This one has been rolling around in my brain for a while. I was on some online forum a bit ago and we were "discussing" energy, specifically the need and uses of energy to support our modern life. We got to a discussion of electric vehicles and the growth of solar and wind power. I realized with one comment that the person I was "talking" to really did not understand electric cars and power generation. He seemed to think changing all vehicles to all electric would solve all our problems. (FYI, I say "he" as the self-description was a 20-something male college student - I only "know" them from an exchange or two on the forum).
I explained that one problem with that is that electric cars to do not produce any power, they just consumer power. A battery does not produce energy, it stores and releases it. The power has to come from somewhere. I really don't think he had ever thought of that and after a brief exchange, he left the forum.
Batteries have to be charged. It takes a generator attached to something like a windmill, water turbine, nuclear driven turbine, gas powered turbine, or other source to produce the energy. Then the battery stores this energy in chemical form and releases it as needed in electrical form. Batteries by themselves, without a producer of energy, are useless.
So, where does that energy come from? Here is a list showing the production of electricity in 2020:
U.S. utility-scale electricity generation by source, amount, and share of total in 2020
1Preliminary data as of February 2021
Energy source Billion kWh Share of total
Total - all sources - 4,009
Fossil fuels (total) 2,419 - 60.3%
Natural Gas 1,617 - 40.3%
Coal 774 - 19.3%
Petroleum (total) 17 - 0.4%
Petroleum liquids 10 - 0.2%
Petroleum coke 8 - 0.2%
Other gases 11 - 0.3%
Nuclear 790 - 19.7%
Renewables (total) 792 - 19.8%
Wind 338 - 8.4%
Hydropower 29 - 17.3%
Solar (total) 91 - 2.3%
Photovoltaic 88 - 2.2%
Solar thermal 3 - 0.1%
Biomass (total) 56 - 1.4%
Wood 37 - 0.9%
Landfill gas 10 - 0.3%
Municipal solid waste (biogenic) 6 - 0.2%
Other biomass waste 2 - 0.1%
Geothermal 17 - 0.4%
Pumped storage hydropower -5 -0.1% (actually uses net energy, just a storage system)
Other sources 13 - 0.3%
You can see that roughly 60% of the electricity came from some type of fossil fuel and 20% came from nuclear power. Even with the rapid growth of renewables they are still only 20% of total power production.
Now, what happens if a large portion of the vehicles start using electricity versus producing their own energy through internal combustion? We will need a lot more electricity? We already have two major States - in the richest country on Earth! - that are having problems meeting the electrical needs of their citizens/businesses now. These are also the two most populous States with the most registered vehicles - read "need fuel for transportation" - California and Texas.
The world has had more people taken out of poverty in the past 200 or so years than in all of previous history. This has largely happened for two reasons:
1) the establishment of property rights and the ability to build real wealth by ownership of property. Throughout history real property was owned by a "lord" or "King/Queen"/"Royalty" and the common folk were unable to build wealth. This started in the late Middle Ages and took hold around the world in the 1800s.
2) the availability of powered "tools" to increase productivity. "Tools" are everything from powered looms to produce fabrics, to diesel powered trucks to allow farmers in the country to sell their goods in far-off cities. The coal-powered and then diesel-powered trains were the beginning of true movements and settlement of masses of people and to tap the resources of entire continents.
Item 2 was made possible mostly by the ability to tap the energy contained in fossil fuels and the use of machines. There is a thing called entropy. It has to do with the amount of energy that is actually available for work in an energy system/fuel. ( fyi, as always, when I discuss scientific principles or facts I am taking license and purposefully over-simplifying things. I do not intend these comments to be scientifically intricate, but layman-like explanations of complex issues. Entropy is also a measure of randomness or chaos in a system. I am going to concentrate on the availability of useful power.)
Fossil fuels provided, for the first time, a large amount of relatively cheap energy to do work. Compare a horse team hooked to a plow to a modern tractor hooked to a plow. The horse team was infinitely more efficient than humans with hand tools, just as the fuel-powered tractor is over the horse team. Gasoline and diesel-powered machines have allowed people to do more in less time. As mentioned above, it allowed mass movement of goods and people unlike any time in our history. Resources were allowed to be taken to people instead of people going to resources. The energy from fossil fuels has low entropy by the definition I am using. It is readily available, relatively low-cost, and very adaptable using different machines.
Renewables have high entropy. Take wind power. It is totally dependent on the wind (obviously). There are places that have almost constant wind, but they also have storms that can damage these expensive machines and require them to be shut down to prevent damage. There are also times that the wind just does not blow, or blow at sufficient speed and power. There is the same problem with solar. By definition, one must have the sun to be out to capture solar power. There are many hours of the day that there is no direct sunshine or darkness. There are storms and clouds that affect the power available from solar power. There are also dire environmental issues with the production of wind turbines due to rare earth magnets needed and fiberglass production among other things. The same thing goes for solar panels. The production of solar panels is currently one of the most environmentally hazardous there is. There is also the cost of both of these methods.
The fossil fuel industry was/is pretty much self-supporting and funded. Gas stations, pipelines, wells, and the other equipment and tools needed to produce and bring these products to market were paid for by the industries themselves. (I understand that this cost was borne by the customers, but I am distinguishing this from direct government/taxpayer support.) If the subsidies and tax credits were not being given to the renewable companies none of these would be feasible at all. (I know, you have all read of the "subsidies" paid to the big oil companies. This is mostly hyperbole from the anti-fossil fuel folks. The "subsidies" are mostly just depreciation and tax credits that are available to any business. Big oil companies have gone through years that they do not make any profits.) There are provisions in the latest tax and spending bills for building out the charging stations and such to support the electric cars. This is taxpayer support. I personally do not want my tax dollars going to this. Let the electric car companies and charging companies pay for the infrastructure and develop the charging networks as the oil companies did with the gas stations and distribution networks for petroleum products.
One other mention of an issue with electric cars. Practicality in a natural disaster. Have you ever been in an evacuation area of a hurricane? I have. One of the issues in getting away is getting fuel for your vehicle. My car gets about 400 miles on a tank of gas on the highway. If I have a full tank when the evacuation order comes, I can get around 350 miles away before I am looking for a fill-up. I can tell you from experience that one of the first thing that happens when thousands upon thousands of cars hit the road in a short period of time - gas stations run out of fuel. But, at least I can get 300+ miles inland before it is a problem.
Now, how about if half the cars are electric. The average range of a fully charged electric car is around 250 miles. There are over a million cars in South Florida. A major storm is approaching and an evacuation is ordered. If half of the cars are trying to evacuate and half of those are electric, then 250,000 cars are all going to need to be charged within 200 or so miles from South Florida. 250,000 cannot make it out of Florida and really can't get much past Orlando or Daytona, if that (we are assuming a full charge upon leaving, as I was a full tank of gas)
Now, can electric cars be made to work. Of course they can, and they probably will. But, by forcing the issue we are either going to have to foot a huge bill to pay for the infrastructure needed to make them practical or watch them fail. I have no problem overall with electric cars. I do have a problem with them being forced on the market and making people that are not interested in making electric car companies rich pay for it!
The same goes for renewable energy. Will wind, solar, and other renewables grow in importance. Yes, no doubt. But forcing the issue and subsidizing the industries to make them work is wrong and expensive. It also leads to profiteers just going after the money. There have already been massive solar and battery failures even with the support of taxpayers money. Let the market work it out. Let the companies become competitive and grow due to actual demand, not because of a $2,000 tax credit.
Lastly - the only true "carbon-free" electrical energy production method that is out there and will not require ridiculous adaptation of our lifestyles is nuclear. There are new technologies that are out there that make nuclear power safer, greener, and better in most ways than almost any other source. The anti-nuclear fear-mongers that have killed the industry should be shut down and shut up so that industry can take it rightful place in our power supply.
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