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Not just a blog post, but an actual in-depth white paper citing the sources for their data on life cycle emissions of internal combustion engine vehicles in comparison to battery electric vehicles: https://theicct.org/sites/default/fi...-jul2021_0.pdf
In a very short summary in relation to this topic, currently the production of a battery electric vehicle produces more emissions than the production of an equivalent internal combustion engine vehicle. If you stopped it just there and you produced the vehicles but never used either of them, then currently the battery electric vehicle produces more emissions. However, if you are producing vehicles that are meant to never be used, then perhaps you can avoid those emissions entirely by not producing them at all since these are never going to be used.
Realistically, the vast majority of vehicles produced are intended to and will be used. It takes a fairly small amount of miles in operation before the battery electric vehicle, even in a fairly dirty grid, overall emissions are lower than the internal combustion engines.
In a very short summary in relation to this topic, currently the production of a battery electric vehicle produces more emissions than the production of an equivalent internal combustion engine vehicle.
Let's try a hypothetical calculation using people who live fairly low carbon footprint lives.
Two people, Tom & Dick both own 5 year old modestly powered ICE subcompacts that get 30 miles per gallon on average, so that by driving them 15,000 miles per year they use 500 gallons of gasoline per year. The cost of this fuel is $2000 apiece at $4 per gallon and it generates 500 gallons * 20 lbs per gallon = 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Both Tom and Dick have 75,000 miles on their cars and they were just paid off on their 5 year loan.
Tom sells his ICE car for $5000 since the loan is paid off and buys a stripped down 40 kWh Nissan LEAF that has a 150 mile range and costs $28,375 including the destination charge — or $20,875 after the federal income tax refund. Tom needs about 5000 kWh to power the Nissan Leaf and using the national average carbon dioxide produced by electricity in the nation (0.85 pounds per kWh) or 4250 pounds of carbon dioxide. The electricity costs ~ $700 per year.
Tom is feelling pretty happy since he has reduced his fuel payments by 65% and has reduced his carbon footprint by 67.5%. He does have a car payment ($300 per month for a 5 year loan) and he must rent an ICE car when he drives on a road trip as 150 mile range would require him to recharge every 2-3 hours.
Dick keeps his older ICE vehicle which costs him an extra $1000 in automobile repairs on his aging car (spark plugs, brake shoes, etc.) in addition to the $2000 for gasoline. He makes ten contributions to a carbon offset charity. These contributions are $7.95 to fund a project that reduces carbon emissions by 1000 lbs. So his ten contributions totalling less than $80 offset the 10,000 lbs of carbon emissions from his ICE vehicle.
Now which person, Tom or Dick, used his money the most wisely to cause the last impact on the planet that year? Who spent the least amount of his income? I tried very hard to make the costs reasonable approximations of reality.
Fuel: Tom $700 - Dick $2000
Car Payments: Tom $3600 - Dick $0
Extra Car Maintenance: Tom $0 - Dick $1000
Car rental for long traips: Tom $300 - Dick $0
Carbon Offset Program: Tom $0 - Dick $80
Car Rental long trips: Tom $300 - Dick $0
Total cost: Tom $5200 - Dick $3080
Carbon emissions from rental car: Tom ~750 pounds (37.5 gallons) - Dick 0
Carbon emissions total: Tom ~5000 pounds - Dick zero pounds (offset his 10,000 pounds with charity contribution)
------------------
About 5 years ago I read an article about the cost of converting the entire fleet to EVs. The author made an estimate as to how much that would reduce greenhouse gases. Transportation produced roughly 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide in 2020 for every man, woman and child and a large percentage of that was caused by passenger cars, SUVs, and light trucks. So obviously there was a large reduction even when you deduct the carbon dioxide produced by generating the required electricity to power the fleet.
But the dollar cost of that reduction was staggering. He concluded that we could do almost anything else to create the same reduction at a fraction of the cost. The alternative processes is illustrated by Dick above who reduces 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide by contributing $79.50 to a charity and wipes out his carbon dioxide footprint from his car.
BTW if you wonder how billionaires like Al Gore can claim to leave carbon neutral lives even though they use a dozen times as much electricity as you do, and fly around in private jets and drive around in limousines. The secret is in "carbon offset" charities or businesses.
It strongly resembles the Catholic church in medieval times who sold indulgences to offset your sins.
Last edited by PacoMartin; 04-19-2022 at 06:59 PM..
Let's try a hypothetical calculation using people who live fairly low carbon footprint lives.
Two people, Tom & Dick both own 5 year old modestly powered ICE subcompacts that get 30 miles per gallon on average, so that by driving them 15,000 miles per year they use 500 gallons of gasoline per year. The cost of this fuel is $2000 apiece at $4 per gallon and it generates 500 gallons * 20 lbs per gallon = 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Both Tom and Dick have 75,000 miles on their cars and they were just paid off on their 5 year loan.
Tom sells his ICE car for $5000 since the loan is paid off and buys a stripped down 40 kWh Nissan LEAF that has a 150 mile range and costs $28,375 including the destination charge — or $20,875 after the federal income tax refund. Tom needs about 5000 kWh to power the Nissan Leaf and using the national average carbon dioxide produced by electricity in the nation (0.85 pounds per kWh) or 4250 pounds of carbon dioxide. The electricity costs ~ $700 per year.
Tom is feelling pretty happy since he has reduced his fuel payments by 65% and has reduced his carbon footprint by 67.5%. He does have a car payment ($300 per month for a 5 year loan) and he must rent an ICE car when he drives on a road trip as 150 mile range would require him to recharge every 2-3 hours.
Dick keeps his older ICE vehicle which costs him an extra $1000 in automobile repairs on his aging car (spark plugs, brake shoes, etc.) in addition to the $2000 for gasoline. He makes ten contributions to a carbon offset charity. These contributions are $7.95 to fund a project that reduces carbon emissions by 1000 lbs. So his ten contributions totalling less than $80 offset the 10,000 lbs of carbon emissions from his ICE vehicle.
Now which person, Tom or Dick, used his money the most wisely to cause the last impact on the planet that year? Who spent the least amount of his income? I tried very hard to make the costs reasonable approximations of reality.
Fuel: Tom $700 - Dick $2000
Car Payments: Tom $3600 - Dick $0
Extra Car Maintenance: Tom $0 - Dick $1000
Car rental for long traips: Tom $300 - Dick $0
Carbon Offset Program: Tom $0 - Dick $80
Car Rental long trips: Tom $300 - Dick $0
Total cost: Tom $5200 - Dick $3080
Carbon emissions from rental car: Tom ~750 pounds (37.5 gallons) - Dick 0
Carbon emissions total: Tom ~5000 pounds - Dick zero pounds (offset his 10,000 pounds with charity contribution)
------------------
About 5 years ago I read an article about the cost of converting the entire fleet to EVs. The author made an estimate as to how much that would reduce greenhouse gases. Transportation produced roughly 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide in 2020 for every man, woman and child and a large percentage of that was caused by passenger cars, SUVs, and light trucks. So obviously there was a large reduction even when you deduct the carbon dioxide produced by generating the required electricity to power the fleet.
But the dollar cost of that reduction was staggering. He concluded that we could do almost anything else to create the same reduction at a fraction of the cost. The alternative processes is illustrated by Dick above who reduces 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide by contributing $79.50 to a charity and wipes out his carbon dioxide footprint from his car.
BTW if you wonder how billionaires like Al Gore can claim to leave carbon neutral lives even though they use a dozen times as much electricity as you do, and fly around in private jets and drive around in limousines. The secret is in "carbon offset" charities or businesses.
It strongly resembles the Catholic church in medieval times who sold indulgences to offset your sins.
Or you can actually look at a white paper that actually has to do with the topic. This thing you wrote seems unfortunately long so I opted to just skim it as it seems pretty random.
Let's try a hypothetical calculation using people who live fairly low carbon footprint lives....
It strongly resembles the Catholic church in medieval times who sold indulgences to offset your sins.
Excellent post...but you over-estimated the repair cost of old cars by a factor of 10 and neglected the costs of battery pack replacements over the course of 5-10 yrs.
The money spent on buying the carbon offsets is also a waste, because those "producers' of offsets would be producing whether or not the offsets are bought & sold.
...and we won't even get intio the concept that the supposed "advantage" of reducing co2 production is a non-problem that, therefore, needs no "solution."
Or you can actually look at a white paper that actually has to do with the topic. This thing you wrote seems unfortunately long so I opted to just skim it as it seems pretty random.
You think a post is long so you link to an 88 page white paper?
The crux of my post is that for $79.50 you can buy a carbon offset for 10,000 lbs of C02 or ~500 gallons of gasoline. So if you are spending thousands of dollars on a hybrid because it is good for the environment, you are very unlikely to reduce overall consumption of gasoline by 500 gallons in a year.
The money you donate for a carbon offset goes to fund various projects in farming or industry that reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electirc automobiles. An excerpt from the article states:
While the U.S.'s pall-mall race towards reliance on electric cars may signal virtue, it is far from harmless. The reflex to protect the earth has merit; not all actions taken in its name are beneficial.
NYT writers are morons. The project isn't known as "Lithium Americas"-that is the company that is developing the mine. The project is Thacker Pass, one of the most desolate, barren places in America.
You think a post is long so you link to an 88 page white paper?
The crux of my post is that for $79.50 you can buy a carbon offset for 10,000 lbs of C02 or ~500 gallons of gasoline. So if you are spending thousands of dollars on a hybrid because it is good for the environment, you are very unlikely to reduce overall consumption of gasoline by 500 gallons in a year.
The money you donate for a carbon offset goes to fund various projects in farming or industry that reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Your post is long because I don't expect to learn much from it and your condensed version isn't very promising, so I think I made the right decision. The white paper is actually interesting and worth the time to me.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-21-2022 at 11:10 PM..
Excellent post...but you over-estimated the repair cost of old cars by a factor of 10 and neglected the costs of battery pack replacements over the course of 5-10 yrs.
The money spent on buying the carbon offsets is also a waste, because those "producers' of offsets would be producing whether or not the offsets are bought & sold.
...and we won't even get intio the concept that the supposed "advantage" of reducing co2 production is a non-problem that, therefore, needs no "solution."
Quote:
Originally Posted by PacoMartin
You think a post is long so you link to an 88 page white paper?
The crux of my post is that for $79.50 you can buy a carbon offset for 10,000 lbs of C02 or ~500 gallons of gasoline. So if you are spending thousands of dollars on a hybrid because it is good for the environment, you are very unlikely to reduce overall consumption of gasoline by 500 gallons in a year.
The money you donate for a carbon offset goes to fund various projects in farming or industry that reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
How does anyone know that this frenetic activity to reduce CO2 emissions will reduce a single temperature at a single place for a single day? The answer is that no one knows. This effort makes people feel as if they're involved in a "cause." They feel good about themselves.
How does anyone know that this frenetic activity to reduce CO2 emissions will reduce a single temperature at a single place for a single day? The answer is that no one knows. This effort makes people feel as if they're involved in a "cause." They feel good about themselves.
For models of that size and complexity, you don't generally get predictions with that kind of specificity. It's like when you model something plenty complex, but is relatively easy in comparison like with complex fluid dynamic simulations where the prediction if you simulate a force in one area then yields a specific molecule to be at a particular place and time. Instead, it's a larger, more general characterization. Similarly for this, what you get with current best fit models are a larger overall temperature increase and more dramatic local variance. With those models, you then try to further model what the actual results on infrastructure, agriculture, and the like are. These are extremely complex models, but they are likely as best as we know now. There are other secondary, highly localized environmental advantages such as having lower tailpipe emissions especially where there is a great density of people and that can be nice as far as things like childhood asthma.
Regardless, it's not likely that the bulk of people, even if they see themselves as environmentalists, are willing to put a particularly large amount of money (such as a new vehicle purchase) where their mouths are. That's generally just not how people/consumers really work. I don't expect that to be the reason why electric vehicles will end up taking over the market. Instead, it's going to be multiple improvements over ICE vehicles due mostly to at least but not only the following, and many of these strongly rooted in the comparative efficiency of electric powertrains:
- comparatively lower eventual purchase price
- lower maintenance price and downtime
- much broader base of tried and true pathways for converting many sources of energy, including petroleum, into electricity compared to the very limited pathways for conversion of other energy sources into something that a vehicular gasoline engine (or a diesel engine, though even these aren't cross-compatible) can use
- the ability to recover kinetic energy to a notable extent as energy used for storage
- greater longevity
- packaging flexibility of drivetrain components allowing for better interior room utilization for exterior volume
- powerful, quiet and smooth powertrain performance across a broad spectrum of rpms
- ability to recover / reuse / recycle battery materials rather than to be used as consumables which can greatly help with longevity or vehicle value at end of life or salvage
How does anyone know that this frenetic activity to reduce CO2 emissions will reduce a single temperature at a single place for a single day? The answer is that no one knows. This effort makes people feel as if they're involved in a "cause." They feel good about themselves.
How do you know this makes people feel good about themselves? The answer is you don't know.....
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