Republican introduces new bill to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars

[Submariner]

and tax them more instead.

https://electrek.co/2018/10/10/republican-bill-end-federal-tax-credit-for-electric-car/

At a time when most governments are looking at ways to encourage electric vehicle adoption, a Republican senator has now introduced a new bill to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars and instead tax them more.

Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, introduced the bill this week.

The full text of the bill is not available yet on Congress’ website, but the goal is clear from its title:

“A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles and to provide for a Federal Highway user fee on alternative fuel vehicles.”

The effort comes at an interesting time for the electric vehicle federal tax credit.

It’s the second year in a row that the GOP has tried to repeal the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles. The last attempt wasn’t part of a much bigger bill and it was dropped from the final version.

Last quarter, Tesla became the first automaker to hit the 200,000 delivery threshold to initiate a phase-out period of the credit over the next year.

At the same time, a new bill in Congress is attempting to remove the delivery limit for the federal tax credit and replace it with a time limit.

The logic is that the delivery limit results in a disadvantage to early proponents of the technology, like Tesla, and will create a competitive advantage for other automakers who have been late to introduce EVs in volume.

But the bill is backed by Democrats in a Congress and Senate controlled by Republicans, which makes this new bill introduced by Barrasso much more likely to pass.

“Oil and gas” is one of the top sectors to donate to Barrasso’s campaign, according to OpenSecrets. Chevron and Murray Energy are amongst Barrasso’s top donors.

The bill has now been referred to the Committee on Finance. We will monitor its progress.

snip >

https://electrek.co/2018/10/10/republican-bill-end-federal-tax-credit-for-electric-car/

Lowlife morons.

[RockRaven]

1. I saw somewhere that one of Rupert Murdoch's kids was going to be Tesla's new chairman...

we'll soon see if the fossil fuel industry or FOXNews has more sway.

[brush]

2. Wonder if it's GM or Ford or both contributing to his campaign fund?

What a whore he is. Alternate energy solutions should be a priority for all of us as climate change from fossil fuel use is here, not just a scientific rumor somewhere years off in the future.

[Wyatt513]

3. 0. Republican introduces new bill to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars and tax the

I understand about man made climate change, but as a poor person (who walks, rides a bike or take public transportation) I don't understand why we have to subsidize rich people and their electric cars, wouldn't it be better to tax gasoline at $10 bucks a gallon? So people would be forced to buy electric cars?

[progree]

4. In other words, force people to be rich enough to buy electric cars?

I don't understand why we have to subsidize rich people and their electric cars, wouldn't it be better to tax gasoline at $10 bucks a gallon? So people would be forced to buy electric cars?

[Wyatt513]

5. Only rich people can afford electric cars now

Us poor people have to subsidize them.

[uppityperson]

6. How does taxing gas so everyone is forced to buy a car that "only rich people can afford" help?

Seems that subsidizing electric cars to make them more affordable to more people would be better.

[Wyatt513]

7. People not using our/fossil fuel

The UN says in order to save the planet gas should be $240 a gallon , surly if gas was $10 bucks a gallon poor people would not have to subsidize rich people to buy electric cars




https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2018/10/08/a-240-per-gallon-gas-tax-to-fight-global-warming-new-un-report-suggests-carbon-pricing

[Brother Buzz]

8. Citing The Daily Caller, a climate change denier?

Surely you jest.

[progree]

9. Doncha know? The Daily Caller is the poor peoples' friend ROFLMFAO. n/t

[Wyatt513]

10. Well what do you deem appropriate?

The new York times? the same report



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/climate/carbon-tax-united-nations-report-nordhaus.html

[Brother Buzz]

12. That piece is an honest assessment of the UN position

My takeaway from the entire New York Times piece: Companies that burn fossil fuels should be taxed at a rate that reflects the harms they are imposing on the rest of the world.

Nowhere do I read of this $240 a gallon nonsense suggested by The Daily Caller. You know, I read the Daily Caller for years thinking it was a bang-up satire site. I was gobsmacked to learn it was not intended to be satire, and that there actually are rubes who believe the shit they serve up.

[Wyatt513]

13. So you think the way to combate man made climate change

Is to lower gas prices? That doesn't make sense...

It's obvious they need to go higher way higher to condition people to use alternative energy.

[Brother Buzz]

16. Industry is responsible for about 85 percent of total greenhouse gases

Can you say, "Cap and Trade?", Baby?

It's most curious that "Cap and Trade" is working wonderfully in California, yet the orange anus is trying to torpedo the idea. Why do you suppose that is?

[uppityperson]

11. What about subsiding poor people so they can buy electric cars?

[Wyatt513]

14. A $7,000 subsidize is just for rich people

Someone Like myself working a full-time job and going to school would need a $60,000 dollars that's why this is not fair, I am subsidizing rich people so they can say they are saving the planet while I am walking to work and taking the electric bus to school.

[uppityperson]

17. What about subsidizing so poor people can buy electric cars?

Increasing gas so they can't afford gas won't help poor people. Subsidizing electric car purchases will.

[Finishline42]

24. To begin with - raising the gas tax is political suicide - straight from a congressional staffer

Wyatt - this is meant more as a general response to this topic but I'm using your post as a jumping off point.

To begin with - raising the gas tax is political suicide - straight from a congressional staffer which is why it doesn't come up in Congress. I've always thought that raising the gas tax $.10 a year for 10 years (or even 5 years) wouldn't be much different than what we see on the consistent up and downs of the price of gas. Dec 2015 it was $1.60 where I live. It's basically double that now.

There's also the issue from the GOP in using gas tax revenue to fund mass transit (even though the more people that ride buses and trains mean fewer people on the roads and as a result less wear and tear). It also ignores the fact that urban areas pay more in taxes so using the gas tax to fund mass transport is a way to return some value for their contributions.

With regards to the cost of an EV, used Leaf's can be had for $10k, and yes they require less maintenance (no oil changes, no filters, less brake wear). Gas cost is approx $1000 per 10,000 miles driven (10,000 / 30 mpg x $3.00/gal).

There's also the fact that you can buy solar panels and make your own electricity.

Something not mentioned that the $7500 rebate has a hand in - creating good paying jobs. From making cars to batteries - there are a lot of people working as a result.

Plus the more EV's that are sold means that there will be more of them on the used market in a couple of years.

[MichMan]

27. See, that is the crux of the problem.

No politician will ever run on raising gas taxes to combat climate change. Yet, that is realistically the fastest way to get people to willingly embrace electric vehicles. Most people would agree that we all want low gas prices, but at the same time we want to discourage people from using it. Unfortunately, those two goals are incompatible.

IMO, as long as gasoline is affordable, people will continue to buy larger trucks and SUV until either of two things occur.

#1 Fuel prices increase substantially

#2 Laws are implemented that make them unaffordable by adding a user tax or banning them altogether


I can't see either of those things happening soon as no politician will support them. If we are serious about reversing climate change, that is exactly what probably needs to happen.

[NNadir]

15. It doesn't matter a whit. This subsidy for rich people has nothing to do with the environment.

Electricity is overwhelming made by burning dangerous fossil fuels, and thus electric cars, since they waste energy produced by burning dangerous fossil fuels make things worse, not better.

The fantasy to the contrary is popular, but it doesn't mean a hill of beans.

[progree]

18. Can you please quantitatively compare the primary fuel in BTU used to power an electric car

to that of a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine car?

And yes, on the electric car side, I'm well aware of power plant inefficiencies and transmission line losses and charging/discharging battery cycle. I'm an M.S.E.E. that worked 15 years in generation planning, system operations, and transmission planning, so I'm well aware of power plant and transmission system inefficiencies and economics. Had my share of thermodynamic courses too.

An electric motor is far more efficient than an internal combustion engine (a true thermodynamic nightmare, just 15 to 20% efficient in turning the energy in the gasoline into power to the wheels). Much less efficient than all that is involved in power plant fuel -> wheel of an electric car.

Internal combustion engines have thermodynamic limits on efficiency, expressed as fraction of energy used to propel the vehicle compared to energy produced by burning fuel. Gasoline engines effectively use only 15% of the fuel energy content to move the vehicle or to power accessories, and diesel engines can reach on-board efficiency of 20%, while electric vehicles have on-board efficiency of over 90%, when counted against stored chemical energy, or around 80%, when counted against required energy to recharge.[66]

From Wiki ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

[66] is a study by the Brookings Institution

Or compare the two in costs. More than 2 to 1 gasoline cost vs. electricity cost per mile using recent national averages prices $2.50/gallon and 12 cents/KWH. (Yes, both, and the ratio, vary substantially with locality. And then there is the issue of the increasing prevalence of time-of-use electric rates.).

As for greenhouse gasses,

Charging An Electric Vehicle Is Far Cleaner Than Driving On Gasoline, Everywhere In America, Forbes, 3/14/18
(disclosure: based on a Union of Concerned Scientists report, and written by a contributor, Silvio Marcacci, Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology Contributor, so it's not necessarily Forbes' opinion, or even a journalistic article, but more like an Op-Ed. So I'm not going to characterize this as "according to Forbes" )

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/03/14/charging-an-electric-vehicle-is-far-cleaner-than-driving-on-gasoline-everywhere-in-america/#17e211e471f8

Synopsis: Today, an average EV on the road in the U.S. has the same greenhouse-gas emissions as a car getting 80 miles per gallon (MPG). That’s up from 73 MPG in 2017. And in every corner of the U.S. driving an EV produces significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions than cars powered only by gasoline.

That said, I shudder at the idea of disposing of all the batteries, and am somewhat aware of potential issues in the supply of certain critical materials like lithium.

Back to economics, one set of numbers that I saw recently say that the savings on gasoline vs. electric costs per mile saves only about $540 / year for a car driven 15,000 miles per year (at $2.50/gallon and 12 cents/KWH). Over 10 years, that's a savings of $5,400 neglecting inflation and the time value of money. Seemingly (to me) not enough to overcome the purchasing cost differential between an EV and its gasoline IC car equivalent.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/constancedouris/2017/10/24/the-bottom-line-on-electric-cars-theyre-cheaper-to-own/#507e33ba10b6

EV's don't hold their resale value well, either, but doesn't offer any quantifications --
https://clark.com/cars/is-it-cheaper-to-own-an-electric-car/

But some articles (such as the clark.com one above) claim that maintenance of electric cars are far less, but I haven't seen anything quantitative that includes the replacement of the battery pack, a multi-thousand dollar expense, or how often that is needed.

[NNadir]

19. Well, I don't get my science from articles in Forbes, nor do I credit the idea of ignoring...

external costs, what people pay in health costs from internal costs, the highly subsidized procedure where people are allowed to dump the waste they create at no expense to themselves. I have no use for "economic analyses" that ignore external costs, and I was very pleased to learn that in my son's requisite curriculum in his (materials science) engineering programs, external costs were calculated. This gives me hope that the younger generation, who are going to have to clean up all this consumer shit we keep generating while crowing mindlessly about how "green" it is, will learn and turn from our grotesque irresponsibility.

So let's start there:

A study a few years back found that in China, which has 100 electric vehicles, the death rate per mile from pollution was higher for electric cars than it was for electric cars in that country. (This is not true for electric scooters, as opposed to cars. Scooters make up the bulk of electric vehicles in China.)

Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Cherry et al Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024.

Now, despite all the horseshit bandied about about wind and solar, the overwhelming source of primary energy generation on this planet is generated by combusting dangerous fossil fuels. These remain, according to the most recent edition of the World Energy Outlook - put out by the IEAE - in 2017. The 2018 edition will come out in November, and the disturbing trends of the 21st century will, I expect not change.

The thermal efficiency of most dirty dangerous fossil fuel power plants typically runs at around 33%-34% in the transformation of chemical energy to electrical energy; there are combined cycle plants that do better, but they do not dominate the world power supply.

The electrical energy is transported, then reconverted into chemical energy - you can feel the entropy in this process by simply placing your hand on a charging lithium batttery and feeling the heat. (If the car requires a cooling fan during this process, so much the worse.) Then the chemical energy is reconverted - under temperature sensitive conditions by the way - to electrical energy, than to mechanical energy via magnetic energy. Let's say, to be generous, that each process, after the power plant operates at 35%, and every other transformation, transmission at 90%, charging at 90%, reconversion to electricity at 90% and conversion to mechanical energy at 90%

Note that these figures are somewhat generous; since we're well on the way to disturbing the climatic stability of this planet, these efficiency figures for the electrical components will be reduced by heat.

Note that despite all of the self-delusion going on about the "death of coal" it was for the entire 21st century the fastest growing source of energy on the planet, growing by 60 exajoules from 2000 to 2016.

If you make more electricity, as things stand, you're going to burn more fossil fuels, and the act of shifting the pollution from the city to rural regions is certainly morally suspect.

In any case, the product of the individual is 21.6%. It's not the impressive even if the fuel to wheel thermal efficiency of cars is what you say it is, unless you're including stopping and accelerating, a practice that electric cars also experience, albeit with some minor recovery of energy during braking.

If your thermal efficiency for gasoline cars comes from the Union of Concerned "Scientists" analysis to me; those assholes almost never know what they're talking about. When I was a dumb shit anti-nuke as a kid, I joined them. No one asked me a science question of any sort before sending me my membership card; I only needed to send a check.

I read real science journals, not UCS (or Greenpeace) trash.

But let's say that there was a slight efficiency gain in some cases with electrical cars as compared to gasoline cars. They would still incur the external costs of copper - and in most cases - cobalt mining (a conflict metal) and lanthanides (a fossil fuel intensive and very dirty mining business) and the building of a robust power source that would require many more power plants Note that electrical systems perform less efficiently when hot, and since the world has bought into the interminable bullship spewed out by the Union of Concerned "Scientists," we have failed miserably at addressing climate change.

I think the car CULTure in any form is unsustainable, but to the extent that we need some self propelled vehicles, notably buses, tractors on farms, delivery vehicles, ambulances, police cars and fire trucks, a thermal to chemical to mechnical transformation is thermodynamically better.

To the extent we'd like to have these vehicles, I propose that carbon dioxide and/or water be subject to thermochemical cycles to split them, with CO being subject to the water gas reaction to give hydrogen, and that the necessary cooling steps involve one Brayton cycle (the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide, and in fact the dioxide are both exothermic). Cooling the high temperature gases could then be used to run a rankine cycle, or even two rankine cycles depending on the working fluids. The product I have in mind would be the easily liquified gas DME, dimethyl ether. The reaction by which it forms (in the CO case is : 8H2 + 2 CO <-> H3C-O-CH3 + 8H2O. It's an exothermic reaction, and thus Brayton avialable.

Since this system can be designed to be carbon negative depending on the source of carbon and the requirement that all thermal energy be produced by nuclear heat at approximately 100C or higher, I believe it would be more efficient, infinitely cleaner, and far more sustainable than all this useless electric car trash we're always hearing about.

DME can replace not just gasoline and diesel fuel; it can also work with minor modifications to infrastructure in all applications of dangerous natural gas, all uses for coal with the possible exception of the reduction of iron to steel (although the actual reducing agent is CO in steel making), and all uses for LPG.

It has, in contrast to dangerous natural gas a very low GWP, with an atmospheric half life of about 5 days. It's critical temperature is 150C.

It's a wonderfuel.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[progree]

21. On externalities - any "science" article that applies to the U.S., instead of China?

Last edited Sat Oct 13, 2018, 07:07 AM - Edit history (4)

(ON EDIT 1255am ET Saturday: I just noticed I somehow triple-posted it. Here is the exact same thing but single-posted, sorry. Holy Cow, I have NO idea how I didn't notice.)

Well, I don't get my science from articles in Forbes, nor do I credit the idea of ignoring...
external costs, what people pay in health costs from internal costs, the highly subsidized procedure where people are allowed to dump the waste they create at no expense to themselves. I have no use for "economic analyses" that ignore external costs, ... and I was very pleased to learn that in my son's requisite curriculum in his (materials science) engineering programs, external costs were calculated.

I looked at the UCS study too, I didn't rely on the Forbes contributor's take on it.

What I wrote included primary fuel conversion efficiency and greenhouse gasses as well as economics, but admittedly didn't include the other pollutants. There we are comparing the mini-pollution control equipment on a mobile polluting source (gasoline IC cars) with that of what's on power plants -- some modern and some not. Some coal-fired, some not.

I'd bet on the efficiency of the pollution control equipment on new power plants in developed countries over that of what's being put on new cars, given the economy of scale and that it doesn't have to be part of a moving vehicle. Except maybe coal-fired plants.

... A study a few years back found that in China, which has 100 electric vehicles, the death rate per mile from pollution was higher for electric cars than it was for electric cars in that country. (This is not true for electric scooters, as opposed to cars. Scooters make up the bulk of electric vehicles in China.)

Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Cherry et al Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024.

I'm well aware of the 2012 China paper. Keep in mind that their pollution standards for both gasoline-powered cars and power plants, especially before 2012, were much more lax than in more developed countries. They were focused on getting hundreds of millions of people out of deep poverty, now they are giving a lot more attention to the pollution/environment. Their electricity generation has a much higher proportion of coal than the U.S.

How about in the U.S.? How do gasoline IC cars compare to electric cars in pollution, when the whole production system from extracting the primary fuel from the ground onward to the tail pipe or power plant is considered? Is there a "scientific" rebuttal to the UCS study? Or another "scientific" study?

Pollution reduction was always part of my job at NSP (Xcel Energy), at least in the generation planning and system operations phases. Mitigating externalities was taught in Northwestern University and Ohio State engineering programs too even back in my day (1970's).

Concern over the environment became a big thing in the 1960's and 1970's, it's hardly something that started with your son's generation.

This gives me hope that the younger generation, who are going to have to clean up all this consumer shit we keep generating

We'll see how well they do resisting the pressures of bottom-line-quarterly-results capitalism and politics. I too hope they are better than us older generations, because they will have to be. But I haven't noticed much difference so far. They are as likely to be driving a SUV or monster pickup truck (when they reach the point when they can afford them) and turning on the air conditioner when it's 1 degree above perfect as we are.

Note that despite all of the self-delusion going on about the "death of coal" it was for the entire 21st century the fastest growing source of energy on the planet, growing by 60 exajoules from 2000 to 2016.

True, but as far as for electric generation, it has leveled off since 2014, both globally and in China. Citing a source you have cited yourself: https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants

A discussion we have had a number of times, the last time being https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142153274#post42 and https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142153274#post43 and https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142153274#post66


As for coal for all purposes, that's on the decline too:

Global coal demand dropped for a second year in a row in 2016, approaching the previous record for two-year declines set in the early 1990s. Global demand for coal fell by 1.9% in 2016 to 5 357 Mtce, as lower gas prices, a surge in renewables and energy efficiency improvements put a major dent on coal consumption. Demand for coal has now dropped by 4.2% since 2014, almost matching the fall of 1990-1992 which was the largest two-year decline recorded since the IEA started compiling statistics more than 40 years ago.

https://www.iea.org/coal2017/

but expected to pick up slightly over the next few years, both in the electric power generation sector, and overall:

... As a result of these contrasting trends, global coal demand reaches 5 530 Mtce in 2022, which is only marginally higher than current levels, meaning that coal use all but stagnates for around a decade. Although coal-fired power generation increases by 1.2% per year in the period 2016-22, its share of the power mix falls to just below 36% by 2022, the lowest level since IEA statistics began.

But anyway, I don't want us to leave the impression that coal burning is still growing by leaps and bounds, something that statements like the below do.

"despite all of the self-delusion going on about the "death of coal" it was for the entire 21st century the fastest growing source of energy on the planet, growing by 60 exajoules from 2000 to 2016."

(I realize global fossil fuel burning is still increasing, thanks to both oil and natural gas increasing more than coal's slight decline.)

Let's say, to be generous, that each process, after the power plant operates at 35%, and every other transformation, transmission at 90%, charging at 90%, reconversion to electricity at 90% and conversion to mechanical energy at 90% ... In any case, the product of the individual is 21.6%.

I get 35% * 90% * 90% * 90% * 90% = 23.0%

Still considerably better than gasoline internal combustion at 15% (1.53 X better) and a little better than diesel at 20%.

Note that these figures are somewhat generous; since we're well on the way to disturbing the climatic stability of this planet, these efficiency figures for the electrical components will be reduced by heat.

Heat is no friend of gasoline IC efficiency either..

And while the electric grid we have is the electric grid we have, as far as fossil fuel plants, it is evolving to one with considerably higher efficiency power plants. As older power plants are being retired, the average efficiency is improving, particularly with combined cycle that is 45% to 60%.

Google "MPGe" to see some comparisons of electric vehicles vs. gasoline counterparts.

If you make more electricity, as things stand, you're going to burn more fossil fuels

More fossil fuel than sticking with gasoline IC cars? I don't think so.

I read real science journals, not UCS (or Greenpeace) trash.

Fine. Let's see some "scientific" paper comparing greenhouse gasses and other pollutants, primary fuel usage, economics, whatever of IC cars to EVs. In the U.S. Not in 2012 era China.

I put "scientific" in quotes because as you well know, even in peer-reviewed journals, you will find papers putting a scientific veneer to whatever viewpoint the authors have. (It's called turd polishing). As you well know. Just like in the medical literature on prescription drugs and medical devices and so on.

Although my field is engineering rather than science, I have seen plenty of garbage in peer reviewed I.E.E.E. (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) journals, and even been pressured to write one myself (I resisted until I had time to find a job in another department.). Also I was pressured to write a positive review of a garbage paper (I didn't). Your son's generation is not the only one that cares about more than just dollars.

I've seen the corruption close up in the social "science" literature too.

To the extent we'd like to have these vehicles, I propose that carbon dioxide and/or water be subject to thermochemical cycles to split them, with CO being subject to the water gas reaction to give hydrogen, and that the necessary cooling steps involve one Brayton cycle ...

... Since this system can be designed to be carbon negative depending on the source of carbon and the requirement that all thermal energy be produced by nuclear heat at approximately 100C or higher, I believe it would be more efficient, infinitely cleaner, and far more sustainable than all this useless electric car trash we're always hearing about. .... It's a wonderfuel.

That sounds great, so when will it be for sale so that it can start to make a difference? When will we see the CO2 readings at Mauna Loa start to drop (or even slow down) from this wonderfuel? How long has this technology been in the lab?

In the meantime, with existing industrial-scale technology, as far as propelling cars with nuclear energy, what do you think of EV's on a grid like France where it's like 75% nuclear? Again, compared to gasoline-IC cars in France..

It's too bad by the way (and I take no joy in this), that even in a nuclear-powered country like France, they are having trouble building new ones. The Flamanville reactor #3 (1600 MW) is the first new reactor built on French soil in about 20 years - original target date 2012, is now slated for 2020, and is more than a factor of 3 over the original budget, and is now estimated at $7,970 / KW per a 7/25/18 Reuters article.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-flamanville/edfs-flamanville-reactor-start-again-delayed-to-2020-idUSKBN1KF0VN

(Another article from 2009 has this interesting statistic: Although France gets over 3/4 of its electricity from nuclear, nuclear accounts for only 16% of final energy use. Which just goes to show that nuclear-ifying the electric power sector only solves a rather modest fraction of the carbon problem. Or to put it another way, nuclear-ifying the electric power sector globally is not going to stop the CO2 readings at Mauna Loa rising.).

Have a nice day tomorrow.

Thanks. Likewise

[NNadir]

22. I said I was being generous at 90% for all of the conversions, but what does it matter?

Last edited Sat Oct 13, 2018, 12:46 PM - Edit history (3)

The world is getting much, much hotter, and the efficiency of anything electrical goes down under hot conditions.

Suppose that some of these efficiency's fall to 85%. It is well known that electric cars generate considerable heat - and heat is entropy - it's why they are known to sometimes spontaneously burst into flame.

Always when I hear about what I regard as consumerism disguised as environmentalism it's "all new stuff." I don't buy it.

Of course, we could build all new power plants, but what we will build clearly in these benighted times will be gas plants. A combined cycle gas plant operating at 50% thermal efficiency is still a gas plant, and thus a crime against all future generations.

We can quibble forever about scrubbers on power plants in the US; none of them "scrub" carbon dioxide. The thermodynamic penalty for doing that is vast when compared to the thermodynamic penalty of scrubbing sulfates, mercury and lead.

I note that in terms of purification, none of these systems are 100% efficient, and even if they were, one still has to put the sulfur, the mercury and the lead somewhere.

The key difference between your focus and my focus however is that you are concerned only with the United States - a provincial country - and I am interested in the world at large.

There more than a billion people in China; in purely human terms, China is far more important than we are; they matter; we don't, except to the extent that we consume per capita way more than our fair share.

Another difference between you and I is that you are looking to retrofit the car CULTure to be less odious than it has clearly been almost forever, although I will grant that initially it did solve the serious 19th century environmental problem of horseshit on city streets. Unfortunately, it pretty much destroyed and contaminated everything outside of cities.

I am not really ethically willing to have enslaved children dig cobalt in the Congo to get 1 or 2% - should it exist at all, and I doubt that it does - for thermal efficiency of cars in the United States, should such an advantage exist, which I highly doubt.

I'm sorry, but I have not - and will not - read or believe a UCS "study" of anything and if they say that dangerous fossil fuel cars exhibit 15% efficiency, I still must consider the source. I read an interesting article today in a back issue of Nature stating that over 1 million scientific papers are published each year; so many papers that people have to invest in AI type systems just to sort through them to find what may be relevant. As a person who spends at least 5 to 10 hours a week in science libraries wandering aimlessly through tons of literature, I can surely appreciate it that some sources are better than others. It may be true that many gasoline powered vehicles are in fact 15% efficient, but does it matter? Was there no life on earth before the invention of the automobile? A better questions might be will there still be life on Earth after the invention of the automobile.

There are many, many, many studies of "Well to Wheel" efficiency of cars of various types - Google Scholar is your friend. I don't spend a tremendous of time going over them since I wholly reject the car CULTure even though I am a hypocrite as I personally have no real option to escape it myself. I do wish however that people were working toward this escape. The operative word in that search term for me is "well," not "wheel." From the limited number of papers on this topic I've read, it does seem to me that a hybrid vehicle is slightly more efficient than an electric vehicle, but again, it really doesn't matter. Cars are still powered in all cases by dangerous fossil fuels.

The "efficiency will save us" scheme is as much a failure as the "renewable energy will save us" fantasy. I'm sorry, but Amory Lovins is a complete idiot. Jevons wrote about his paradox in the 19th century, and its no less true today than it was then. (Lovins would have been helped if he opened a book, but it seems to be beneath him; this moron has actually stated that he likes to discuss topics authoritatively he knows nothing about.) World energy efficiency is rising; so is energy consumption, by huge amounts because, among other things, the citizens of China did not agree to remain desperately impoverished so suburban Americans could smugly drive to the mall in electrified SUV's at Christmas time to buy Sierra Club calendars.

The same is true for India; and soon enough, Africa.

I am an advocate of nuclear energy as the only sustainable form of energy on this planet, one factor precisely being because it is not distributed energy. (The worst and most egregious example - one the world should have heeded - of the criminality of distributed energy is the automobile.) People always want to challenge me on my nuclear advocacy by stating that there are no nuclear powered cars, which demonstrates graphically their very selective attention; what may be more properly called "grotesque myopia." Now I hate the reflexive use of the world "could" as equivalent to "is," as in an idiot statement from the morally and intellectual Lilliputians at Greenpeace that "Studies show that the world could be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2100." This sort of thinking is contemptuous of every human being who lives after us.

This said, I know, and outlined superficially in my last post in this thread that it is technologically feasible that we could power cars using highly efficient "+1000 C" thermochemical cycles with nuclear as opposed to dangerous fossil fuels as the primary energy source. The question is would this be a wise use for nuclear energy. I suggest it isn't. Nothing, not even marvelous sources of energy like nuclear, can make the car CULTure sustainable, primarily because it is distributed energy writ large, and distributed energy will always involve distributed, diffuse, and thus impossible to manage, pollution. From what you wrote, you seem to get this, but not so much that you are willing to question the whole damned enterprise.

[progree]

23. Some insights into why I perhaps myopically focus on the U.S.

The world is getting much, much hotter, and the efficiency of anything electrical goes down under hot conditions.

So does the efficiency of gasoline IC engines. And for now, we're only talking a very few degrees F ambient. We'll all be dead if we go beyond that. The efficiency of our machinery is the least of our problems with warming.

Suppose that some of these efficiency's fall to 85%. It is well known that electric cars generate considerable heat - and heat is entropy - it's why they are known to sometimes spontaneously burst into flame.

Gasoline cars are known to catch on fire too.

Of course, we could build all new power plants, but what we will build clearly in these benighted times will be gas plants. A combined cycle gas plant operating at 50% thermal efficiency is still a gas plant, and thus a crime against all future generations.

Again we are talking about replacing gasoline IC cars with electric cars. Gasoline IC cars (and regular non-plug-in hybrids) are 100% fossil-fueled. An electric grid with a mix of nuclear, fossil, and renewable is not 100% fossil fueled.

(I realize that renewable, even with adequate storage, is very resource intensive. And I don't want to see the entire landscape covered with windmills either)

We can quibble forever about scrubbers on power plants in the US; none of them "scrub" carbon dioxide. The thermodynamic penalty for doing that is vast when compared to the thermodynamic penalty of scrubbing sulfates, mercury and lead.

No way either to scrub CO2 from the tailpipe of gasoline IC cars. And what we do scrub from IC cars is also at considerable penalty to fuel economy.

The key difference between your focus and my focus however is that you are concerned only with the United States - a provincial country - and I am interested in the world at large.

There more than a billion people in China; in purely human terms, China is far more important than we are; they matter; we don't, except to the extent that we consume per capita way more than our fair share.

No, I'm not only concerned about the U.S. (Sigh). The reason I ask about the U.S. is that's because it's where I and most of the people reading DU live and where the politicians we write to and vote for live, and the editors live where we write letters to the editor and so on. And if we buy an EV, it's the regional grid that we are plugging into.

We DUers can't influence what China does. We can at least try to influence what happens in the U.S. Yes, we're just a drop in a very big bucket of 330 million fellow citizens (and in a world of 7.4 billion people). But why not try? Anyway, I can't just drink and zone out all the time and hope that the next generation will figure it all out for us.

I gave my farm to Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) in 2016 because I am perhaps trying to quixotically influence family planning program advocacy, knowing full well it was maybe (after considering the actuarial cost to them of the charitable gift annuity I got in return) less than 2% of their budget for just one year.

I'm well aware that China is the biggest GHG emitter in the world, and it, along with India are the fastest growing GHG emitters. And their GHG growth dwarfs that of the U.S. (Actually, U.S. has declined a bit over the 3 years through 2016). What foreseeable policy changes the U.S. makes will make only a tiny percentage difference in world-wide GHG growth.

I am not really ethically willing to have enslaved children dig cobalt in the Congo to get 1 or 2% - should they exist at all, and I doubt that they do - for thermal efficiency of cars in the United States, should such an advantage exist, which I highly doubt.

And I'm not ethically willing to continue polluting the Niger Delta and Ecuador and Congo rainforests and kill the indigenous people and anyone else who resists for oil to power gasoline IC cars. Or pollute ours and other peoples' coasts. The oil industry is not a patty-cake walk either.

The "efficiency will save us" scheme is as much a failure as the "renewable energy will save us" fantasy.

The "doing nothing and everything will work out somehow fantasy" is worse.

You seem to have great hopes in your sons' generation. What is it that they are going to do about all this?

the citizens of China did not agree to remain desperately impoverished so suburban Americans could smugly drive to the mall in electrified SUV's at Christmas time to buy Sierra Club calendars.

Nor did they agree to remain desperately impoverished so suburban Americans could smugly drive to the mall in gasoline-power SUVs and monster pickup trucks to wherever to buy whatever.

Nothing, not even marvelous sources of energy like nuclear, can make the car CULTure sustainable, primarily because it is distributed energy writ large, and distributed energy will always involve distributed, diffuse, and thus impossible to manage, pollution. From what you wrote, you seem to get this, but not so much that you are willing to question the whole damned enterprise.

I do, but for now, not knowing what else to do, I push for any improvement, however incremental, that I can. Just saying we should all stop driving and cut our living standards by 80% (and that assumes world population growth stabilizes) isn't going to do a damn bit of good.

I drive such a small amount of miles a month that if I said what the number is, people would ridicule me for not having a life (a lot of truth to that, but oh well, but I'm quite content with it). I cheat and take the bus too, but that comes to only about 500 miles a year.

[NNadir]

25. OK. Everyone should do what they can; clearly you are; but I hope...

...you will understand my frustration at weak efforts in a clearly rising disaster of global proportions.

I do come across as hostile, I'm sure, but frankly, it's just generalized anger because of what I have come to know, and I hope you will understand that it's because of what I've come to understand, and not directed at you personally.

Clearly you care..

If you focus your attention on weak means of addressing this crisis, you are still doing far more than most Americans, especially in the age of Trumpism, and for this you clearly deserve some admiration and respect.

It's not as if I have a realistic approach, in the political or sociological sense, to solving this problem. I'm like a man with small cell lung cancer who's reading about treatments that might be available some day even though he has been declared terminal.

I will confess that 30 years ago, when I first started seriously thinking about issues in the environment by delving into the primary scientific literature, I went through a phase where I actually believed that the world would be wonderful if everyone had an electric car and a solar cell system on their roofs.

Been there. Done that.

It's clear that depending on how one searches the literature, one can still find evidence to believe this, although frankly, the case is less and less defensible.

I recall George H.W. Bush announcing that the "American lifestyle is not negotiable," as if one could negotiate with the atmosphere.

We can't.

(Despite attempts to rehabilitate them, the Bushes are really awful people, considerably worse than even the awful Kennedys)

We're really at a "finger in the dike" moment at, say, the Banqiao dam disaster, which killed according to most sources around 170,000 people, although there are a number of estimates that are considerably higher. (The true death toll will never be known.)

Fukushima!!!?!!

I had a vague feeling that I'd recently come across a "well to wheel" paper, and as kind of a peace offering for my angry tone, here it is:

Current and Future United States Light-Duty Vehicle Pathways: Cradle-to-Grave Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Economic Assessment (Elgowainy et al Environ. Sci. Technol., 2018, 52 (4), pp 2392–2399.)

I opened the PDF in my files, and looked at it, and it has all this wonderful stuff about if we lived in the solar nirvana and had electric cars, our GHG would be such and such...etc...etc...etc.

(I've been hearing this stuff for so long and with such deepening frustration at how delusional it is, that for me it's pure "Waiting for Godot," but no matter...)

I'm not going to have time today to really go deeply into this paper, open the HTML in a library, put up all the high resolution graphics, and superficially discuss the text as I do here from time to time on other topics. (My sons have both come home from college this weekend and we need to do some business and logistic things. There is a prosaic life beyond these vast issues, "deck chairs on the Titanic" as they sometimes say...)

Maybe I will someday have time. Watch this space if interested in what I have to say on this topic, or feel free to ignore it.

But here is the low resolution graphic that pretty much describes what the thinking of the NREL and other National Lab type people think about the non-negotiable American lifestyle and transport vehicles:



With a quick glance, one can see that if electric cars have some Greenhouse Gas advantages over gasoline based ICEV cars, there are clearly a large number of them, depending on the source of electricity, that are very much in the same range as gasoline cars.

To me this suggests that the enthusiasm for the electric car enterprise as "doing something" - the wild enthusiasm for and worship of that awful fool Elon Musk and his stupid car for billionaires and millionaires - is nearly the equivalent of doing nothing at all.

(Note that the graphic above only refers to vehicles that contain some electrical components, and not to the average gasoline type car that still characterizes the "non-negotiable" American lifestyle, the exception being the ethanol cars for which Jimmy Carter had so much enthusiasm almost half a century ago, this at the ultimate cost of the destruction of large tracts of the Mississippi Delta ecosystem.)

Thanks for your comments. I actually appreciate them.

[NeoGreen]

20. I think you might have a misunderstanding...

...the person you are responding to hates certain (i.e. organic) fossil fuels as much as the next person, they just wish that every was dependent upon their preferred fossil fuel (i.e inorganic). The wish being everyone would drive a nuclear powered vehicle.

I hope I have cleared up your apparent misunderstanding.

Oh, and Off!

[tinrobot]

31. I'm not rich and that subsidy helped me afford an electric car

A lot of people such as myself are buying electric cars other than Tesla. I'm a huge proponent of mass transit, but if we must have cars, electric cars are much cleaner. We need to subsidize the cars along with charging networks to get ourselves off of oil.

Electricity is overwhelming made by burning dangerous fossil fuels, and thus electric cars, since they waste energy produced by burning dangerous fossil fuels make things worse, not better.

That's myth promoted by fossil fuel companies. If you create the electricity with coal and put it in an electric car, the amount of pollution will still be less than if you burned gasoline in the same size car. On top of that, it is easier to contain and/or scrub the carbon from a centralized plant than multiple vehicles.

That said, coal/oil still needs to go away. The real benefit to electric cars is that they decouple the fuel source from the vehicle, so you can wean yourself off of fossil fuels completely. Your city could generate power from solar, wind, or any number of non-fossil fuel sources in order to clean up the vehicles. You could also put solar panels on your roof and ditch coal completely on your own.

[NNadir]

32. I'm very happy for your personal story.

It's bullshit that scientific publications are "myths created by the fossil fuel companies," but if you wish to claim that buying a car makes you an expert in the source of electricity on the planet, there's very little I can do to contradict this view by which you justify your consumption to yourself.

Every year, the International Energy Agency publishes a report on the world's energy sources:

IEA 2017 World Energy Outlook.

The next one comes out in November. I read every issue. You?

I'm certainly in no position to contradict your nonsense statements, but I did post a link to a, um, scientific publication showing that in China, where coal is king, the death toll associated with electric cars is higher than that of electric cars.

China, I note, citing that publication has 100 million electric vehicles. Here it is again:

Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Cherry et al, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024)

A map of air pollution deaths in China can be found in this paper:

Nature: China's annual air pollution deaths now stand at 1.4 million per year.



Nature 525, 367–371 (17 September 2015)

I'm certainly in no position to educate you; but I really question which one of us is awash in marketing hype. I would suggest you look into the laws of thermodynamics, but in lieu of that, maybe you can watch one of that idiot Elon Musk's ads showing wind turbines (bird and bat grinders) in the back ground.

As for the question of whether or not you are a rich person, I wrote extensively some time ago about people who live on less than $1 dollar a day:

Current Energy Demand; Ethical Energy Demand; Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come

Maybe you don't know what "rich" is but I'm certainly not willing to approve of subsidizing your car when there are children in inner city schools who lack textbooks that might allow them, if not you, the opportunity to learn the laws of thermodyamics.

[tinrobot]

33. 100 million electric vehicles? Where did you get that?

China, I note, citing that publication has 100 million electric vehicles. Here it is again:

China had a little over a million as of 2017 (per the IEA that you reference).

https://www.iea.org/tcep/transport/evs/

There are not even 100 million EVs on the planet.

Not sure what your point is here... but please read your quoted papers more carefully before posting misinformation and vitriol.

And by the way, I have a BS in Physics. Please don't lecture me on thermodynamics.

[Finishline42]

34. He likes to throw numbers around to confuse the subject

He once had one of his number numbing posts to say we didn't have enough aluminum to make enough windmills to make a difference. All the while the world makes billions of aluminum cans for pop and beer. The fact is that aluminum is the 3rd most plentiful element by weight in the Earth's crust.

Also, not sure what his point here is???

I'm certainly in no position to contradict your nonsense statements, but I did post a link to a, um, scientific publication showing that in China, where coal is king, the death toll associated with electric cars is higher than that of electric cars.

Whatever the point was it is unsupported nonsense.

[AllaN01Bear]

26. these are the same people that killed the electric street car in the 40s

think public transit.

[MichMan]

28. They must be really old by now

[Calculating]

30. This is fine with me TBH

Tired of my tax dollars going to subsidize 1%ers buying $60K-100K Teslas.