Are Electric Vehicles Really a Boon to the Environment?
There are at least two kinds of “EV deniers” (as I call them), i.e., people who doubt that electric vehicles represent an improvement for the environment over gasoline. The first concept is that for the foreseeable future, an increase in the electric load means burning more coal. I.e., coal plants that would otherwise have been tamped down during off peak hours are instead running full-throttle through the night. Frequent commenter Glenn Doty points out that even California and the other states that have no coal buy power when they need it, and this ultimately means that somewhere, more coal is being burned.
Classically, I’ve addressed this by saying that we do indeed face the need to shut down coal plants; this is part of the reason that I favor a significant role of government in support of the migration to renewables and the ancillary areas: smart-grid, efficiency, conservation, energy storage, etc. I’ve also pointed out that the true externalities of fossil fuels are almost completely ignored in most of the arguments. E.g., as bad as coal is, it could be argued that it’s not as bad as oil because of international security issues. The costs (both financial and human) of war, terrorism, and civil unrest and injustice are enormous, and normally totally dismissed. As oil becomes scarcer, these problems will only get worse.
The other major class of objection is made by U.S. ex-pat John Petersen, now living in Switzerland, who points to the shortage of non-ferrous metals as the ultimate issue. John believes that, as the population grows – especially the population of consumers – we’ll soon find that we’ve hit the ceiling in terms of the availability of elements like lithium, neodymium, boron, cobalt, lanthanum, and dysprosium that are required for EV batteries and powertrains.
Historically, I have responded in a way that may appear glib or cavalier: essentially, we’ll deal with this problem when we come to it. 100 years ago, we didn’t think there was much oil in the ground. Then, when we started looking for it, we found a great deal of it. (Unfortunately, we extracted it, refined it, and burned it.)
I’m posting this not because I’m looking for validation for my ideas. Precisely the opposite, I’d like to get to the bottom of this. I’m hoping a few people will chime in and help me get my wits wrapped around this once and for all.
Craig,
You are absolutely correct about the externalities of fossil fuels, but you forgot to add the fact that we have subsidized the internal combustion engine automobile for about 100 years now.
If those subsidies are shifted to renewable energy sources, you will see much faster progress there and those costs will come down quite rapidly.
A second important point is the rapidly growing field of solar powered electric car charging, which will allow localized daytime recharging of EVs at train stations, schools, and company parking lots. These solar canopies will solve the problem of dirty electricity charging electric cars.
I’m in first category, but I do not consider myself a “denier”. Driving a Nissan Leaf (which averages abt 3 miles per kWh according to CONSUMER REPORTS) in my neighborhood (Kentucky) translates to abt 0.67 lbs CO2 per mile from electricity produced by Kentucky’s 90+% coal-fired electric grid. This is roughly equivalent to CO2 per mile from a 33 mpg gasoline-powered car. I have gotten over 41 mpg since 1992. Last yr I averaged 43, less than 0.5 lbs CO2 per mile. I’m not willing move backwards, and there are many more pollutants besides CO2 from burning coal. After all, coal is our worst-polluting energy source. Ignoring that would be more serious denial. It motivates me to minimize how much electricity I use. When I converted my home office to PV in 2001, I went off-grid with REAL batteries for storage so I wouldn’t be relying on a coal-fired utility instead of real batteries. Even if I had a grid-tied PV setup large enough to achieve annual net-zero, unless I ran my office and charged an electric car only during sunny afternoons (we’re barely over 50% sunny days here), I’d be charging with mostly coal-fired kWhs. That is unacceptable to me and many others. No amount of SmartGrid solves this dilemma. So right now, at least where I am, switching to an electric car means a substantial increase in pollution. That is not denial.
I think Petersen’s main argument is that EVs are an inefficient use of resources. Given that 98% of all cars are ICE’s, it makes more sense to use relatively expensive components like batteries to put 8 hybrids on the road rather than one EV.
I think he presents a false dichotomy. Yes, if the choices were 8 hybrids or 1 EV, I’d go for the hybrids, but I don’t think that limited battery supply is the constraining factor… I think the constraint is social inertia: the unwillingness to change.
Petersen has lots of anti-EV arguments, but they always seem to boil down to a comparison of the relative environmental benefits of EVs and hybrids.
OK, thanks. But what to you think about Glenn Doty’s argument? I’m starting to think he has a point here. I.e., the relevant issue isn’t the average amount of coal in your local grid-mix, it’s what exactly happens when you add electrical load — and that is that somewhere, more coal is burned.
I agree with Glen in part. Average electric mix is irrelevant, you have to think on the margins: What happens when demand from an EV is added to the mix? But his conclusion that more coal is burned it wrong… in many cases, what happens is that intermediate plants such as gas turbines are run for longer… the situation when coal plants are tamped down at night is fairly rare.
Second, his idea that CA will import more coal power is wrong. CA is transmission-constrained, so they can’t import more power (and if they did it could easily be more natural gas power.)
Finally, you can’t just look at what happens when you buy the car… you have to look at the car’s whole lifetime (10 years?) That’s long enough to impact utility planning, so the most important question is, what new plants will utilities build to power EVs?
Interesting. This seems correct to me. We’ll see what Glenn says; he should be along any minute now… 🙂
Craig,
That’s funny, and extremely lucky timing. It’s been about a week since I checked your blog (busy, as usual), and I had just noticed this discussion and decided to bang out a reply… you posted your message while I was typing out my longer post.
Tom,
The average capacity factor for a coal power plant in this country is >60%… That’s extremely low for a baseload power source, and it’s partly due to the fact that every single coal power plant in the nation is tamped down frequently at night.
This specifically occurs in areas of high wind power penetration – such as the Northwest. In these areas, if the forecast calls for high winds that evening, the power company will tamp back its coal power some and leave the natural gas power plant operating at a higher capacity, so when the winds blow the dispatchable natural gas plant can be quickly tamped back or ramped up as the winds fluctuate… The goal will always be to produce the maximum ratio of energy from coal to energy from gas, as even with current prices gas is far more expensive than coal… but since coal is not quickly dispatchable, the coal plants must be tamped down in order to take advantage of wind when it blows – and it blows largely at night.
The power companies will only bank their coal power plants as far back as they expect additional wind to blow, so if new baseload demand is added, then they will tamp the coal plants back a little less.
But while this is a bigger issue in areas with high wind power penetration, everywhere in the U.S. is seeing some tamping back of their coal power. The environmentalists waged a war on “vampire power” throughout the late 90’s and early 00’s, which led to far less nightly energy consumption from household appliances, and more businesses being conscientious about nightly power drains from employees leaving their computers on and whatever else… Add to that an elimination of 3rd shifts in most manufacturing, and a reduction in “24 hour” commercial operations… and you get a power usage that shows a very large drop in middle-of-the-night demand. Now most coal plants have to be banked back to some extent or another at night… that’s the new norm.
As far as what’s going to happen in 10 years…
If we’re talking about margins now, we’ll be talking about margins in 10 years as well. Every MWh of new wind, solar, geothermal, and small hydroelectric power that is added to the grid in the next 10 years will have >$10/MWh of marginal cost… I’m not talking levelized cost, I’m talking marginal cost: Once the wind turbine is built, it will generate energy almost for free (aside from a cheap maintenance contract)… So the energy that comes onto the grid from said wind turbine will, in all practical cases, be used to offset fossil energy.
That means in 10 years, you will have more renewable energy on the grid as a component of “average grid mix”… but that doesn’t matter, and it won’t matter in 10 years. What will matter then is what will matter now – the marginal impact of new demand… and that will be responded to by means of spare capacity. Every MW of fossil capcity that is offset by renewables becomes spare capacity… so in 10 years the average grid mix – which doesn’t matter – will have more renewables, and there will be a great deal more fossil spare capacity – which is the only thing that will be considered in terms of the relative “clean-ness” of new marginal baseload demand.
Thanks for thinking about this… and especially thanks to Craig for discussing it and bringing this to light.
Since we can’t seem to think in the present about energy vs environment… Let’s think squarely abt alternative(s) to petroleum. In the old days when we thought ngas was running out and petroleum would be next, we more routinely talked abt “energy alternatives”. This wasn’t always better for environment or renewable, just ways to have or produce energy in other ways. Coal-fired and ngas-fired electric vehicles are just one alternative in this context. Personally, not living in or near a city (which is normal in a rural state like KY), I like other liquid fuel options since they provide storage enough for longer travelling distances between refills (aka recharging). And I also like not putting all our focus on just one alternative. The more the better. The worst thing about our current transportation systems is too much dependence on just one fuel, petroleum. We do not want to switch to another dependence on just one fuel