And even if an EV is powered by a coal plant, the air pollution is in industrial areas not the residential areas where people live, so there are health benefits regardless of the climate impact.
An electric car is also more efficient and grid fossil fuels are better than a small ICE.
Still, I’m not really seeing the evidence that the grid is getting all that much greener. There’s a lot of solar capacity installed and yet every year we use more fossil fuels than the year before. It dents the growth a bit but it doesn’t seem to be doing a good job at replacing fossil fuels.
We need more gen iv fission, not more renewables, to meaningfully displace fossil fuels. And no, it’s not more expensive than solar even today if you add the cost of batteries which everyone seems to ignore when comparing solar/wind to fission. As for hydro, that resource is fully tapped; all the available capacity is fully in use at a significant environmental cost. Geothermal might be a good one but it requires a massive shift in where cities are located which limits its utility (HVDC remains extremely expensive).
Battery prices are going down. Solar prices are going down. Wind prices are going down. Nuclear mostly is going sideways. This is also reflected by deployment, where renewables are on an exponential (logistic) curve and nuclear isn’t. Even in China, where nuclear is growing fastest, the curves look like this: https://www.evwind.es/2024/01/13/nuclear-energy-remains-far-...
TL;DR if fast deployment of low carbon sources is what you want, nuclear definitely is not the answer.
Not necessarily, synthetic fuel is being developed for air transport and could also be used in internal combustion car engines. Not sure anyone is seriously working on it, and I don't know how the economics compare. One advantage would be that we already have the distribution infrastructure in place for liquid motor vehicle fuel. Our electrical infrastructure is going to need significant upgrading at least in places to handle charging if all vehicles are EVs.
randerson|1 year ago
vlovich123|1 year ago
Still, I’m not really seeing the evidence that the grid is getting all that much greener. There’s a lot of solar capacity installed and yet every year we use more fossil fuels than the year before. It dents the growth a bit but it doesn’t seem to be doing a good job at replacing fossil fuels.
We need more gen iv fission, not more renewables, to meaningfully displace fossil fuels. And no, it’s not more expensive than solar even today if you add the cost of batteries which everyone seems to ignore when comparing solar/wind to fission. As for hydro, that resource is fully tapped; all the available capacity is fully in use at a significant environmental cost. Geothermal might be a good one but it requires a massive shift in where cities are located which limits its utility (HVDC remains extremely expensive).
matthewdgreen|1 year ago
TL;DR if fast deployment of low carbon sources is what you want, nuclear definitely is not the answer.
SoftTalker|1 year ago