Trillions For Oil, Millions For EVs.

[JohnnyRingo]

Last edited Sat Mar 20, 2021, 02:34 AM - Edit history (1)

Great article about how big oil is once again flexing their well toned political muscle to slow development of electric vehicles and they're drumming out their greatest hits of small government and free enterprise:

"Just look at all the long-lived car companies pledging today to go all-electric by [insert random date in future here] without any reference to a charging infrastructure that is already painfully lagging. What’s their plan? Wait for the oil companies? Who’s going to make sure that electricity generation is safe and clean as can be? Who’s going to get that charging station up fastest? If history is any guide, it won’t be ExxonMobil. Not without a government handout, at least."

Trillions For Oil, Millions For EVs: The Big Lie Of Ineffectual Government

With a new more environment-friendly White House and wholesale improvement in the range of new electric cars, the American nation’s anti-EV forces are mustering again to slow progress down by embracing some of modern history’s most tiresome shibboleths – the first one being that the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of choosing winners and losers in the field of energy.

So it was that the oil industry’s trade association and chief lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute, fired off a peevish blog post last month, spurred by a Biden administration executive order directing use of the federal government’s procurement powers’ to “achieve or facilitate ‘clean and zero-emission vehicles for Federal, State, local, and Tribal government fleets, including vehicles of the United States Postal Service.’” As Big Oil’s copiously funded think tank gasped, its “fundamental concern” was the very idea of “government, in a market-based economy, taking policy actions to push the market and consumers toward a specific policy outcome. Basically, it’s the government picking winners and losers for consumers.” Omigod!?! What? Wait, no.
Newsflash, API: the American government has been picking winners and losers, choosing between competing persons, corporate and otherwise, as well as their technologies, since the American experiment in self-government began. Indeed, a 2011 study for DBL Investors traced the first federal incentives for fossil fuels back to the beginning, 1789, when Washington (actually Philadelphia, the nation’s capital until the following year) placed a punitive tariff on British coal entering U.S. ports as ship ballast. From that day on, America’s extractive fuel industries — particularly producers of coal and petroleum — have easily been among our biggest all-time winners. And don’t forget the big winners they supported, like trains, planes, and automobiles.

Continued here:
https://jalopnik.com/trillions-for-oil-millions-for-evs-the-big-lie-of-ine-1846476419

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Your headline says billions but the article says millions ... just sayin ;) nt

[JohnnyRingo]

3. Fixed it

In these days of pandemic relief it's easy to mix up millions and billions.
Thanx!

[Miguelito Loveless]

2. I am an EV and renewable energy activist

And I can tell you we are seeing the astroturf groups ramping up against us. The usual lies and disinformation.

[NNadir]

4. The fantasy that electric cars are "green" and "sustainable" is just that, a fantasy.

It depends on the fantasy that electricity comes from so called "renewable energy" - it doesn't - as well as ignorance of the chemistry of batteries, and contempt for and ignorance of the laws of thermodynamics.

The reality is quite different.

Throw in more than a dollop for indifference to human suffering and you really, really, really, really have the sum of what electric cars really are.

The term "green car" is an oxymoron.

[Celerity]

5. +100000

Nuclear is by far the best EROI form of electricity generation atm.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. You can't argue with physics and chemistry ...

I support a mix ... but nuclear needs to be a BIG part of that mix ... or this earth is going to choke to death.

Most important thing, we have to move away from an economy that's entirely based upon 'debt', and endless 'growth' to service that debt.

And humanity needs to slow down, quickly, on the 'being fruitful and multiplying' thing.

[modrepub]

8. Nuclear In It's Current State Is Uneconomical

Just on construction cost, it's at least 23x as expensive to construct a nuclear power plant than a combined cycle natural gas plant. I'm basing that off the recent still unsuccessful construction of the SCANA plant in SC. Nuclear plants also need hundreds of workers to run the plant and replacing the nuclear rods adds another 2000 workers that have to be paid. Again, that compares with about a $10B outlay for a new coal plant (that needs hundreds of workers) or a combined cycle natural gas plant that costs about $1B to construct and can be operated with about a dozen employees. Natural gas efficiencies for small plants can approach 80%. Coal plants are about 35% efficient and nuclear is probably about the same.

How much have we spent building Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site that will not receive one ounce of nuclear waste if Nevadans have their way? So after spending billions on that boondoggle most highly radioactive nuclear plant waste is in temporary storage or being dumped into decommissioned nuclear reactors. Neither option was designed for long-term storage.

If you're going to complain about other sources of energy then at least factor in the billions that have been sunk into nuclear power that's more expensive to generate compared to other sources and produces waste nobody wants.

Our best bet is for off-shore wind development in the US supplemented with more efficient combined cycle natural gas. Couple that with more efficient use of the electricity we do use and development of smart and efficient electrical grids and we should be OK.

PJM has done a lot of work planning for when electric vehicles replace the IC engine car fleet. EVs are already cheaper to operate than IC engine cars. The flip in the fleet (when EV sales are more than IC sales) is expected to occur in the next decade. There's also a possibility that the entire EV fleet will be able to store enough electricity to smooth out generation/demand mismatches. Plug your car into the grid and you may get paid to have the battery discharge back into the grid when demand outpaces supply (or keep your lights on when power goes out).

The markets are pretty efficient if politicians are kept out of them. I'll place my bets with folks who are innovative and know how to manage the electric grids. Scientists are good but they generally do not make good businesspeople. They are, however, infinitely more preferable to politicians who aren't good for much of anything in my book.

[NNadir]

10. I've been hearing this appalling selfish Ayn Rand nonsensical argument for more than 30 years.

It was disgusting nonsense 30 years ago, and it is disgusting nonsense now.

Unlike most people making this intellectually and morally appalling and frankly lazy claim, I have analyzed, in detail, the comprehensive Master Register of Danish Wind Turbines.. My last import of the spreadsheet into Excel showed that wind turbines, on average, last less than 19 years, meaning that before babies born today are 20 years old these pieces of mass intensive crap will be landfill, and the pristine wilderness's - including the continental shelf - where they were built will be garbage dumps.

The external cost of so called "renewable energy" - never includes the financial and external (environmental) cost of having redundant systems to do what one can do.

All of this horseshit about batteries ignores the chemistry and the mass limits of batteries, which I have also studied in detail. Nor do they recognize - this is obvious from the automotive experience of the last century - that distributed energy is distributed pollution

The first commercial nuclear plant ever built - by engineers equipped with slide rules as opposed to computers - in the Western World, Calder Hall, operated almost 50 years using 1940's and early 1950's technologies. Since anti-nukes care neither about climate change nor about future generations, they are incapable of grasping that in paying the cost of nuclear construction, they are giving gifts to future generations. Because of their selective attention, and their claims about putative "safety" they are unable to explain how the United States built more than 100 nuclear reactors between 1965 and 1985 while providing the cheapest electricity in the world. Nor can they explain why the two highest prices in the OECD for retail electricity belong to Denmark and Germany.

A nuclear plant is a gift to future generations; after they are amortized, they become cash cows, clean cash cows.

Since I also know, intimately, the chemistry of used nuclear fuels, which I have discussed at great length in my journal here in a very, very, very, detailed sense, and I also know that the assholes carrying on about so called "nuclear waste," don't give a shit that between 18,000 and 19,000 people will die today from air pollution - more than have died world wide on Covid-19's worst day worldwide - the thought of quibbling about so called nuclear waste is simply immoral selective attention. It is their determination that if they can imagine someone dying in the next 50 centuries from radiation, they have justified the death of six to seven million people per year from air pollution.

I also know intimately how steel is made. I know how concrete is made. I know the chemistry of the lanthanides. I understand the tragedy of electronic waste, which is what every solar cell on the planet right now will be in less than 30 years.

The nuclear energy industry is well over half century old. I have challenged anti-nukes, with their selective attention, to show where the storage of valuable used nuclear fuel has accounted for as many deaths as will die in the next four hours from air pollution.

I've given them a comprehensive piece of open sourced scientific literature to dig these putative used nuclear fuel storage deaths out:

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

They never show anything remotely compelling to support their tiresome nonsense.

If dangerous fossil fuels were required to meet the same standards that nuclear is required to meet, standards that account for the wasteful and unnecessary prattling on about Yucca Mountain and its cost - that no one, even someone with an abysmal education can even imagine a death in 10,000, 100,000 or even 1 million years from radiation, the dangerous fossil fuel industry, and its "lipstick on the pig" - the piddling so called "renewable energy" industry on which we've squandered more than three trillion dollars in this century for no effective result - would not exist.

But it does exist. An the result is that the accumulation of just one of the many dangerous fossil fuel wastes indiscriminately released into the environment, poisoning the air, the land and the sea, carbon dioxide, has now reached around 418 ppm, 25 ppm higher than it was just 10 years ago. This rate of carbon dioxide, 2.5 ppm per year, is the highest rate ever observed at the Mauna Loa CO2 observatory. New Weekly Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory for CO2 Concentrations 417.97 ppm

If we spent the same amount that we were required to spend because of cultural ignorance on Yucca Mountain, to clean up the planetary atmosphere, it wouldn't make a dent. The death toll from air pollution would continue to rise.

I can't believe that after 30 years, with the environment spiraling out of control, with a bleak future for all future generations because of this rhetoric, I still have to make these arguments that should be obvious.

To me, anti-nukes are the equivalent of anti-vax, and for that matter, anti-GMO types. They just chant the same crap over and over and over that they've been repeating their whole damned lives without ever bothering to open a science book, or for that matter, to have ever engaged in a shred of critical thinking.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[modrepub]

11. Where to Begin

Opening with an insult pretty much admits to me you've lost the argument. Rand was never a respected business mind. The fact that she's peddled by Republicans like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz should tell you all you need to know about her "philosophy". It's utter crap.

If you want a good market based description then read Joseph Schumpeter. Creative destruction and entrepreneurs when properly harnessed can innovate and provide solutions as long as we allow for fair competition and keep politicians out of it.

You still haven't addressed why nuclear costs so much more than other forms of electric generation. Nothing is designed to last much more than 20-30 years as far as power generation goes. Once something is past 10 years its probably less efficient than something produced in the current day. A 50-year old nuclear plant that runs without modern computers sound woefully inefficient and somewhat dangerous.

You complain about externalities. Markets can be adjusted to account for those but it's very difficult. I don't think you can adjust them so that combined cycle gas plants are 25 times as expensive as today, which would bring them in line with the cost of a comparably sized nuclear plant.

You can deride folks for not wanting nuclear power but then you're just forcing them to accept a predetermined solution that they don't want or are justifiably afraid of. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were real events and for better or worse they are readily associated with nuclear energy. In your mind the opposition are simpletons but the consequences of mistakes on the nuclear side are far more disproportional than mistakes at a typical fossil fuel plant, wind farm, hydro eclectic dam or solar panel field. Never heard of an accident at a wind farm that needed a 100km exclusion zone for 10,000 years after it broke (and don't tell me that hasn't already happened).

I'm quite familiar with earth history. CO2 levels have been much higher in Earth's past and life has still managed to go on. Whether we as a society will survive as the climate adjusts to anthropogenic emissions is a valid question. I tend to think we will, but things will be different.

Decades of doom and gloom have only made younger generations fatalistic. I see this in my kids who don't think they'll live past 40. Spouting off about total annihilation if we don't follow a set path (that may not work) does't provide much incentive to change. I'm hopeful the next generation can figure things out. While market economics is not perfect and can be subverted, it's the best system we've got for this challenge.

[JohnnyRingo]

9. Part of the API argument is that EVs pollute nearly as much

...so why not just stick with efficient ICE vehicles?

That's been their talking point since the first hybrid Prius rolled off the assembly line. Follow that with the Leaf, Tesla, Chevy Bolt and Spark, the Ford Focus and Mach E, and the slew of auto makers that don't even sell here, and we've seen a dramatic decrease in fossil fuel use and global pollution. They carp about how China, the world leader in EV and solar cell production, is doing nothing about pollution, even as air quality has dramatically improved since the Olympics were held at Beijing's smog ridden "Birdhouse" back in '08.

The bottom line of the article is that the govt should be preparing for the onslaught of electric cars and trucks by building a national network of charging stations, but lobbying by the API has stalled any political will to do so, even as major automakers like VW and BMW set immediate plans to go all electric in just a few years.

There's no such thing as a free ride, but in 15 years almost everyone on this planet will be charging their car instead of pumping gas. Exxon Mobil will have to adapt to this new world or die. I'm betting they'll find new ways in supplying energy.

[BSdetect]

7. Does that nuclear amount include the decommissioning cost? Probably not.

[fescuerescue]

12. Yea I would doubt that Exxon would do it

Electrical generation isn't their expertise.

Just getting the license to build a power station takes decades.

While the end customer is the same (car owners), the entire business is 99% different.

The only similarities would be selling candy bars and cokes at the gas station/charging station.

And let's face it. Oil sales will not be ending in any of our lifetimes. Certainly not the lifetimes of any Exxon executives.

[JohnnyRingo]

13. EVs are threatening to oil companies.

The point of the article is that we should be preparing for the coming wave of EV cars and trucks with an infrastructure of charging stations, but we aren't seeing that. It's happening in Europe and Asia where there is political will, but seems stalled here. Every major car manufacturer has set a looming deadline in this decade to change to full electric vehicles. Used cars will be around a couple decades at best.

US lobbying laws allow special interests to legally bribe politicians, and the API is the largest. I predict companies like Exxon Mobil will adapt to the change in energy production as oil consumption goes lower and lower each year. Perhaps they'll start offering supercharging at gas stations and phase the pumps out gradually, but as the article says, not without a government subsidy.

[fescuerescue]

14. They also need to build the super chargers to accommodate larger vehicles

and combination vehicles.

When pickup trucks finally come online, they will be needed.

Next time you are out, take a look at all the vehicles towing. Today none of them could refill at a supercharger.