Newsweek has published an interesting opinion piece by Bjorn Lomberg where he actually analyzes the CO2 savings from switching to an electric vehicle vs. just purchasing carbon offsets.
He demonstrates that subsidies for electric vehicles are hugely disproportionate to the amount of carbon dioxide emissions prevented.
Climate activists and politicians constantly tell us electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. California and many countries, including the U.K., Germany, and Japan, will even prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade or two. But if electric cars are really so good, why do we need to ban the alternatives? And why do we need to subsidize electric cars to the tune of $30 billion per year?
The reality is far more muddled than the boosters of electric cars would have you believe. Carbon emissions from an electric car depend on whether it is recharged with clean or coal power. Moreover, battery manufacturing requires masses of energy, which is today mostly produced with coal in China. That is why the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car using the global average mix of power sources over its lifetime will still emit about half as much CO2 as a gas car. You can buy that same carbon emission reduction on America’s longest-established carbon trading system for about $300. Yet many countries pay more than 20 times that amount in subsidies to convince people to make the switch.
There is no air pollution from the engine of an electric car, but it needs electricity, which can end up polluting more. One new study found that electric cars cause more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars in two-thirds of American states. In China, an extra electric car pollutes slightly less if driven in areas with new, cleaner power plants, but it produces slightly more pollution in regions with older power plants.
https://www.newsweek.com/electric-car-subsidies-are-bad-investment-opinion-1752032?
He concludes:
Ultimately, the reason electric cars are championed is because of their promised emission reductions. Yet the IEA estimates that even if the whole world achieves all of its ambitious stated electric vehicle targets by 2030, the additional saved CO2 emissions over this decade will be 235 million tons. The standard climate model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals that this will reduce global temperatures by only 0.0002°F by 2100.
Electric vehicles will only take over when innovation has made them better and cheaper than gas-powered cars. But politicians want the change now and are planning to waste hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing electric cars, blocking consumers from choosing the cars they want, to achieve virtually nothing for the climate.
https://www.newsweek.com/electric-car-subsidies-are-bad-investment-opinion-1752032?
The full article at Newsweek is well worth a read.,
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“[Norway] is paying such high [electric-car] subsidies for such small CO2 reductions that it has to sell 100 barrels of oil, emitting 40 tons of CO2, to subsidize an electric car to cut just one ton.”
How much of the French national revenue is wasted on high end fission “safety” for reactors that were already very safe?
What is the “carbon intensity” of that revenue?
You may be interested in a little context: https://www.decouplemedia.org/podcast/episode/2d6eef03/somethings-rotten-with-french-nuclear
It’s not about CO2 — it’s about votes.
“I promise that if elected I will continue to support our nation’s investment in electric vehicles” is one required stop on the road to reelection. Don’t look to our politicians for leadership.
It is not about votes. If it were I would have no sympathy for us. We would have got what we literally voted for.
The problem is the entire political class is in lock-step on this. There is no one we can vote for who isn’t saying “I will continue to support our nation’s investment in electric vehicles”.
In this country (US), it’s about buying votes. Not necessarily about buying voters, but buying politicians’ votes The big money men, special interest groups and lobbyists all want these subsides and thus we have them. This is the same reason we have ethanol subsides and mandates.
Just look at Texas. Back in 2017 I was shopping electric rates and happened upon a report from ERCOT (which was blamed for the Feb 2021 near complete failure of the TX grid). That report warned that the traditional electrical generation system was threatened by too much investment in renewables instead of maintenance of existing facilities, building new traditional plants and the lack of investment in fuel. The politicians pointed the finger at ERCOT and the consumers and media bought their scat. TX is still subsidizing the Green BS.
Climate Change and Nut Zero about political power and control.
Dumbocrats believe everything is wrong or broken
They want to be in charge of “fixing” everything.
Then they make every problem worse.
I’m not exaggerating !
Money. Money = power. Money = votes. Follow it.
The discussion and arguments on this site are predominantly ‘my science is better than your science’. The people in control (politicians, media and academia) do not care. If they can scare and guilt your average Joe and Jane on the street, who needs science, except as a minor tool. Until there are serious consequences, the mob will keep allowing this to go on. The NeoLIA might be what it takes.
In the meantime buy stock in superglue; seems to be pretty high in demand.
Golf carts, fork lifts, and children’s toys. Everything else, not that much
Mobility scooters?
Hand tools?
Nope, the battery packs don’t last very long, and there is never one charged when you need it.
I have two (three counting my daughter’s) hand-tool battery chargers and about 10 batteries. I hated running out of juice and fixed the problem.
It’s an easier fix with an electric power cord. They’re more powerful, too.
If you are using a tool continuously, plug in MAY be better, BUT, I use battery powered tools for almost everything I do, less drilling holes in STEEL and driving nails, I use a compressor driven nail gun.
Lithium batteries will make 50 or more cuts of dimensional lumber.
It is all a balance between cost and the number of batteries you may need. I don’t buy “extra” since they do deteriorate as they get older. Since I am ONE person, 3 batteries are all I need, and the 3rd battery is so I can have multiple tools at the ready. Ex, one drill to pre drill holes, second to drive screws. One on the charger as backup.
So I have extension cords, long ones and #12 wire, but almost NEVER drag them out.
I even have a 12 inch battery chain saw that does a good job of limbing and cutting rounds from pine trees under 12 inches. Two batteries last as long as the chain oil fill up, and will fill the bed of my Polaris Ranger. AND so much quieter. AND starts every time. BUT it does NOT last as long or cut as fast as my Stihl.
I also have a couple of them for when I have to drill through
something hard.
Yep – make a lot of manual functions easier.
I have three battery chainsaws. Two are actually for pruning. The big 82V chainsaw is used in the bush and I do not disturb the peace and quiet of the bush using it.
I also have a battery mower. Been using it for 12 years and replaced the original lead/acid battery with lithium-ion 8 years ago. Now lighter and batteries hold charge much longer. That avoids having to store fuelled and the tedium of pull starting an ICE mower. The electric has no fumes and is quieter than any ICE mower.
I have been looking to buy an electric mower, I just put in some grass.
I was looking at a Dewalt, with 2 10 AH 20 volt batteries, which I think would work in my Dewalt chain saw so it was tempting but we travel a lot and we mostly stay at our cabin 200 miles away so we will probably just hire it out.
Only for drills as they are used far more often than any other tool and come with multiple batteries. For anything else plug them in or use petrol power. One small advance has come though with companies offering a range of tools that use the same battery but I don’t see any advantage in changing unless you need a new tool anyway.
I don’t know what we’d do without the DeWalt cordless drill or the Ryobi leaf blower. We have battery chargers for both, and spare batteries are always available.
Smartphones!
… and calculators…
Is it morally and ethically correct to provide subsidies which are financial incentives for the continuation of environmental degradation and humanity atrocities being exploited upon those with yellow, brown, and black skinned folks in the developing countries that are mining for the materials for EV batteries in countries with no environment controls or labor laws?
“Is it morally and ethically correct…?”
Yes, if it makes you feel better.
In my younger days there was a phrase making the rounds, “If it feels good, do it!”.
That was 50+ years ago.
(Strange that it was never used by the defense in a murder or rape trial.)
If given the choice, ALWAYS buy the indulgences! Always cheaper.
I remember in Animal Farm the top pig started selling food the other animals had produced to others rather than letting them eat it themselves.
A very telling quote:
“… A new study shows only one in 10 households with an electric car relies solely on it. The rest have at least one non-electric car, with most including an SUV, truck, or minivan. For most households, at least one of those non-electric cars is driven much longer distances, making the electric one their ‘second car.’ …”
It’s difficult in Wyoming because heading west in an EV is not recommend.
North, east or south don’t sound like good ideas either.
90% of electric ( coal fired ) cars are still on the road. The other 10% made it home….
This is what I am seeing…. EVs are not unlike motorcycles and sports cars. Almost no one has one of those as their only set of wheels. They are all “fun” vehicles for use on weekends and nice days.
I see a few Teslas around the small town I spend most of my time in, but I’ve noticed that I see them most often on warm, sunny days and on weekends. When it’s cold, rainy, or snowing I seldom ever see any….just like I never see motorcycles or sports cars with convertible tops being driven in that kind of weather.
But, without EVs, how else are people going to virtue signal? You have to think these things through! Same thing with rooftop solar. Perfect for virtue signaling. You can’t miss them. And the fact that you are helping to pay for them through higher electric rates, not to mention your taxes doesn’t matter at all. Shame on you for even thinking it does.
I am going to get stickers to put on my truck that say it is powered by green energy.
The majority of leftist morons won’t make the connection with my tailpipe.
Is the truck painted green?
No, but the stickers will be.
Brad
I’ve seen these two phrases for a gas/diesel car:
“Powered by a natural biofuel” & “Powered by naturally preserved sunlight”
Sadly, just about everything is lost on the climate fanatics; they are clueless.
If they can afford to by an EV, they can afford instead to hire somebody to glue themselves to something.
(Like in racing and some sports they could wear a patch or decal with their sponsor’s name on it!)
they can afford instead to hire somebody to glue themselves to something.
Why pay when the idiots with the superglue will do it for free?
The context was “virtue signaling”.
That Getty heiress that funding the group that threw Heinze soup at that Van Gough would gotten lots of points!
(Kind of like “earning” Twitcoins. 😎
Except for people like me that locked in contracts for utility payments for my excess generation at the retail cost of electricity. Thanks for the subsidy.
this has given me a cunning business idea, has anyone cornered the market in ‘fake’ solar panels, similar to those fake cctv and alarm bell box’s. What about a Tesla body kit for your old Peugeot diesel, and perhaps a small box that emits a stupid noise to indicate when your reversing…. Off to search eBay ….
A variation. The sticker reads –
“My other car is a Tesla, and it’s recharging from my solar panels!”
Ideal in England . . . .
Auto
The whole, or a very significant, part of owning/driving a car was ‘Freedom‘
Something almost always emphasised in advertising for cars
With electric cars, everything that you imagine to be ‘free’, every last aspect of it, will vanish as fast as the click on a remote mouse
That is what electric cars are about.
Absolute Control
Yet it doesn’t seem to have dawned on anyone, apart from The Man Himself,
Elon Tesla Musk
That is why he’s putting so many Sputniks up – to keep tabs on all the motors, as will be required by Governments everywhere.
When it all gels, he’ll make Gates, Blooperberg, Rockinfellas, Sugarbergs, Packards and Soros’ of this world look like the proverbial Church Mice in comparison
Yep, but not just Tesla, not just EV’s, have always been convinced eventually every vehicles management system would communicate with ‘Central Services’, responding to enforced road speeds, controlling vehicle use, toll road and motorway auto billing, the most fun you will be able to have in your car, will be to set light to it!
With an EV, it’ll light itself…
What if it turns out that consumers don’t buy electric cars? Billions of dollars are being invested in factories to make electric cars and batteries. For example it looks like old established companies like Volks Wagon, Ford and General Motors have staked their future on electric cars. Fortunes are being spent on mines, infrastructure, and so forth. But what if consumers decide not to buy them?
Big companies make big mistakes. Remember when Coca Cola discontinued Coke and tried to replace it with that sickly sweet drink called New Coke? The executives at Coca Cola didn’t even know why people bought Coke. They were so disconnected from their customers that they didn’t even understand that people liked the taste of old Coke. Could electric cars be the new New Coke?
Of course Big Brother can always step in and outlaw ICE cars. And Big Brother might. But I don’t think He will. It would be too disruptive. And of course the advertising for electric cars and the fancy marketing will be shoved down our throat. But in the end it is consumers who decide what they want. And after all the investments, after all the propaganda, after all the virtue signaling, and after the fat lady is finally done singing what if consumers simply decide that prefer ICE cars?
As you have so succinctly put it, “Big Brother can always step in and outlaw ICE cars” as well as stopping the selling the gasoline to RUN them! When they shutdown all the refineries there won’t BE any gasoline! However, looking back at the hard times in Germany just before the end of WWII, there ARE other fuels that can be used. The onboard computers are capable of adjusting to them, too. You might have to hide your telltale tailpipe, though.
Big brother already has stepped in and outlawed new ICE’s, at least in the UK
Also Australia and Californiastan. But only so far in the future that the politicians that voted for it will be long retired.
Estimates vary but let’s say there are currently 477,000 EVs on the road in the UK and 790,000 PHEVs. This compares to over 30m ICEVs.
BoJo’s ridiculous virtue signalling by banning sale of new ICEVs by 2030 will have to be revisited as no Government is going to want to alienate that many people.
And ‘Boris Johnson is considering running in the Tory leadership election’ – press and BBC, just now [1430Z/20th].
Auto, wondering what a return of Carrie Antoinette will bring . . . .
I don’t think Boris will return
He’s always been far too interested in trying to find the hotspot than searching for the missing fingerprint of climate warming
What if it turns out that consumers don’t buy electric cars?
Then the US eventually becomes like Cuba which is like an American 1950s era car museum.
The remedy for that is to outlaw petroleum and alternate fuels, they seize and destroy any vehicles that violate the ban. They get a real rush out of doing that sort of thing.
There are around 2m EVs and c.7M PHEVs in the US out of a total of 290m cars. The industry to support ICEVs is going to be very big for a long time.
Do you think the governments that are ‘outlawing ICE cars’ are going to rescind their laws and regulations? Under what circumstances besides a huge replacement (somehow possible?) of the party now running almost everything?
This is something that I too wonder about….usually, when a company or industry debuts new product(s) they might add a line to their existing catalog, or manufacture a small amount of product to see what the consumer response is (this also after getting feedback from consumers). No corporation has ever re-tooled their entire factory or lot of factories to create products without knowing for sure that there will be sufficient demand for said products.
At least with the New Coke, Coca Cola simply stopped making that formulation and went back to the tried and true. Plus, Coca Cola makes other brands of soda as well. So they didn’t commit to a path that they could not reverse. Presumably everything in the factories was the same – same equipment, same general process, same bottling/canning, etc. They had to change the ingredients back to the old Coke, drop the logos and the advertising for the New Coke. But not the end of the world that would lead them to going bankrupt.
IMO car manufacturers that are leaping headlong into this are going way, way out on a limb….and there is no security net under them made of overwhelming consumer demand.
And as for governments forcing the hands of manufacturers and consumers, I would look for many of these bans to be challenged in court. By manufacturers when sales plummet (yes, there are some people who are clamoring for an EV, but they are minority of vehicle buyers and will be so for the time being) and by consumers when they are forced to buy vehicles that cannot meet their needs.
Totally agree with your last paragraph. The IEA estimated there were c.16m EVs worldwide at the end of 2021. This compares to over 1.4 billion ICEVs. There is no way all these vehicles are going to be electric by 2050.
Lomborg makes good sense on these pragmatic issues, even as I disagree with him about CO2 emissions ever driving a climate problem at all.
He has reach and credibility, and his posts and articles are no doubt raising awareness that the numbers plainly do not support the EV mandates and subsidies.
nor any of the other subsidies for “green” make sense, yet here they are.
Thank you, David, for hitting the nail on the head. There is no real evidence that CO2 emissions have anything to do with climate. Lomborg is a bright guy and I applaud most of what he says, but he is a luke warmer regardless of the total lack of scientific evidence. The Tesla is a con, and its CEO will go down not only as the richest man in the world (for a while) but also the richest con man who ever lived.
John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, Steve Jobs etc built leading American companies without a penny in Govt funding. Now many companies owe their survival to govt subsidies
Especially here in Canada
I didn’t need to be convinced by the government to buy my cellular phone. It certainly didn’t take a government subsidy to convince me. I bought the thing because I thought it made my life better in some way (there are times when I wonder about that though).
The same thing should apply to EV cars. If it takes massive subsidies for EVs and penalties for buying an ICE vehicle, then are EVs really what people want? I suspect not.
Did people need government incentives to buy Model A Fords, or did they fly off the production line in their millions on their own merits? I suspect it was the latter.
And the gov’t didn’t force people to choose VHS over BetaMax, or compact discs over cassettes and LPs…or flat screen TVs over CR tube sets. With all of these things the consumer made the choice and manufacturers followed….not the other way around!
I have a hard time thinking of a government EV subsidy as an “investment”.
It might be an “investment” if I owned shares in a company that sold EVs.
But I don’t.
In this case “investment” really means money the government forcibly extracted from the rest of us to reward politicians’ rich friends who want to buy a toy.
In government speak, “investment” means “taxpayer funded boondoggle that will not benefit most taxpayers,” not the usual and customary meaning.
Doesn’t anyone remember the subsidies for buying cars, trucks and vans to help get those inconvenient horses off the road? (/s)
As good an example of the free market in action as anyone could want.
Those pesky horses left a mess behind them
Especially in cities
Taking that one step further, in the early days of motoring there were three horses in the propulsion race: ICE, steam and electric. It wasn’t government diktat that decided which won the day.
I’ve just bought a hybrid petrol electric car, purely because of the tax breaks. It’s potty. I have to carry around all the extra weight of the batteries whenever I’m running on petrol power, which is about half the time. So my overall energy usage is vastly increased.
How earth is that going to save the planet?
I see no reason to subsidize anything or give tax relief. The whole idea has been abused beyond belief. If taxes are to high lower taxes for everyone. It is not the governments place to pick winners and losers.
Flat income tax, with maybe a small personal deduction.,
‘its the only place’ said the rat
I don’t get it.
The author is incorrect with this statement:
There is no air pollution from the engine of an electric car,
Electric motors produce ozone. While arguably beneficial 10-25 miles up, here at ground level its not so nice. It’s widely as an antibiotic decontamination gas due to its highly reactive properties with most organic molecules.
It also conveniently disregards the coal fire supplying the electricity that charges its batteries, and the incorporated pollution caused by all the mining, etc. that went into making it.
From the article: “0.0002°F”
It’s probably closer to 0.0003 degrees F. But that’s just a guess.
And let’s not forget that when the consumer incentives are removed, sales plummet as has been the case in Georgia, Ontario, Denmark, and Hong Kong. As the article says, only when prices drop to a point that EVS are competitive with gas and diesel vehicles will sales take off. Right now in North America EVs are being outsold by the others by a 19 to 1 margin.
I expect Insurance Co’s will cause the EV fad to go up like a Hindenbuerg mushroom cloud of toxic smoke. They burn like 2000 lbs of magnesium ribbon, bright and hot, like 4000 F with lots of electric arc light and huge volumes of toxic smoke. When ignited, from whatever source, you can’t extinguish with water. I’m a fire fighter, have watched 5 new Teslas burn up. It was caused by the car carrier truck, not a Tesla fault. No matter how it starts, EVs burn like magnesium thermite bombs.
I’ve listened to the burning metal shrapnel buzzing through the air, bouncing off highway guardrails, igniting fires wherever they land. For hours. Trust me, even firefighters keep their distance when these things light up. Will you sleep soundly if your neighbors’ charging EV is next to your car or house, your children’s bedroom, or in the 1st floor parking slip under your multi-story apartment bldg?
Insurance companies deal with reality every day, because it’s expensive. They’ll stop insuring products that explode, send high velocity burning blobs of molten metal 100 feet in all directions. Insurance carriers will see hype, wont be able to pay out for incidental damages; theyll stop carrying the risk. No insurance, no registration, no buyers.
They might insure them but exclude any payment for fire as they currently do.
Anything and everything is a bad investment if it’s expensive.
Yes, even fission.
Today fission is too damn complicated and “safe”.
We need to uncover the biggest medical hoax ever (with miracle vaccines): cancer causing radiation.
Electric vehicles will only take over when innovation has made them better and cheaper than gas-powered cars.
And there is no sign of that happening within the next couple of decades. When it comes to ‘cheaper’ the rising costs of the lithium batteries will ensure that goal remains way off.
The quotation would be true it there were a genuine free market and politicians were rational people. EVs don’t have to be cheaper or better than ICE cars if ICE cars are banned from sale.
But sooner or later the politicians are going to have to factor in that the vast majority of their populations are not driving EVs. Will they want to alienate these majorities?
For example, in Japan the market share of EVs was below 1% for the last three years. In the UK ICEVs outnumber EVs/PHEVs by more than 30 to 1. In the US there are 2m BEVs and c.6.8m PHEVs out of 290m cars
Speaking from experience in Australia, I owned an electric car for 2-3 years. Its range was about 252 kilometres. That was more than I used in a week. I trickle charged it overnight via a 3 amp plug when the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing. Our beautiful coal recharged the battery. So it cost no more than leaving a dim night light on. I now live in Sydney where I don’t need a vehicle, but if I ever need to get around other than the bus I will buy a mobility scooter which I can use on the walking trails. Also guys, the torque was fantastic
“Climate activists and politicians constantly tell us electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better.”
There are grains of truth here, but looking closer it is apparent there is much misinformation. Cleaner? Well maybe and sometimes but as a definitive truth NO.
Cheaper? Perhaps over the useful life of the vehicle, but there are a lot of ‘depends’ here. It depends on subsidies, cheap electricity, road taxes, interest rates, etc., etc..
Better? Yes in many ways, but inferior in many ways as well.
I would love to own an electric, but look at it in the same way I look at the purchase of “let’s say” a Corvette. An extravagant toy as balm to an inflated male ego.