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Comment by ppf | Hacker News Reader

No, it's not an order of magnitude, although I find it disingenuous to use the peak load from 20 years ago, when the UK National Grid has changed quite considerably since then, and has lost 16GW in production capacity [1]

We're also apparently in the process of nuclear decomissioning, and I'm not sure where that lost power will come from.

At the moment, we just ramp up gas-fired power stations to meet demand, so yes, we can just burn more gas to generate more power. In this scenario, transmission/distribution and charger losses wipe out a lot of the CO2 gains.

We also haven't even touched on the idea of commercial EVs - I'm not sure of the figures, but I suspect that the energy requirements for making all vans, trucks, and lorries electrically powered will outstrip EV domestic usage (and, for that matter, should be more important from a CO2 reduction point of view).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Engl...

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The 47 GW peak which would provide more than enough power for 30 million cars was this year. I gave the all-time peak as an example of how high it has been in the past - as a means of demonstrating that not only is charging cars within the scope of our current grid, but our current grid isn't even as heavily utilised as it was in the past - so it's unlikely to be burdensome to expand it back to those levels.

I don't know to what extent the infrastructure itself has changed - but given National Grid themselves don't think it'll be a big issue, the grid itself is probably still capable of that 62GW (even if generating capacity is less).

I haven't mentioned CO2 in my comments because that was not part of the original discussion. "Its not even clear how we are supposed to produce the necessary amounts of electricity" is patently false in the case of the UK. Maybe overall CO2 production would be less, maybe more - that's a different (though important) discussion. At least with electric vehicles there's a clear technological roadmap to 0 emissions - there's no credible roadmap for 0 emissions with internal combustion engines.

Vans aren't likely to be vastly different from cars - eg the Ducato Electric claims 235 km on a 47 kWh battery - vs a Model 3's claimed 265 km on a 50 kWh battery. HGVs are much heavier vehicles though - the path for electrification for those is likely to be slower.

>Maybe overall CO2 production would be less, maybe more

According to most EV proponents, that is the entire point. We are being slowly forced to switch to EVs that are much less convenient, and incur a much higher manufacturing cost (in materials, rare minerals, and energy), because the overall CO2 reduction will (help) stop the planet overheating. If that's not certain, then what is the point?

I'll say it again - yes, we may have some capacity to generate enough electricity so that domestic vehicle usage can change to EVs. However, that would be done by burning more gas, which obliterates any CO2 benefits, and does nothing to address the (I assume) higher commercial usage of petrol and diesel.

>At least with electric vehicles there's a clear technological roadmap to 0 emissions - there's no credible roadmap for 0 emissions with internal combustion engines.

Which is what? In my opinion, the only credible roadmap involves nuclear power, and it looks like the UK is mostly decommissioning its nuclear plants.

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