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Motor emissions could have fallen by over 30% without SUV trend, report says
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Motor emissions could drop by 100% if we banned ICE vehicles already.
Yeah but short term that would be worse for the environment, interestingly enough:
"Almost 4 tonnes of CO2 are released during the production process of a single electric car and, in order to break even, the vehicle must be used for at least 8 years to offset the initial emissions by 0.5 tonnes of prevented emissions annually."
https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-battery-production/
Do also note that estimated life cycle CO2 for BEVs are lower but not significantly so than ICE vehicles. The numbers do however improve significantly as we move to a more carbon neutral energy grid. Without construction improvements that reduce emissions the cap is at around 1/3 the total pollution for a BEV vs ICE. IF the electricity is produced and delivered without any CO2 costs.
The only real, long term, solution is to rethink transportation. Or some groundbreaking new battery tech.
I want to point out that the author of the article you are citing is not an environmental scientist or a climate change expert, but an economist with an interest in the field. The article is not a peer reviewed piece of work, it is more or less equivalent to a blog piece with citations. She is not citing peer reviewed research as far as I can tell, but instead a series of linked 'studies' (including drafts and organizational white papers) of questionable scientific value.
After reviewing, I would not be inclined to put much if any stock in her analysis.
Here is a peer reviewed article for nature, that finds BEVs are actually much , much lower in CO2 production even during pre use than ICE vehicles.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27247-y#Fig3
Thank you for your review. I don't really agree with your criticism though since your main arguments against the linked article can easily be abused to discredit anything that hasn't been studied in the exact form discussed. We will never have scientific papers on every possible dimension and perspective on a problem and as such understanding will need to be built by engaged members of society connecting dots in good faith and debate about it as you and I do now. There is nothing inherently bad about a blog with citations.
I also notice how what you link is not at all equivalent. They add in the infrastructure needed to supply vehicles with the fuel they consume, which is of course a valid addition. That addition then offsets the difference in production by adding on disproportionately more to ICE vehicles. What we then end up in is that we still see that building BEVs is still not going to solve our crisis. But they are for sure better than ICE, and this isn't something I nor the article disputes. My claim that it would be worse for the environment short term also holds true because the gain for the environment only comes after the production cost increases has been offset and, as the paper you linked added, gasoline infrastructure can be decommissioned.
The paper you linked also doesn't look into Lithium nor Kobalt which are problematic to say the least, if not from a CO2 perspective. Nor does it say anything about the feasibility of an even more rapid phase out (because a phase out is happening right now, and rather rapidly at that, we can't go much faster without other significant risks).
In summary, the article and the linked paper are not in conflict, from my reading.
The paper I linked doesn't look into all possible aspects because it's a peer reviewed scientific work, which unlike blog posts tend to have narrow scopes and aren't written to debunk every aspect of random peoples thoughts on the topic.
The long and short of this is that people need to be much, much more discerning in which information to trust and which to disregard. The author of your article had a Ph.D. , they could seek to publish their research in serious journals, but they'd need to actually do the hard work of finding reliable, evidence based , peer reviewed sources to do that. Instead we get a blog post the links out to other blog posts that link to yet more blogs, occasional draft papers, and decidedly non scientific works.
If I were to trust this author writing in this medium, why not trust anti-science fossil fuel interests who use the same mediums and communication strategies?
Are you familiar with the concept "the medium is the message"?
For me, it's a big no thanks, especially on important issues like the adoption of BEVs.
I fully understand the need to filter out information as being to much of a burden to actually verify/dispute. And I don't think any less of you for sticking to the safest material in terms of trust, i.e. peer reviewed papers in acclaimed publications.
But at the same time we can't really wait around for consensus and full understanding of every matter before making informed decisions either. Now, once again, I'm pro BEVs, I just don't see them as the solution to climate change because even with 100% BEVs our planet can't sustain personal transportation as it works right now. I haven't written anything here with the intent to discredit BEVs, I'm just trying to steer focus to what I consider more important issues to craft policy and solutions around. Like personal transportation, wasteful consumption and more.
If you're asking why I trust this author more than others it's because they seem to argue in good faith, the cited sources aren't horrible. The opinions aren't hyperbolic or presented without any nuance. It doesn't ring any of my warning bells that causes me to outright dismiss.
And as closing I have no issues with your dismissal of the source and I don't even think we're in disagreement.
I’m not a bot! I’ve tried to reduce this comment down by removing some text. Here’s my summary:
“Scientists can’t be doing everything everywhere at once so we should believe capitalists when they pull numbers out of their asses”
I’ve reduced this comment down by 89%!
Good not a bot!
If Americans wouldn’t be so allergic to public transport, it’d be way easier to move away from the whole concept of personal vehicles (except bikes and scooters of course).
Yeah, the solution is not taking the car for every trip, and having car sharing available so you don't need to manufacture so many cars.
As others have pointed out, your linked article doesn't have any scientific weight and is hardly a source of truth. But even if it is correct, it is still better to move pollution outside of cities. There are no reasons to continue using ICE vehicles.
Let me guess, you live in a city and forget that not everyone lives in a city?
Have you been to cities in North America? Full of massive trucks and SUVs for no good reason. Look up marketing.
I used to live in the middle of nowhere and walk 1 hour to the nearest shop. But an EV or walk. No excuses.
Damn, that's crazy that you have the time to so seriously inconvenience yourself so you can feel good about this.
What actually is crazy is that you feel entitled to kill people for your convenience.
What's actually crazy is that you think electric vehicles don't have an environmental impact. You sound like a 1990's era climate activist trying to switch to plastic bags because paper is killing trees, not realizing your solution is actually just as bad and/or worse.
You get all huffy and high and mighty like you're making a difference but you're not, you're just performing activist theatre and acting like we are all murderers for having an hour commute by car. Sorry we don't all live in downtown LA.
Also, just so you're aware, manufacturing and coal cause more climate issues than the rest of us combined, trying to save the planet by getting individuals to switch to EV is like trying to clear your 2TB hard drive by deleting text files instead of the hundreds of gigabytes of 4k videos. There's bigger issues here but you'd rather get recreationally angry.
Do you want walking 50km/ 30 mi to school. How about half that to get any food.
Buy an EV, problem solved!
I need chargers in my area
They're in every lamp post, no?
no not at all.
Well, ask your council to upgrade lamp posts.
That's a good one! I approve!
We would also have to get rid of tires to do that, tires pollute a lot. And roads too, heavier vehicles wear out roads faster, and asphalt requires petroleum products to produce.
Tyres don't pollute air that much and their particles are big enough for simple filters. Also many roads are made out of concrete instead of asphalt these days.
They pollute more than you think, and using concrete is very rare in certain parts of the world. Outside of elevated roads I’ve never seen in used in my area or any part of the northern US.
Well, the post is about the UK and concrete is slowly growing in numbers here. It's also worth noting, that even if there's a slim asphalt layer on top, many roads are made of concrete and other stuff inside. Asphalt is usually added to improve wet weather performance of the road.
ICE is here too stay. It's pure gasoline usage that will probably fall out of fashion. Toyota is experiencing with ammonia based engines that cut down on emissions almost entirely.
The only benefit of ICE over BEV is quick refueling, and that only matters if you're roadtripping.
The solution is fast-charging BEVs. Edmunds just released a roundup of EV charging times, and showed that with some Hyundais/Kias, you can get 100 miles of range juiced up in 7-8 minutes. Obviously, yes, that's still slower than dumping some dead dinos in your gashole and taking off, but it's still pretty quick.
With further technological refinements over time and infrastructure built to give you something to do during 15-20 minute charges, road trips will be perfectly feasible without ICE and will actually probably be more pleasant.
I'm not buying an EV.
There is no large well of ammonia that we can use for fuel. Transforming green electricity into a liquid fuel, whether hydrogen, ammonia or something else invariably results in large efficiency losses compared to battery technology.
I doubt battery production is easier than creating ammonia fuel. There's tons of chemical manufacturers available domestically.
And entire world's economy would drop by 100%. World is not ready to transition into EVs, and most likely will never be. In my opinion what Toyota is doing is the right approach. Higher quality ICE engine which can directly burn hydrogen. They already have the engine, just need to push it hard enough so R&D pays off. Hydrogen is expensive and hard to make (in terms of efficiency), but it's infinitely more scalable than batteries, and cleaner too. But with higher popularity price will drop.
It also has the disadvantage of being harder to fill and harder to contain (not dangerous, exactly, but hydrogen tanks generally leak.)
All of that can be fixed. But one thing that can't be done is improve energy density of Lithium batteries. Simply put they are too heavy for the amount energy they store, have issues in cold weather, prone to mechanical failures, etc. Even if high pressure tanks are more expensive, we could start with lower pressure ones and work our way up as technology improves. Simply put it scales better.
Unless you’re talking cryo, it’s practical density is not great at all. And if you are talking LH, you’re insane.
It’s not just a question of the mass of the fuel itself that matters- it’s also all the mass of everything needed to contain it, and when you account for that, the low pressures of gas stored hydro is a joke (and the reason we haven’t created hydrogen cars, Toyota isn’t doing anything that hasn’t already been done,) and LH tanks are… a bomb waiting to go off when Karen is late for the kid’s hockey game,
That said there are other battery technologies coming down the pipeline that don’t rely on lithium. Sodium ion, for example, or there’s the “old” work horse in space- the nickel-hydrogen battery.
Energy density can be designed around- they’re doing it with lithium cells, and with hydrogen ice. Lithium isn’t offensive because of its energy density, it’s offensive because of how the lithium (and other rare earths) are sourced. NH2 batteries don’t have that problem as much. Nickel and iron are both much easier to extract and recycle than lithium- and the other compontemt is hydrogen gas with some some KOH mixed in. The other primary advantage of NH2 batteries is their recharge cycle count is north of 20k- an order of magnitude more than other batteries (and the reason nasa uses them.)
So there may be some changes to habits, and it might be necessary to use hydrogen ICE in trucking and other long haul transport. But EVs for consumer vehicles are where it’s going.
Latest figures are that green hydrogen accounts for 0.04 percent of total hydrogen production.
Because there's no demand for it. Currently production is very dirty but the engine itself is green as it gets. As the demand shoots up government can and probably will stimulate green production of hyrdogen. Point is, once you have hydrogen car there's no upgrade path needed anymore. Initial ICE engines were of poor efficiency but it got better. But we have to pick technology which can scale with demand. Batteries are simply not it, especially when it comes to big transporters like boats and trains. You can't use batteries on those. Even trucks are problematic as battery weight significantly reduces amount of cargo.