Not my case necessarily, but a very thoughtful one from Robert Bryce, a research fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP.org).
It’s Time to Unplug the Hype Over Electric Vehicles
A few key passages:
- “I am pro-electricity. But I am adamantly opposed to the notion that we should ‘electrify everything’ including transportation. The big problems with EVs are affordability, resilience, and supply chains.“
- “EVs are coming down in price, but they are mostly being purchased by the Benz and Beemer crowd. The average household income for EV buyers is about $140,000. That’s twice the U.S. average.”
- “Furthermore, low- and middle-income Americans are facing significant electric rate increases for grid upgrades to accommodate EVs.”
- “Last month, the California Energy Commission estimated the state will need 1.3 million new public EV chargers by 2030. Likely cost to ratepayers: about $13 billion.”
- “Meanwhile, blackouts are almost certain this summer and electricity prices in the state are, as energy analyst Mark Nelson recently put it, ‘absolutely exploding.’ Last year, electricity prices soared by 7.5% and California regulators expect rates to surge another 40% or so by 2030. These cost increases are happening in a state with the highest poverty rate and largest Latino population in America.”
- “Electrifying transportation will put more of our energy eggs in one basket and make our grid an even-juicier target for terrorists, cyberthieves, or bad actors. It will also reduce resilience and reliability in case of a prolonged grid failure due to natural disaster, equipment failure, or human error.
- “Indeed, attempting to electrify transportation makes little sense given the ongoing fragilization of our electric grid. That fragilization is due to the ongoing closures of our nuclear and coal-fired plants as well as the grid’s increased dependence on weather-dependent renewables and power plants that rely on just-in-time delivery of natural gas. Since 2016, the number of grid outages per year – what the DOE calls “major disturbances and unusual occurrences” – has nearly tripled.”
- “EVs will also make the U.S. more dependent on China. Electrifying just half of our auto fleet will require, in rough terms, about nine times current global cobalt production, three times global lithium output, and about two times current copper production. As the International Energy Agency noted in a May report, China has a majority share in the processing of cobalt, lithium, and the rare earth elements needed to make EVs.”
Turning to oil-powered transportation, Bryce concludes with the following prediction:
- “The simple truth is that oil’s century-long dominance of the transportation-fuel market is largely due to its high energy density. That density – along with oil’s versatility, quick refueling, ease of handling, and continuing improvements in internal combustion engines and hybrids — assures that oil will be fueling our cars, trucks, ships, boats, snowmobiles, ATVs, bulldozers, excavators, and airplanes for decades to come.”
My own sense is that the transition from hydrocarbons to electricity won’t be anything as swift, seamless or complete as the GREENEST of GREEN OPTIMISTS think.
Green as POLICY remains largely ASPIRATIONAL. Unless and until we see the data, action plans, engineering strategies and timelines regarding how this transition will occur, it remains largely a RALLYING CRY for those INFECTED with the same unreasoning fervor as SOCIAL JUSTICE PARTISANS.
In other words, there’s still far too much MAGICAL THIKING here. And it’s largely a function of STRESS and DISQUIET.
Tudor Place 