Electric vehicles are having a good run. But are they the solution to our energy problems? Andrew Nikiforuk is skeptical:
I reject the optimistic narrative for electric vehicles. Instead, here’s what I fear. EVs will end up simply adding to energy demand by vastly accelerating society’s embrace of automation and artificial intelligence.
My sense is that industries pushing electric cars are not so much concerned with slowing down extreme climate change as they are accelerating technological control over our lives — all under the guise of liberation. We’ve been groomed to accept this as inevitable progress. In 2015, Google engineer and ultra-techno-optimist Ray Kurzweil pronounced autonomous electric vehicles a sure thing that, as one article paraphrased, would “free us up to do something else instead of driving during the commute.”
Nikiforuk believes that EVs won't solve our emissions problems:
Passenger vehicles produce about 10 per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Other forms of transportation collectively add another six per cent. Approximately 1.4 billion ICE vehicles now clog the world’s ever-expanding road system. Replacing every one of these old farts with electric wonders — even if such a scheme were possible — would only address 16 per cent of the carbon dioxide problem.
Actually, not even. Because if we assume all the new electric cars run on “renewable” energy such as wind or solar power, these systems require fossil fuels for their manufacture, installation and maintenance. In fact, it takes more carbon emissions to make an electric car than a conventional vehicle because of the energy intensity of battery manufacture. And of course electric cars run on roads made of and by fossil fuels.
But the problem is more complicated than that. Houston energy analyst Art Berman raises another neglected point. Transport is not the main use of ICEs. Of the 165 million internal combustion engines manufactured in 2020, less than half, 78 million, were destined for the road. Agriculture, manufacturing, power generation, forestry and construction accounted for the other 53 per cent, says Berman.
To complicate matters further, EVs require materials that need to be mined:
Replacing ICE cars with EV cars likely won’t radically reduce emissions, but these machines will energize and expand the globe’s energy intensive mining sector.
Last year the Paris-based International Energy Agency published a report on critical minerals needed for electric cars and renewables. The IEA, no radical organization, described the EV revolution as a “shift from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive energy system.” In other words, buying an electric car just moves civilization’s ever-expanding industrial footprint from one kind of mining to another, from fracked well pads to open-pit mines.
About 10 per cent of the world’s energy spending now goes to the extraction of minerals. According to the IEA, the electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional vehicle. Most of these minerals go into the battery manufacturing. They include lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, copper and graphite. There are other minerals with names like neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium.
According to the Geological Survey of Finland, “the production/consumption of industrial minerals increased by 144 per cent between 2000 and 2018.” An EV boom will accelerate that industrial assault on ecosystems around the world, creating, as the IEA notes, a host of environmental and social challenges. “The prospect of a rapid increase in demand for critical minerals — well above anything seen previously in most cases — raises huge questions about the availability and reliability of supply.” No kidding.
To make one tonne of lithium, mined in high and dry alpine places like Chile and Tibet, requires 500,000 gallons of water. Lithium mining is no more green or clean than hydraulic fracturing or bitumen mining. “Like any mining process, it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the Earth and the local wells,” said Guillermo Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile, as far back as 2009. “This isn’t a green solution — it’s not a solution at all.”
You see where this is going. The automobile industry is going electric. But that doesn't mean that the world will experience a green new day.
Image: nbcnews.com
32 comments:
I see where this is going alright, back to the horse and buggy. Not sure my backyard is big enough, but at least I've got a large animal vet in the family.
Cap
Like so many other things, Owen, it sounds like the hopes around EVs represent yet another form of magical thinking or are seen as a deus ex machina. Few are willing to make the really hard choices that tackling climate change require.
Canada could be an exceptional country boosting north Americ’s ultimate public transportation system. But………………not. Anyong
This is an aside. The BA 2 variant is found in Denmark according to the WHO. Anyong
I hope you have a large place to pile the manure, Cap.
The bottom line is that we have to consume a lot less, Lorne. We don't want to do that.
Not yet, Anyong.
I don't see the connection, Anyong.
@ 1 Cap
Artur C Clarke back in the 1960's wrote that in the future he expected each household to have a miniature elephant. Much more intelligent and capable than a horse. Possibly more manure than a horse but an elephant may be easier to toilet-train.
Since I am not a fan of personal automobiles in urban environments I'd just prefer we make car ownership costly/difficult and follow Anonymous Anonymous @ 10:30am and move to public transit plus making the urban environment more pedestrian and cyclist friendly.
these systems require fossil fuels for their manufacture, installation and maintenance
This is a ridiculous remark. What does he not understand about energy substitution?
The resource usage is a very valid point though batteries are recyclable and most of the lithium can be rolled over into a new battery. It is also questionable if lithium will be a battery component in a few years. There are a lot of mad scientists out there "building better batteries".
The article makes some good points, much depends upon how the energy and the storage equipment etc is produced, we need less as well as more efficient energy use, Owen. The thousands of cars traveling into Toronto each day so that workers can sit in a office only to drive back down the same route each day comes to mind.
The image of a gas or diesel generator charging an electric car is not inaccurate.
90-95% of Alberta's electricity is generated from coal or gas.
even the snappy new hydrogen motorbikes out of Japan are sourcing their hydrogen out of Australian brown coal with a bigger footprint than gas , the only advantage being they are stepping on Australia not Japan.
Kinda want a naming pool when we get to rename the Bennett buggy after the current leader of the time. Who will it be? Place your bets now.
It could be a cautionary tale that the horseless carriage was cheered as the solution to horse manure continually being in the streets. Oh those clever monkeys, what will they think of next?
I suppose the alternative is electrified public transit, the old trolley cars with the overhead power lines.
I haven't experienced "rush hour" traffic for years but it remains heavy with single-occupant commuter cars. Too many people working in cities where they cannot afford to live or pursuing the quest for McMansions in the 'burbs.
We do know that a better freight rail system could easily displace emissions-heavy, long haul trucking. Tier 4, low emission locomotives can reduce GHG output by 85 per cent and there's a Tier 5 in the works. Trucks would then be a more local means of distributing goods from hubs (i.e. major cities) to warehouses and on to retailers.
Today, I drive sparingly. The provincial insurance scheme provides a 10 per cent premium discount for those who drive less that 4,000 kms.annually. I drive about half that these days. By my calculations, however, my major cost per km. isn't fuel or maintenance, but insurance. I may log very few miles but I still pay 90 per cent of the premium paid by those who easily drive 10 or more times as far each year. Once I amortize the premium on a per km. basis, I'm getting hosed.
Mass transit, especially for commuter passengers and urban dwellers, and rail freight for mid- and long-haul shipping, could go a long way to cutting overall emissions.
I doubt any of these measures are likely until we break our governments' fealty to the fossil energy industry.
T
11:22 am If Canada had a top notch public transit system, we would not need so many vehicles on the road. And no, changing to EV is not going to reduce CO2 at helpful levels only the car manufacturers will benefit……...do they care? I think not. Anyong
My impression is that cities are moving in that direction, jrk -- particularly in the wake of COVID. We'll see if that happens.
I read the other day, jrk, that the Chinese have developed a new battery that doesn't use lithium.
Toronto still relies heavily on a large highway system, Rural. The planners are still working from an old paradigm.
The old paradigm is still alive and well, Mound. Perhaps COVID will break it. COVID has changed the way we look at lots of things.
The fossil fuel industry is still intricately entwined with our politics, Anyong.
There are all kinds of pollution, lungta. At least the old form of pollution could be recycled in your garden.
I drool over the videos about Japanese trains with marvelous little sleeping compartments, showers, meals and a terrific view from one's own bed of the snowy landscape creeping by. Canadian public transit is incredibly crummy, squalid and dangerous for picking up diseases like covid or anything respiratory. It is a real problem for me since I have relatives up north who I would like to see. The only possibility is the plane, but that is not safe either.
You wouldn't believe the stories I hear up there. The center of Quebec is largely uninhabited but there is a train line with no stations. The nurses picking up medical supplies have to stand by the tracks and wait for the train to stop, even in the middle of the night.
Rail travel in this country is still operating in the last century, ffd. It's time to catch up with much of the developed world.
Owen the only thing you have to know about electric cars is that they consume 75% less energy to accomplish the same task as ICE cars.
An ICE engine is 25% efficient, the worst electric cars are over 90%.
I know your an English teacher, but that is simple math.
About 2/3 of the energy that goes through an infernal combustion engine spews out the exhaust. ICE efficiency runs 30% to 40% while BEV (electric) efficiency is close to 95%. So, yes, a switch to electric cars will help. Electric cars are easier to drive, quieter, need little maintenance, have stunning acceleration and can refuel at home. What's not to like? Since most driving is local, range is not nearly the problem that people fear.
Cities have discovered that automobiles simply take up too much room for what they do. A lifetime ago I spent a few years in San Francisco. Within a few months of moving there I sold my car. The parking problem was so oppressive that it was faster to hop on a cable car that moves at 9mph than to drive myself.
We have some hard choices to make but we can't all move to Walden Pond or take up a hunter/gatherer existence. There are too many of us. Humans have more than tripled our number in my lifetime. That is by far our biggest problem.
You're focused only on the cars, Steve, not on the ripple effects they produce.
4:03 Actually, South Korea has been looking for support for their new battery technology since 2019. Chinese try to steal all the technology they can and call it their own. South Korea happens to be a first world country with very high technology habits. Anyong
The Disaffected Lib has an interesting post today on the population crisis we face, Toby. There are a lot of bills coming due.
Our son teaches in South Korea, Anyong. He tells us that they are, indeed, a highly developed country.
Progressive, regressive, left or right,democracy,authoritarian; the choice is yours , but it will not solve the issue of overpopulation which is the root of 'all evil" ?
We are , above all things, consuming ourselves and the planet we live on.
With the exploration of our universe and beyond , I have to wonder ; just who came ( and went) before us??
We have reached the point of being the wolf in a leg trap that chews off it's leg to continue it's life!
TB
I spent many years in South Korea employed with the Korean High School system and later with a University. It was one of the most interesting time spent in any country. Anyong
Put simply, TB, we are our own worst enemies.
Our son teaches at a community college there, Anyong.
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