Electrification of surface transport is the most obvious way to improve air quality in dense cities. This needs to be a priority.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/china-is-adding-a-lon...
This is the same tactic they use on trade. They're hyper protectionist about access to their economy, and then claim they're free traders.
"China's leading role in financing a wave of new coal plants across Asia is drawing fresh scrutiny as the world’s top climate scientists weigh calling for much deeper cuts in emissions. China, India, Japan and the Philippines rank among the biggest investors in the 1,380 coal plants under construction or development worldwide, according to a study by the German pressure group Urgewald released Thursday."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-04/china-s-f...
"The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China. The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet. The report says that at present China has 993 gigawatts of coal power capacity, but the approved new plants would increase this by 25%."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45640706
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-comp...
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/6/6/17427030...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/china-is-massively-betting-o...
The graph you linked mostly shows exponential growth, with a slowdown in the last measured year. But similar kinks are visible twice before, with growth continuing at the same pace afterwards. I wouldn't call that "plateauing".
Natural gas might be better, but for whatever reason it’s never taken off here. Seems like electric is the way things are going.
CNG is at least way better than diesel.
If you have to use fossil fuels a combined cycle natural gas plant generating electricity and electric buses is your best option.
That said I tend to discount arguments that compare things to coal since coal just needs to go away.
That said... yes. Electrification is a massive improvement in the US, Canada, and Western Europe, but much less useful in Russia, China, and much of SE Asia. Adding to that, pushing pollution sources away from cities reinforces the demographic crisis China has had brewing for a long time, with everything from lead to lack of iodine creating serious permanent health issues in rural regions.
I commute with a bike every day in Paris, France. The infrastructure isn't great but it's OK, and it's improving. The thing is: I'm a big, strong guy who can legally outrun most cars and motorbikes in such a big, dense city. I can fight my way in traffic, mostly because the law authorizes bikes to go both ways in most streets, to run red lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop, to ride between traffic lanes, etc. Most people are terrified to ride here so you only have the most reckless persons on bikes, including me. Although I'm respect the law (which does not make riding safe because no one wants to be anywhere near a big bus/truck, or between vehicles, or stuck in a diesel tailpipe…), I end up riding dangerously making people think that biking is only for reckless guys.
The worst is that, the more I respect the law, the more drivers get angry at me for taking to much space or slowing traffic down. So you move as quick and close as possible to vehicles and pedestrians. That's absurd but that how it is.
It's an infrastructure problem. The more you give space to bikes, the more reckless bikers can finally ride prudently, or prudent people dare to ride (making reckless bikers a tiny minority). It's the same with cars: what would happen if the infrastructure made car driving dangerous? You would only have road hogs and people would just hate cars.
Being a cyclist, I thought I found a slice of heaven. I thought about being an urban planner when I got back to the States.
I've been a car driver and a cyclist there for ~10 years now. Believe me, being the former is much easier than the latter. If you're on a bike, many assume you're just having a good time (either on vacation or unemployed, as many people says) so the politicians/police/media won't care about your well being and focus instead of the transportation means of "serious people", i.e cars and motorbikes.
It's insulting, because I do have a car (and a parking spot) but everything pushes me to drive it instead of riding my vélo (which makes no noise, does not emit anything, takes very little space, doesn't damage the road, is far less dangerous to others, makes me fit and save health insurance costs...). Go figure.
Its not for everyone in every big city but certainly the Dutch model of transitioning cities from cars to transit and pedestrian/cycle focus is probably the clearest model for sustainable and healthy tansport out there.
Cycling infrastructure is amazing. It is almost always faster to travel by bike than by car.
They did it so long ago and the world still hasn’t caught up. I’m very sad about that.
Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL.
I live in the UK and I probably wouldn't consider getting a bike again, simply because I know it would be nicked within a month.
I personally had 4 bikes stolen in 5 years.
That's OK. We can keep up the consumerist "Everybody needs a car" mentality as long as the amount of driving per capita stays low.
We almost never used the Métro, what was the point? Saved money and no one ever stole my wallet!
Additionally, low density US cities are one of the worst places I’ve seen for cycling, because not only is everything spread out, but also the multi-lane roads everywhere make it much more dangerous than equivalently populated towns and cities in Europe. Despite having cycled through central London (UK) and just over 1,000 km along the Rhine, there’s no way you’d see me cycling around Salt Lake City or Sacramento. I’ve cycled around Davis (CA), but Davis has better than US average cycling infrastructure — almost as good as the average level in the UK.
In general, traffic speeds are low in London and there are lots of quiet side routes that are well suited to cycling. We’re no Amsterdam, but cycling is certainly much more popular and visible than it was 5-10 years ago.
A lot more people can pass any point in a biketrack per hour than they can per subwaytrack, and they can often take a more direct path to their destination using bikes than they can by subway. That also means that a bike system is better suited to a city where both the departure and the destination are diverse among all "packets".
That's not even starting to talk about how biketracks scale much better economically since they are much cheaper to build.
Trains coming in each couple minutes - show me lower latency than that :)
>A lot more people can pass any point in a biketrack per hour than they can per subwaytrack
several hundreds (up to a thousand in rush hour packing) people per train each couple of minutes - beat that.
Anyway, the rest of what you're saying about biking is just a theory that doesn't come even close to the reality of any big dense city in Europe/Asia. This is why those cities has highly developed subway system - the low latency high bandwidth and high speed mode of transportation. You put all these people on bikes and they would choke the city.
For it to be too dense for biking to be a viable transport they would have to be much denser than European cities which would by definition not allow for parking in the places where business takes place (in which case nobody would drive).
Most American cities were clearly designed with cars in mind, while most European where not (having grown organically rather than being designed), and while the American decision might have seemed better for the better part of the last 100 years, that might not be the case for the next couple of decades.
China is using 100% methanol and other lesser methanol fuel that are produced from coal. But in other places you could use gas.
This would also be faster then full electrification. The US missed out massivly. The gas boom could have lead to very cheap and relativly clean fuel.
It would also be great to have that infrastructure because you can also do fuel cells with the same infrastructure.
With these fuel it very much depends on a lot of factors.
However a overall police towards use of fuel alcohol would overall be very benefical.
Both in terms of emission and in terms of price competition.
EDIT: I'm referencing this:
A series of studies by Tsinghua University, whose alumni includes the incumbent president, showed electric vehicles charged in China produce two to five times as much particulate matter and chemicals that contribute to smog versus gas-engine cars. Hybrid vehicles fare little better.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-coal-powered-c...
You can plant tree, reduce plastics production AND switch to EV. For some reason, every time the case for the electrification of transport is presented, other legitimate, complementary causes are put forward as opposable. As if reducing emissions was a zero-sum game…
From a CO2/efficiency standpoint, you're correct. A modern EV powered purely by coal power plants puts out less CO2 than a gasoline car, largely because of the efficiency difference between large power plants and ICE.
From a SO2/NO2 standpoint, EVs powered by coal would be far far worse, assuming gasoline. Gas/Diesel these days is ultra low sulfur, which reduces SO2 significantly. The only remaining issue is NO2, which is why the catalytic converter is there.
The only caveat is Diesel. Diesel engines, especially older ones, are pretty horrid things. It's only in the last couple of year have we started to get the particulate under control with DPFs, and the NOx issue remains very difficult to fix cheaply (see: VW). Chances are any diesel engines running in a place like China will be old and lack both DPFs and Urea based NOx control systems.
I am uncertain as to whether old diesel trucks or coal power plants produce more NOx.
Modern ICE are amazingly sophisticated, EV in comparison have limited range, potential polluting issues, battery creation rare earth component scarcity issues and a massive dead battery disposal problem. We'll get there with a grid and more practical EV's but we're not there yet
Total cost of ownership of an EV is getting close to a tipping point where EV is a better deal than electric. One thing pushing that way is the many moving parts of ICE vehicles leading to more maintenance needed. Another is that modern car batteries are turning out to have longevity much higher than what was projected by critics (early Tesla cars still have 90% of initial battery capacity). Another is that the cost per mile in terms of energy is an order of magnitude cheaper. The only thing really stopping electric is that people have been wary to invest heavily in the factories that were necessary to produce the economies of scale that would lower the price. Since Tesla has done that, prices are dropping and everyone else is being forced to follow.
ICE vehicles are losing market share, because the more practical EVs you mentioned are already here.
With an EV, if you are not driving already, your car will likely be almost fully charged at your home or office while the earthquake strikes. You will then have about 300 miles of driving to a place with power.
According to the 2015 DOE analysis, the wheel to wheel emissions from EVs was less than half that of ICE cars. Even in WV, a coal heavy state, EVs produced less emissions than gasoline cars.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-950-november-7-201...
For example: the final stages of a steam condensing turbine are actually operating under vacuum relative to atmospheric pressure. To start the turbine a vacuum pump first removes the the air from the turbine. After steams works its way through the turbine it is cooled by feed water (which is then used in the boiler) reducing it's volume by about 1000 times maintaining the vacuum.
An ICE on the other hand expels a good portion of the input energy as hot exhaust gasses several PSI above atmospheric pressure.
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/13/11911798/emissions-electricity...
But we definitely need to improve power plant emission standards as we move to electric.
Vehicles have limited under the hood space and are distributed.
(but no mention of solar, wind, drastically reducing our energy consumption, etc?)
Easy to look at : https://www.electricitymap.org
If by "max efficiency" you mean "less terrible than just wasting that energy" then sure but it's still a lot less efficient than a highway cruise.
Edit: why the downmod? Energy is energy.
Electrification of surface transportation is a huge win for people regardless of how the electricity is generated.
The problem is it presents a false dichotomy, or at least a choice which highlights merely a current state and not a move towards future improvements, and uses that blindless to make a case against EVs.
Thing is, even if a country is 100% coal and ICE right now (which is already not the case, China is not 100% coal), moving the fleet to EVs is still a good move. Putting aside an argument as to whether central power generation is 'cleaner' than distributed (ICE) generation, as long as a country also makes moves to renewables in it's centralized power generation, then the two things work in conjunction.
A lot of the current 'omg greenwashing' push-back is people confusing arguments for 'better' solutions with those for 'perfect' solutions. Which don't exist. Better is still worth doing, and paralysis until 'perfect' comes along is a big ol' waste of everyone's time.
It's mostly plants and zooplankton
Both would be major living standard improvement.
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/13/11911798/emissions-electricity...
Urban citizens have better access to low carbon transportation (Walking, Biking, Mass Transit).
Urban citizens are easier to reach in many last mile problems. Power lines can be shared by more users. Less network cable needs to be laid per user. Fewer miles of water pipes are required.
Apartments common in urban areas are more fuel efficient for heating/cooling than stand alone houses commonly seen in suburbs and rural areas.
The reason for this is two-fold: 1. Modern gasoline cars produce very clean exhaust. 2. Most of the particulate pollution comes from wear on tires, brake and the road surface. And electric cars, being heavier than average, produce more wear on tires and road surface.
Electrification is part of the puzzle, but we also need to get people out of giant, heavy vehicles into right-sized vehicles for their trip. (And the majority of trips are less than 5 miles!)
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Edit for the people asking for sources:
The lit review suggesting EVs have >90% as much particulate emissions as internal-combustion: http://www.soliftec.com/NonExhaust%20PMs.pdf
Another review that acknowledges these numbers vary depending on rainy vs dry climate, use of snow tires, etc...
NOx in particular is a big problem in European cities due to the proliferation of diesel cars.
It’s true that tire wear may be increased slightly due to weight, but electrics aren’t that much heavier than combustion vehicles: typically 10-20% more for comparable vehicles of the same size/class.
Under normal road/wear conditions, most tires degrade into relatively large particles that are not actually aerosolised. They end up on the road and get washed away by weather. The main place where they become a problem is in tunnels where the dry conditions and passing traffic keep picking them back up into the air.
Finally, brake pads. Electric hugely reduce brake wear due to regenerative braking. Most EV owners will tell you that they’ve never had to replace their brake pads!
That means 90% of cars particulate matter must be coming from tyres and the road surface. How far does this travel? Does it just fall back quickly onto the road? Does it get washed away in a rain storm?
Do you have a source for that 90% figure?