A few billions in taxpayer funds were thrown at the plug-in electric car industry yesterday for, amongst other things, building manufacturing plants for actual vehicles. The news was accompanied by the usual warm glow of great expected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are sure to follow.
The ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in one’s head may be good for mental health, but it is no basis for sound public policy. If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we have to consume less petroleum on our roads and reduce electric consumption. But plug-in electric cars take us in exactly the opposite direction. They increase electricity consumption and also promote higher energy consumption on the road by supplanting petroleum supply with electricity.
Coal generates more than 80% of electric pollution. Its future is secure for decades because it provides half of our electricity. Plug-in electric cars increase electricity demand at a time when we need to be removing dirty sources of electricity from the electric grid that is running at capacity. It is like going on a spending spree (using more electricity) when you want to reduce the hefty monthly interest payments on your maxed out credit cards (electric grid) because some day, the aunt (clean energy) is going to leave you an inheritance. Coal just got a brand new best friend in the plug-in car.
Economics 101 gives us sensible policies to reduce greenhouse emissions without sacrificing living standards. Any form of gradual pollution-pricing done in a tax-neutral fashion by refunding pollution revenues back to the people will do its job. Our reliance on dirty fuels will go down, people will conserve by increasing efficiency, and the right energy mix will evolve on its own. It is one thing for the government to set such broad policies with long time horizons and then stay out of the way, but it is another to pick favorite solutions and shower subsidies on them. Plug-in electric cars are just following the footsteps of corn ethanol in feeding at the public trough without delivering a dime of environmental benefit.
Despite the subsidies and regulatory gifts showered upon them, plug-in electric cars are not that efficient. Laudatory articles about plug-in cars rarely mention any numbers. In fact, plug-in cars are no better than my 15-year old Honda Civic or a Ford Focus when their emission at the coal-fired electricity plant is taken into account. Yes, the very same coal plants that we supposedly want to retire pronto. Plug-in cars will remain substantially less efficient than their gasoline-driven hybrid cousins for decades to come.
Plug-in cars are not alone in this dreamy clean-future scenario. Billions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown around to initiate a superfast train network. Rail excels at carrying freight efficiently, but not at transporting passengers. Intercity express luxury coach buses are far more environmentally efficient (and cheaper) at carrying people between cities such as New York and Washington, DC, or Chicago and St. Louis. For distances beyond 350 miles or so that buses can ply conveniently, planes tend to be more efficient than trains. When there is already a good network of highways and the nation is drowning in debt, is there a need to start from scratch on a new fast train network that is neither cheap nor environmentally efficient? Would it not make more sense to learn from the superefficient “Chinatown” bus coaches that handily beat Amtrak in price and in greenhouse emissions (while providing free internet access on the ride)? Those entrepreneurs survive just fine without any government subsidies, thank you, but they could use some good access stations on the interstate highway system.
I guess contradictions are to be expected from the hodgepodge of regulations and wasteful subsidies that masquerade as our energy policy. The folks who brought us corn ethanol are still at work.
20 responses so far
1 balconesfault // Aug 6, 2009 at 3:41 pm
“Economics 101 gives us sensible policies to reduce greenhouse emissions without sacrificing living standards.”
Really? Do tell!
“Any form of gradual pollution-pricing done in a tax-neutral fashion by refunding pollution revenues back to the people will do its job.”
Pollution pricing will … what … reduce consumption? Get people to drive less? Get people to drive smaller cars? Get people to spend money they would have spent on other things to buy a hybrid vehicle?
All of those things involve individuals “sacrificing living standards”.
2 barker13 // Aug 6, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Re: Balconesfault // Aug 6, 2009 at 3:41 pm –
I think what he’s saying is that electricity is generated by…
(*SIGH*) Oh… nevermind.
All I know is that Obama’s policies (like Bush’s) continue to put downward pressure on the dollar.
Downward pressure on the dollar creates upward pressure on oil.
Upward pressure on oil creates higher prices at the pump.
Higher prices at the pump…
PISS ME OFF…!!!
Now… (*EXHALE*) Does anyone have anything NEW to say…???
(*SMILE*)
BILL
P.S. – Prof. Somalwar: Don’t take my post the wrong way. I “got” your point and I’m grateful that you took the time to point out yet another route via which Congress and the Administration are pissing my money down the drain.
3 balconesfault // Aug 6, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Well, I’ve disagreed with Professor Somalwar on exactly this point before when he posted it – yes, currently electric power is generated primarily by coal. But at the same time, we’re rapidly increasing our utilization of alternative energy sources … wind power generation capacity grew by 50% in the US last year … and a lot more natural gas fired plants have been being built in the last decade – and natural gas is a relatively low CO2 emitter.
The great thing about electric cars and wind, is that probably 80% of the electric car charging will end up taking place during night-time hours when peoples cars are garaged at home … which is traditionally the lowest grid usage time period, and also is in most places the highest wind power generation time period.
Utilities have been wrestling with how to store excess power generated from wind during off-peak usage times … and charging car batteries has the potential to be the perfect way to store that energy.
The problem with Dr. Somalwar’s analysis is that it lacks insight into and faith into the American free market system, and how market forces will evolve to produce electricity to power cars with less environmental impact – particularly if we nudge them with cap and trade or a carbon tax or some other economic incentive.
So I picked at the one issue because it reflects a worldview that I think is easily shot down. Dr. Somalwar must feel that driving less, driving a smaller car, or spending one’s money on a hybrid instead of a Disney Vacation or college fund don’t have to do with “living standards”. That’s just wrong on first principles.
4 sinz54 // Aug 6, 2009 at 8:13 pm
balconesfault sez: “….when peoples cars are garaged at home … ”
In large cities, cars are not garaged at home. My car isn’t garaged right now; it’s sitting outside in a parking lot.
What do you plan to do with a city like New York, where most of the cars are parked out on the street at night? Install recharging equipment every 30 feet on every block of every street and every avenue, with underground transmission cables? Good luck with that.
This means that electric cars can only be used to go where both the origin and destination points have recharging equipment. If I owned one, I would always have to call ahead to my destination to make sure they have recharging equipment, just in case. Otherwise, I’m out of luck.
Besides, recharging takes hours (as you know), which limits travel to commuting distances. The family won’t be able to just pack a couple of suitcases and pile into their electric car for a trip out into the country, or to travel a few hundred miles to see Grandma. Because stopping off to refuel along the way may take as long as the entire rest of the trip. And Grandma may be an old-fashioned lady, without recharging equipment for those new-fangled electric cars.
Electric cars can’t compete with the convenience of liquid fuels, which enable you to refuel your car in minutes.
Electric cars aren’t going to fit into the lifestyles of most average Americans.
5 sinz54 // Aug 6, 2009 at 8:15 pm
The electric car is the Segway of four-wheeled transportation.
6 balconesfault // Aug 6, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Sinz, I’ll grant you that all those people who street park in NYC and parts of Chicago and Philly and Boston will not be charging their cars at night. Then again, I’m also pretty sure that they represent an infintessimal number of the vehicle miles driven during the year.
7 Engineer-Poet // Aug 6, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Many cities like Regina SK have their parking meters wired for power, allowing motorists to plug in their block heaters so their cars will start after 8-9 hours in the frigid breezes of the northern tundra. In other words, the problem of wiring downtowns for cars which need to be plugged in has been solved for decades. sinz needs to get out more.
8 Engineer-Poet // Aug 7, 2009 at 12:04 am
As for Mr. Somalwar, this hatchet-job of an article makes him look like a stooge of the oil companies. A car which runs only on liquid fuels leaves its owner very few choices, most of them bad: ethanol from corn and coal-to-liquids are the major “alternatives” to imported petroleum, and the latter is far worse for greenhouse emissions than oil. On the other hand, a car which plugs in (whether PHEV or pure EV) can run on juice from wind, nuclear, or natural gas and cannot tell the difference. A combined-cycle gas turbine plant running on natural gas is roughly twice as efficient as a car’s engine, so the PHEV charging from a CCGT plant would emit LESS pollution than a pure hybrid running directly on natural gas!
Somalwar’s claims regarding grid burdens have been rejected by EPRI itself. The grid is being remodeled continuously; the flexibility represented by plug-in vehicles is being eyed by grid managers as a way to add demand-side management, grid regulation, spinning reserve and reactive power generation at less cost than we pay today. The August 2003 blackout was caused by a LACK of spinning reserve and reactive power; this argues for plug-in vehicles, not against them.
There are also systems effects to consider. Shifting energy demand away from liquids gives us a better balance of trade and more political options. Adding a bunch of electric vehicles which can soak up extra late-night power makes it more attractive to build that nuclear plant and retire the coal burners. Last, any vehicle which receives its energy from the grid becomes cleaner as the grid does; try THAT with your 1994 Civic!
I hope Exxon-Mobil paid you well, Mr. Somalwar. I also hope that newmajority.com tires of your propaganda quickly.
9 somalwar@physics.rutgers.edu // Aug 7, 2009 at 9:21 am
I have nothing to do with the oil industry and doubt it knows of my existence. However, if they ever offer me any money, I will be sure to donate it to a good cause and still tell them that we consume too much petroleum as is (and don’t need to add coal to our gas tanks with plug-in cars).
I would be interested in seeing any numbers to back up the implicit assertion that if plug-in cars are charged at night, that electricity does not come from coal.
Yes, renewables are increasing, but check out the 2007 electricity generation figures: coal increased far more than solar in terms of kwhr’s generated. Electric cars contradict the goal of reducing coal consumption. Plug-in cars are here, coal is not going away for decades.
Sorry, spending countless hours on the road is not my idea of high living standards. If the system changes due to carbon pricing, people may spend less time on the road and more with the family. Or be able to work in a convenient transportation while getting to work and thus increase economic productivity. However, the point is to pay for the pollution and let the markets figure out the rest, not dictate what people should or should not do.
10 sinz54 // Aug 7, 2009 at 10:51 am
engineer-poet: New York City is not Saskatchewan.
And as I said, a car that takes hours to charge, that can’t be recharged anywhere it must be parked out on the street or parking lot of a major city, is worthless.
I live in an apartment complex. My car, like all the other renters’ cars, are parked out in a central parking lot. That’s not uncommon, even in the suburbs. The electric car “solution” requires that every garage, every parking lot, has to be equipped with electric charges. That is never going to happen.
The nice thing about ethanol is that the delivery infrastructure is already there. I can even imagine trucks delivering hydrogen fuel to filling stations.
But I cannot imagine electric cars ever being useful. On a long trip, I can’t just recharge my car midway. I have to leave it, perhaps overnight, while it’s charging. That’s ridiculous.
If electric cars were available TODAY, even at a decent price, I would never buy one. I like the convenience of filling up the gas tank in minutes.
11 sinz54 // Aug 7, 2009 at 10:53 am
That’s why I brought up the Segway. The Segway was the electric vehicle that was supposed to totally revolutionize personal transportation. Seen one lately?
12 Green Car Reports // Aug 7, 2009 at 10:58 am
Electricity comes from a wide varieties of pathways, which is one of its attractive features over the long term.
A well-accepted study by the Electric Power Research Institute and the National Resources Defense Council concludes:
– the rampup of EV charging will be slow enough that it won’t lead to power shortages; and
– 1 mile driven on grid power from ANY generating source is lower in carbon than 1 mile driven on gasoline in a 25-mpg car
For more detail, see here:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-grid/how-green-is-my-plugin
13 balconesfault // Aug 7, 2009 at 11:10 am
Yep … I can walk out my office door and down to the street and see folks on Segways almost every day.
Of course, they’re novelties for tourists to toodle around downtown Austin.
But the Segway has problem. It had to create its own need. If you gave Segways away, you probably still wouldn’t see that many in use.
Electric cars? If someone gave me one, I’d use it. The better ones tend to have a 70 mile range – I live about 15 miles from work. I’d rely on it for 80% of my weekly transportation, while still keeping the Ford Freestyle for camping trips or driving down to visit family in SA or whatever. And an awful lot of suburbanites would do the same.
Thisi isn’t about wholly swapping out one fleet for another. It’s about alternatives, and slowing the consumption of oil, which is a non-renewable resource that has its uses we can’t replace (I’m not expecting to see an electric, or even fuel cell, jet airliner anytime soon).
14 sinz54 // Aug 7, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Balconesfault: An electric car with a 70 mile cruising range (roughly one-fifth that of a Ford Explorer). Great, just great.
You live only 15 miles from your place of work. You might as well bicycle, and save even more energy. Or buy a motorcycle.
In California, many folks live 50-60 miles from where they work.
In Massachusetts, I lived roughly 50 miles from my girlfriend.
Suburban sprawl makes a car with a 70 mile cruising range useless.
And nobody is going to buy two cars–one for long trips, one for short trips–if they only drive one car at a time. Except the affluent.
That’s all an electric car is–a toy for those who want to show off their environmental consciousness. I can see the bumper stickers on it now: “My Other Car Is A Prius.”
The issue isn’t slowing the consumption of oil. If that were the issue, we would switch to ethanol or propane or natural gas. The issue is global warming. Those alternatives produce somewhat less greenhouse gases than gasoline, but not enough to satisfy environmentalists, so that takes care of that.
15 balconesfault // Aug 7, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Sorry Sinz … but while ethanol technology is promising, right now it’s pretty much chewing up farmland for a 0 net energy production, at least with corn ethanol. The Brazilians are doing far better with cane ethanol. Propane and natural gas are nice – but we’re nowhere near being ablel to generate either from renewable resources in the volumes needed to power our vehicle fleet. And they’re our best alternative to being pared with renewables like solar and wind, since you can ramp gas power plants up and down very quickly to achieve load leveling with relatively little loss of efficiency or excess pollution generation, something that isn’t the case with coal plants.
16 Engineer-Poet // Aug 8, 2009 at 10:26 am
balconesfault: The PHEV is the evolutionary step between the HEV and EV. The Chevy Volt has a 40-mile all electric range (AER). It would handle all your commuting on electricity, without charging at work or getting a second car for longer trips.
Austin is a neat town. I lived there for about a year.
sinz54: Go back to the Chevy Volt again. One car, runs on electricity when you have it and gas when you don’t. Gets 50 MPG once it switches over to liquid fuel. Your trip to your girlfriend’s would burn about 0.2 gallon over the final 10 miles, for an average fuel economy of 250 MPG. What part of your life would be left unserved by such a vehicle?
You assert that NYC isn’t Regina (or Saskatoon). That’s true (though NYC could benefit IMO if it were more like Regina), but I don’t see how that’s relevant. NYC has electricity and other infrastructure. Billing systems made to serve public parking will handle city streets as easily as shopping malls. About the only thing I can see NYC needing more than others is armored cables and locking connectors to defeat vandalism and tampering, but it is in no way a special case even there.
The cost of electricity is equivalent to gasoline at about 75¢/gallon. Wiring costs money, but at near-future costs of $3/gallon even a cost of $1000 per space would be paid back with about 2 years of fuel savings. Where else can you get 50%/year return on investment?
And pardon this, but I have to test the allowed HTML here.
List oneTwo.
17 Engineer-Poet // Aug 8, 2009 at 11:36 am
Mr. Somalwar wrote:
I think you know how misleading you are being with this statement. Electricity is fungible, so if a load is connected to a grid with any coal-fired capacity it is literally impossible to say that none of the energy it used came from coal. However, green-car-reports statement that an EV running on ANY grid power is better than a 25-MPG ICEV is correct; further, it should have been such an obvious thing to check that your failure to include it in your article is prima facie evidence of bias.
Maybe worldwide, but not here; preliminary figures for the USA show that coal generation fell, and even NG generation fell by roughly the increase in energy from wind. Nuclear (another carbon-free energy source) was essentially flat. If we are talking about US policy, it is disingenuous to bring the likes of China into the discussion.
Since electricity is fungible, we can look at the sources of generation which are expanding and matched to the characteristics of EVs. Wind stands out on this list. In recent years, the USA has been adding enough wind power every year to power something like 40% of the new vehicle fleet (a figure which is much higher of late). US wind capacity has been doubling roughly every 2 years; even if the installation rate levels off soon, it’s obvious that it will remain far ahead of PHEV production. EVs put energy into storage rather than feeding an immediate load, so they are very well suited to soak up energy from an unschedulable source like wind (or solar); so long as the batteries are charged when the vehicle is needed next, the minute-by-minute charge rate is not important.
Last, we don’t need to worry about zeroing out the carbon emissions from vehicles right away. All we need to do is establish a falling trend, or the basis for it. Again, the per-mile carbon emissions of electric vehicles can be changed after the fact by changing the grid mix, which is more or less impossible with any other type of vehicle. The EV can even be made carbon-negative by burning biomass to make electricity and sequestering the carbon.
18 somalwar@physics.rutgers.edu // Aug 8, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Look up 2007 US DOE-EIA report on INCREASE in generation. Having said that, the situation may come out different in 2008 (and later) since natural gas prices have fallen etc. The bottomline, however, is that it will be a long time until renewables beat coal.
19 Engineer-Poet // Aug 10, 2009 at 7:22 pm
The EIA puts out lots of reports, and I note that you provide no link. Do you perhaps mean Electric Power Annual 2007: A Summary?
You’re shifting the goal posts again. The issue isn’t when renewables will beat coal (nuclear is a lot closer, and is also carbon-free), it’s whether adding electric vehicles to the grid is the environmental disaster you claim it is. I notice that your claim is very poorly supported, and you engage in a lot of evasions when questioned on the specifics. If this is how you write when submitting for peer review, I’m amazed you get anything published.
20 Carney // Nov 23, 2009 at 3:51 pm
“[F]ollowing the footsteps of corn ethanol in feeding at the public trough without delivering a dime of environmental benefit.”
A dime of benefit? Here’s a quick comparison between ethanol and gasoline:
Gasoline is necessarily riddled with carcinogens and mutagens (the aromatics such as benzene, toluene, and xylene) . Ethanol does not need them and is neither carcinogenic nor mutagenic.
When burned, ethanol emits significantly less NOx than gasoline, which reacts to fuel vapor in the atmosphere to make ozone smog. As for fuel in vapor form, which gets into the air via tailpipes (from imperfect combustion) or through leaks from the refueling process, NOx reacts to vapor ethanol in the air at less than a tenth of the rate that it does to vapor gasoline. Finally vapor ethanol washes out of the air easily in the rain, unlike gasoline which is stubbornly persistent. End result of a switch to ethanol: far less ozone smog.
When burned, ethanol emits NO sulfur, the source of acid rain.
When burned, ethanol emits NO smoke, soot, or particulate matter (SSPM), the source of smog, which blankets the air of car-centric Los Angeles and Houston, and causes 40,000 deaths a year according to EPA. Firemen accustomed to billowing black smoke from gasoline fires have had to be re-trained because ethanol fires emit no smoke at all. In fact, the Indy 500 switched from gasoline to methanol (another alcohol fuel with closely similar traits) in the 1960s after smoke from a burning wreck blinded other drivers and caused more fatal crashes (they have since switched again to ethanol). Tired of seeing a coating of gray-black film on cars and trucks, or “wash me” written with a fingertip (other than on pollen in springtime)? Tired of black roadside snow in winter? Interested in slashing lung cancer deaths? Ethanol sits, waiting, as an ignored solution. By the way, air quality over Brazilian cities has improved dramatically since that nation went for ethanol in a big way.
As any bartender will tell you, ethanol dissolves readily in water, helping make delicious drinks. This water solubility is a key difference with oil, which remains concentrated and localized until human intervention removes it. If the Exxon Valdez had been carrying ethanol, the entire contents would have melted away into the vast hydrosphere within days if not hours, and would have been consumed by naturally occurring bacteria (did I mention ethanol is biodegradable?), leaving no trace. Back in our unnecessarily oil-dependent world, the Valdez is still killing wildlife as sea otters eat contaminated shellfish. Leaks from cars and oil stations leave foul, rainbow colored oil slicks at roadside puddles, and such pollution is rife in waterways frequented by recreational watercraft. Meanwhile millions of gallons of methanol (the main ingredient in windshield wiper fluid) is dumped into the environment each year, without a peep from environmentalists, because it is physically impossible for alcohol to cause water pollution.
The carbon dioxide emitted by burning ethanol comes from plants. It is part of the carbon cycle, already in the biosphere, and would have returned to the atmosphere anyway – it is no net gain in greenhouse gas. By contrast the carbon dioxide from gasoline was once, in effect, sequestered far underground, and would have, if undisturbed by man, have remained out of the atmosphere forever (in human terms) – each molecule is new, additional net CO2.
Even if you are a man-made global warming skeptic, the above examples should show that there is a LOT more than a dime’s worth of benefit from ethanol.
And of course there is far more than just the environment at stake. Any conservative, especially not one hog-tied to rigid dogma, should leap at the opportunity to de-fund OPEC by endorsing an affordable and viable alternate fuel source.
For more information, read former NASA rocket scientist and nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin’s book “Energy Victory” or see EnergyVictory.net
You must log in to post a comment.