And it is a car that emits less in 10 trips than a fuel efficient Mercedes in 1.
You will have have a very hard time convincing me that the trip ratio difference is more than 2 / 1. Batteries also need a lot of lithium and don't last forever. Everything considered driving old cars as long as we can might be smarter than going green with electrics. The power generated at the power plant and the environmental costs to manufacture and deal with a fleet of electrics is as bad as what we have now. The best thing is drive as little as you can without '
driving' yourself crazy.
The drive through at Starbucks demonstrates how poorly the American Public understands energy issues. It is not a statement for or against electrics.
Electrics are part of the solution as long as you only drive it on days you are licensed to do so. We will have to ration power or too much CO2 will be emitted at the coal burning plants than the current Paris or whatever agreement will be allowing. If you don't think you will need new coal fired power plants to charge 100 million new electric cars in America you are dreaming. Nothing else could give that much power in the time frame needed.
Nobody to my knowledge has done this math so I will. Lets say it takes 17 kW to get Karen to
where yes, she can wait in line and message on her phone with no idle emissions. It took her 17kW to get there. That does not change.
So 100 million new electrics won't be driven all the time. Lets say 15% use each day and the rest of the time they are parked. If you dispute the ratio, dispute the 100 million as well.
That means 15 000 000 cars are using 17kW for a total of 255 Gw.
U.S. coal-fired capacity peaked at 318 gigawatts (GW) in 2011 and has been declining since then because many plants retired or switched to other fuels and few new coal-fired plants came online. By the end of 2019, U.S. coal-generating capacity totaled 229 GW
.
In 2020, net generation of electricity from utility-scale generators in the United States was about 4,009 billion kilowatthours (kWh)
4,009 billion kWh / 8760 hrs (hours in a year) => 458.0 GW
This little exercise reveals the US is getting
exactly 50% of its electricity from coal.
Cutting to the chase: 100 million new electrics will require increasing electric generating capacity by ((255/458)x100%.
After the math crunches 100 million new electrics will require increasing National Electric Generating Capacity by 58%.
I wonder why nobody pushing
the green new deal has pointed this out?
I wonder why nobody else has pointed this out?
Does this mean we are screwed?
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