A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."

[NNadir]

Let's be clear: People lie to themselves and they lie to each other, but numbers don't lie.

When we represent that energy storage is "green," that is batteries, or worse, hydrogen, what we are really talking about is destroying the exergy of dangerous fossil fuels, making the impact worse, not better.

The belief in these tiresome fantasies, that batteries are "green" or even worse, that hydrogen is "green" plays into the fact that degradation of the planetary atmosphere has reached the fastest pace ever observed in 2024, not that we really give a shit, since we're all promoting dangerous fossil fuels either to others (people rebranding fossil fuels as "hydrogen" and running sleazy ads) and/or batteries.

At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, the 2024 Terror Continues.

Things are getting worse faster than ever.

Let me repeat: People lie to themselves and they lie to each other, but numbers don't lie.

The paper to which I'll refer in this post, is this one: Cleaning up while Changing Gears: The Role of Battery Design, Fossil Fuel Power Plants, and Vehicle Policy for Reducing Emissions in the Transition to Electric Vehicles Matthew Bruchon, Zihao Lance Chen, and Jeremy Michalek Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (8), 3787-3799

It's open sourced - anyone can read it - and refers to the grid on which I live, and in fact to the type of car I drive, an HEV, a hybrid Toyota Camry which routinely gets well over 50 mpg, sometimes (depending on the weather) close to or even exceeding 60 mpg, which doesn't make it "green," although it slightly ameliorates the filth associated with my lifestyle.

Again, it's open, and I'm not going to bother talking about but I can't help pointing to the pictures of the source of electricity on my grid (PJM) and other grids around the world, despite the very ignorant lie that electricity is "green."

The grid on which I live, by the way, the authors claim is "typical" although as the next graphic shows that there are definitely places that are even worse.



The caption:

Figure 1. Electricity generation mix by region in 2020. Regions other than PJM are ordered from the largest to smallest total regional generation. Generator fuel types are ordered (bottom to top) from the largest to smallest global generation. Generally, PJM has similar properties to most other regions of the world: wind, solar, and nuclear power produce a minority of generation with low marginal cost, typically generating as much energy as possible regardless of the variations in load, while dispatchable fossil fuel plants (primarily coal and natural gas) adjust the generation in response to changes in load. Hydroelectric generation, a small source in PJM, can adjust the timing of generation within constraints (such as lake level limits) (Data from refs (1) and (2)).

You see the red regions in the graph. This is low carbon and reliable electricity, not dependent on the weather at a time the weather has been vastly destabilized by the unrestricted brown and black regions promoted by antinukes. And let's be clear again, the "bait and switch" game is what is promoted by people claiming that hydrogen is "green" and batteries are "green." What they're selling is fossil fuels.

A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.

By the way, the investment in allegedly "green" so called "renewable energy" and the mining dependent distribution network designed to make what doesn't work, work although it's marked with decades of failure, easily outstrips the money being spent on the larger and reliable low carbon source of energy in red, which people claim is "too expensive" while ignoring the question of whether climate change is "too expensive."

The graphics in the following link are interactive, showing the "investments" in all forms of energy: IEA World Investment in Power

The, um, results of these vast expenditures are also graphic, albeit in another way.

The numbers are here: 2023 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Table A.1a on Page 264.



Trillions of dollars for 7 Exajoules of magical solar, and 8 Exajoules of magical wind power, all of which will be landfill in 20 to 25 years, if not sooner.

At long last, no sense of decency.

Anyway, about the external costs, the costs to the environment, human health, and ecosystem sustainability of cars:

Figure 6. Consequential life cycle air emission externalities per vehicle in 2019, assuming 10% of the light-duty passenger car fleet in PJM’s service area is replaced with PEVs. “ICEV” denotes a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle, “HEV” denotes a standard gasoline hybrid electric vehicle (NiMH battery), “PHEV20” denotes a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with a battery range of 20 miles (Li-ion battery with NMC111 cathode chemistry), and “BEV300” denotes a battery electric with a battery range of 300 miles (Li-ion battery with NMC622 cathode chemistry). “CC” indicates that battery charge schedules are optimally controlled by PJM to minimize system operation costs, and “UC” indicates that battery charging is uncontrolled (i.e., initiated by the vehicle owner as soon as they complete their daily driving and arrive home. “Production” includes disposal and recycling; “Vehicle Use” includes tailpipe emissions and tire and brake wear).

It looks like on my grid, my type of car is the least obnoxious, although all cars are obnoxious, including mine.

On and it's not like people really wait until the sun is shining and the wind is blowing to charge their "green" electric cars, is it?

I really shouldn't bother, should I? It's not like all this bitterness and anger at the end of my life will cause people to stop lying to themselves and lying to each other, selling batteries with ores dug by slaves, some of whom are children, or rebranding fossil fuels as "hydrogen," in order to waste energy and drive fossil fuel sales. The bull keeps flying around while things get worse.

Reality is unpopular.

We. Just. Don't. Give. A. Shit.

Trump may be the most famous egregious liar on the planet but he's hardly the only one.

Once again, people lie to themselves and they lie to each other, but numbers don't lie.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

Enjoy the upcoming weekend.