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Comment by logifail | Hacker News Reader

Q: Where is the electricity coming from to recharge the batteries?

"Powered by electricity" doesn't necessarily mean "clean", years ago I visited friends in Germany who were within cycling distance of an open-cast lignite mine. It had its own (lignite-fueled) power station on-site, which powered much of the equipment.

Will never forget climbing steps up the earthen embankment at the edge of the mine to reach a viewing platform. The scale of the destruction was literally breathtaking.

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An electric car powered by coal is still cleaner overall than one powered by gasoline.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/10/26/analysis/dirty-e....

https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2018/08/19/myths-an...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2020/03/30/yes-electr...

Yes, almost always. But it's important to point out the edge cases.

Where I'm from the largest power plant in the country is also insanely polluting - Bełchatow power plant burns lignite for electricity and the CO2 emissions are just bananas. The official number is around 1.7kg(!!!!!!!) Of CO2 for every kWh of electricity produced[1]. If you run your electric car using energy from that power plant then yes, it pollutes more than almost any petrol/diesel vehicle bar some sports cars and large trucks.

But that's a curiosity, an edge case, and if anything it proves that Bełchatow should be closed down immediately and not that EVs are a bad thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Stat...

> An electric car powered by coal is still cleaner overall than one powered by gasoline

I'm sceptical that we know enough about the energy and resource mix in use across our global supply chains to be anywhere near that confident.

Look up Enrico Mariutti and his thoughts on the photovoltaic lifecycle figures ( mentioned in "China's dirty fuel advanage" - https://public.substack.com/p/solar-panels-more-carbon-inten... )

"You glide silently out of the Tesla (TSLA.O) showroom in your sleek new electric Model 3, satisfied you're looking great and doing your bit for the planet. But keep going - you'll have to drive another 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before you're doing less harm to the environment than a gas-guzzling saloon."[0]

Appreciate this may be desperately off-message here, but here's the rub: what we change in Europe and North America isn't going to fix anything unless we take China, India, and all the rest of the world with us.

"Most of the electricity in China comes from coal, which accounted for 62% of the electricity generation mix in 2021"[1]

"China permits two new coal power plants per week in 2022"[2]

"China ramps up coal power despite carbon neutral pledges. Local governments approved more coal power in first three months of 2023 than all of 2021."[3]

If we really care about fixing the planet, China and India are where we should be looking. Teslas in California are an irrelevance.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China [2] https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/24/china-ramps-up...

Electric fueled by coal produces less CO2 than gasoline. It's not cleaner by a long shot. The pollution produced by a coal plant, especially a brown coal plant, is insane even when they don't have an ash pond breach that kills more wildlife than a tactical nuclear explosion.

> "Powered by electricity" doesn't necessarily mean "clean"

"Powered by electricity" is an abstraction that lets you move towards clean sources of energy over time and zero emissions. Even if the source of that electricity is dirty today and shifts emissions, it can become clean and zero emission.

On the other hand "Powered by gasoline" or "Powered by diesel" will always be dirty, even with bio-diesel.

Thats interesting point, thanks.

Came to say this. I would add that "powered by electric" also typically means that power was generated at an industrial-scale facility and so is likely inherently more efficient than on-site generation. Powering a vehicle with electricity generated from diesel is (or can be upgraded to be, over time) more efficient than powering the same vehicles using diesel powertrains.

This story is Tesla propaganda by a Tesla propagandist. The author of the piece wants every EV maker other than Tesla to go fail. Look at the history of articles the person wrote. No surprise, it’s another attack on an alternative green technology. I doubt the guy even cares about green technology other than what can promote Tesla.

There’s no reason to believe that this a serious attempt to go green. The vehicles are already diesel-electric so it is simply a matter of hooking them up to electricity. And since diesel is not that cheap, you can get save money with an electrified system, provided you have no interest in ensuring green electricity.

It’s talking about Australia. If they have one thing it’s sunlight.

Also a looooot of coal. https://www.energy.gov.au/data/australian-electricity-genera...

They have 30GW of renewables in the AEMO connection pipeline at the moment, ~7GW greater than entire continent coal generation (which will add to current renewables capacity) [1] [2]. Batteries are scaling up to consume grid services revenue and drive out thermal generation [3].

Also of note: "NEM total emissions declined this quarter to the lowest Q2 level on record, of 28.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, 6.6 per cent lower than Q2 2022, whilst emissions intensity dropped 4.3 per cent to 0.61 tCO2 e/MWh."

"“Rooftop solar generation increased 30 per cent from Q2 2022, which reduced electricity demand from the grid. Coupled with higher renewable output, wholesale prices were zero or negative nine per cent of the quarter throughout the NEM, a new Q2 record,” Ms Mouchaileh said." This bears repeating: 9 percent of the time, the wholesale cost of power is zero or negative.

[1] https://www.energymagazine.com.au/aemo-quarterly-energy-repo...

[2] https://opennem.org.au/facilities/au/?status=operating

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-04/how-tesla... | https://archive.is/egMXl

> They have 30GW of renewables in the AEMO connection pipeline at the moment, ~7GW greater than entire continent coal generation (which will add to current renewables capacity) [1] [2]. Batteries are scaling up to consume grid services revenue and drive out thermal generation [3].

Yet they are still digging coal out of the ground - for export. Australia exported USD 75 billion worth of coal in 2022.

We should try to keep it that way.

If they discovered a new source of coal, as large, clean and easy to mine as their best ever existing coal seams, they'd be financially better off putting solar PV over the top of it than mining the coal seam. So that problem should solve itself if they let the market do its thing and don't tilt it to help out coal mine owners.

I've been there too, it's the saddest view, maybe only on par with the destruction in Northern Canada due to fracking. And likely in Africa there are similar sites but I haven't seen those in person, just online and photos do not do this kind of damage any justice. If you haven't seen any of this try anyway:

https://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2012/07/tar_sands.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Panorama...

I imagine a mix of solar and natural gas. A lot of natural gas is mined in Western Australia and Australian mines tend to be in hot sunny places. Coal mining isn’t BHPs business so that seems unlikely.

Uhhh, BHP is like one of the largest coal miners on the planet. Though, it's just one of their operating units (mainly iron and copper).

The iron ore mines are nowhere near the coal mines, but are near the North West Shelf gas area.

Nah, I know, the iron is in WA, iirc the main coal mines are in Queensland and some in NSW. The main point was the comment that coal isn't BHP's business, when they've gotta be the largest coal miner in Australia.

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