Take a Cool Guess—The Fun Quiz on Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Today’s Topic: Electric Buses

proterra-electricQuestion: What country in Latin America has the largest fleet of electric buses?

Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.

Relevance: Many other countries are close behind.  The electrification of transportation is really speeding up.

Having said this, from the perspective of environmental benefits, everything turns on the fuel that is used to charge the batteries–in particular, what fuel is used to meet incremental load when the buses are charged; if that’s coal, we’re better off with gasoline and diesel.  Here’s the Wikipedia article on the subject, but this exact datum isn’t addressed.

 

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3 comments on “Take a Cool Guess—The Fun Quiz on Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Today’s Topic: Electric Buses
  1. marcopolo says:

    Craig,

    As usual, your information is old, out of date, and inaccurate.

    The global Electric bus fleet is nearly 345,000, 96% of those are to be found on the streets of cities in the Peoples Republic of China.

    In 2016 Shenzhen became the first city in the world to electrify 100 percent of its public buses, the fleet no numbers 19,359,

    In 2019, Shenzhen’s buses will recharge using power from three of China’s newest cold-fired power stations. These marvels of advanced technology can achieve 60 efficiency, while CO2 emission have been reduced by 94% and SOx and NOx emissions by more than 90 percent.

    These power plant’s are far cleaner than Natural Gas fired plants.

    There is very little point in taking interest in only some technologies, while ignoring the advances in others.

    • craigshields says:

      I left out an important qualification: the country is in Latin America; I’ve fixed this. Thanks for the “courtesy note.” lol

  2. marcopolo says:

    Craig,

    Perhaps what you shouldn’t have ignored was the information regarding the advances in Clean Coal technology for those nations heavily dependent on fossil fuel generation.

    Obviously any expansion in electrification of road transport is going to require a massive increase in power on demand.

    Coal generation represents nearly 80% of global “power on demand” generation. I would’ve thought it obvious that any genuinely concerned environmentalist, would be not only interested, but excited by advances in any technology with the capacity to dramatically slash emissions to the maximum extent of any existing technology.

    The practical environmental advantages of implementing advanced clean(er)coal technology are overwhelming. The technology exists, it works on a practical level.

    What I can’t understand is your ideological aversion to not only support new technology, but even consider, investigate or discuss these amazing advances.

    Here an invitation for 2019, you research and list all the disadvantages of Clean(er) Coal technology and I’ll do the same for the advantages, and we compare the results ?

    The only rules are to be scientific, accurate, objective and honest in presenting information.

    Obsolete, conjecture, emotive supposition, anecdotal or unverifiable information can’t be included.

    The question is, are you up for the challenge ? Can you still participate in honest advocacy and debate ?

    That’s the real challenge ………