While I agree it would be great if we had 0 emission vehicles, today EV in US or Germany run largely of coal , hence battery production is anything but green...
Thus I still don’t see the point of what’s called « Transition ».
Climate change is real , but at the moment without nuclear fusion I fail to see how this is going to change anything it seems to be deporting the problem to be honest.
No? Coal accounts for 11% of US energy production. 7.5% for Germany.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/736640/energy-mix-german...
Otherwise the headline here is that renewables are already the dominant source of energy in the German market. Gas is the only thing growing in market size currently other than renewables and that's mostly just offsetting the decline of coal and nuclear. Overall, renewables grow faster. Otherwise, many EV owners also put solar on their roofs and/or buy power from renewable sources or charge at public chargers hooked up to renewable sources. So, the notion that EVs are powered by coal is very dated at this point.
Your fossil fuel burning electrical generation facility can be equipped with things to capture emissions. So can a fossil fuel burning car, but the car needs to be small, mobile, and light weight and that limits how much you can capture emissions. The electrical generation facility doesn't have those constraints.
The other big win is time: if I buy a conventionally-fueled car now I'm locking in its use of fossil fuels for 15+ years unless there's a major improvement in biofuels whereas if I buy an EV in many states I can at any time switch to 100% renewable electric charging. A non-trivial percentage of EV owners will consider that option over the life of the vehicle and that opens the possibility of policy makers making a substantial change without needing to coordinate with millions of people: bring wind, solr, geothermal, nuclear, etc. capacity online and you have a guaranteed day one reduction in the CO2 generated for transportation.
Furthermore, even if renewables do not fully power the BEV, it's easier to filter/capture pollutants at a single point source of generation than it is to try to capture these things across millions of vehicles. It's not just CO2 that's harming the environment, it's also nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, formaldehyde....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_Sta...
It’s not an either or problem. It’s an also problem. Make power plants cleaner and make cars cleaner. Hit it from Both ends.
You’re right ! US has shifted from coal ... to Natural Gas !
I don’t think that this is solving the problem , natural gas comes from fracking ... but it’s definitely a small win knowing how big is America and how much less natural gas produces CO2.
Fission may have plenty of issues, but lets not pretend that the entire world is "fusion or bust".
Unfortunately , that’s no how it’s work.
Yes fission is great ! France runs on Fission it works greats.
Problem ? In 2015 at the current rate of consumption 130 years of uranium left on earth !
Sadly for us International Nuclear association estimated that if most country shifted to Nuclear that uranium would shift from 130 to just 30 years...
Regardless of how your turn the problem you’ll always end up to the same solution to satisfy the world need for energy :fusion.
Especially if you intend to have EV widely deployed.
First of all, this is nonsense. The same old peak-blabla nonsense.
Second of all, thorium can be used in current reactors. Third, thorium is practically unlimited.
Existing nuclear 'waste' and nuclear bombs contain huge amounts of potential energy as well.
With newer reactors these limits can be further broken by moving from terrible utilization to much higher utilization. And lets not ignore that modern CO2 turbines can improve efficiency by a further 20% at least.
There is absolutely no limit to fission in any theoretical or practical sense.
Its arguably renewable as volcanoes transport new thorium to the surface.
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...
Coal - almost 30% vs less than 10% of solar
Also, we can't have both "electric cars are only for rich coastal elites" and "... but the power they're run on is the dirtiest power available in coal country"