Francis Menton
Connecticut is a small state, so you may not be paying sufficient attention to its heroic efforts to save the planet. Count on the Manhattan Contrarian to bring you up to date on the latest developments.
On Friday (July 22) Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed the just-passed bipartisan Clean Air Act for the state. Lamont and other state officials gathered in New Haven in 90+ degree heat to celebrate the great accomplishment. A State Senator named Will Haskell, who is a member of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, took the occasion to make the main point:
We cannot wait for Washington to step up and save the planet!
But how exactly is Connecticut going to accomplish that? After all, it has a population of only about 3.6 million. Its greenhouse gas emissions are in the range of about 41 MMTCO2e per year, which is well less than 0.1% of total world annual emissions of about 49,000 MMTCO2e. You could zero out Connecticut’s emissions entirely, and it wouldn’t even amount to a rounding error in the world total. Indeed, the increase that occurs each year in China’s CO2 emissions is a multiple of Connecticut’s total emissions. (According to Our World in Data here, from 2019 to 2020, latest years given, China’s CO2 emissions went from 10.49 to 10.67 billion tons, a one-year increase of about 180 million tons, or well more than four times the total annual emissions of Connecticut.)
But our heroes in Connecticut are not going to let such mere statistics discourage them. They have a plan. And the plan, included as the central feature in the new Clean Air Act, is to electrify the state’s fleet of vehicles, particularly its city buses and school buses. Here is state Transportation Commissioner Joe Giuletti speaking at the July 22 event, quoted in the New Haven Register:
“There are approximately 800 buses that we are responsible for at the DOT that are being replaced with no-emissions electric models. They’re quieter, they emit no emissions and they last longer,” Giulietti said Friday.
Governor Lamont also issued a statement emphasizing that the new law would bring about conversion of all the state buses to electric within a few years:
In addition to the electric state-run buses, public school buses will also shift to electric models, according to the governor’s statement. The Clean Air Act will also prohibit the procurement of diesel-powered buses after 2023, according to the statement.
I particularly enjoyed this statement from Transportation Commissioner Giuletti, this time quoted at the website of television station WTNH:
Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe Giulietti remarked, “it’s so nice to hear a bus that’s behind you that’s not making the noise or emitting any of the air, either the propane or the diesel fumes.”
Note the clear implication that Giuletti has never actually ridden on one of these city buses himself, nor would he ever deign to do that. City buses are for the little people. It’s just that when he gets near one, he wants it to be more suitable to his elite esthetic.
The New Haven Register added that the new electric bus program represents a build-out of a pilot program that began with the delivery of some 12 electric buses in 2020. The Register quotes Connecticut Transportation Department spokesman Josh Morgan:
“The first battery electric buses came into service in the fall of 2020,” Morgan said. “Today, there are 12 electric buses in Connecticut. . . .”
And then, as luck would have it, on the very next day, July 23, one of those 12 electric buses already in Connecticut’s fleet suddenly exploded into flames while sitting in a parking lot in the town of Hamden. Here is a picture of the event, courtesy of the Hamden Fire Department:
It’s really quite something when one of those big lithium-ion batteries suddenly explodes into flames. As usual with these lithium fires, they couldn’t extinguish it with water or anything else, and they just had to let it burn itself out.
“Lithium ion battery fires are difficult to extinguish due to the thermal chemical process that produces great heat and continually reignites,” Hamden fire officials said.
Fortunately, no one was on the bus, and it was out of service on a Saturday morning.
The Connecticut officials reacted to the incident by immediately pulling the entire electric bus fleet from service. The Register quotes CT Transit spokesman Josh Rickman:
“The importance of rider safety is demonstrated by taking these buses out of service and ensuring a thorough investigation is completed prior to any redeployment of the fleet,” Rickman said.
Who, just who, woulda thunk that??
We have hybrid buses here in London, where they do make sense. They are much quieter and emit far less particulate pollution, particularly around bus stops.
Not too keen on the batteries blowing up, I must admit – who wants to be fried on their morning commute? – but that doesn’t seem to happen here with the buses we use.
Two went up in flames in Paris in April.
https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/london-fire-electric-buses-recalled/
Apparently, it does happen there with the buses you use, Observer, and it’s quite spectacular.
London bus explosion: Five electric buses go up in a fireball – smoke seen for miles https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1614242/London-bus-explosion-electric-bus-battery-pack-fire-latest-update
Video footage posted on line shows flames and thick black smoke billowing skywards from the garage in the High Street, as by-standers watch on in horror. Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said six fire engines had been sent to the scene. The fire brigade urged the public to avoid the area and said the emergency could last for a “long time”.
In a statement, they said: “We are currently in attendance at this large fire.
“This is likely to be burning for a long time.
“Please avoid the area if you can, and keep doors and windows closed if you live in the area.
Images captured by Shaun Cunningham show firefighters attempting to douse the flames with water.
However, as they struggle to contain the fire, a huge ball of flames erupts from the burning buses…
lady luck is a b#tch
Virtue signaling twits !
Just another reason to keep that 68 Camaro running
One among many,
Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe Giulietti remarked, “it’s so nice to hear a bus that’s behind you that’s not making the noise or emitting any of the air, either the propane or the diesel fumes.”
It is so very nice when you pull up behind a bus and know that it will eventually move because it’s powered by actual fuel instead of batteries that might drain too fast on a hot day, and that it won’t explode with a loud bomb blast and erupt into a huge untameable fireball. Yes, so very nice.
I am still trying to figure how one hears a bus that is not making noise. Sorcery indeed.
It wasn’t even far away in the middle of a forest…
It gets impenetrably worse when most of the noise created by road vehicles these days is ‘wind noise’ or ‘tyre noise’
OK maybe electric buses don’t have radiator grilles and (engine) air-intakes but unless efforts are made to make them extremely aero-dynamic they’re still gonna be noisy
Tyre noise is going to be much worse because of the grotesque weight of these contraptions, made even worse by the immense damage they’ll be doing to the road itself.
A Very Long Time Ago in the UK was a Government Agency called the TRRL (Transport & Road Research Laboratory)
Concerned about cheapness and economy (how to build cheap, nasty, short life & high maintenance roads) despite themselves floundering in an ocean of somebody else’s money BUT…
Their research found that the damage inflicted upon asphalt road surfaces multiplied via the 6th power of the vehicle axle weight.
Wrap your head around that – an electric Tesla at 2+ tonnes all-up weight is doing 2^6 times (64 times) more damage to your motorway than a VW Golf might do.
While the Tesla gets away with paying no Road Fund Licence or other tax
Don’t even think about concrete motorways for a low-noise solution.
In any case, most of the noise coming from school buses is made by the kids themselves – how do they not know that?
Silly me, its because they’re soooo rich & intelligent that they don’t make kids any more.
Errr, why do they need school buses then…
I think my head hurts……
In the UK there isn’t any kind of Road Fund Licence or Road Tax. Instead, the upkeep of roads is taken out of general taxation that everyone pays. Hence I have to pay for some other rich bugger’s virtue signalling.
You must live in a different UK to me!
While some vehicles are not liable for Vehicle Tax, as it is now called, all IC engined vehicles have to pay. The amounts vary considerably, depending on the fuel, age, consumption and value of the vehicle.
You’re talking of Vehicle Excise Duty. Road tax was abolished in the 1930s
Although the govt, I believe, are currently planning to put VED into a road fund. It all got put on the back burner because of covid, but it may have gone ahead now.
Yup, for some reason, cars that emit more CO2 are taxed at a higher annual rate, regardless of how many (or few) miles they travel.
At least taxes on petrol make some sense in that regard, as they encourage people to drive less. Charging a flat annual rate for a car incentivises people to use them *more* so they get their money’s worth.
Governments…
That’s not what is hurting on Connecticut’s alleged leaders.
My bicycle puts far more pressure per square inch on the road than my car but my car is doing 10^11 times more damage because it weighs 80 times more? What?
Maybe you should have an Real Lancashire Eccles Cake and read the report again.
It’s all that processed sugar he’s been eating.
The pressure per square inch a tire puts on the pavement is roughly the same as the air pressure in the tire, give or take a little tread pattern and rubber squishing. Racing bikes run up over a hundred psi, but I think most bike tires are about the same as cars.
My own bike, which has been hanging on the wall of my garage for 27 years, has a tire pressure pretty close to ambient.
Maybe a man …. er …. person …. will walk, or maybe ride a bike, in front of it ringing a handbell, like cars had a flagman in front of them years ago.
The voices! In his head, telling him that there’s a planet being saved behind him.
Australian regulations on lithium battery installations for residential premises prohibit placing the battery under living spaces.
When I boarded an ocean ferry a week or so back, they asked if my car was battery electric because it is not a common variety but is diesel powered. The ferry require battery vehicles to be separated from other vehicles because they present a much worse fire risk.
So – Is it a good idea to sit passengers on top of lithium batteries? The first death in a battery bus fire will likely end in thought provoking litigation.
The buses used in Leicestershire have a battery pack on the roof and in the rear engine compartment. https://pelicanyutong.co.uk/about-yutong/ select
Yes, I seem to recall a flaming bus in Paris that might have had those roof mounted (among other places) batteries. Makes for nice flaming debris and molten metal falling on the heads of passengers…
Not a good idea for stability when rounding tight corners one would think.
When was the last time you saw a 52-passenger bus in an F1 race, Alastair?
😉 😉
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Idle question: why do buses always ‘plunge’ off of mountain roadways? Can’t they just “miss the curve and tumble to the bottom” every once in a while?
Nothing to do with racing or taking fast corners. Unstable design is a significant hazard at slow speeds too.
In places like San Francisco, Conshohocken, Pittsburgh and many other hilly towns/cities makes unstable buses death traps. All it takes is a wind gust at the wrong time.
Or cutting the corner a little to tight and hitting the curb.
Haven’t read about one tipping over yet, but I’ll keep an eye on the news.
Flaming sparky buses? Yes. Tippy buses? Nothing yet.
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Meanwhile, I’m going to see how often double-decker buses tip over. My curiosity is piqued. Is it a thing? I dunno.
Old buses are pretty stable.
Thanks for that, JeffC.
Yeah, I looked up “tipping double decker buses” and found that one of the design specs was that they had to turn on a 28 degree slope without tipping. Somewhere else it mentioned that the suspension would allow the upper carriage to tilt up to 34 degrees without tipping.
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I also searched on electric buses tipping and found only a lone example from a design test drive. The bus design wasn’t yet available for sale. The batteries were all in the top.
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During the test drive, the bus ran off the road and then tipped over. The test driver and 3 other employees (engineers?) suffered minor injuries. Oddly, at least to me, the bus didn’t burst into flames.
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I never found a follow up to that report. The bus maker was investigating why the bus went off the road. It was clear that the battery top-heavy bus would tip. I can only guess that the ditch by the road tilted the bus at an angle beyond the bus’s design specs.
Pretty sure that bus is not full of passengers, who would raise the CoG considerably
There appears to be two ropes connecting the top of the vehicle and the building to the left. The front rope appears to be loose, but the rear one appears taught.
Nice catch, Mark.
After your remark, I embiggened the picture to look at the cables and saw the 34 degrees on the front of the bus. I could also read the 28 degrees. The article I found had the numbers, but not that great photo that Jeff found.
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I would think that photo was from one of the original design tests where they tilted the chassis until the top was going to go over. Or may PR to reassure the public.
When a cable went tight, preventing a tip-over, they took a reading which we see in the photo. I admit, I’m just guessing on that, but it would explain one tight cable.
Why crash a bus just for the answer on tilt when you can get the answer without damaging the bus?
Paris is fairly flat.
Public Bus Crematorium – unimaginable, or is it?
It’s a feature, Jim. For the price of bus fare, you can be cremated and not pay those high prices they charge at the funeral parlors.
Of course, the funeral parlors wait until you are dead. whereas you may have only been looking to get from A to B on the bus. The ‘A to Eternity’ probably wasn’t stamped on your ticket.
Wait… check the fine print.
All this nonsense based on worse than useless climate models. Where is the due diligence? Impoverishing the population all based on complete incompetence. It is a disgrace to science that Manabe won a Nobel Prize for his stupidity. He has no clue how Earth’s energy balance is regulated. His sad omission that climate models do not handle clouds well is too little too late. The world has gone mad in the wake of an incompetent dullard.
The cause of the bus fire was Catastrophic Climate Change (aka Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming).
And I thought “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” was fiction enough.
I suspect that, were he alive today, Samuel Clemens would detest, and mercilessly mock the Alarmists. He would see right through them.
Isn’t it time that all EVs were banned from tunnels, parking buildings, and every occupied building? Since such fires CANNOT be extinguished by firefighters, ANY such fire will consume any building where that happens. Yes, the frequency of such fires is quite low, but the losses are likely to be tragic! How are they going with their electric buses in Paris?
Yeah, it’s a good thing this bus wasn’t sitting in the parking garage when it caught fire. Otherwise, Connecticut might not have any electric buses right now after they all caught fire.
As a Connecticutan myself, I must disagree. It would have been the ideal outcome if they had all burned up.
But anyway, buses? What are those? This is Connecticut. 900 buses for 3.6 million inhabitants.
Especially if the local politicians pushing the “climte” crap were inside at the time…
Might not have a (usable) parking garage either!
In CT it occurs in 1 in 8 buses so it’s not quite low
In Connecticut it will be School Buses. Now that is scary.
A new twist on the term “small fry”
However, all the political useful idiots are convinced that EV is the way to go regardless of the environmental costs and risks and maintenance, short battery lifetime, and poor performance. They know that wind and solar cannot support EVs, which is why they want to get everybody out of their cars and too poor to buy an EV.
Fewer people also means lower consumption, fewer cars, less travel, and incredibly increased inconvenience in doing anything outside your home. They are working at removing large portions of a normal lifestyle and make us all stay-at-homes. We are supposed to be living at home, own nothing, and be happy.
A red-faced commissioner Joe Giulietti: “O the infamy, the infamy! They must all have it in for me.”
Hey, man; what time is the next bus?
It’ll be bang on time.
They’re just warming one up right now
It warms itself.
Perhaps we should keep a list of electric bus fires given that there seem to be a disproportionate number of burn-ups in these useless vehicles.
Fortunately if you you live in a rural area with hills you are unlikely to ever see one of these milk floats with pretentions roll up to your bus stop.
On a very worrying note, some clown from the Met Office warned Britain on BBC news this morning that “sea levels around the U.K. are rising” at a faster rate.
This is worrying. Have shipping lines been warned that as their vessels approach British coastal waters they will run into a rising slope or perhaps a step of water. Will this step become steeper and steeper and yachts fall off
If they attempt a more distant voyage. How does the physics of U.K. waters rising at a wholly different rate to the rest of the world even work.
Send for more magical thinkers.
Since the immediate response to one of these fires is to pull all similar models from service, it will be quite a problem if a school bus goes up in flames (let’s hope while not loaded with kids). “Sorry folks no school in Connecticut until we get less dangerous buses.”
Oh, and Connecticut gets most of its electricity from natural gas so there’s still going to be CO2 emissions.
Not to mention the “emissions” inherent in making worse-than-useless battery powered buses even before they turn their first wheel…
My local council here in Leicestershire (population 1.2 million) has switched to electric vehicles on their park and ride.
https://www.choosehowyoumove.co.uk/park-ride/greenlines/
https://pelicanyutong.co.uk/
It now seems to be assumed, incorrectly in my view, that electric vehicles are now zero emissions.
Certainly there are no tailpipe emissions so air quality in densly crowded areas may improve to a degree but the main aim is to reduce CO2 emissions and that is not really happening.
Transitioning from liquid fuelled vehicles to electric powered vehicles increases demand on the grid and as the only type of generation that can increase output to that extra demand are fossil fuelled ones (Unless hydro is a significant part of a grid’s mix.) Renewables and nuclear are already giving all they can.
Most studies I’ve seen use average CO2 per Megawatt generated as a basis but this is inaccurate and gives a very flattering figure for evs.
If the construction and commissioning of non CO2 emitting generators actual output matches the expansion in demand from electric vehicles (And heat pumps, the same is true for them) then CO2 emissions will stay as they are. I suspect that evs and heat pump demand will outstrip the increase of non CO2 emitting generators output especially as there is a limit to how much renewables the grid can accept and stay stable.
I expect that all this expenditure on evs will produce little of the desired reduction in CO2 emissions and is very damaging to the established automotive industry..
Electrics should be classified as ZEH vehicles. Zero Emissions Here.
Plus don’t forget the emissions encapsulated in the battery powered buses before the source of “recharges” comes into play.
and some kind soul giving the toxic air particulates /chem runoff into drains etc would just be a community service …wouldnt it?
lol
In Lake Wobegone the children are all exceptional, in Connecticut they are burned to a crisp. Dysfunctional and proud of it, and willing to endanger the public to prove it.
Yes, don’t think I’d want my school children on one of these.
If I had kids I’d be driving them (or having them driven) to school in a fossil fuel powered vehicle.
Meanwhile, Coventry City Council (UK) is to splurge millions on converting the entire city’s bus fleet to electric. Wouldn’t want to be a passenger on one….
I’ve visited Coventry.
Tolerable place [in places], but won’t be going back if they’re buying mobile crematoria.
Auto
When one of their shiny new electric school buses self-ignites while full of children, who will they find to blame? Climate change? Trump? Russian disinformation? White privilege? Themselves? (impossible)
“The importance of rider safety is demonstrated by taking these buses out of service and ensuring a thorough investigation is completed prior to any redeployment of the fleet,” Rickman said.
Hard to investigate the cause of a fire when there’s nothing left but toxic ashes.
To be fair, almost all of the ‘spontaneous combustions’ I have read about in EVs happen during charging. That is why the overwhelming majority of them happen when nobody is in the vehicle. Unless those little kids are sitting in the bus while it is charging, they are probably safe.
Do you have statistics or is this just a feeling based on reading biased reporting from an EV enthusiast web site?
The Paris buses were not charging when they burst into flames, a matter of sheer good fortune that no-one was injured.
https://insideevs.com/news/583324/paris-suspends-149-bollore-electric-buses-after-two-fires/
Don’t think the Paris bus that self immolated was charging when it burst into flames on the street.
Not trying to be obtuse, but how does he know that they last longer when they’ve only been around for a couple of years?
About quieter buses: I recall reading, in 1963 I think it was, when Sheffield introduced its new fleet of trolleybuses (anyone remember trolleybuses?), they had accidents caused by people stepping in front of them, and they had to install a noise-making device so folk could hear them coming.
I lived in Bournemouth as a teenager and we had trolley buses. Loved ’em! Great power up hills….
I recall reading (probably here on WUWT) about two municipalities in Germany that had gone to electric buses but found after just a couple of years that the batteries needed to be replaced and they could not afford to do that.
Transpired that both were very hilly places and the batteries were not up to taking the buses up all those hills.
“Not trying to be obtuse, but how does he know that they last longer when they’ve only been around for a couple of years?”
I had the same question.
For the same reason he knows that the Earth needs saving from CO2. It’s what he’s been told to believe.
I was in China 5 years ago. A lot of motor scooters were battery powered. As you may know plenty of Chinese drivers don’t particularly keep to the rules of the road. So the motor scooters could be on either side of the road, with hardly any noise and most were saving electricity by not having the lights on ever. It was very challenging crossing roads at night.
Is that why San Francisco put bells on their trolleys?
I was raised Catholic, so schadenfreude makes me feel vaguely guilty.
But it is one of the few pleasures that has not been eliminated by woke regulations or the rising cost of double digit inflation. So, enjoy responsibly.
…and just 5 days later…Let’s Go Lamont!
CT Electric Buses Removed From Service After Fire
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ct-electric-buses-removed-from-service-after-fire/ar-AA102apQ
There is no intelligent life remaining in CT. Except the EV grifters who are making huge bucks offa the stupidity of the voters/taxpayers in blue areas. Watch for more EV flameouts in the near future.
12 battery busses in all,
Lithium all around,
Take one down
Burned to the ground,
11 battery busses to fall.
sung to the tune “99 bottles of beer on the wall”, etc…
Follow the money flowing into CT and elsewhere and try not to breath the battery fire fumes. Money is power even if it’s borrowed and goes up in smoke after the press events. Just don’t let your cut of the money pile get smoke damaged.
The out of service parking lots will need to be expanded which will increase UHI warming from the extra asphalt.
A feature, not a bug!
Auto
Where will they get asphalt after fossil fuels are banned? Back to cobblestones?
Maybe Belgian Blocks. There was a stretch of road near where I grew up that was made of those – they would vibrate the fillings out of your mouth when you drove over them (and this was back before “low profile” tires), but they would still be there if they weren’t paved over.
They’ll also need to be distant from anything flammable…
Ignorance meets reality.
infact you could eliminate 100% of the CO2 from man’s industrial and transportation activities and it wouldn’t move the needle – total CO2 less than 4 one hundredths of one percent and over 95% of that is naturally occurring – the biggest scam ever in the history of mankind
I notice he left out the fact that they cost much more.
Beyond that I wonder when the myth of electrics lasting longer will finally crash onto the shoals of reality?
They will have to get more traffic cones and crime scene tape for public safety. Also they need bigger evacuation doors that can be opened by trapped occupants.
As regards Connecticut’s plan to electrify the state’s fleet of vehicles in order to save planet Earth, please see the attached photo with caption.
ALL politics and nothing more. Lamont is lamentable. Next Connecticut with its own hero, NED, will save the UNIVERSE. Just imagine the glory.
Believe it or not, he’s a big improvement over the last guy (Malloy).
Someday along here, one of these school buses will light up, and immolate more children than any of the school shootings have ever killed.
Will we then hear anguished cries to ban these “instruments of mass murder”?
Probably not…
With all these electric buses being rolled out, and considering the number of electric bus fires we’ve seen in just the past year – how long before there is a real tragedy and it happens with an occupied one? Is that what it’s going to take to get them to reconsider this? Or will even that not be enough?
I know I am not alone in enjoying Francis’ assaults on green idiocy. This one is priceless. Thanks!
Though I guess we should also thank Connecticut for the descent into absurdity that provided the subject.
What EV’s really are…
At least Ned can check off the box. It was never about science or the planet.
Their EV fleet comes complete with false claims and baseless assumptions.
any climate proposal that doesn’t have measurable benefits to temperature should be vetoed
oops that’s all of them
Would be interesting to know what pollutants are released in say, an ev autobús or a Tesla 3. They certainly are sooty fires.
“During an electric vehicle fire over 100 organic chemicals are generated including toxic gases carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide – both fatal to humans”
From an advisory note by the UK Bedfordshire Fire Brigade
https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/Community-safety/Road-safety/Fire-in-Electric-Vehicles.aspx
I would guess Gomer Giuletti has never heard the Gawdawful noise when the radio you are listening to erupts into static when anywhere near one of those virtue pandering monstrosities
Currently, the only way to put out a lithium fire is to smother it with sand.
Connecticut could have a giant freight helicopter loaded with sand standing by for immediate deployment. Ready to dump on the next spontaneously exploding battery-powered bus.
All the passengers tragically killed by the solution to climate change would be memorialized inside an instant monument.
Sounds like Chernobyl. At least we can save a few bucks by not having to airdrop Boron to absorb neutrons.
Karma is great.