Great blog about EV's! I appreciate the context that ALL cars are bad for the environment...it's easy to forget this in our zeal to adopt the latest technology. I just wanted to point out that you didn't mention one of the most important aspects of EV's and that is their potential to stabilize the electric grid by adding storage and to green the grid by unlocking more solar photovoltaic energy generation. The biggest impediment to growth that our grid has now is that we can't really add more solar generation capacity without having the means to store it (know as the "duck back" problem.) Peak electrical demand is around 7 pm when everyone gets home and turns on their appliances but peak solar supply is around solar noon. We just need the means to store (a lot) of solar energy generated from about 9 am to 3 pm and then release it back to the grid during the evening peak demand around 4 pm to 9 pm. A typical EV today has a battery equivalent to about 6 or 7 Tesla Powerwalls and as soon as UL and IEEE write standards for bi-directional car chargers (V2H, V2G), we can have our EV's power our homes (and if our PUC's will allow it, also power the grid).
Awesome information and thank you for putting this together in a one collective article to share! Really helpful!
Kinda relating to a previous HEATED article which mentioned meat and diary companies fighting fossil fuel companies because of competing interests, I'm curious if we will see something similar with car companies as EVs become a higher percentage of the profits of car companies. After all if fossil fuel companies continue doing what they do doesn't that directly affect the ability of car companies to sell EVs?
Also I think it is great to be skeptical of recycling claims but as far as I'm aware, lead acid car battery recycling is a genuinely incredible recycling success story. 99% essentially are recycled. Which makes sense to me because of common act of trade ins, etc. And while lithium car batteries are nowhere near that in terms of recycling, I think that is more to do with just the newness of EVs and lack of a circular trade in economy for it. Seems like IRA provisions should help with EV recycling too.
However that obviously doesn't take away from just the unbelievable amount of new materials needed to reach the goal of essentially replacing gas cars with EVs. Don't want to minimize how much mining and materials will be needed there.
We definitely, need to change our economy to meet the changes of the climate crises. These long commutes people make (me too, in a BEV) need to be changed to mass transit.
When discussing if the grid can handle the addition of additional EVs it's kind of funny that people fail to appreciate that utilities are generally profit making organisations and that providing fuel to cars is an immensely profitable business. It seems to me to stand to reason that even if utilities can only capture 10% of what's currently used on gas they'll still make boatloads of money and figure out how to power the EVs people buy – especially since it can allow them to do a bunch of things they might want to do anyways like charging different rates at different times of the day.
The other thing is about recycling where I can fear the failures of plastic recycling can cloud our judgement of what's possible when recycling metals. Even though recycling metal can also be difficult it's still something we're doing at large scale and the economics also work better than for plastic. With plastic you have a bunch of strongly bonded carbon atoms and once you break those bonds you're left with not super valuable carbon atoms to build new things out of. There's also just a lot of different types of plastic so that adds additional complexity. With metals recycling you want to still might want to break strong bonds but once you do you get back metal. It also helps that it can often be easier to get metals out of a waste stream than a natural metal ore which further helps the economics.
And beyond that we also just need to remember that the EV batteries can outlive the car so some direct reuse might be possible. When EV batteries degrade we might experience the car as being slower to charge and have less range and less power but that might not be a problem for other industries that are more sensitive to the cost of batteries so it might be possible we would just reuse the batteries for shipping or grid storage. That'll obviously tilt the life cycle analysis further towards favouring EVs over gas cars.
Loved this 2-part series - especially as an EV driver.
I'm interested in 2 things you may have ideas or interest in reporting on:
- What steps can people who purchase EVs take around helping the people who have to do the mining of the minerals that make the batteries? I'm not thinking in terms of person to person action (definitely not planning some kind of eco tourism trip to any of the mentioned countries), but pressure on companies that make the batteries to safeguard their people more.
- In terms of the sustainability of the electric grid, what about AI & data centers adding to the load? I live in Virginia where tons of data centers have existed for, probably, a couple of decades or even longer. It's a big local issue and one of the main concerns is how building new data centers means the grid will have a higher load. Meanwhile there are political forces (probably like most states) where some say the increase in data centers means we can't stop using fossil fuels, and others say the only way to build a greener system is to not have data centers. I think a bill was introduced in the state leg this year to require new data centers to have solar, but it died.
The good news is the road to electric vehicles seems to be inevitable, as the demand for them will compel car companies to aggressively sell and market them for the sake of their bottom line. The bad news is, yes, they're still cars. Also, even if we're on a path to electric, attempts to slow down or halt progress will further hurt us in the push to avert a complete climate catastrophe.
With all due respect….”Environmental journalism” ? .. A bit of a misnomer don’t you think? As one of the definitions of journalism is the to provide information characterized by a direct presentation of facts to seek the truth or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.
I suggest that most of the so called environmental journalists should be better characterized as “environmental activists” and when they report on examples of disinformation should be holding up a mirror!!..
Thanks, Emily, that's very helpful. I would just note that the ICE vs. BEV debate is a bit of oranges and apples. ICE vehicles will certainly emit more GHG over their lifetimes but other impacts are not as clear. I'm surprised on the note about tire wear, for example, as some studies are showing that EVs wear out tires up to 30% faster than regular vehicles.
Better late than never? An EV owner can already help the grid, and decrease emissions from electricity used for charging, and in many locations save money, by timing the charging of the vehicle. One doesn't need to wait for special controls or "vehicle-to-grid" BEVs. In some places during mid-day solar over-supply, other midnight when wind, hydro or nukes are over-supplied.
Also, while two wrongs don't make a right, all over the world people are screwed over by fossil fuel extraction and processing, and even here in the USA. Though somehow they don't get talked about as much right now as folks screwed over by foreign mines and processing plants. Hmmmm, wonder why?
Great blog about EV's! I appreciate the context that ALL cars are bad for the environment...it's easy to forget this in our zeal to adopt the latest technology. I just wanted to point out that you didn't mention one of the most important aspects of EV's and that is their potential to stabilize the electric grid by adding storage and to green the grid by unlocking more solar photovoltaic energy generation. The biggest impediment to growth that our grid has now is that we can't really add more solar generation capacity without having the means to store it (know as the "duck back" problem.) Peak electrical demand is around 7 pm when everyone gets home and turns on their appliances but peak solar supply is around solar noon. We just need the means to store (a lot) of solar energy generated from about 9 am to 3 pm and then release it back to the grid during the evening peak demand around 4 pm to 9 pm. A typical EV today has a battery equivalent to about 6 or 7 Tesla Powerwalls and as soon as UL and IEEE write standards for bi-directional car chargers (V2H, V2G), we can have our EV's power our homes (and if our PUC's will allow it, also power the grid).
Awesome information and thank you for putting this together in a one collective article to share! Really helpful!
Kinda relating to a previous HEATED article which mentioned meat and diary companies fighting fossil fuel companies because of competing interests, I'm curious if we will see something similar with car companies as EVs become a higher percentage of the profits of car companies. After all if fossil fuel companies continue doing what they do doesn't that directly affect the ability of car companies to sell EVs?
Also I think it is great to be skeptical of recycling claims but as far as I'm aware, lead acid car battery recycling is a genuinely incredible recycling success story. 99% essentially are recycled. Which makes sense to me because of common act of trade ins, etc. And while lithium car batteries are nowhere near that in terms of recycling, I think that is more to do with just the newness of EVs and lack of a circular trade in economy for it. Seems like IRA provisions should help with EV recycling too.
https://www.epa.gov/recycle/how-do-i-recycle-common-recyclables#batteries
However that obviously doesn't take away from just the unbelievable amount of new materials needed to reach the goal of essentially replacing gas cars with EVs. Don't want to minimize how much mining and materials will be needed there.
We definitely, need to change our economy to meet the changes of the climate crises. These long commutes people make (me too, in a BEV) need to be changed to mass transit.
This is a great summary. A couple of notes:
When discussing if the grid can handle the addition of additional EVs it's kind of funny that people fail to appreciate that utilities are generally profit making organisations and that providing fuel to cars is an immensely profitable business. It seems to me to stand to reason that even if utilities can only capture 10% of what's currently used on gas they'll still make boatloads of money and figure out how to power the EVs people buy – especially since it can allow them to do a bunch of things they might want to do anyways like charging different rates at different times of the day.
The other thing is about recycling where I can fear the failures of plastic recycling can cloud our judgement of what's possible when recycling metals. Even though recycling metal can also be difficult it's still something we're doing at large scale and the economics also work better than for plastic. With plastic you have a bunch of strongly bonded carbon atoms and once you break those bonds you're left with not super valuable carbon atoms to build new things out of. There's also just a lot of different types of plastic so that adds additional complexity. With metals recycling you want to still might want to break strong bonds but once you do you get back metal. It also helps that it can often be easier to get metals out of a waste stream than a natural metal ore which further helps the economics.
And beyond that we also just need to remember that the EV batteries can outlive the car so some direct reuse might be possible. When EV batteries degrade we might experience the car as being slower to charge and have less range and less power but that might not be a problem for other industries that are more sensitive to the cost of batteries so it might be possible we would just reuse the batteries for shipping or grid storage. That'll obviously tilt the life cycle analysis further towards favouring EVs over gas cars.
Loved this 2-part series - especially as an EV driver.
I'm interested in 2 things you may have ideas or interest in reporting on:
- What steps can people who purchase EVs take around helping the people who have to do the mining of the minerals that make the batteries? I'm not thinking in terms of person to person action (definitely not planning some kind of eco tourism trip to any of the mentioned countries), but pressure on companies that make the batteries to safeguard their people more.
- In terms of the sustainability of the electric grid, what about AI & data centers adding to the load? I live in Virginia where tons of data centers have existed for, probably, a couple of decades or even longer. It's a big local issue and one of the main concerns is how building new data centers means the grid will have a higher load. Meanwhile there are political forces (probably like most states) where some say the increase in data centers means we can't stop using fossil fuels, and others say the only way to build a greener system is to not have data centers. I think a bill was introduced in the state leg this year to require new data centers to have solar, but it died.
The good news is the road to electric vehicles seems to be inevitable, as the demand for them will compel car companies to aggressively sell and market them for the sake of their bottom line. The bad news is, yes, they're still cars. Also, even if we're on a path to electric, attempts to slow down or halt progress will further hurt us in the push to avert a complete climate catastrophe.
With all due respect….”Environmental journalism” ? .. A bit of a misnomer don’t you think? As one of the definitions of journalism is the to provide information characterized by a direct presentation of facts to seek the truth or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.
I suggest that most of the so called environmental journalists should be better characterized as “environmental activists” and when they report on examples of disinformation should be holding up a mirror!!..
Thanks, Emily, that's very helpful. I would just note that the ICE vs. BEV debate is a bit of oranges and apples. ICE vehicles will certainly emit more GHG over their lifetimes but other impacts are not as clear. I'm surprised on the note about tire wear, for example, as some studies are showing that EVs wear out tires up to 30% faster than regular vehicles.
Better late than never? An EV owner can already help the grid, and decrease emissions from electricity used for charging, and in many locations save money, by timing the charging of the vehicle. One doesn't need to wait for special controls or "vehicle-to-grid" BEVs. In some places during mid-day solar over-supply, other midnight when wind, hydro or nukes are over-supplied.
Also, while two wrongs don't make a right, all over the world people are screwed over by fossil fuel extraction and processing, and even here in the USA. Though somehow they don't get talked about as much right now as folks screwed over by foreign mines and processing plants. Hmmmm, wonder why?