Electric vehicles

[deicer]

Electrical production is catching up.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424

 

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

Solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2024

Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, December 2023

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Developers and power plant owners plan to add 62.8 gigawatts (GW) of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity in 2024, according to our latest Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory. This addition would be 55% more added capacity than the 40.4 GW added in 2023 (the most since 2003) and points to a continued rise in industry activity. We expect solar to account for the largest share of new capacity in 2024, at 58%, followed by battery storage, at 23%.

Solar. We expect a record addition of utility-scale solar in 2024 if the scheduled 36.4 GW are added to the grid. This growth would almost double last year’s 18.4 GW increase, which was itself a record for annual utility-scale solar installation in the United States. As the effects of supply chain challenges and trade restrictions ease, solar continues to outpace capacity additions from other generating resources.

More than half of the new utility-scale solar capacity is planned for three states: Texas (35%), California (10%), and Florida (6%). Outside of these states, the Gemini solar facility in Nevada plans to begin operating in 2024. With a planned photovoltaic capacity of 690 megawatts (MW) and battery storage of 380 MW, it is expected to be the largest solar project in the United States when fully operational.

Battery storage. We also expect battery storage to set a record for annual capacity additions in 2024. We expect U.S. battery storage capacity to nearly double in 2024 as developers report plans to add 14.3 GW of battery storage to the existing 15.5 GW this year. In 2023, 6.4 GW of new battery storage capacity was added to the U.S. grid, a 70% annual increase.

Texas, with an expected 6.4 GW, and California, with an expected 5.2 GW, will account for 82% of the new U.S. battery storage capacity. Developers have scheduled the Menifee Power Bank (460.0 MW) at the site of the former Inland Empire Energy Center natural gas-fired power plant in Riverside, California, to come on line in 2024. With the rise of solar and wind capacity in the United States, the demand for battery storage continues to increase. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has also accelerated the development of energy storage by introducing investment tax credits (ITCs) for stand-alone storage. Prior to the IRA, batteries qualified for federal tax credits only if they were co-located with solar.

Wind. Operators report another 8.2 GW of wind capacity is scheduled to come on line in 2024. Following the record additions of more than 14.0 GW in both 2020 and 2021, wind capacity additions have slowed in the last two years.

Two large offshore wind plants scheduled to come on line this year are the 800-MW Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts and the 130-MW South Fork Wind off the coast of New York. South Fork Wind, which developers expected to begin commercial operation last year, is now scheduled to come on line in March 2024.

Natural gas. For 2024, developers report 2.5 GW in planned natural gas capacity additions, the least new natural gas capacity in 25 years. Notably, in 2024, 79% of the natural gas capacity added is to come from simple-cycle, natural gas turbine (SCGT) plants. This year will be the first time since 2001 that combined-cycle capacity was not the predominant natural gas-fired technology. SCGT power plants provide effective grid support because they can start up, ramp up, and ramp down relatively quickly.

Nuclear. Start-up of the fourth reactor (1.1 GW) at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant, originally scheduled for last year, has moved to March 2024. Vogtle Unit 3 began commercial operation at the end of July last year.

Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, December 2023

[deicer]

Norway should be used as the example of what to do.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/02/17/how-norway-became-the-world-leader-in-electric-vehicles.html

[Malcolm]

4 hours ago, deicer said:

Norway should be used as the example of what to do.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/02/17/how-norway-became-the-world-leader-in-electric-vehicles.html

And on the other side of the coin.

Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts

Electric cars are crucial, but not enough to solve climate change. We can’t let them crowd out car-free transit options.

By David Zipper  Oct 31, 2023, 7:00am EDT

 

David Zipper is a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, where he examines the interplay between transportation policy and technology. His work has been published in the Atlantic, Slate, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.
 

This story is part of a group of stories called

Finding the best ways to do good.

OSLO, Norway — With motor vehicles generating nearly a 10th of global CO2 emissions, governments and environmentalists around the world are scrambling to mitigate the damage. In wealthy countries, strategies often revolve around electrifying cars — and for good reason, many are looking to Norway for inspiration.

Over the last decade, Norway has emerged as the world’s undisputed leader in electric vehicle adoption. With generous government incentives available, 87 percent of the country’s new car sales are now fully electric, a share that dwarfs that of the European Union (13 percent) and the United States (7 percent). Norway’s muscular EV push has garnered headlines in outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian while drawing praise from the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Economic Forum, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “I’d like to thank the people of Norway again for their incredible support of electric vehicles,” he tweeted last December. “Norway rocks!!”

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I’ve been writing about transportation for the better part of a decade, so all that fawning international attention piqued my curiosity. Does Norway offer a climate strategy that other countries could copy chapter and verse? Or has the hype outpaced the reality?

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So I flew across the Atlantic to see what the fuss was about. I discovered a Norwegian EV bonanza that has indeed reduced emissions — but at the expense of compromising vital societal goals. Eye-popping EV subsidies have flowed largely to the affluent, contributing to the gap between rich and poor in a country proud of its egalitarian social policies.

Worse, the EV boom has hobbled Norwegian cities’ efforts to untether themselves from the automobile and enable residents to instead travel by transit or bicycle, decisions that do more to reduce emissions, enhance road safety, and enliven urban life than swapping a gas-powered car for an electric one.

Despite the hosannas from abroad, Norway’s government has begun to unwind some of its electrification subsidies in order to mitigate the downsides of no-holds-barred EV promotion.

“Countries should introduce EV subsidies in a way that doesn’t widen inequality or stimulate car use at the expense of other transport modes,” Bjørne Grimsrud, director of the transportation research center TØI, told me over coffee in Oslo. “But that’s what ended up happening here in Norway.”

And it could happen in other countries, too, including in the United States, where transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. The federal government now offers tantalizing rebates to Americans in the market for an electric car, but nothing at all for more climate-friendly vehicles like e-bikes or golf carts (nor a financial lifeline for beleaguered public subway and bus systems).

Ending the sales of gas-powered cars, as Norway is close to doing, is an essential step toward addressing climate change. But a 2020 study found that even the most optimistic forecasts for global EV adoption would not prevent a potentially catastrophic 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. Reducing driving — not just gas-powered driving — is crucial.

As the world’s EV trendsetter, Norway’s experience offers a bevy of lessons for other nations seeking to decarbonize transportation. But some of those lessons are cautionary.

How Norway fell in love with the electric car

At first glance, Norway’s EV embrace might seem odd. The country lacks a domestic auto industry and its dominant export is, of all things, fossil fuels. Nevertheless, Norway’s unique geography and identity helped put it at the vanguard of car electrification.

Historically, Norway has been mostly rural; as recently as 1960, half the nation’s population resided in the countryside. But as the postwar economy boomed, Norwegians migrated to cities, and especially to their fast-growing, sprawling suburbs (much as Americans did at the time). They also fell hard for the automobile.

“The car was this genius idea for Norwegians,” Ulrik Eriksen, author of the book A Country on Four Wheels, told me over dinner in Oslo, after stashing his cargo e-bike. “Because there is plenty of land, cars opened up urban space for people to live in, letting more of them get sizable single-family homes.”

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Norway embarked on a road-building binge, constructing bridges over fjords and boring tunnels through mountains to connect downtowns with new neighborhoods on the urban fringe. As Norwegian cities expanded, public transit took a back seat. Bergen, for instance, shuttered its extensive tramway service in the 1960s, dumping some of the trams into the North Sea. 

Those decisions cast a long shadow: Norway still has one of Europe’s lowest rates of public transportation usage and a higher car ownership rate than Denmark and Sweden, its Scandinavian neighbors. “Most Norwegian cities now have more of a car-centric, American approach toward transportation than a multi-modal, European one,” Eriksen said.

Norway’s city residents often own an automobile even though they seldom use it, Oslo-based urban planner Anine Hartmann told me. “Norwegians identify as coming from the place where their parents or grandparents come from,” she said. “Many people have a car to return to that place or simply to visit a cabin in the country.”

By the 1990s, the automobile was Norway’s indispensable vehicle. It was then that Norwegian entrepreneurs launched two early electric car startups, Buddy and Think. Though their models were clunky and inefficient by today’s standards, the companies spurred excitement that Norway could become a global hub of EV production. Seeking to give the carmakers a tailwind, the Norwegian government exempted EVs from the country’s steep taxes on car purchases, which today add an average of $27,000 to each sale. Even better, EV owners — who at the time were few and far between — would not pay for tolls, parking, or ferries (over all those fjords) anywhere in the country.

Norway’s dreams of becoming a global hub of EV manufacturing quickly fizzled when the companies ran into financial problems. (This summer, I spotted a tiny, aged Buddy squeezed into an Oslo parking spot, dwarfed by SUVs on either side.) But the incentives remained on the books; since few people were buying EVs, their cost was negligible. 

That changed as the global EV market improved in the mid-2010s, with carmakers like Tesla offering stylish, high-performance models that attracted more buyers. Norway’s EV policies were now championed as a centerpiece of the national effort to slow climate change in an economy whose electricity is already clean, produced largely from hydropower. “We want people to buy electric cars,” Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said in 2019. “It is the most important thing you can do personally and privately to help reduce climate emissions.”

As EV models improved, Norwegians began to realize how valuable the cost savings from government incentives could be, particularly for urban commuters. After an already discounted EV purchase, owners’ ongoing expenses were minimal because Norwegian electricity is inexpensive (due to abundant hydropower), and EVs were exempt from tolls, parking, and ferries. EV owners were even invited to drive in bus-only lanes.

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Hundreds of thousands of Norwegians responded to the government’s invitation to buy an EV, seemingly saving money and the planet in one fell swoop. But not every EV purchase replaced a gas guzzler; Grimsrud noted that the Norwegians owned 10 percent more cars per capita at the end of the 2010s than they did at the decade’s outset, in large part due to the EV incentives. “The families who could afford a second or third car ran off to the shop and bought one,” he said.

Norway’s incentives have unquestionably reshaped the country’s car market and reduced carbon emissions. EVs’ share of new vehicle sales surged from 1 percent in 2014 to 83 percent today. Around one in four cars on Norwegian roads is now electric, and the country’s surface transportation emissions fell 8.3 percent between 2014 and 2023.

The national government seems ready to declare victory. “When it comes to electrical vehicles, I’m quite proud,” Cecilie Knibe Kroglund, Norway’s state secretary for transportation, told me at the Oslo headquarters of the Ministry of Transport. “My main lesson is that incentives work. We have succeeded at a large scale.”

But not everyone shares her enthusiasm. Although the EV rush has reduced tailpipe emissions, it has also entrenched car dependence, which inflicts other kinds of damage. “Climate change gave Norway an opportunity to change how we travel,” said Eriksen. “I worry we had this once-in-a-generation chance to fix our transportation network, and we blew it.”

EV subsidies fueled car sales, but Norway’s cities want fewer cars

As electric car sales picked up throughout the 2010s, Norway placed few constraints on its EV incentives. Wealthy Norwegians could buy as many high-end EVs as they liked, receiving a full package of subsidies on each one. Luxury carmakers like Porsche advertised Norway’s promotions in their marketing materials.

Although the EV policies were fueling a car-buying frenzy for affluent residents, they offered little to those of limited means. Many low-income Norwegians do not own a car: In Bergen, for instance, 67 percent of households in the lowest income quartile go without one. One recent study found the likelihood that a Norwegian household would purchase an EV rose 26 percent with each 100,000 Norwegian Krones (around $11,000) in annual income, suggesting that electrification subsidies — which ballooned to $4 billion in 2022, equivalent to 2 percent of the national budget — have redistributed resources toward the rich.

Meanwhile, EV incentives have undermined the shift away from automobiles that Norwegian city officials, like their counterparts throughout Europe, are increasingly encouraging. “Everyone agrees that 100 percent of cars should be electric. That’s not the question,” Tiina Ruohonen, a climate advisor to the mayor of Oslo, told me. “The real question is whether you really need to own a car in Oslo.”

Over the last decade, Oslo has joined Bergen, Trondheim, and Stavanger (Norway’s four largest cities) in committing to meet all future trip growth through transit, biking, and walking — not cars. Seeking to reduce driving, Oslo has removed over 4,000 parking spots since 2016 while also building bike lanes, widening sidewalks, and adjusting traffic patterns to reduce through traffic. Those efforts helped the city achieve a remarkable milestone in 2019: For a full year, not a single pedestrian or cyclist was killed in a crash. 

Walking and biking through Oslo helped me understand how it became so safe. The few motor vehicles I encountered within the city center moved carefully through streets thronged with pedestrians (some blocks are entirely car-free). Traffic typically moved at the speed of my e-bike; my one moment of anxiety came when a passing streetcar startled me as I gazed at Oslo’s picturesque harbor.

Many local leaders recognize that reducing car dependence will enhance urban life. “I am certain that when people imagine their ideal city, it would not be a dream of polluted air, cars jammed in endless traffic, or streets filled up with parked cars,” Hanne Marcussen, Oslo’s former vice mayor of urban development, told Fast Company in 2019.

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But there are inherent conflicts between cities’ efforts to limit driving and the Norwegian government’s promotion of EVs. Oslo’s elimination of street parking and creation of pedestrian-only streets, for instance, nudge Norwegians away from driving, but they also diminish EVs’ usefulness.

“The way to get people to buy EVs is to make them easy and cheap to use,” said Eriksen. “But cities don’t want driving cars to be easy and cheap.” A recent study of EV subsidies in Bergen underscores those tensions, finding that promoting EV adoption hampers cities’ ability to build dense neighborhoods that shorten trips and strengthen transit.

The effect of EV adoption on public transportation has been a particular concern for Norway’s cities because boosting transit ridership has been a linchpin of local mobility strategies. Bergen, for instance, opened its first light rail line in 2010, and Trondheim overhauled its bus fleet in 2019. But because generous EV incentives make driving cheaper, they make public transportation relatively less cost-competitive.

Worse, EV promotions have shrunk the funding available to invest in transit improvements because Norwegian public transportation budgets are partly funded through the road tolls that the national government exempted EV owners from paying. As more Norwegians purchased EVs, transit revenue fell, threatening major investments like a new metro line in Oslo. “One of my primary concerns is that because we are subsidizing EVs through the cheaper toll roads, we don’t have the money to pay for big transit infrastructure projects,” said Eivind Trædal, an Oslo city councilmember who until a few weeks ago led the city’s council’s environment and transportation committee.

National officials, for their part, have stuck to pro-EV messaging and refrained from discouraging driving. Despite its generous incentives for electric cars, the Norwegian government provides no discounts for those buying e-bikes or e-cargo bikes (Oslo and Bergen offer limited programs for residents). The country’s current 12-year National Transport Plan includes initiatives to catalyze the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles, but none to reduce car trips.

Trædal said that politics led the Norwegian government to downplay reducing transportation emissions through transit, biking, and walking — all of which produce significantly fewer emissions than driving an EV. “Nobody’s mad about getting a cheaper new car, right?” he shrugged. “It’s politically easier to just give them car subsidies.”

When I asked Kroglund, the country’s transportation state secretary, if Norway’s government seeks to reduce total kilometers driven, she said it does not. “We don’t have a specific goal [to reduce driving],” she told me. “Of course, we would like to get more people on public transportation and bikes. But that is more something that cities work on.”

But national policy decisions inevitably affect local transportation efforts — and sometimes undermine them. Last October, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration opened E39, a four-lane highway into Bergen that the city had opposed due to concerns that it would increase driving. Those fears proved justified. Lars Ove Kvalbein, a Bergen city adviser on sustainable mobility, told me that before E39 opened, 30 percent of those traveling into the city from the south had used a car, but after the highway opened that share jumped to 40 percent.

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“E39 was part of a national plan that smashed all the positive local plans to pieces,” he said.

Other countries can avoid repeating Norway’s mistakes

In the last few years, Norway has begun to confront the tensions within its push for car electrification. In 2017, the country began requiring EV owners to pay for parking, road tolls, and ferries, although they still receive a discount. As of this past January, only the first $45,000 of a new EV’s purchase price is tax-free. Buyers of the largest (and often priciest) EVs must also pay an additional fee that scales with vehicle weight.

“The argument is to make the tax system more fair,” said transportation state secretary Kroglund, “and not give benefits for things that are unnecessary for the transition to EVs.” As a result of the new policies, Norwegian sales of some high-end EVs, like the enormous Chinese Hongqi SUV, have collapsed.

Looking to the future, TØI’s Grimsrud hopes that Norway’s next 12-year National Transport Plan beginning in 2025 will include a goal of limiting total driving, which could restrain highway expansion plans and direct more investment toward transit. “If you start with a national goal for reducing transportation emissions, it will force you to focus more on public transportation and less on road construction,” he said.

Could alternatives to driving succeed in the US? Explore these related Vox stories.

How to end the American obsession with driving

Tips for going car-free — or car-light — in Middle America

How to save America’s public transit systems from a doom spiral

The case for funding bike infrastructure

 

For other countries, a clear Norwegian lesson is that a focus on reducing transportation emissions through electric car adoption can worsen inequality. Capping the price of eligible vehicles and limiting the number of EVs that a household can purchase tax-free are intuitive moves that Norway took only belatedly.

At the same time, Norway offers a warning about the dangers of promoting EVs at the expense of modes that are more beneficial to the environment as well as urban life. The national government’s decision to subsidize electric cars but not e-bikes makes no sense from a climate perspective, although the United States Congress made the same mistake when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act last year. At a minimum, countries should ensure that EV adoption does not deplete resources needed for public transportation investments, as has happened in Norway and could occur in the US, since EVs reduce gasoline tax revenues, a portion of which funds American transit.

With frequent bus and rail service, walkable city centers, and expanding networks of bike lanes (including, in Bergen, the longest purpose-built bike tunnel in the world), Norwegian cities are far ahead of American peers in providing viable alternatives to driving. Nevertheless, over the last decade, US cities have taken significant steps forward: Bike share programs are now a fixture, and new bus rapid transit lines have emerged in places like Madison, Richmond, and Washington, DC. New York City and San Francisco have even experimented with making major thoroughfares car-free. But if local initiatives aren’t matched with supportive federal policies, Norway’s experience suggests that an influx of electric vehicles can hinder efforts to escape the automobile’s urban stranglehold.

“The mistake is to think that EVs solve all your problems when it comes to transport,” said Ruohonen, the Oslo mayoral adviser. “They don’t.”

[Malcolm]

Even the World’s Biggest Electric-Vehicle Market Is Slowing

Story by Selina Cheng • 12h

IN THIS ARTICLE

Even the World’s Biggest Electric-Vehicle Market Is Slowing - WSJ

[Malcolm]

What happened to EVs?

The sudden slowdown in electric car sales is a symptom of a much uglier problem.

Why America's Electric Car Push Isn't Working (businessinsider.com)

[Malcolm]

From the Wall Street Journal  The EV Era Needs a Lot of Really Big Trees - WSJ

VIDALIA, Ga.—Electric cars. The solar build-out. Washington’s rural-broadband initiative. Utilities bracing the grid for stronger storms. They all depend on the same thing: big trees.

The utility-pole business is booming, thanks to a flood of public and private infrastructure spending. So the hunt is on for the tallest, straightest, knot-free conifers, which are peeled, dried and pressure-treated at facilities such as Koppers Holdings’ pole plant in southeastern Georgia’s pinelands.

 

Employees cruise surrounding pine plantations, marking pole-worthy loblolly and longleaf and making offers. The bigger, the better these days, given how much more equipment and cable poles must hold in the era of fiber optics and electric cars, said Jim Healey, Koppers’ vice president of utility and industrial products.

For landowners, especially the families and individuals who grow much of the South’s pine, the pole boom means higher prices for standout trees than what sawmills pay.

Shareholders of the two firms that dominate the American pole business—as well as railroad ties—have also been winners. Over the past year, Pittsburgh’s Koppers and Montreal’s Stella-Jones are up 49% and 87%, respectively, compared with a 16% rise in the S&P 500 stock index.

“Demand right now in North America for utility poles is outpacing capacity,” said Stella-Jones Chief Executive Éric Vachon.

The true cost of mining electric car-battery metals

This summer Stella bought pole facilities in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, where it also opened a new peeling plant. Additional plants are planned for next year in British Columbia and North Carolina. Stella also installed automated drilling equipment at its Eugene, Ore., facility and is looking for other places robots can speed output.

Koppers, which notched record domestic pole sales and profit during the summer quarter, is adding drying capacity to plants in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. A new one is under construction in Louisiana’s western woodlands to feed peeled poles to a rail-tie treating facility in a part of Texas without many pine trees.

“We see a very good peak market for the next three to five years,” Healey said.

Makers of concrete, steel and composite poles are also ramping up. Steel-pole supplier Arcosa has a concrete-pole plant under way in Florida. RS Technologies raised about $270 million in debt and equity to expand factories in Utah and Ontario where it forms poles from polyurethane resin, and to build another in Houston. “It is an absolute infrastructure boom going on right now,” said RS CEO George Kirby.

 

Some demand may not materialize. High yields on supersafe Treasurys have drawn investors from dividend-paying utility stocks, which are on track for their worst year since the market rout of 2008. That has choked off an important way for utilities to raise money for big expenses, such as poles. Shares of renewable-energy developers have been hit even harder by high interest rates, as well as supply-chain problems, jeopardizing plans for wind and solar projects.

Still, many poles are needed no matter the financial-market conditions.

A chunk of the more than $60 billion allocated by the federal government to extend high-speed internet to rural areas will be spent on poles. So will some of the $1.2 trillion in 2021’s infrastructure bill. Meanwhile, last year’s climate, tax and healthcare law encouraged a boom in solar installations, many of which are sprouting up in remote locations and must be connected to the grid.

 

Plus, a lot of the more than 120 million wood poles standing in the U.S. need to be replaced. Many are decades older than they were intended to last and deteriorating, or built to outdated standards, such as the Hawaiian Electric poles toppled by hurricane-strength winds during this summer’s deadly fires. Woodpeckers are a persistent problem in the North.

Communications technology has come light years since telegraph lines were hung in the 1840s, but poles haven’t changed much. One difference is utilities and telecom companies want larger poles than before.

The most popular lately is a 45-foot Class 2 pole, said Brad Singleton, who manages Koppers’ Vidalia plant. That is taller and two sizes thicker than the 40-foot Class 4 pole that has long ruled the roadside.

“They don’t know what’s coming next,” Singleton said. “They want room to add things.”

 

The Class 4 pole owes its ubiquity to dimensions matching many mature trees, Healey said. “That’s how God grows trees,” he said. “God doesn’t grow a Class 2 pole.”

For those, Koppers must find giants and chop off their tapered tops to make a pole that meets the stouter specifications. Trees big enough could become scarce if demand for the largest poles keeps growing.

“Based on production data and current harvest schedules, there are not enough larger trees available to sustainably produce the quantity of 40-foot poles made today if the poles had to be two to four classes larger,” the North American Wood Pole Council warned in a 2020 paper. The trade group suggested utilities consider more, not larger, poles.

Koppers buys logs mostly from private landowners, who tend to grow pine trees for longer than industrial timber concerns with mills to feed, Healey said. Pole makers pay a premium over the next highest value product in each local wood market to get the top trees. Usually, that is sawlogs, which are cut into dimensional lumber. In some markets, pole mills must also outbid veneer mills.

The Electric-Car Era Needs a Lot of Really Big Trees© Provided by The Wall Street Journal

Southern pole mills have been paying roughly $20 a ton more for wood on the stump than sawmills, which paid about $26 a ton in the third quarter, said Jonathan Smith, executive director of pricing service TimberMart-South.

Except growers who planted stands specifically to produce poles, winding up with trees that make the cut is lagniappe. “If you’re growing loblolly pine plantations and you get some poles out of your stand, that’s bonus income,” Smith said.

Koppers’ Healey estimates that the average acre of planted pine yields five to seven poles.

“It takes a really, really good tree to make a pole,” said Rick Nelms, a consulting forester in Alabama who advises retirees, heirs and other nonindustrial landowners on timber sales. It is worth the trouble to comb the woods for them, he said, especially since two new pole plants opened nearby in Mississippi, boosting demand in that part of the pine belt.

Extraordinary measures are taken to fill orders for the largest wooden poles, like those along transmission lines. They are often Douglas fir or Western red cedar, prized for warding off insects, as in closets. Stella sometimes uses helicopters to pluck individual stems of cedar from Pacific Northwest forests.

Arborists climb the giants, cut the tops and limbs, affix neon flags and wedge back cuts into the butt. A helicopter with a grapple snaps off the stems and whisks them away with minimal damage to the surrounding woods.

[Malcolm]

AGAR: Put the brakes on carbon rebates for EV owners

Opinion by Jerry Agar • 2h

 

EV drivers shouldn’t receive carbon tax rebates.

As long as we have taxes applied to fuel, EV drivers are not paying their fair share.

The Trudeau government is not only keeping the carbon tax, but also increasing it.

CTV News reports “the federal government is ruling out any future pauses or exemptions to the carbon price, despite still-high inflation numbers contributing to the cost of living, according to Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon.”

They insist most people gain financially due to rebates the government sends four times a year.

MacKinnon told CTV’s Question Period host Vasse Kapelos that “eight out of 10 families will continue to benefit from the price on carbon.”

Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux has said that when factoring in the carbon price’s economic impact on job growth and incomes, 80% of families in most provinces might end up with less money.

Did MacKinnon misunderstand the 80/20 ratio, or just attempt to spin a tale to the Canadian public?

The Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation tells us “the federal carbon tax is increasing to more than 17 cents per litre of gas and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas on Apr. 1, 2024. The carbon tax will cost the average household between $377 and $911 in 2024-25, even after the rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.”

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

According to the government, starting this April, a family of four will receive Canada Carbon Rebates from a high of $1,800 in Alberta ($450 quarterly) to a low of $760 in New Brunswick ($190 quarterly).

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre says he will “axe the tax” if Conservatives are elected and he becomes prime minister.

For now at least we have the tax.

The rebates are ostensibly to compensate Canadians for the extra cost we bear, especially on fuel.

But EV drivers do not pay gasoline taxes, which are collected to pay for roads.

EV vehicles are heavier than their comparative vehicles due to the approximately 2,000-pound battery. They are harder on the roads.

Additionally some reports point out that heavier vehicles are harder to stop and therefore more dangerous, especially to pedestrians.

The Taxpayers Federation calculates “the average tax on a 64-litre fill-up in Canada is $35.25, with $2.62 of the bill being tax-on-tax.”

None of that is collected from EV drivers.

Regardless of your feelings about switching from gas to electric, the roads have to be paid for.

With the number of EVs increasing annually, it is past time to make their owners pay their fair share for road upkeep.

Some suggest road tolls, but that would make owners of gas powered vehicles – the vast majority – pay double.

Can we incorporate a meter in the EV’s system, monitoring each time the car is “refilled” with power, resulting in a charge, or tax, amounting to $35.24 per “fill?”

That might bring back some range anxiety, but again, fair is fair.

Only a greedy, selfish EV owner would insist they do not need to contribute to road taxes.

Assuming most are not greedy and selfish, perhaps they will agree that a quick and efficient way to begin to contribute, so long as we have the carbon tax, is that registered owners of EVs be dropped from the rebate program.

You can’t be rebated if you didn’t pay in the first place.

[Airband]

Quote

City of Edmonton's claim against electric bus manufacturer balloons to $82M

Lawyer says the city is unlikely to receive much in bankruptcy proceedings

Edmonton's pricey ride aboard The Virtue Signalling Express

[Jaydee]

[deicer]

Just like the introduction of any new technology, time brings improvement.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/29/ev-sales-rise-to-7-2-of-us-auto-sales-tesla-4-3-of-auto-sales/#:~:text=In 2020%2C they had risen,7.2% of the auto market.

EV Sales Rise to 7.2% of US Auto Sales, Tesla 4.3% of Auto Sales

In 2019, full electric vehicle (EV) sales were 1.4% of US auto sales. In 2020, they had risen to 1.7%, and in 2021, they had risen to 3%. Growth seemed a bit slow, too slow. However, in the past two years, things have changed much faster. In 2022, US EV sales accounted for 5.5% of the auto market, and last year (in 2023), EV sales rose to 7.2% of the auto market. We’re still far from European or Chinese levels, but we’re improving!

[deicer]

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/electric-vehicle-sales-continue-to-grow-despite-what-some-automakers-are-saying/

[Jaydee]

 

The Drive to James Bay Proves Full-Scale Electrification is as Elusive as Ever

[Jaydee]

 

[Jaydee]

Inevitable

Alberta to tax electric vehicles at the same rate as fuel tax

https://tnc.news/2024/02/29/alberta-to-tax-evs-same-rate-as-fuel-tax/

[Jaydee]

[deicer]

An interesting analysis of how overall electric vehicles are less polluting.  Yes, even taking into consideration making batteries.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/02/24/analysis/gasoline-versus-electric-cars-life-cycle-emissions-compared-canada

Gasoline versus electric cars? Here’s how their life cycle emissions compare in Canada

The overwhelming climate damage from Canadian cars comes from burning the gasoline to move them around. Over the full life cycle of Canadian gasoline cars and electric cars, the 70 tonnes of CO2 from burning gasoline absolutely crushes everything else.

To help visualize the gargantuan scale of gasoline car emissions — and how much less climate damage an electric car driven in Canada causes — I've created a series of charts.

Let's start by looking at the most consequential stage in a car's life cycle: the fuel.

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Gasoline versus made-in-Canada electricity

Electricity made in Canada is much cleaner to drive on than gasoline. My first chart shows the relative climate emissions from fuelling our cars with each. (Note: In this article, I use the term "gasoline" to refer to both gasoline and diesel road fuels. They have similar CO2 intensities. For more on this and all the other nerdy carbon details used in this article, see the endnotes.)

As the top red line on the chart shows, burning gasoline creates sky-high emissions.

In fact, gasoline is even climate-dirtier than coal. Burning gasoline in a car emits more CO2 per unit of energy than burning coal in a power plant. And in Canada, our cars also dump twice as much total CO2 into the air each year than all our coal power plants.

Fortunately, we have a much cleaner and safer fuel: our made-in-Canada electricity.

Eighty per cent of Canadians live in provinces with super-clean electricity — Ontario, Quebec, B.C., Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador. Driving on their electricity nearly eliminates the climate pollution from fuelling a car. That's shown by the green bar at the bottom of the chart.

And even in our provinces with the most carbon-intensive electricity — like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia — driving on electricity is only half as climate polluting as gasoline. This is shown by the yellow bar. And that yellow bar keeps going down. It's already a third lower than in 2000 and is on track to keep falling.

What people are reading

B.C. introduces law to cut the poverty rate by 60 per cent over next decade

By Dirk Meissner | News, Politics | March 6th 2024

Not only does burning gasoline create far more climate damage, it also makes people sick. The noxious chemical smog produced by burning gasoline and diesel is a key cause of illness and early death in Canada and worldwide. Even small amounts of tailpipe emissions have big health impacts. For example, a recent California study found that asthma-related emergency room visits declined in areas after only a tiny percentage of cars had switched from gasoline to electric.

And a third big strike against gasoline is that it costs Canadian drivers far more than electricity. How much more? Gasoline currently costs around $1.50 per litre. Charging an electric car at home costs around 25 cents per litre-equivalent for most Canadians. At those prices, gasoline will end up costing $30,000 more than electricity over the lifespan of an average new car.

Over the full life cycle of Canadian gasoline cars and electric cars, the 70 tonnes of CO2 from burning gasoline absolutely crushes everything else — including our climate hopes. But other nations have found ways to rein it in. @bsaxifrage writes

 

So far we've just compared the fuel side of things. Next, let's expand the focus to see the full life cycle emissions, which include the cars themselves.

'What about the batteries?'

The most common question I get when discussing gasoline's huge climate impacts is: "But what about the batteries for electric cars?"

So, to shed some light on this perennial question, I dug into a detailed life cycle analysis of gasoline cars and electric cars by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). And to make it Canada-specific, I used the electricity emissions from our provinces. My next chart shows the result.

That towering bar on the left is the life cycle emissions for the average new gasoline car in Canada. It totals around 80 tonnes of climate pollution (tCO2) per car.

As the red part shows, almost all that climate damage is caused by the gasoline — a crushing 70-tonne climate hammer per car. Only a tenth of a gasoline car's life cycle emissions come from making the car itself. If that seems surprising, consider that the gasoline that has to be burned weighs 10 times more than the car itself.

Luckily, Canadians looking to buy a new car can choose one that runs on electricity instead. As the chart's right-hand bar shows, electric cars in Canada create far fewer life cycle emissions.

Making a gasoline car is currently a bit less climate-polluting than making an electric car. Around 2 tCO2 less. But this small advantage gets wiped out many times over by the extra emissions from fuelling the car.

For example, in our clean electricity provinces, the fuel needed to drive an electric car will emit only one tonne of CO2. That's shown by the tiny green bar on the chart. In these provinces, the life cycle emissions for an electric car add up to around 13 tCO2.

And even in Canada's dirty electricity provinces, electric cars result in only half the climate impact of gasoline cars. And as their electricity keeps getting cleaner, all their electric cars do, too.

The clear takeaway from this life cycle analysis is that gasoline cars are hugely climate-polluting. If we want a shot at a livable climate future, then we need to stop filling our roads and driveways with new 70-tonne climate hammers.

The good news is that we have cleaner electric options. The bad news is, well …

Canadians keep buying burnermobiles

Unfortunately, a decade of having electric cars available in Canada hasn't slowed the rising tide of gasoline burners.

Here's a chart showing the latest vehicle registration numbers from Statistics Canada.

The height of each bar on the chart indicates the number of light-duty vehicles (cars, SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks) registered each year in Canada.

The black bars are vehicles that burn gasoline. Their numbers have marched upwards like clockwork — from 17 million two decades ago to more than 24 million last year. It's a startlingly, relentless rise that's adding another million fossil burners to our roads every three years.

That's a lot of 70-tonne climate hammers.

Where are all the electric cars? They're shown on the chart by those tiny green bars at the top. Yeah, not many. They're barely visible at this scale.

In Canada, electric cars are a thin green frosting on top of an ever-expanding fleet of burnermobiles. For every new electric car added to our roads over the last five years, we've added 10 more gasoline cars.

Ten steps backwards isn't climate progress.

More tailpipes. More emissions

Unsurprisingly, adding millions more gasoline burners has also led to millions more tonnes of climate pollution pouring out the tailpipes.

My next chart tracks gasoline emissions from Canadian cars since 1990.

The CO2 coming out of tailpipes is shown by the lower grey line. The full life cycle emissions for that gasoline are shown by the upper line.

Take a look at the trend since 2010. That's been the decade of rising electric car options and sales. Have cleaner options led to falling gasoline emissions in Canada?

No. Just the opposite.

Gasoline emissions have taken off, rocketing past the 100-million-tonne mark.

Canada's single biggest source of climate pollution is the making and burning of gasoline. Having that emissions curve surging upwards obviously isn't climate progress.

It's Category 5 climate failure.

What can we do in Canada?

Is there anything we can do to bend our emissions curve rapidly downward toward climate safety?

Yep. Plenty.

It turns out that many of our peer nations have found ways to reduce the climate pollution from their cars.

The policies that have worked for them are based on the "polluter pays" principle. These policies include higher taxes on gasoline and adding CO2-weighted fees on gas guzzlers. We can adopt policies like these that have worked so well for them.

Here are just two examples.

Our Commonwealth peers in the United Kingdom (U.K.) successfully reduced their car emissions by doubling their gasoline taxes. The Conservative government of John Major started that decades ago with the express goal of reining in their climate emissions. Today, the U.K. taxes gasoline three times higher than Canada does — their gas tax is the equivalent of $560 per tonne of CO2 emitted.

A second example is Norway. They’ve led the world in the race to eliminate the sale of new gasoline-burning cars. And as the chart above shows, their success has resulted in a plunging drop in their car emissions.

Nearly everything I read in Canada about Norway’s rapid transition away from gasoline cars gets the policy part wrong. The common assumption here is that Norway did it by offering great incentives for buying cleaner electric cars (carrots). But the key to Norway's success has been policies that raise the cost of the dirtier gasoline cars (sticks).

Their most effective single policy has been a "polluter pays" tax added to new cars. Specifically, they calculate the purchase tax for new cars based on car weight, CO2 emissions and NOx emissions. This can nearly double the cost of buying a polluting gas guzzler. Imagine Canada bringing in an 80 per cent sales tax on big, new gas-guzzling SUVs and you've got the basic idea.

And a second "polluter pays" policy tag teams with that: Norway taxes gasoline even higher than the U.K. — at the equivalent of $600 per tonne of CO2 emitted.

These two policies can easily add $50,000 or more to the cost of the kinds of new gas guzzlers Canadians buy.

So, it's not surprising that Norwegians stopped buying new gasoline cars. Their policies made them too expensive. Canadians would do the same if we adopted similar policies.

And, critically, Norway's policies have also changed the incentives for legacy automakers. If automakers want to sell cars in Norway, they have to offer cars that Norwegians can afford — electric ones. And, unsurprisingly, car companies fill their showrooms in Norway with electric cars. In fact, many legacy makers have completely stopped offering gasoline cars there.

In contrast, Canada's car emissions are rocketing in the opposite direction — up, up, up. That's because we've avoided "polluter pays" policies. Instead, our gasoline taxes remain ultra-low compared to most of our peers. And we lack any effective "polluter pays" fees on buying new gas guzzlers. The result is that new gas guzzlers remain as affordable as ever in Canada. And so Canadians keep buying them.

And, to make matters worse in Canada, legacy automakers have a huge financial incentive to prioritize selling gasoline cars here, while dragging their feet on offering electric cars. That's because legacy car companies make the most profit selling their biggest gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks. They are desperate to sell them somewhere in the world.

Canada's ever-growing horde of burnermobiles and soaring tailpipe emissions are exactly what you get when polluters don't have to pay.

 

 

-----------------------------

Endnotes:

CANADIAN ELECTRICITY

In this article, I grouped provincial electricity into two groups for simplicity.

For those interested in a breakdown by province, here's a chart showing the details. The data source for provincial electricity emissions is Canada’s National Inventory Report (Part 3).

The height of each bar shows grams of CO2 per kWh delivered to the wheels.

The red bar is gasoline. This is essentially the same in all provinces.

The five green bars on the left are the five provinces I grouped together as having super-clean electricity. Eighty per cent of Canadians live in these provinces.

The next four provinces, shown by orange bars, have much dirtier electricity. In the article, I grouped them together using a population-weighted average that worked out to be very similar to Alberta’s electricity of just over 700 gCO2 per kWh to wheels.

This chart also lets you see how much cleaner each province’s electricity has become since 2000. For example, Alberta's electricity is now 36 per cent cleaner than in 2000. And Ontario's electricity is 91 per cent cleaner. Policies already on the books will continue this trend towards cleaner electricity as coal power is slated to be replaced primarily by wind. That means that an electric car bought today will be fuelled by increasingly cleaner electricity over its lifespan.

 

HOW TO COMPARE GASOLINE TO ELECTRICITY

In this article, and in that chart just above, I compared gasoline to electricity in terms of the CO2 emitted to deliver the same amount of energy to the wheels. I like this metric because it allows direct comparisons of fuels that are independent of any specific model or make of car. For those interested in how I calculated this metric, here are the details.

For gasoline cars. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says ~20 per cent of the energy in gasoline ends up turning the wheels. The rest is lost in waste heat and friction. So, to deliver each kWh of energy to the wheels, drivers need to fill the tank with 5 kWh worth of gasoline. The direct emissions from burning 5 kWh worth of gasoline are 1,260 gCO2. The full life cycle emissions for gasoline are ~ 25 per cent higher (EPA). Adding those increases gasoline's life cycle total to 1,577 gCO2 per kWh of energy to the wheels.

For electric cars. Battery electric cars are far more energy efficient. The EPA says that ~88 per cent of the electricity put into an electric car makes it to the wheels. So, to deliver each kWh of energy to the wheels requires charging the car with 1.14 kWh of electricity from the grid. The emissions from that depend on the electricity supply. For example, Quebec's electricity emits 2 gCO2 per kWh. So, 1.14 kWh of Quebec electricity results in 2.28 gCO2 per kWh of energy to the wheels — 500 times less climate polluting than gasoline.

 

DETAILS ON THE AVERAGE CAR

If you are interested in details about the "average car," here are some key metrics used by the ICCT in its life cycle analysis. The ICCT data I used in this article were specifically for the average new sedan-style car sold in the United States (note: key differences with the SUVs and pickup truck segment are discussed further down). Using U.S. government data, the ICCT determined that the average new gasoline car there consumes 7.8 L per 100 kilometres. Canadians buy slightly more gas-guzzling cars than Americans do, but I didn't adjust for that. For new electric sedan-style cars, the ICCT found that the sales-weighted average battery size is 70 kWh. For U.S. cars, it found that the average lifespan is 314,000 kilometres. They assumed new electric cars will last for a similar number of kilometers as new gasoline cars — although it also noted that new electric car batteries are built to last several times longer (see discussion on batteries below for more details).

 

BATTERY EMISSIONS ARE LIKELY OVERSTATED

The ICCT life cycle analysis listed the emissions for making the average new electric car battery at around four tonnes of CO2. But the study also pointed out that a broader life cycle accounting would shift a big chunk of these battery emissions from the electric car phase to the post-car, second-use phase as stationary grid storage batteries. That's because they say that many of the current generation of electric car batteries are built to last 600,000 to 1,200,000 kilometres. So many batteries have a long useful life remaining even when the car itself wears out. These batteries are getting reused as stationary batteries to store electricity. This second phase in their life cycle reduces fossil fuel emissions further by capturing excess renewable electricity generation (example: more sun and wind power being generated at a given moment than the grid needs). This, in turn, reduces the amount of fossil fuel burning needed to generate electricity. The combination of this battery reuse, together with future recycling of the battery materials, is expected to reduce the emissions from building electric cars to below those from building gasoline cars.

 

SUVs & PICKUPs

The life cycle data I used in the article was for sedan-style passenger cars. The ICCT also analyzed the average new SUV/pickup category separately. Not surprisingly, life cycle emissions were higher in all stages. But once again, gasoline emissions overwhelmed everything else. Gasoline emissions for the average new SUV/pickup were 18 tCO2 higher than for sedan-style cars — resulting in 88-tonne climate hammers per car. In contrast, the emissions from making the bigger batteries for the electric SUV category rose by one tonne of CO2. All in all, the emissions gap between gasoline and electric cars was even larger for SUVs than for sedan-style cars.

 

DIESEL VERSUS GASOLINE

In the article, I only discussed "gasoline" for simplicity and because 95 per cent of passenger vehicles in Canada burn gasoline. Diesel cars have a similar CO2 intensity as gasoline cars. It is often stated that diesel engines can be a bit less CO2-intensive than gasoline engines. But studies of real-world driving show most or all this benefit gets lost before getting to the wheels. For example, a study by the ICCT concluded: "a modern gasoline vehicle can have the same or even lower CO2 emissions than a comparable diesel version." One big reason is that diesel vehicles require a lot of extra energy to filter out the higher levels of NOx gases. Trying to avoid paying that energy penalty was the motivation behind the Dieselgate emissions cheating scandal by VW and others a few years ago. In addition, diesel vehicles are often heavier and have more powerful engines, further eroding the real-world efficiency for them.

[Malcolm]

Electric vehicle sales continue to plummet in Germany

Story by Jakob A. Overgaard

 • 

 

Germany's electric vehicle (EV) market is experiencing a significant downturn.

Despite the global push towards sustainability and cleaner transportation options, recent statistics reveal a continuous decline in the sales of electric cars in one of Europe's largest economies.

This trend raises questions about consumer preferences, government incentives, and the future of electric mobility in the region.

The German automotive industry, renowned for its innovation and engineering excellence, seems to be at a crossroads. With a history of dominating the internal combustion engine market, the shift to electric vehicles has been met with both enthusiasm and skepticism.

However, the latest figures suggest that the road to electrification may be bumpier than anticipated. The decline in EV sales not only impacts manufacturers but also has broader implications for Germany's environmental goals and its position in the global automotive market.

The reasons behind this unexpected slump are multifaceted. As reported by Ecomento.de analysts point to a combination of factors, including reduced government subsidies, which have historically played a crucial role in making electric vehicles more affordable to the average consumer.

Additionally, concerns about charging infrastructure and range anxiety continue to deter potential buyers. Despite the automotive industry's efforts to address these issues, public sentiment appears to be shifting, at least for the time being.

Another critical aspect contributing to the decline is the economic climate. With inflation rates rising and economic uncertainty looming, consumers are becoming increasingly cautious about making significant investments, such as purchasing a new vehicle.

This financial prudence is particularly evident in the luxury car segment, where electric models tend to be positioned. As a result, potential buyers are either postponing their purchase decisions or opting for more traditional and familiar internal combustion engine vehicles.

The German government and automotive industry face a challenging task in reigniting interest in electric vehicles. While the long-term benefits of EVs, such as reduced emissions and lower operating costs, remain undisputed, addressing immediate concerns and obstacles is essential for the market to recover. This includes enhancing the charging infrastructure, offering more attractive incentives, and educating the public about the advantages of electric mobility.

 

[Jaydee]

[Malcolm]

and the debate goes on.   

Electric cars may release MORE pollution than gas-powered cars, study says

©REUTERS

Electric vehicles may release more pollution than gas-powered vehicles, according to a report that has recently resurfaced. The study, which was published in 2022 but has begun circulating again after being cited in a WSJ op-ed, found that brakes and tires release 1,850 times more particulate matter compared to modern tailpipes which have filters that reduce emissions. It found that EVs are 30 percent heavier on average than gas-powered vehicles, which causes the brakes and tire treads to wear out faster than standard cars and releases tiny, often toxic particles into the atmosphere.

 

Hesham Rakha, a professor at Virginia Tech told Dailymail.com that the study is only 'partially correct' because even though EVs are heavier, their tires will emit more microplastics into the air, but this could also be true for sedans versus SUVs. Rakha said it is very challenging to determine the difference between the amount of microplastics emitted from EV tire treads and gas-powered vehicles because you have to separate the microplastics that are already in the air from other sources with what's coming off the tires. Rakha and his team at Virginia Tech are in the process of conducting field tests to determine how much microplastics are emitting from EV and gas cars by using traffic simulators that will mimic an urban setting.

He added that he doesn't expect there to be a major difference between the EV and gas-powered vehicles, saying that they haven't measured it yet, but expect the difference to be about 20 percent. This doesn't mean that people should gravitate away from electric cars because they 'are more efficient depending zero emission,' Rakha said, but added the caveat that 'it also generates a lot of CO2 when charging your vehicle.' EV batteries weigh about 1,000 pounds, and can result in tire emissions that are nearly 400 times more than tailpipe emissions. Particle pollution can increase health problems including heart disease, asthma, lung disease and in extreme cases, can lead to hospitalization, cancer, and premature death.

It comes as California is working to impose a complete ban on all gas vehicles by 2035. New gasoline-powered vehicles don’t release the same amount of emissions as older vehicles, emitting only one percent of all particulate matter (air pollution) in California, with the majority of emissions coming from older vehicles. New gasoline cars are created to be 'cleaner,' by updating the trims of their internal combustion engines to include particulate filters that reduce emissions to below 1/1000th of a gram per mile. The EVs increased weight due to their lithium-ion batteries cause the tire treads to wear faster, ultimately producing more emissions

Provided by Daily Mail

The study, conducted by the firm Emissions Analytics, said the main difference between tailpipe and tire emissions is that the majority of particulate emissions released from the tire go directly into the soil and water, while exhaust negatively affects the air quality. The effects of tire composition come down to the materials the tire is made from, the study reported. Light-duty tires are typically made from synthetic rubber which is developed using crude oil natural rubber adds fillers and additives, some of which are recognized carcinogens. Emissions Analytics tested the tire wear on both EV and gas-powered vehicles after driving them at least 1,000 miles.

 

The researchers used a sampling system to collect particles immediately behind each tire and then measured the size of the particles emitted from the tread. It found that the greater the vehicle's mass and weight, the more rapidly the tire particulate emissions would be released due to the increased torque between the tires and the road. A separate 2020 report by the Emissions Analytics firm said that tires are likely to be a major concern in the coming years as ‘consumers switch to bigger and heavier cars.’ ‘Research shows they contribute to microplastic marine pollution, as well as air pollution from finer particles,’ the report continued. The average Hyundai electric vehicle weighs more than 3,700 pounds compared to the gas-powered alternative which weighs 3,000 pounds. 

©Provided by Daily Mail

Meanwhile, Volvo’s EV weighs 4,662 pounds while its gas-powered vehicle weighs 3,726, but the Ford F150 EV truck comes in at a whopping 6,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds more than the gas option. California claims that banning gas vehicles would protect public health from airborne pollutants like dust, dirt and soot, calling EVs ‘zero-emission vehicles,’ but the heavier weight drastically impacts how quickly tire tread wears out. Yet, the state's proposal , submitted by the Air Resources Board, suggested that tire treads on EVs and gas vehicles wear out at the same rate, which was criticized by the public, but the state said ‘it would be speculative to project’ that EVs would not weigh less in the future. It added that future EV models’ weight could be ‘offset’ with ‘weight reduction in other components or the vehicle body,’ – although the agency did not provide examples about how the weight would be reduced.

 

California has claimed that EVs produce zero emissions because they don’t have a tailpipe, but that is reportedly misleading, because the substantial electricity used to power the cars creates additional particulate pollution. ‘Coal tends to be the critical factor,’ Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told The New York Times. ‘If you’ve got electric cars in Pittsburgh that are being plugged in at night and leading nearby coal plants to burn more coal to charge them, then the climate benefits won’t be as great, and you can even get more air pollution.’ 

Additionally, lithium-ion batteries which power EVs are made of materials including cobalt and lithium, which have been linked to environmental concerns. Mining cobalt emits toxic chemicals and gases that leak into the environment and extracting metals from the ore emits sulfur oxide and pollutes the air. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated the national air quality standards with a new rule to reduce the amount of air pollution. ‘Today's action is a critical step forward that will better protect workers, families and communities from the dangerous and costly impacts of fine particle pollution,’ said EPA Administrator Michael Regan. 

‘The science is clear, soot pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution and it's linked to a range of serious and potentially deadly illnesses, including asthma and heart attacks.’ EVs are beneficial for the environment because they have no tailpipe emissions so they produce less greenhouse gases than the average gas-powered car. According to the EPA , over an EVs lifetime, the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with the manufacturing, charging, and driving the vehicle is typically lower than the standard vehicle.

[Jaydee]

[Seeker]

I have just bought two new electrics!  One has been delivered and I have to say it's fantastic - way better than the vehicle it replaced.  We are still waiting for the second to be delivered - presently enroute from a Asia on a ship.

I am, of course, talking about e-bikes.  We live in the country so won't be using them for errands but I have talked to quite a few city-folk who own them and use them regularly for short trips to the grocery, etc.  This is the perfect use for an EV - short city trips (bike or small car).  I could totally get onboard if they were cheap and efficient.  Instead the market seems to be focused on producing $80K monsters that go from 0-100 in 3 seconds.  Then they take many hours to recharge on a $3K home charger.  I would buy a $20K vehicle that goes from 0-100 in 12 seconds and then charges on 120V from a wall socket overnight.

[Seeker]

Bike number 1

 

[mo32a]

We bought a couple of e-bikes from Pedego, not cheap but very well-made using top-notch batteries and chargers. We ride 20–30 miles every weekend.

[Seeker]

2 minutes ago, mo32a said:

We bought a couple of e-bikes from Pedego, not cheap but very well-made using top-notch batteries and chargers. We ride 20–30 miles every weekend.

I stopped by the Pedego shop in Calgary and spent some time with the owner - seems like he would be a decent guy to deal with.

I've ridden a few different bikes now and the advice I would give is that you have to really spend some time on thinking about how you will use the bike.  Cargo/utility, cruiser, e-mountain, small tire, big tire, skinny tire, wide tire, suspension, hardtail - they can all be found in the e-bike market but will give vastly different riding experiences.  Buy a utility bike and try to ride it off-road and you will be unhappy.  Buy an e-mountain bike and try to use it to bring home a case of beer and you will be unhappy.  An e-mountain bike being ridden off-road is fantastic and a utility bike carries a case of beer like it was born to it (which it was).

 

its

[deicer]

15 hours ago, Seeker said:

I have just bought two new electrics!  One has been delivered and I have to say it's fantastic - way better than the vehicle it replaced.  We are still waiting for the second to be delivered - presently enroute from a Asia on a ship.

I am, of course, talking about e-bikes.  We live in the country so won't be using them for errands but I have talked to quite a few city-folk who own them and use them regularly for short trips to the grocery, etc.  This is the perfect use for an EV - short city trips (bike or small car).  I could totally get onboard if they were cheap and efficient.  Instead the market seems to be focused on producing $80K monsters that go from 0-100 in 3 seconds.  Then they take many hours to recharge on a $3K home charger.  I would buy a $20K vehicle that goes from 0-100 in 12 seconds and then charges on 120V from a wall socket overnight.

I agree with your assessment of what the market needs for electric cars.  

With regards to the e-bikes, I see them in the same light, however their riders need to understand that with the speeds they achieve they should not be on sidewalks or bike lanes.

They are a powered vehicle and should be driven as such.