying.
You measuring battery to wheels (the gauge in the car) or wall to wheels?
w.
How about the mining, transportation to the generating plant, generation of the electricity, transforming the voltage up and down, conveying the electricity to his house than from the wall to the battery then the battery to the end use.
As an electric car owner, subsidized by all of us taxpayers and able to virtue signal by driving an electric car, all but the last item, battery to use, mean nothing to him, Electricity is just there at the wall, it is all magic before that.
Willis, thanks for doing the exercise as above. Most of us know the impossibility of net 0. Even TW above knows it is impossible, but that won’t stop him from picking at nits.
Wall to wheels. The gauge in the car gives 4 miles/ kwh
And, your single sample is representative of all EVs? How certain of that are you?
To start with you have to pull around a 800 to 1000 pound battery as opposed to a 200 pound gas tank and fuel before you add in the weight of the engine and car plus passengers. There is no way that can be more energy efficient. Just saying.
If batteries were way better, I would have an electric car in a heartbeat.
An electric motor is 2 to 3 times as efficient as a gas motor. 70-96% vs. 30-35%
Plus, electric cars have regenerative braking which makes them far more efficient for city driving.
The bottom line is the in-laws plug-in hybrid burns zero gasoline in the summer and they pay way less for electricity than I do for gasoline. In the winter they need the engine for heat but they still consume less than half the gasoline I do.
On the other hand, they don’t know how long the battery will last and it’s going to be expensive so maybe that will erase the money they’re saving now. 😉
So, is an electric vehicle more efficient? For city driving I would say yes because of the regenerative braking. That advantage disappears for highway driving. In that case, if you take into account all the losses in the electricity distribution system, the efficiencies of the two vehicles are going to be a lot closer. YMMV
Mostly agree. But, you would be surprised how much regenerative braking occurs even on superhighways. There are slowdowns, hills, etc. All of those involve recovery of energy. When driving on a road like the NJ Turnpike, which is essentially flat and almost never stop and go when I drive on it, there is little regenerative gain in power. However, my hybrid van can log 33 to 36 mpg on long highway trips (after the batter is exhausted), well above the mileage of the ICE version of this van.
That is where ‘cruise control’ earns its keep, but a good driver also keeps extra distance from cars to avoid being slowed down unnecessarily.
However, in the Winter, an ICE car can heat the passenger compartment and windshield defroster with no loss in efficiency. Chemical battery performance degrades in cold weather, and power has to be diverted to heat the passenger compartment and front and rear windows.
Are those numbers for winter of summer?
My 16.6KwH battery in my Pacifica hybrid van will get 33 miles on a warm summer’s day. In winter? Not a chance. In cool weather,more like 25 miles if you are lucky (the heater runs at 6 KW).
In the winter, the gasoline engine comes on until the system gets warmed up.
Calculate how many KwH are used to heat cars and trucks in the winter. You will pay for that with electric vehicles but the heat is free with ICE’s.
Hi Thorbjarn.
Thank you for a real-world figure. Would you please tell me where and how you measured the KWhr. I would appreciate it.
Measure from the socket in my garage.
Shows about 20 % more than what the car reports.
Net nope!
Data & Statistics – IEA
Ageneral comment. First on Willis Eschenbach postings… IMO Willis does a great job in his original study, analysis, and writing/posting “original” work and studies on climate change. In general I am critical on what seems to me now having too much reposting of other web sites and/or cutesy articles .. in the old days Anthony mainly focused on relatively signficant / climate study / viewpoints … today seems like half of the posts are … ranting and reposting already published stuff from other sites, forums and media etc. As one example, republishing other sites “entire postings” from e.g., Judith Curry or Steve McIntyre. Appears nowo that all of Judith’s postings are republished in their entirety on WUWT, 30 – 40 – 60 paragraphs long from Climate Etc. I typically get 5-10 WUWT notices / day) most of which are reposts. It seems like WUWT has morphed from a science blog to a general rantblogosphere site. As one trained and having worked a career in scientific research I don’t need to read a web posting and then have an email from WUWT appear with the exact same posting reposted on WUWT. Sorry but just my opinion.
Dinna like rants, do ye?
How are ye for mirrors, laddie?
And aren’t you glad you CAN post your opinion here?
Savor your free speech avenues – they’re disappearing faster than glaciers are melting.
“today seems like half of the posts are … ranting and reposting already published stuff from other sites, forums and media etc. “
Settled science 😉
I concur with Daniel Wolfs opinion; postings, with little substance, appear every 4 to 6 hrs. Willis and Rud Istvan are always worth reading but why an article on “Climate Change Altering the Smell of Snow,” much less 2 articles. To those who say “don’t read them;” well that is the point: I don’t and, IMHO, trivia overload is turning WUWT into just another aggregator with perhaps valuable information lost in the noise. Anthony Watts has had an illustrious career and contributed much to our understanding of the weather and climate. I no longer think this blog fulfills his high ideals.
You have to keep the churn alive, but really how much “science” is new?
We have how many climate models? 50? 60? All those scientists need to get paid, so the churn continues.
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Yes, SEPP with the Week that Was, along with Judith Curry’s Climate Etc., Week In Review, do a pretty good job of picking up things published elsewhere.
With so many articles being published here, they have a half-life of about two days. I’m not sure what the business model is.
No one forces you to get emails from WUWT for every posting, you know. You can just turn the notification off and come back and visit when you’re in the mood for information and a free exchange of views. No need to indulge in curmudgeonliness.
WUWT is not all things for everyone, nor does it claim to be. I find some of the “impossibility of net zero” type posts a bit repetitious, but then no one is forcing me to read them in depth. I rather enjoy scrolling through comments on the “climate change causes hangnails in Portugese badgers” type posts; I come away feeling entertained, and my feelings of self-esteem and intellectual superiority are newly invigorated. And, most importantly, I also learn something new, not every day but a couple of times a week, and not always about global warming or climate. The things I learn come from commenters who know their stuff, as often as from the posts themselves.
Judith Curry’s posts are invariably erudite, informative, balanced and thought-provoking. Reposting them on WUWT just ensures that more people get to read her words of wisdom. Who (other than alarmists and their enablers) could object to that.
Benefit of the doubt – perhaps Danley is just having a bad day.
WUWT RULES!
I understand that everybody believes that only the stuff that interests them is important.
What I don’t understand why some people believe that their priorities should be everyone else’s priorities as well.
@Danly … Hear what you say. I’ve been a follower of WUWT for many years and have thoroughly enjoyed the now broad-ranging articles but especially the associated commentary from the many sharp thinkers here.
The expansion of focus into politics, a bit of aggregation, etc., has been necessary, in my mind, to keep WUWT readers engaged in the broader issues of this entire climate industry kokup.
I also get all of those emails, I scan them for any interest, tag the interesting ones for follow up and delete the rest. I don’t have a problem with that and am happy for Judith and Steve to focus on specifics that are highlighted to me on this blog.
Happy WUWTing !
I for one don’t have the time to keep up with the many different websites that touch on both climate and science. So I appreciate the efforts of those scan the rest of the web in order to keep the rest of us up to date on what is happening elsewhere.
Instead of dictating renewable energy use just make it more practical, affordable, and reliable and their “problem” will take care of itself.
Model this Griff….
The big problem for renewables companies is the price of steel, which comprises 70% of the final cost of a wind turbine and is nearly twice as expensive as it was before the pandemic.
Supply chain woes are killing clean energy stocks — Quartz (qz.com)
An electric vehicle is not necessarily battery powered. My dream is an electric vehicle powered by a fuel cell burning ethanol. Not as toxic as many alternatives.
We don’t have such a fuel cell yet. But even a grass-powered fuel cell must be possible – look at how much grass a cow eats, and not only she moves, she even produces milk.
Curious George, you left out “also produces methane”, which would be a great addition to your dream electric vehicle hybrid.
Have you thought about the water vapor by-product of fuel cells?
Ban dihydrogen monoxide!
There is a different way to reach the same conclusion based on just Tesla Model 3— ignoring that most US cars and light trucks are bigger and heavier needing a bigger battery.
The Model 3 standard range battery (advertised as 220 miles) weighs 1060# and is about 7% by weight each of Li and Co. There were about 17 million cars and light trucks sold in the US in 2020. That means needing about 63 million tons each of Li and Co at Model 3 levels.
In 2020, the world produced 82,000 tons of Li and 140,000 tons of Co. So by 2050, Li capacity has to increase 770x and Co capacity by 430x, just for the US at Model 3 levels. That is obviously impossible from a mining standpoint—nowhere near the amount of resource in the ground at any cost.
So Tesla has developed a battery recycling process, for which there is some available pilot line data from last year. Supposedly 92% by weight is recycled, so 8% is not. In order by weight, nickel (lots), copper (lots), aluminum (some), cobalt (little). Lithium is NONE, zero. You cannot get there from here, period. Independent of time frame.
There you go with those darn “facts” thingies again, Rud … as the famous philosopher Homer once remarked,
And that’s a fact. Look it up.
w.
Facts are merely facets of the whole truth.
Rud,
Using your #’s, I calculate 630,700 tons each of Co and Li, not 63,070,000 tons each. Typo?
Just redid the nums without scientific notion—complete numbers. Yup about 631,000 tons each. My bad. Goof was converting pounds to tons. 2 instead of 2E3. Just for US at Model 3 capability. Might get there with lithium from spodumene. Cannot get there with cobalt. Of the 140,000 tons per year, about 95,000 is from DR Congo. And the world for sure cannot get there despite EU ambitions.
‘Recycling lithium-ion batteries’ Harper et al. Nature 575, 75-86 (2019)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1682-5
May have been some progress in last 3 years but still relevant
Not to mention the ~300 miles a vehicle can travel before it needs hours of recharging…So much for long haulers…
And the ‘Just in Time’ supply chain.
Willis,
I’ve no idea what the situation is in the USA. In the UK, as you’re probably aware, we use gas for most domestic heating and Cooking. For cooking the usual, but not standard, combination is electric oven gas hob. For Net Zero UK these will have to go.
What is the situation in the USA?
No clue about the US in general, but in my house, we use gas (propane) for cooking, space heating, and water heating. To rewire the transformer, incoming wiring, and internal wiring and replace all the appliances in order to convert the house to electric would be very expensive, and electric costs in California are already through the roof due to renewable mandates.
w.
Depends on where. At my Wisconsin farm, the furnace, stove, and hot water heater are propane. At my Chicago townhome, all three are Nat Gas. Our condo tower in South Florida has Nat gas for the big emergency generator, but all the unit appliances are electric by code; Nat gas considered too dangerous for a multi unit high rise here. The one/two story very expensive homes just to our south on the beach are a mix of electric and natural gas depending on when built or renovated. All their emergency generators (not required, but wise thanks to hurricanes) are Nat gas. We have friends who installed a substantial Generac two years ago after Irma since the home is all electric and they lost power for days.
Get an induction electric hob… responds like gas
Still needs electricity whether it behaves like gas or not, will also mean new pots and pans for many households, which will be in short supply. The grid will have to cope with a five fold increased load when the UK goes NZ.
I wondered if the USA was the same.
To get an induction hob with the same performance as a cheap gas hob would require a 32 amp, dedicated supply.
Sure. Then I just have to pay for the new stove, throw out my aluminum cookpans, and pay through the nose for expensive electricity …
… and then, since PGE can’t keep the power on at my house, I can’t cook whenever we have a blackout.
Brilliant plan there, griff …
w.
Griffs answer to everything spend lots more money to get what you already have and load up a system already near collapse in many countries due to green mandates.
It’s not like griff is going to spend any of his money for any of this.
Don’t believe griff has any money. Seems to live in his mum’s basement.
We installed one of those when we built our current house. It works really well, but may not be practical in many cases.
Similarly, bottled gas isn’t especially practical in many cases.
If Induction cooktops respond quickly, then why do the majority of chefs prefer gas cooktops? I doubt that chefs would agree with that statement.
gas gives you *much* better temperature control.
Ben:
Here’s an EIA report from 2011 on domestic heating. It’s all graphs and no figures but by eyeball it looks like natural gas is about 50%; electric about 33%; oil about 8%; propane a little less than oil.
Regionally, oil is significant in the northeast and a bit player everywhere else. Electric is dominant in the south and natural gas is at least 50% everywhere else.
As for cooking, I assume that anyplace using electric or oil for heat uses electric, anyplace using propane for heat uses it for cooking also, and places using natural gas for heat are split between gas and electric for cooking. Our house for example had gas heat but electric cooktop, stove and clothes dryer. We had gas run to the kitchen and installed a gas cooktop but we’ve kept electric for the oven and clothes dryer.
Plan is for serial production of MSR power barges, not unlike Space X with continuous process improvement. 3-year order to docking a new plant starting in 2026…
The least impacting energy source on nature:
https://businessdevelopmentinternational.biz/seaborg-co/
Seaborg deep dive: https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/deep-dive-on-floating-nuclear-reactors
Even if such things existed, what good would they be to most of the US or to many other countries with the majority of their territory far from the sea?
But all the major population centers are on the coast, or near it. And the vast majority of the people who would be the first in buyers of EV live in those population centers.
The same production lines that build those barges could build the components in shipping container sized lots to modularly construct a plant inland if you needed one.
Not to mention navigable rivers and the Great Lakes.
But the green swarm won’t let it happen. They will stoke fear among the wider population, just as they’ve been doing about conventional nuclear plants since they first came on line in the 1950s.
This is much the same as the ThorCom concept. And the people who started that company have experience building mega tankers.
I was shocked that one of those monsters can be built for a hundred-million dollars. They are mostly empty space I guess.
They make a good ad but there doesn’t seem to be anything real to back it up.
” ….. 3-year order to docking a new plant starting in 2026…”
IMHO, not a chance. Maybe starting in 2035, if they work hard enough over the next decade at getting all of the MSR technology parts and pieces in place, all of the MSR regulatory requirements covered, and all of the needed MSR support infrastructure elements in place which are needed to make their concept a realistic proposition.
Having been deep inside of a nuclear construction project working QA oversight, and having been a member of several cost & schedule estimating teams for new-build nuclear projects, I view the Seaborg proposal in the same light as I view Bill Gates’ TerraPower MSR project. The schedule timelines for these molten salt projects are impossibly optimistic.
That’s why ThorCon went to Indonesia for their trial reactor. They calculated it would cost a billion dollars to do the paperwork and groundwork to just ask for permission to build a reactor. Because the NRC does not have any procedures to approve a new reactor design.
Once they get that then they have to get the actual permits.
Exactly how many barges would you need to supply New York City?
Willis,
Quote: “The first function converts joules to watt-hours. ”
I think the function converts watt-hours to joules.
Quote: “The next two convert gallons of diesel and gasoline to their energy content in kilowatt-hours.”
It looks like to me that the next two functions will be looking for a function j2wh. For example.
galgas2kwh=function(gal) gal*j2wh(130927880)/1000
Maybe I’ve got it all backwards? R is not in my sandbox.
Thanks, Dan. Always good to hear from you. You’re right, I fixed it with the right function.
w.
Just think of all of the oil we’ll need to keep those hybrids running, as the grid won’t be doing it.
Yes, nicely done, could probably do the same exercise for Net Zero in the UK. I guess Excel would be more accessible for civil servants, the calculation is not very complicated.
In another part of the wood we read Ars Technica today, expressing bewilderment that renewables are the cheapest generating technology, so how come as we get more and more of them energy prices keep going up?
Strange, isn’t it?
Indeed yes, it burns.
I read that article too
Totally Fracking Deluded
These people just can’t accept that their theory /religion is ridiculous.
This post by Willis is planning 101 and it’s clear that no one in (world) government is bright enough or honest enough to call it out.
The remaining fossil fuel component, gas, keeps going up. do try to keep up!
Fossil fuel prices are going up because they always have to be as expensive as unreliables.
Keep up (like they do with subsidies and costs)!
Your gas keeps going up because the Russians are a major EU supplier and you won’t allow fracking to increase cheaper domestic supply. Then there is that little carbon tax the EU wants on everything to inflate the costs of reliables to match
cheap renewablesexpensive unreliablesEnergy prices were going up even while fossil fuel prices were going down, so you can’t blame current energy prices solely on current fossil fuel prices.
Regardless, the reason why fossil fuel prices are going up is because idiots like you have been doing everything possible to make it impossible to produce fossil fuels, even while the demand for them continues to go up.
In Australia the gas price keeps on going up because of limited domestic supply due to stupid state governments banning exploration, shale and fracking … and worse, exporting the bulk of our gas for government tax … more money to pis out on more stupid things like NetZero.
Where do you get these ridiculous ideas from the gruniard?
There is plenty of gas somewhere between 50 and 100 years worth just on current reserves. Reality is it’s probably more like 200 as many countries have locked up extraction.
https://www.worldometers.info/gas/
There have been many oil crisis over the decades. I can remember the UK talking about issuing rationing tokens in the 1970s, left over from WW2 or Suez I think. The usual result is over production and a price crash. There’s no reason to suppose that non=European countries will meet the shortfall.
The result will be that Europe will be left with expensive renewables whilst the rest of the World benefits from cheap reliable energy
Well according to Wind Europe half of Europe’s wind fleet will come to the end of its natural life by 2030 and need replacing.
My local council has installed charging sockets on certain lamp posts for ‘overnight’ charging courtesy of Siemens and Ubitricity
When there are enough of these EVs I predict a riot… trying to use one
Who is paying for the electricity, fretslider?
Taxpayers, of course.
First one has to scan a QR code on a phone etc….
The juice is subsidised by the taxpayer, but the charging itself is paid for by the user
Holiday periods in Australia when internal combustion engine vehicles with families on board often line up at highway fuel stations to refuel, and each vehicle moves on within several minutes.
The same situation with EV would become a very good reason to stay home.
That’s the purpose of warmunism.
Willis … You just pee-ed in their pool. Unfortunately, we need a lot more pee-ers and maybe a few poopers to get our green friends and their elected enablers to listen.
Thanks.
What is great about this post is that one can approach alarmists & say “Fine ! So how are you going to solve the problem ? (without ever getting into / arguing the scientific issues)… ” and show that even if you are a true believer, the only way forward is to adapt. I guess the flip side is that most the true believers won’t be able to grasp even simple calculations, such as present here.
Thanks for “doing the maths” , Willis !
Good job Willis. Question: I assume the auto companies have people who can also do the calculations which you just did. How come then are they all seemingly planning for an all-electric EV future?
Hi Tom,
While I can’t presume to speak on Willis’ behalf, I submit that the auto-industry knows the ‘all-electric EV future’ is a pipe dream, just as well as the rest of us and they are not planning for an all electric EV future at all. They are playing the ball as it lies to their advantage. With the current crop of government diktats related to NetZero, with the number of urban slcaktivists going with the flow so as to look good in front of their neighbours, the car companies are working on the principal that a fool and his money are soon parted and building today what the customers want today.
The current fad of selling EVs to ‘enlightened’ consumers and the basis of being ‘green’ is no different to the great shift toward diesel powered cars (on the basis of reduced thin air emissions and cheaper fuel costs) a decade ago. You surely recall how that planning did a complete 180 turn when Volkswagon were busted cheating on their US emission testing and champions of deisel were forced to admit that while CO2 emissions per mile may be lower than for petrol, emissions of particulates and oxides of nitrogen were not.
So a lot of ‘enlightened’ customers replaced servicable petrol powered cars in favour of ‘green’ new diesel powered cars, to then be pollution shamed into replacing their servicable diesel powered cars with less polluting petrol powered cars a few years later, and those same ‘enlightened’ customers are now being encouraged to replace their serviceable petrol powered cars with ‘clean’ overgrown golf buggies.
Auto companies didn’t plan for an all-diesel future, nor did they plan an all-petrol future, just as they are not now planning an all-electric future; they’re playing the game, selling what ever types of new cars they can most easily shift. The “customer is always right”! Even when he hasn’t the faintest idea what he is talking about.
As a bonus, with so much unneccessary turn over in cars based on what the indecisive, politically fashion conscious market thinks it wants from one half decade to the next, they’re keeping their revenues flowing by selling new cars instead of servicing older but still serviceable cars – and their advertising gobshites will tell the ‘enlightened’ consumers whatever they need to hear to be persuaded to part with more credit to buy the latest fashion accessory.
There is the Climate Group’s EV100 Initiative which consists of 100 companies (actually now 121companies) in 80 markets across the world committed to switch their fleets to EVs and /or install charging for staff and/or customers by 2030.
Most of the major car manufacturers are on board but the IEA has said that only 60% of them support government targets to phase out petrol and diesel cars.
https://www.theclimategroup.org/ev100.members
There’s a huge difference between issuing a press release and actually spending enough money to replace their entire fleet by 2030. That’s only 8 years away. If they aren’t already buying huge numbers of electric cars and trucks, this was nothing more than a PR stunt.
Noting that just the transportation side of things creates a practically impossible scenario, how much further beyond does converting all the energy consuming activities move these numbers? Plus all the products that require O&G as a base component?
All of which is beyond the understanding of the innumerates populating the MSM and the liberal gaggle.
Willis,
Its right of course, to do it is impossible. But maybe the real issue is to go a little further.
We know from what you’ve done (and it was intuitively obvious anyway) that the idea that we all carry on as now but with the engines changed from ICE to electric is not going to happen.
But that does not mean we are all going to carry on driving ICE cars as now. What is much more likely is that the government, particularly in the UK, where all four political parties agree on it, the other three of them being even more extreme on this stuff than the present Conservative government, will make a serious effort to do it. And they really will actually ban the sale of ICE vehicles after 2030.
What then?
Well, it would be a very long post to spell it out, but I think the bottom line is fewer cars, maybe 10% of what we have now. Much less driving. Much less freight. Much less shopping. Tracking vehicles and charging per mile and by where is driven. Using the car as a grid storage device, and draining its battery when the grid needs it.
Buy a bicycle. Not a fancy lightweight one, a Dutch style bike with big panniers and metal fenders. You are going to need it, if they really keep on with this. And they show no sign of stopping.
I’m a fan of the TV series, All Creatures Great and Small, set in the UK in the years between 1936 and 1939. A hundred years later in 2039, the transportation scene in the UK will resemble what it was in 1939; i.e., walking, bicycling, taking a bus, and taking a train will resume their previous relative importance as primary modes of transportation for the average UK citizen.
Yes – and all this time the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians & Russians etc will be driving around in more and more cars – laughing at us.
And this is the plan for the so-called ‘environmentalists’ of course. For the most part they don’t care about the environment as much as they just hate the success of western culture – and people in general.
And when we finally see the error of our ways we’ll be too poor to afford the Chinese and Indian cars that will be the only ones on the market. It’s OK though, our children and grandchildren will be able to go and work as maids in those countries and send some of their wages back to us. Probably no more than a few million of us will starve.
Result!
“Then I went and got the figures for the number of miles driven and gallons of fuel used in the US in 2017 from the US Department of Transportation. “
Did I miss the calculation for regenerative braking that electric vehicles enjoy? I’m sure it wouldn’t make all that much difference, but it would allow the critics an opportunity to throw water on the argument and dismiss it out of hand.
Wouldn’t that feature be logically reflected in the manufacturers’ range estimates, Steve?
Steve, I actually know the numbers since I drive a hybrid. Depending on the vehicle (mine is a Ford AWD Escape small SUV) even in city traffic it is well under 10%. The reason is very basic. To extent battery life, you baby it. Regen braking is big pulses, so all the kinetic energy cannot be used to charge. Same reason Tesla’s rapid charging done frequently kills battery life and voids warranty.
Rud, we just got one of those a few months ago. There are things to complain about, but gas mileage at nearly double what our old 2010 Escape got, wasn’t on that list.
Yeah. We had to decide between the standard V6 and the hybrid. I crunched the numbers. V6 about 20 blended hi test, Hybrid I4 AWD with class 1 tow hitch a blended 30 on regular. The hybrid premium incentive that year (2007) was 3k. We made that back on day one. No brainer. And the battery is still ok. A bit of low voltage leakage current if sits too many days, but Ford designed in an easy button fix.
EV figures always include regenerative braking, Steve.
w.
Thanks
A few years ago I did a similar calculation based on the energy equivalent of all the oil we were using in Canada. That produced a number like 2x the current generating capacity equivalent . Reworking to to use average miles driven etc to try to factor in EV effeciency gains it still came at over 1x the current capacity… so doubling at a minimum the electricity generating capacity in Canada is required. I got into arguments with people but nobody ever corrected the math. At this point my conclusion is the best way forward is to go gung ho green in certain provinces and states and let them fail quickly so we can move on. They wont learn unless they fail so lets get it over with fast.
Well I can’t speak for the USA, but looking at the average commute in the UK – 11 miles – the average journey length – 8.4 miles – the average annual mileage – 6,800 miles and the average mileage in first 3 years for new cars – 10,377 miles – it is plain that taking a 200 mile range (most UK smaller EVs will do more than that) you’ll be charging your car about once a week in the UK.
And you’ll do that off peak, at the commuter rail station or supermarket or gym as often as at home…
So there’s not going to be some huge increase in power use every evening.
Average mileage means nothing. Average trip length, neither. What’s the standard deviation, is what you should be asking. That is what determines usability.
Read today’s Telegraph. They got three people living in the country, using their cars for the usual things, to try going electric for a week. With cars varying in price from 35,000 to about 80,000, and that is pounds not dollars.
Every one of them had serious range issues. This was winter. They don’t get anything like their nominal mileage in winter. Or on a freeway. And when they came to recharge? That is a story in itself. No, you can’t find charging points, and when you do, you can’t afford the time.
What you have to take on board is not that it cannot be done. It can and will be done, or at least attempted. What you have to accept is the consequential changes that will happen when it is attempted.
The first thing is, cars will become impossible to afford for a large proportion of the population. The second thing is, there will be evening surges, and the proof of that is in the two plans now surfacing: the right to turn off chargers, and the right to draw on car batteries to fund the grid. The third thing is, there will not be enough range, enough charging points or fast enough charging to accomodate the present pattern of car use. Its not five minutes at a pump, its hours at the plug. And finally, when the grid is taken to 15 minute spot rate pricing you can be sure this will cost a bomb when you most need a charge.
They are fine as second cars for a run to the school or supermarket. Expensive luxuries, but OK. Make them into the sole means of transport, the primary vehicle, and it can be done, but at the price of huge changes in how people live, work and play. Its going to be a more confined and limited and more expensive world.
Because not only will they cost more to buy than most can afford, they will also be charged per mile for road use. The cost of ownership and running costs will be much greater than current cars.
A big part of this will come from the requirement to run the cars and the heat pumps and all the current demand off intermittent power generation. The costs of that will all be built into the charging or the heat pump charges. And they will include not only backup, but also restructuring of the transmission network to take the power from the wind farms somewhere north of Thurso.
Griff will tell us that this is the best of all possible energy plans and that it will work out wonderfully, because there will be all this cheap electricity between midnight and 4am, and that is when all the cars will be charged.
Right, that is the only time you’ll be allowed to charge them. But don’t expect a cheap rate then. On the contrary, you will be paying through the nose every time there is a calm hour or two. And you’ll never know how much until you have incurred the charges.
The fundamental intellectual dishonesty here is pretending that we can just swap out the engines of our vehicles and carry on as before with neither inconvenience nor increased costs. We cannot, and we will not. The attempt to do it will revolutionize personal transport in the UK.
And it will have no effect whatever on global emissions.
I live in country NSW Australia and regularly drive to Sydney, point to point for my purposes is just over 300 kilometres.
Driving my diesel engine 4WD I could drive to Sydney, drive around the suburbs I visit for a few days and drive home without refuelling. To buy an EV that has the range just to reach Sydney and maybe drive around part of my routes would cost me about A$25K more retail price plus home charging equipment and without the passenger and luggage capacity of my SUV.
And I on average before the pandemic drive 50,000 kilometres a year and tow a large boat or caravan and the EV could not.
and that may be an issue… but all I can tell you is that it is NOT an issue for most of the UK population in their daily lives.
Read the Telegraph piece and you will see that it is. The point is, your average miles may be a dozen or so per trip. But you will have some important trips, a big part of the reason you need a car, which are significantly over that, and that’s when you find when the Telegraph testers found, they had range problems. And charging problems.
The only way electric cars are going to work as plug in replacements for ICE is if they:
It ain’t happening now, and it won’t by 2030, and this is why the attempt to ban ICE cars in the UK after 2030 will only happen at the price of huge changes in how people live work shop and travel.
To pretend otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
Its not that it cannot be done. Its that if done it will require huge changes in living styles which the advocates are not being honest about.
What do you do for a living? It’s *very* common for a working man (e.g. an appliance repairman) that is dispatched from a central hub to travel 100 miles or more per day as they work appointments. And there are a *lot* of those people, even in urban London! How is recharging their vehicle on a cold winter day going to work into their efficiency?
Probably the only way to make them work is to remove the battery and power them with OH lines like the old Electric Trolley system of the 40’s
Or you could power them like Slot Cars
which ironically is already being tested in Germany for heavy trucks…
three people living in the country..
The urban and suburban dwelling British are not going to have a problem though, are they?
there won’t be evening surges, will there? The whole point of the smart technology is to incentivise people to move, not force them… carrot, not stick. Saying we will all be ‘forced’ is frankly just conspiracy theory.
and again, it is clear not everybody charges every night (not everybody needs to top up whole battery capacity every time they charge).
Think how much time the average Brit spends parked at the supermarket, leisure centre, place of work, commuter rail station…
I am skeptical of the ‘everyone must get a heat pump’ narrative.
Or why is so much research and so many trials going into putting hydrogen into the gas grid? either as sole fuel or in the 20% mix which all UK boilers post 1996 will run on?
“it is clear not everybody charges every night”
Ask those in California who have to evacuate at a moments notice because of fire. Or those in Florida who have to evacuate at a moments notice because of hurricane weather. Ask those in North Dakota that must drive 20 miles to work in -20F weather.
Ask why they recharge every night.
(a 20mile commute is nothing, it’s from the south side of Kansas City residential areas to downtown Kansas City. Or from the south side of Topeka to the north side – and Topeka is a *small* city!)
Looking at the future from the other side of the coin, another important reason why there won’t some huge increase in power use every evening is because there won’t be enough power available to allow it.
All you have done is show that it’s possible for some people to commute using electric cars.
However you have not demonstrated that electric cars can completely replace ICE cars.
How nice of you to declare that everyone now needs to own two cars. One for commuting and one for everything else.
You also have done nothing to deal with the problem of how to charge that electric car for most people, and where the electricity is going to come from.
I believe that mainly for the zero exhaust emissions and public health reasons EV for city and other built up areas driving makes good sense, but is not practical or affordable yet.
A city family could buy two small ICEV for the price of one EV of the same size.
That is pretty much how they are used now. One status car to park outside so everyone can see it, and the workhorse in the garage.
Being outside also keeps it from burning down the house when it catches on fire!
I’ve shown that there is one heck of a lot less of an issue than the ‘everyone will charge, not enough power’ narrative.
I live on a large housing estate where half the cars are used for local journeys… and most of the commutes are within 20 miles (to judge by my neighbours)
How nice of you to prove MarkW’s comment true!
mark: “One for commuting and one for everything else.”
griff: ” half the cars are used for local journeys”
What are the other half of the cars used for?
You have shown nothing of the sort. You’ve made various claims, all of which have been multiply refuted.
No. You’ve asserted it, not shown it. I will show the opposite.
In CA last year, during power emergencies, the state had to “ask” EV users not to charge their cars in the evening after work because it was worsening the emergency. There were proposals to make it statutory.
Imagine if all autos were EVs rather than a small fraction of them.
That is obvious! Most of our states are larger than the UK.
In most of my younger years I would commute about 50 miles each way to work. So, I’d want to recharge every day, to be sure I didn’t exhaust my battery on the way home the second day. What does recharging a half-discharged battery every day do to its longevity?
When I take a vacation, it is not unusual to drive 600 miles per day to get to where I’m going. That turns a two day drive into a 6 day drive plus the cost of lodging for 5 nights instead of one. The motel owners will love that.
I also travel regularly to Australian remote country areas where there are no electricity grids, fuel service stations or road houses have diesel generators and with demand for energy from air conditioning, food freezers, operating fuel pumps, often also for nearby motel and/or caravan park customers and more few if any would welcome too many EV drivers wanting to plug in.
Your definition of most is 20%?
No, 30%
Another way of looking at it is that the 15 US states that are larger than Great Britain have 27 times the area of Great Britain, not 15 times.
Lets put it this way. Great Britian is about 80,000 sqmi. The average of 48 states is about 62,000 sqmi. GB’s density is about 850people/sqmi and the continental US is about 100/sqmi.
During the late 1980s I was visiting the UK and while dining out with colleagues the conversation turned to travelling distances, we all at first assumed that Australian business vehicles would travel further per week or year than UK business vehicles.
Not so according to the comparisons discussed because in Australia we tend to fly between cities for business purposes but in the UK business people drive.
Yes, but the distances in the UK aren’t vast. London to Edinburgh 400 miles… and that would be one of the longest journeys.
You would have difficulty towing a largish caravan that distance by EV
What about winter or summer? What about when the battery is no longer brand new?
LOL, so when everybody charges the EV “off peak” … a new peak will be created. Never mind, you will have to sharpen up at the gym because the only people there charging their EV’s will be the beefcakes 🙂
Yes
And this destroys the various energy storage schemes like pumped hydro which arbitrage between cheap and expensive demand periods
But if they smooth all that out with smart charging that all becomes stranded investment
I think you underestimate the gym mania in the UK…
Perhaps look at a map and compare the size of UK to most other countries … you are a tiny nation down at 78 on the list of countries by area.
This is just the mindset of a central planner. This is like calculating how many tons of pots and pans are produced by a factory and calling that a meaningful measure of the plant’s output.
A central planner can’t imagine a hive member will want to drive his/her car on the weekend for something other than going to work.
Ignore.
Central planning is required for any grid or economy.
Really? The grid in the US didn’t evolve from central planning by the government. Neither did the economy.
Your ignorance of the world is huge.
Grid yes, economy most certainly not. Every attempt at planning an economy has ended in total failure, usually at the cost of millions of lives.
Nobody is smart enough to plan an economy. That goes double for socialists and communists.
Griff, your stoopid is exceptional today. R U getting worse?
I live in Northern Virginia, and took delivery of a new Toyota 4Runner on August 31 of last year – that’s 5 months and 16 days ago. Today, I noted that I have put just a little over 7,000 miles on it so far. I’m “retired”, so none of that is work commute. I do plan to start a new job soon, and that will add another 250 miles per week to my usage. I estimate I’ll be putting a little over 21,000 miles a year on the vehicle, and I don’t drive it anywhere near as much as I did any of my cars when I lived in Southern California (average there was 40,000 miles a year). The US is a lot bigger than the UK…
Willis Eschenbach
“I’ve written before about the insanity of the “Net-Zero By 2050” ”
Willis, it’s not insanity, it’s criminal ! As with the “Wufu Flu”, the left is trying to get rid of the non productive, non Demoncrap voting segment of society..
Another great post, how do you find the time to write them all with so few typing errors ?
I use a Chrome extension called “Grammarly”, which flags not only misspelled words, but also things like doubled words, doubled spaces, singular vs plural, and other errors. Couldn’t do without it.
w.
Willis,
Thanks for your detailed efforts in this regard, but wouldn’t it have been much simpler to have uses the R code function “credibility test” to establish the non-feasibility of “net-zero by 2050”?
My use of this function in R code returns a value of 0.0000013 (basically, “one-in-a million” chance), but then again I am not as facile as you in using R programming language.
🙂
Thank you for the analysis, Willis. You make it obvious that no one government is actually thinking.
The need for electricity is even greater if rail transport were added to this set of equations. While the US has some electrified lines that are primarily passenger transport, think of all the freight that moves by rail.
On this site alone we have had years of discussion concerning the improbability of going carbon free. We have had years of discussion on the need to go carbon free. I don’t see where we are getting anywhere.
Isn’t it time to back up and get out of the weeds – who and why is leading this? Six years ago AOC’s chief of staff openly stated that this isn’t about the climate – it is about destroying our capitalistic society and replacing it with a global socialist type of society lead by a few and making the rest of us serfs.
My suggestion is to take all of the green money allocated and MAKE the USPS go green. Make them order the vehicles they need. Make them request budgeting based on design drawings and actual quotes. Stop repairing the existing fleet. Put in the charging stations, etc. This will shut down the Post office in a few years and will put actual numbers on the actual costs.
Currently we are spending a little money here and a little money there. Nobody notices what is accomplished and the cost – a form of divide and conquer.
.
WE’s last post inspired me to write a possible post on exactly that theme. Draft is finished. Will polish tomorrow and send to CR. Tonight is Super Bowl.
but it IS about the climate.
It IS about the science.
and bear in mind that this is global and not just about the US or US domestic politics.
Nope. The UN has been quite transparent – it’s all about wealth transfer.
There has never been any science behind the claims of the alarmists. Computer models are not science, and never will be.
Willis, you missed one big fuel user for transporting goods. 30-40% of the truck/trailers are refrigerated with diesel motors running the compressors. I have seen the trailers set for several days with the Diesel running to keep the cargo cold. How is that going to work with batteries?
It won’t!
Fascinating thought, Paul, and you’re right, I missed that entirely. A bit of research says the following:
Reefer trailers use ~ 1 gallon of diesel per hour … and generally they run 24/7 …
Half a million reefer trailers in the US.
365.25 days per year * half million trailers * 24 hours = 4.4 trillion gallons diesel.
Electric is probably 3X as efficient, so that gives us ~ 1.5 gallons diesel equivalent
That gives an additional 15 GW of power plants needed … a mere six 2.5 GW nuclear plants …
w.
Parked reefers could be plugged into a yards grid. The refrigerated containers on Container ships are plugged into the ships power system I believe. On the road they could draw power from the tractor. I believe they do that now?
So no batteries, but still need the power and extra grid capacity.
How can the reefers run off the electric system of the tractor if the tractor itself is running solely on battery power?
Have you ever been to a large truck stop on an interstate highway before? It can get so loaded its a traffic jam just getting in and out. I’m not sure how you would get all of them access to a charging port. Most of the truck stops here in Kansas would require a huge expansion of parking space and most of it would probably be wasted so as to allow in/out flow.
However, adding the extra battery capacity for refrigeration will increase the hauling weight with possible penalties in hill climbing, range, and cost.
If the point of the exercise were as stated, the goal will not be reached. But if the true goal were the bankrupting of industrialization, it may well be reached. And if a byproduct of the exercise would include a major decrease in population, whether by starvation, violence or disease, the Malthusians would be ecstatic.
Well, if we needed Net Zero to be EVEN MORE IMPOSSIBLE than it was yesterday, w. has supplied the data.
Of course, I was perfectly willing to settle for just normal everyday impossible, but I’m a mere pragmatist.
It is extremely frustrating that the globalists are behind net zero emissions and the combined influence and pressures applied to nations that dare to resist, trade for example, are significant.
Accordingly the Australian Federal Government rejected demands for a ban on coal mining and to increase Paris Agreement emissions targets, also refused to commit to signing an agreement to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 but instead stated that Australia has “an aspirational goal” based on new technology being developed and without undermining the economy.
Unfortunately our leaders are being manoeuvred into supporting the climate hoax agendas regardless of what we the people want done and believe, as in being sceptics and not being prepared to have our taxes squandered on exercises in futility to solve problems that are natural climate and weather based.
Kip, you and WE got me thinking about how to reframe the basic debate, given this level of palbable idiocy. Working on it now. Regards.
Rud ==> Look forward to it. Anyone can see that it is impossible on time scales being proposed….just look out your window at your power poles!
Longer. Here are the dates for Plant Vogtle units 3 & 4:
August 2006: Application submitted for ESL (Early Site License)
March 2008: Application submitted for COL (Construction and Operating License)
August 2009: Early Site License and Limited Work Authorization issued by NRC.
February 2012: COL approved by NRC.
July 2012: litigation initiated by environmental and anti-nuclear groups was rejected by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
March 2013: Construction officially begun on unit 3.
June 2013: original schedule extended by 14 months
November 2013: Construction officially begun for unit 4.
October 2021: revised schedule announced: unit 3 operational 3rd quarter 2021 and unit 4 to follow 2nd quarter 2022.
Total time from conception to completion: 16+ years.
Total time for major construction: 9+ years.
The Plant Vogtle campus has been approved as a nuclear power site since before construction started on units 1 & 2 in 1976. For a totally new site it is quite likely the ESL and COL review process will take longer.
Even the French are taking much longer to build nuclear reactors these days: the average start construction to operational status for the four reactors put in service this century is 14.3 years. For the 52 put in service before 2000 it is 6.7 years. The one still under construction is the 1660 MW Flammanville unit 3; started in December 2007 and projected operational May 2023 — 16.5 years.
Aside from cost and time the other reason we can’t rely on all nuclear to meet the additional demand is that pressurized water reactors (the entire US commercial fleet) can’t be ramped up and down to follow demand due to Xenon poisoning. The explanation is here. With current designs nuclear is limited to base load; variable demand will need to be met with other generation types.
Plus Voglte 3-4 cost is something like 2x original estimates. Bankrupted Westinghouse Nuclear, a bit of a problem for Toshiba.
French Flammanville reactor has also had large cost over-runs. Don’t know exactly how much.
I believe Barakah UAE is a better site for what can be achieved. Units 1 and 2 took around 8 years each to complete and are now up and running and supplying power at the same price as previous. The final cost for the four units, delivering 5.6 GW, is expected to be around US$24bn.
Sitting in the UK in a fog of uncertainty, I asked my MP whether I would be allowed to import another French Citroen diesel automobile in 2030 as I’d seen nothing about it. She didn’t know. What wd be the WTO’s reaction to an import barrier?
I think we are misunderstanding what this means. It is not the intention of the elites – the John Kerry’s, Klaus Schwab’s, Leonardo DiCaprio’s etc, that non elites – the 98% of the population, continue to live like we have been living. For example, ownership of personal transportation devices must come to an end except for the wealthy. As Schwab, the originator of the elite wateringhole – Davos, said of the future: “You will own nothing, but you will be happy.”
Willis,
Just one little nitpick. You won’t have just transformer losses to worry about. If all the public, residential, and business chargers use transformers they will put a huge inductive load on the transmission lines. That’s especially true for residential load at peak usage time. Those inductive loads increase the current requirements at the source generator even though the inductive current produces no real work at the load. That inductive current increases total loss in the transmission lines used to serve the load.
I’m not sure what the power factor of the typical low-output, residential charging system is but I’m pretty sure it is not 1. How much widespread residential chargers will increase the inductive current for a typical residence is something I can’t judge. Maybe someone on here will know. It is a factor that should be considered in sizing the generator plants.
Thanks, Tim. Hadn’t considered that … anyone have any hard numbers on that question?
w.
Sure, the numbers are 1 when 2πfL = 1/2πfc. So they will just slap capacitors on the load to eliminate the inductive power factor just as they do now.
Except high voltage Farad size capacitors are not cheap. And neither are the switches. So add that to the cost.
“They will just slap capacitors on the load” that’s true and they will just slap a charge on your bill to pay for them all, its the property owners responsibility.
Modern converters have an input power factor that is generally >0.99. This is not an issue.
Yeah if the utility lines are up to the load, if not oh well.
I found a CA spec that says large battery chargers require built in PFC circuitry (C=correction) to bring PF to 0.9 or higher. So additional grid (utility) level PFC should be unnecessary or at least minimal.
What does PFC circuitry do to the efficiency and power capacity of the converter? Ain’t nuthin free in this world.
Those power factor capacitors also suck huge amounts of inrush current when the load first hits. So doonman is right about needing switches being needed for the capacitors which means multiple capacitors so you can switch them in sequentially. The inrush current also adds to the needed capacity of the generator and transmission line, think 100,000 people getting home at 5pm and plugging in their electric car – big current spike needed from the generator. It might be short-lived but it still needs to be available. (if you have a 2hp to 5hp air compressor in your garage and your lights dim even a little bit for a second or two when it kicks in then you have experienced what the grid generator will also see)
All of this adds to the cost of each residential power converter.
Modern converters do not require any large power factor correcting capacitors at their input, There is no large inrush current – in fact they can be programmed to ramp up slowly if required. The input current to the converter will be basically a sine wave with a PF >0.99 and a total harmonic distortion (THD) of <5%. These converters are a very clean load for the source. The efficiency of the converter will generally be above 95%.
You should look here: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1165&context=ece_fac
“http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajeee/8/4/6/index.html
At least one of these studies contradict what you are saying. That study recommends the use of synchronous capacitors instead of shunt capacitors to correct for the reactive current caused by heavy charging loads. That reactive current is being generated somehow.
ROFL. That’s first one is about 10 years old and was looking at EVs that were definitely at least 10 years old. That’s ancient history in the power electronics world.
In that first one they had to try really hard to identify a problem and realistically the problem wasn’t there. It doesn’t matter if your harmonics are high when as a proportion of the prospective load they are small. If your supply is capable of providing 100 amps and a load is drawing 1 amp with very high distortion that is not a problem. If you had 100 such loads then you have a big issue, but that is not the case here. When the cars were first connected and drawing maximum load there total harmonic distortion was less than 4%. The total demand distortion never exceeded around 3.2%.
You really should find another hill to die on as this one really is not an issue.
I’ve only worked as an engineer in the industry for a bit over 30 years so may know a little bit about the field,
I’ve been an electrical engineer for 50 years. I’ve learned a few things over that time.
Harmonics may be small in an individual unit. But when you multiply those by 1000, or 10000 they can become quite large and have a negative impact on both generation and transmission., Even you seem to understand that: “If you had 100 such loads then you have a big issue,” How many loads does your nearest substation serve?
If doing this were as cheap and easy as you present then this kind of equipment would be put into all kinds of things like washers, dryers, air compressors, well pumps, heat pumps, air conditioners, furnace fans, etc. Anything with an electric motor or transformer.
If genetics is any clue, I’ll be dead way before 2050 and probably incompetent to drive by 2035.
So I will be missing out on all that electrical stuff anyway.
But I’m sure my grandchildren are more than capable of voting for their own best interests regardless of what currently aging boomers have planned for them.
OK Boomer?
So we instead need to look towards the real issue which is that fossil fuels will run out, especially oil which is the focus of your transport calculation
Even if you ludicrously say that oil can be made to last at current production rates with whatever growth is needed for 12 x 18 = 216 years then that still means we need to be building one new plant every year.
That’s why its imperative that we do something about this now. But we need to do it for the right reasons. The wrong reason includes CCS which is a waste of time, money and energy.
First, I think you mean 12 * 18 = 216 months, not years.
Next, here’s cumulative US oil production and US proven reserves … not seeing the problem here.
Yes, we’ll need more electricity production. But electric cars and trucks make the need skyrocket far beyond possibilities …
w.