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Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

reuters.com

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Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#251

Post by ClumsyPilot »

anovikov wrote: post #82
Ma8ee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are way off. It took about 15 years to go from cities dominated by horse carriages to them being dominated by cars. It took longer in agriculture and rural areas. But the shift to electrical vehicles is trivial in comparison. Technically and economically we could easily prohibit new fossil fuelled cars by 2025. Sun and wind power is already much cheaper to install than coal powered plants, and once sun and wind p…

In the field of electricity generation, sure. Technology is there, apart from storage technology. But, given still higher costs and range anxiety, it will be very difficult to convince most consumers to buy electric cars. It will be most probably only generational shift: people born before ~1990 will still buy petrol cars till they die out, and younger generations will progressively shift, having different habits. It…

> "industrial heat, and residential heating "

For decades Russia has used distruct heating using waste heat from nuclear powerplants, its the chealest heatsource known to man.

More modern approach is probably hydrogen and heat pumps, but either works.

Range anxiety is a brain bug for folks that have never driven electric.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#252

Post by leoedin »

cmdkeen wrote: post #52
ChrisRR wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My previous flat had parking about 50 metres away. The previous, people just parked anywhere on the road. I bet they won't be installing charging points at every random location on a road that anyone could possible park on

I live in Edinburgh, one of the more car-unfriendly cities in the UK and recently bought a Model 3. I park on the street, the city has gone nowhere with its plans to provide on street chargers. Yet it isn't a problem, despite a relative lack of public chargers compared to elsewhere in the country it is still perfectly feasible. I've tweaked my habits to go to the supermarket that has a charger in the car park, when p…

Is this strategy still going to work if everyone is doing the same thing?

My local supermarket has a couple of electric car charging points, amongst perhaps 200+ car parking spaces. On a busy saturday most of those spaces are full.

Certainly it's possible to install a charging point at every parking space, but it requires both a large scale building project to lay all those wires (the existing charge points are right by the supermarket - where the power is already available), and also potentially an upgrade to the local power network.

If each of those cars is fast charging at 50 kW, the supermarket carpark will suddenly be consuming 10 MW. Assuming a constant cycle of people, that's equivalent to the average power usage of 20,000 houses.

Just in one supermarket car park.

Fortunately it's unlikely everyone will charge every time they pop in, but it's something that has to be considered carefully. The electric grid has to be sized for peak load - most of the time it's not near capacity. If we're going to slot electric cars into the existing grid we have to manage demand very carefully - which means only charging cars when electricity supply is high or demand is low. Everyone rapid charging whenever they feel like it (eg during the Saturday shop) will cause huge stability issues.

The most straightforward way to manage it is to try to get as many cars as possible charging overnight (or charging whenever they're idle) and then manage when they actually draw power centrally based on electricity supply. That means extensive kerb side charging points.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#253

Post by astannard »

physicsguy wrote: post #31

Many, many houses do not have anything other than on-street parking here. Since 2012 I've lived in 5 houses, and three of them had no driveway. I'm currently buying a house which has no drive way, with no way of fitting one. Apparently 1/3 houses have only on street parking. Unless they also provide huge, huge grants to rapidly implement dense onstreet charging, and fast, this is a pipedream and will end up getting p…

Not many houses come without petrol/gas stations on their drives. Yes its an issue at the moment with batteries and charging but tech will catch up with rapid charging points etc.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#254

Post by ClumsyPilot »

barnacled wrote: post #83
LatteLazy wrote: post #30

This perfectly epitomises the uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming: * it's a non binding commitment to do something but not for at least a decade * it's not enough even if it does happen * it will be too late by then (it probably already is for anything but drastic action) * it's totally at the whim of future governments who will be no more willing to spend the money/time/popularity than the cur…

This comment perfectly epitomises the 'climate crisis' extinction rebellion Greta Thunberg school of response to climate issues. Firstly - any response to climate change that does not include China and really India and other emerging economies too is more or less useless. Why should we deny such countries the benefits of full industrialisation? Secondly - while in some respects you are correct, looking at CO2 numbers…

"Firstly - any response to climate change that does not include China"

China is actuslly on track to exceed their Paris commitments, while US and Australia are not

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#255

Post by pjc50 »

physicsguy wrote: post #136
CalRobert wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should stop letting individuals appropriate public space for storage of their private property, and charge market rate for the land used by parking, thereby encouraging people who are not car dependent to buy houses such as yours instead of demanding a public handout for vehicle storage? (The High Cost Of Free Parking explores this issue in depth)

I mean, I agree to some extent, but there's also no public transport service to the place I'm buying a house other than a single bus that runs twice a day for taking kids to school.

No public transport and not enough space to have off-street parking is a pretty terrible combination.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#256

Post by asenk »

LatteLazy wrote: post #30

This perfectly epitomises the uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming: * it's a non binding commitment to do something but not for at least a decade * it's not enough even if it does happen * it will be too late by then (it probably already is for anything but drastic action) * it's totally at the whim of future governments who will be no more willing to spend the money/time/popularity than the cur…

There is no "uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming".

There's s a small group of rogue countries like US trying to do their best to burn the planet while undermining climate agreements and not doing anything about climate change at 16+ tons of annual CO2 per capita, while some others are doing a whole lot, for example UK has pretty about halved their emissions from already a lot lower starting point, from 10.3 to 5.6 tons in the last 40 years.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#257

Post by pjc50 »

djmobley wrote: post #249
crispyporkbites wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there’s 6 weeks to go and there’s still no trade agreement in place, nothing material has happened in the last 4 years. Any business that imports/exports has no clue what will happen on 1st Jan. But yea I can get a blue passport now. What a great thing to waste years on.

> nothing material has happened in the last 4 years The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020. It happened and the world didn’t fall apart. Negotiations are taking place in the way they always do, and a deal with the EU will be reached at the last minute as everyone expected it to.

> a deal with the EU will be reached at the last minute as everyone expected it to

Perhaps, but at what ridiculous cost?

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#258

Post by pjc50 »

rowanG077 wrote: post #67
djmobley wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve completely missed the point of what is a very reasonable and forward-thinking signalling exercise. You cannot have sudden cliff-edges in policies (like banning the sale of new ICE vehicles) that would put thousands, if not millions of people out of jobs. You need to send signals like this to the market well in advance so they can invest and plan ahead.

Millions of people die or they are out of Jobs? What a hard choice to make. The consideration shouldn't be "but what about the economy?". It should be what if we don't do it.

Covid has absolutely shown that there are a lot of people who prioritise "the economy" over even quite a lot of deaths.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#259

Post by ppf »

hokkos wrote: post #243
ppf wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some simple back-of-the-envelope maths shows that, due to the massively increased amount of energy needed to manufacture an EV, it takes somwhere near half the life of the car (assuming 100k miles) to pay back that "CO2 debt". And even then, you are still limited by the net CO2 emissions of your electricity source. This is why I claim that the CO2 benefits are minimal (not none, or negative). The abstract of the arti…

Check this site https://climobil.connecting-project.lu It has better back-of-the-envelope maths than you could do, it use peer reviewed lifecycle data, take into account real world tank-to-weel CO2 emission from cars where NEDC and WLTP underestimate them massively, well-to-tank emission to make and transport petrol, lifecycle batteries, glider, engine and also the future decarbonation of the electric grid. It shows…

Great, thanks. I just compared my family car to a somewhat equivalent EV, and it takes 40,000km to break even in CO2 emissions. This is very much in line with my original point (and my "back of the envelope maths"). In the online calculator you linked, I assumed a car life of around 150,000km, as the longevity of mass-produced EVs is yet to be determined. It also addresses none of the additional points in my original comment, as we have so far talked entirely about CO2 emissions. If it is all about CO2, and the impending climate catastrophe, then the relatively small reduction in CO2/mile from an EV is just not even close to what is needed. In the calculator linked, it's a 40% reduction per mile. An EV is not the answer. Significantly fewer travelled miles is the answer.

Edit: Just for reference, the UN is calling for a 7.6% reduction in CO2 every year for the next 10 years. Either way you calculate it, an EV alone does not acheive that goal. And if you massively reduce your miles (say, 10x), it doesn't matter (relatively speaking) if you use an EV or an ICE car.

https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/climate-change/...

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#260

Post by pjc50 »

JimDabell wrote: post #113
LatteLazy wrote: post #30

This perfectly epitomises the uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming: * it's a non binding commitment to do something but not for at least a decade * it's not enough even if it does happen * it will be too late by then (it probably already is for anything but drastic action) * it's totally at the whim of future governments who will be no more willing to spend the money/time/popularity than the cur…

I think you’re being a bit unfair here. The UK has made good progress in moving away from fossil fuels in recent years. As of June this year, the UK was generating more power from renewables than from fossil fuels. A decade ago hardly any power was being generated from renewables. The UK has gone months without burning coal this year, and plans to decommission the last three coal power plants in the next five years.…

The weird thing is that hardly anyone seems willing to take credit for this success.
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