Politico: Are Electric Cars Worse for the Environment?

[bone]

This jives with a University of Minnesota Dept of Engineering Study that was published in 2014. That study found that on a nation-wide basis electric cars would be worse for the environment unless somehow the national electrical generating grid were nuclear, natural gas, and renewables like solar and wind.

And since naturally California wants to phase out modern, efficient, ultra low emission gasoline vehicles for electric vehicles, maybe the Trump administration is right to consider revoking California's 1970 EPA waiver.

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/05/15/are-electric-cars-worse-for-the-environment-000660

California has the "highest electric rates in the continental US, 50% higher than the US average. And electric rates just keep increasing."

"...if the EIA’s projected number of electric vehicles were replaced with new internal combustion vehicles, air pollution would actually decrease—and this holds true even if you include the emissions from oil refineries that manufacture gasoline."

"...based on the EIA’s projection of the number of new electric vehicles, the net reduction in CO2 emissions between 2018 and 2050 would be only about one-half of one percent of total forecast U.S. energy-related carbon emissions."

"In effect, the wealthy owners of electric vehicles will enjoy the benefits of their clean, silent cars, while passing on many of the costs of keeping their vehicles on the road to everyone else, especially the poor."

Here's my take: if you want the nation to go electric, I'm all for it provided that the United States gets the majority of it's base load electric power generation from nuclear. Last year France got 72 percent of its power from nuclear.

 

[deltastrike]

As I'm sure you know, CA gets most of its power from nuke, big hydro, and renewables. Its imports are mostly hydro and nuke with an increasing amount of renewables as coal plants retire. Additionally, if electric car-owning homeowners have roof-top solar and/or storage then their cars will be partially "solar-powered" along with the gen mix from the grid.

So if anything, the rest of the nation needs to catch up with CA in terms of decarbonizing the grid.

 

[bone]

As I'm sure you know, CA gets most of its power from nuke, big hydro, and renewables. Its imports are mostly hydro and nuke with an increasing amount of renewables as coal plants retire. Additionally, if electric car-owning homeowners have roof-top solar and/or storage then their cars will be partially "solar-powered" along with the gen mix from the grid.

So if anything, the rest of the nation needs to catch up with CA in terms of decarbonizing the grid.

California has hated on nuclear power plants since the '60's. They shut down San Onofre and Diablo Canyon down early in fact.

But otherwise I agree with you completely. We all know that there is no Republican support for such a proposal, and so I call upon Democratic leadership to introduce a Bill calling for the rest of the country to emulate California's energy infrastructure and legislative model. Just do that quickly please.

 

[deltastrike]

But otherwise I agree with you completely. We all know that there is no Republican support for such a proposal, and so I call upon Democratic leadership to introduce a Bill calling for the rest of the country to emulate California's energy infrastructure and legislative model. Just do that quickly please.

 

[Covertibility]

Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

Nuke power sure does offer a ton of govt subsidies to build. I wonder who told the author to write this or is he looking for handouts.

 

[jem]

I am very happy they shut San Onofre down. I live about 50 miles from there. They were many more problems... not well publicized.

Right now nuke power is very similar to selling puts or selling second mortgages.... looks very profitable for a few people until the inevitable disaster hits... then the costs get shared by everyone and those costs are not just financial.


Until they make nukes safer and store the waste safely we really can not create an accurate cost per kilowatt hour. When you go back and figure the costs of fukishima on Japan and the ocean and the radiation in the atmosphere that we get here in the states... What was the real cost per each kilowatt that fukishima created.


http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...-fukushima-to-san-onofre-2012mar10-story.html

From Fukushima to San Onofre
U-T San Diego Editorial Staff


There is some irony in the fact that, one year after the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan, both reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in northern San Diego County are shut down in the wake of the leak of a tiny amount of radioactivity into the atmosphere from one of the reactors in January. But there is, ironically, some reassurance in that shutdown, too. It shows that the best system of nuclear power safeguards in the world is working.

On March 11, 2011, a monstrous 9.0-magnitude earthquake rumbled offshore from the Fukushima complex. The quake produced a monstrous tsunami. Both the quake and the tsunami exceeded the worst-case scenario that the Fukushima reactors were designed to withstand. The result was the worst nuclear power plant disaster since the Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine in 1986.

Officials in every nuclear nation and at every nuclear plant in the world began immediately to inspect and reassess.

At San Onofre, the immediate questions boiled down to these: How good was the science that said the fault just five miles offshore was capable of producing a quake no greater than magnitude 7.0? Could a quake that big produce a Fukushima-like tsunami? And is the plant adequately protected against both?

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says San Onofre is safe, though it is also preparing new industrywide standards and requirements.

But politics is at the core of other key questions surrounding the nuclear power debate.

How good are the disaster preparedness plans for San Onofre and other American nuclear plants?

Federal, state and county officials have all asserted confidence. But so did the Japanese before Fukushima. And remember, in both the Japan disaster and in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, much of the death toll stemmed from the fact that roads and power systems were all knocked out, making communication and rescue efforts all but impossible for days. There are millions of people living withing 50 miles of San Onofre. Are we really prepared for the worst?

And what about the long-unresolved controversy over what to do with the ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear waste?

At present, spent nuclear fuel rods are mostly kept on-site at the more than 100 nuclear plants throughout the U.S. Nobody thinks that is a good permanent solution, yet a proposed nuclear waste repository deep inside Yucca Mountain in Nevada was halted by President Obama in 2010. Perhaps there is an even better solution in new technology, as outlined in the commentary by General Atomics’ John Parmentola on today’s Opinion section cover.

Nuclear power, as clean an energy source as there is, must be a part of U.S. energy policy. But the many difficult safety issues must also be resolved. From where we sit in the nuclear footprint of San Onofre, the plant operators, scientists and regulators are doing their jobs. Not so the politicians.

California has hated on nuclear power plants since the '60's. They shut down San Onofre and Diablo Canyon down early in fact.

But otherwise I agree with you completely. We all know that there is no Republican support for such a proposal, and so I call upon Democratic leadership to introduce a Bill calling for the rest of the country to emulate California's energy infrastructure and legislative model. Just do that quickly please.

 

[bone]

Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

Nuke power sure does offer a ton of govt subsidies to build.

Agreed. Both nuclear and renewables are heavily subsidized in the United States.