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Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

jakubmarian.com

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Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#41

Post by valuearb »

jakobegger wrote: post #40
smsm42 wrote: post #33

France electricity is mostly (72%) from nuclear power. Aka the most under-appreciated clean energy that everybody is panicky about and wants to get rid of. Which means, unless you have a luxury of having tons of hydropower or something, nuclear is probably the best way to lower carbon footprint. Of course, this is also the least discussed way.

Nuclear power is discussed a lot as a CO2 friendly option. The huge drawback is that we haven‘t found a way to deal with all the radioactive waste yet.

That's an incredibly minor problem compared to global warming. I'd solve the more important one first.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#42

Post by greglindahl »

virmundi wrote: post #37
greglindahl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not forgotten by the authorities! In the SF Bay Area the local air quality council subsidizes electric car chargers. EVs reduce the total pollution and moves what's left out of the prone-to-atmospheric-inversions Bay Area.

Isn't ozone worse than traditional pollution and the main byproduct of electrical cars? So unless we go into a draconian charge laws, will cause more harm in this regard. http://www.iop.org/news/11/april/page_50606.html

I read that article as saying that power plants emit ozone. The ozone isn't emitted where the electric cars are.

BTW a large source of ozone in the Bay Area and LA (both of which have big problems with it) is emissions from internal combustion vehicles.

So, overall, electric vehicles are a big decrease in ozone in the inhabited areas of the West Coast.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#43

Post by scythe »

The problem is that you're assuming that the makeup of electricity production in Europe is a constant, which is strange, because it's probably easier to build low-carbon electricity infrastructure than replace tens of millions of gasoline cars. But the fuel used for gasoline cars is constant, whereas an arbitrary percentage of electricity production can be simply replaced by renewables. Similarly, the CO2 output of car manufacturing itself is variable, dependent on the choice of electricity production method. Of course, a dramatic increase in car production translates to a dramatic increase in resource usage, but cars are not particularly durable commodities, usually lasting only about 15 years or so.

A bigger problem is that the Baltic states (worst electricity prospects in this study) don't have a whole ton of renewable energy potential. It's dark, not (that) windy, not mountainous or volcanic...

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#44

Post by andlier »

I'm a bit tired of all these CO2 comparisons regarding electric vehicles. If we put the CO2 emissions aside, there are so many other benefits moving to EV's. Especially reduced local pollution in cities such as NOx, VOC and particulate emissions. Even if we just look at noise and easy maintenance, electric cars are clear winners. All this focus on CO2 just leads to a lot of inaccurate napkin calculations on one part of the issue, taking focus away from the bigger picture.

That being said, for cities, cars in general are problematic since the consume so much space. I'd say electric bicycles and public transportation is the way to go for cities.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#45

Post by gaius »

jakobegger wrote: post #40
smsm42 wrote: post #33

France electricity is mostly (72%) from nuclear power. Aka the most under-appreciated clean energy that everybody is panicky about and wants to get rid of. Which means, unless you have a luxury of having tons of hydropower or something, nuclear is probably the best way to lower carbon footprint. Of course, this is also the least discussed way.

Nuclear power is discussed a lot as a CO2 friendly option. The huge drawback is that we haven‘t found a way to deal with all the radioactive waste yet.

Yes we have: stick it in a breeder reactor

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#46

Post by stephengillie »

BoorishBears wrote: post #39
stephengillie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric cars do not remove pollution - they are not trees. They merely pollute at a greatly reduced rate.

>removing pollution from cities They move the pollution from a tailpipe feet away from people to a large smoke stack specially optimized to lower the effect on air quality in the immediate area.

Combustion is just one type of pollution that cars produce. And while relocating pollution is a tempting way to externalize the problem, it doesn't solve the underlying issue.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#47

Post by toyg »

andlier wrote: post #44

I'm a bit tired of all these CO2 comparisons regarding electric vehicles. If we put the CO2 emissions aside, there are so many other benefits moving to EV's. Especially reduced local pollution in cities such as NOx, VOC and particulate emissions. Even if we just look at noise and easy maintenance, electric cars are clear winners. All this focus on CO2 just leads to a lot of inaccurate napkin calculations on one part…

> so many other benefits moving to EV's.

Not feeling forced to participate in Middle East shenanigans is a major one from my point of view.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#48

Post by toyg »

One of the many things missed in this study is that the switch to EV is not "to reduce greenhouse effects", but to do that while keeping the car industry alive. It if were all about global warming, we could all switch to trains and bikes tomorrow; but fixing environmental problems without challenging established equilibria in terms of employment and economic output, that's the hard bit.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#49

Post by Eupolemos »

valuearb wrote: post #41
jakobegger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is discussed a lot as a CO2 friendly option. The huge drawback is that we haven‘t found a way to deal with all the radioactive waste yet.

That's an incredibly minor problem compared to global warming. I'd solve the more important one first.

It's minor now.

But if it turns out that we'll need an active (as in "needs manpower") care-taking of this waste for several thousands of years, we get into the compounded interests area.

Also, there's the immediate (last 50 years) issues such as barrels of waste being treated in silly manners; e.g. thrown into the ocean near the coast and shot to pieces by air-planes if they surface...

Politicians and corporations will do anything to save money, if they think they'll get away with it. That makes nuclear waste much more dangerous than it should be.

It's not a problem, we'll have clean fusion in 20 years :D /s

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#50

Post by simonsarris »

jakobegger wrote: post #40
smsm42 wrote: post #33

France electricity is mostly (72%) from nuclear power. Aka the most under-appreciated clean energy that everybody is panicky about and wants to get rid of. Which means, unless you have a luxury of having tons of hydropower or something, nuclear is probably the best way to lower carbon footprint. Of course, this is also the least discussed way.

Nuclear power is discussed a lot as a CO2 friendly option. The huge drawback is that we haven‘t found a way to deal with all the radioactive waste yet.

We never found a way to deal with the radioactive waste that coal plants emit into the air (look it up) or the millions of deaths that coal and petrol/diesel are responsible for, but we still use those.

Per Wiki:

> According to the World Health Organization in 2011, urban outdoor air pollution, from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is estimated to cause 1.3 million deaths worldwide per year and indoor air pollution from biomass and fossil fuel burning is estimated to cause approximately 2 million premature deaths.[14] In 2013 a team of researchers estimated the number of premature deaths caused by particulate matter in outdoor air pollution as 2.1 million, occurring annually.[4][5]

And see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

Nuclear is safer and better in every way even if you multiplied all the past disasters by ten. There really is no comparison.

Where to store some icky stuff isn't really a huge drawback, its a political problem because humans have no sense of scale.

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