WTF? Let's take one example, the F-150 Lightning. When it replaces a gasoline truck sale, it eliminates 150 tons of CO2 from burning gasoline, and about 80 tons of CO2 from drilling, refining and transporting that gasoline.
Sure, producing the truck takes a little extra energy, and electricity isn't carbon free in most places, but that doesn't come anywhere close to 200 tons of CO2.
There is no climate benefit to opening a wind farm. The climate benefit comes when a wind farm causes a fossil fuel power plant to be shut down.
When you look at what politicians and corporations boast about, it's always about adding. New renewables, new solar panels on our roof. Not about taking away fossil fuels.
As an example, "carriers reduced their fuel consumption per passenger-kilometer by approximately 39 percent between 2005 and 2019 (pre-COVID-19), a compound annual growth rate of about 3.4 percent per year". [globally] - you can be sure the industry touts its increased efficiency.
But globally, the emissions of the airline industry have gone up, meaning it's damaging the climate more than every before. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-gr...
Even with your example - is the new truck going to travel more miles than the previous one? The US is still building urban sprawl by default. Does the owner use the pickup truck or, like most pickup truck owners, they could be use a smaller more efficient vehicle?
As in the famous talk "Hans Rosling: the magic washing machine", we haven't done anything to actually reduce emissions. Yet we are sold a narrative of constant progress towards our climate goals.
And coal plants are being shut down at a very significant rate.
The number of ICE vehicles being sold annually is also going down.
I’m not as gloomy. I can acknowledge progress. But when it comes to cars, it’s been worse, not better. But at least now the technology is better and can hope for the curve to finally invert itself.
Normal growth is enough to explain why that hasn't (yet) resulted in a net decrease. If the growth rate continues at 50+%, that will change in about 5 years, though.
> In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use increases its demand, negating the efficiency gains.
Coal peaked, but gas and oil extraction are still growing fast.
You are conceding the point with extra words here
Reality is that the amount of vehicles is increasing, and by rule of thumb 50% of the emissions released by vehicles come from their own construction, steel, copper, manufacturing, chemicals needed for the production
Given the size of a f150, would you take the bet that its manufacturing cost co2 wise is lower than a prius?
This is obviously, bypassing the fact that rather than having to buy a 0km vehicle instead someone could have bought a second hand f150 and therefore not strictly needed to increase the total amount of vehicles in circulation
But that's for an electric car vs a fuel efficient car. An electric truck vs a 15 mpg gasoline truck will go carbon negative a lot faster than 6 months.
That the real deal is figuring how to reduce the number of vehicles in total.
Is the F150 Lightning better than commuting to work in a deuce and half? Sure. But it is not carbon neutral or negative except when compared to something worse - and there’s always something worse that could be compared.
I think people are looking at different derivatives.
If you compare the rate of change of emissions, they do continue to rise as new electric vehicles are produced. But, the claim that an EV is more efficient than a regular truck is not a claim about the first derivative, but about the second.
That is, in theory, an EV raises CO2 emissions less than the equivalent truck. That's saying the impact should be visible in the *2nd* derivative being negative, but not necessarily the first.
I suspect there is not in the US (as almost everyone who wants a vehicle has one or two already) but there certainly could be in less vehicle-saturated markets.
When it's a straight 1 over 1 it's easy - for example, if someone were to buy me a Milwaukee M18 lawnmower, I'd be willing to scrap the existing gas one, so it can no longer pollute. If I were to give it away or sell it, it would still be doing whatever it does for someone else.
Yep, that's always a concern, and one of the reasons I framed my response around what the argument was, and what the claim was. I haven't really done enough research to know or feel confident in whether that claim is borne out or holds and the concern you've raised is the major thing that could get in the way.
I was largely just commenting on the disconnect in the discussion that I was observing.
In many countries, this is exactly what's happening.
In the UK for example, gas and electricity usage has been declining for the last 15 years. Coal has been almost eliminated from the grid, and renewables now account for about 40% of generation, from less than 10% a decade ago. Overall carbon emissions are below 1890 levels.
Obviously we have outsourced some of our emissions but there's very clearly a huge reduction that can't be entirely explained by that.
Or when it prevents a new fossil fuel power plant to open.
No one is going to sell their old vehicles just because there's a greener version, but if all new vehicles are green you'll eventually phase down the old ones. You can't expect people to care overnight, much less to lose money because of it.
That's not a benefit, that's a loss averted. These claims are usually over egged as well for "net zero" calculations. Net zero against some hypothetical averted future, but in physical reality the emissions are still there heating the atmosphere.
As an analogy, I can "prevent spending" by buying a coffee machine, bulk buying some products, etc. However, there are more ways to spend money than I can even notice, and I can pile up the "savings" but still find I have no money left at the end of a month to... actually deposit into my savings. I think it's a common experience.
If production of fossil fuels is not decreased by regulation, then a drop in domestic demand means more is available to export. The export price goes down, encouraging the continued use of fossil fuels abroad. Another power plant is built over there and emits GHGs.
My truck is a little trickier. The F150 lightening would do everything I need a truck for, but I drive my truck so rarely (one fill up per year). too bad nobody will rent me a truck for what I want t truck for.
Or when a new fossil fuel power plant is _not_ built, or when demand spikes but the renewable sources handle the load and make fossil fuels less attractive.
We aren’t socially set up with the mechanisms to make this change overnight. Basically no society is, we have to move people there with a viable alternative to them going without energy, or they will find ways to burn the earth to keep warm as the previous generations of all of us have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc
Heavier vehicles like trucks (and EVs are heavier in general) cause much quicker degradation of roads. And doubling down on private vehicle use with EVs is going to increase demand for roads across the board. It's just so far from a useful solution to go down this route.
What do you mean, lower albedo?
For some perspective, it is likely that the production of a full sized truck embodies 30-40 tons of carbon.
Great example. Let's see. Compared to the previous model it is: bigger, heavier (like 150% the weight), faster, more powerful, more torque.
More, more, more.
Increased efficiency of internal combustion engines has not led to decreased fossil fuel usage. It has led to bigger and more powerful vehicles and increased fossil fuel usage. There is no reason at all to believe electric vehicles will be any different. People simply refuse to sacrifice anything.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/03/17/suvs-pickups...
This is because of two things: (1) fetishization of size, weight, speed. This is modernism, a monomaniacal obsession with measurements, a very infantile mindset. (2) self-preservation; People are more inclined to buy bigger vehicles when they are surrounded by oversized death machines anyway.
It's a textbook tragedy of the commons. This can never resolve positively in a bottom-up manner. It's a local maximum that will require top down intervention, or some serious soul searching.
A scaled tax based on vehicle weight compared to number of seats or something would make the smaller cars more attractive.
Maybe we should provide (edit: sourced) data to back up our claims.
They're easy to find.
gasoline truck: 1/15 gallons per mile * 17 pounds CO2 / gallon = 1.1 pounds/mile
electric truck: 0.5 kWh per mile * 0.8 pounds CO2 / kWh = 0.4 pounds / mile
That 0.8 pounds CO2/kWh number is the US average from 2020. It's predicted to halve by 2025.
And I didn't include the numbers for drilling, refining and transporting the gasoline used, which are massive, and increase the 1.1 pounds/mile figure by at least 40%.
The combustion of a gas plant or of a coal plant is more efficient than the combustion happening in a internal combustion engine, a turbine on a gas power plant can reach 44 to 60%[1] , a thermal plant 33% to 49%, an internal gasoline combustion engine tops at 35% in an idealized state, which real performance between 20 and 29%
Unless you have got strong metrics which quantitatively show this to be true, then it is not a claim that can be spouted easily
[1] http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/fossil-fuels...
[2] https://www.williamson.edu/2018/05/the-most-efficient-therma...