Diesel is not better for the environment than electric

https://innovationorigins.com/no-diesel-is-not-better-for-the-environment-than-electric/

by mhandley • 7 years ago

84 111 7 years ago

The idea that you can say "oh, electric is based on fuel power plants" is just disingenuous. Electricity is fungible. Having electric cars lets you replace the fuel with renewables and the car doesn't have to care.

staffanj4• 7 years ago

Same could be said about the fossil cars.

Most diesel cars can be used with HVO100 - 100% renewable

melling2• 7 years ago

And clean?

Electric cars have lots of options in addition to electricity from fossil fuels

Nuclear, solar, wind, geo-thermal, hydro.

We’ll probably need diesel for quite some time but electric cars do have more options.

sliken5• 7 years ago

True. But how much HVO100 can you personally produce?

Solar is easy to produce locally, even on your own roof. Also electric cars typically turn around 85% of the energy into forward motion. Because it's local there's minimal distribution costs. Additionally grid size installations are competing with coal, natural gas, and similar sources quite well on price.

Gas cars are around 15% efficient, and diesels are only slightly higher. Anything like gas has substantial costs in distribution, and of course you have to drive to/from gas stations (instead of just charging at home/work.

So even if HVO100 is 100% renewable, it's not going to be cost efficient, or energy efficient.... so why bother?

_ph_17• 7 years ago

Fuel produced from anything farmed might be carbon neutral, but the process of farming itself has a huge impact on the environment. Also, we just have by far not enough farmland to come even close in supplying the traffic sector with fuels - while in many regions there still is a shortage of food. So with the exception of processing waste from food production, it is environmental-negative to use grown fuels. Solar cells are more than 10x more efficient per area used and can be mounted on top of roofs etc.

JulianMorrison4• 7 years ago

There's good reasons beside carbon to avoid running your car on what's pretty much liquid margarine. Arable land can't be spared for it on a global scale. And it fills the air with the usual medically inadvisable smut and gases.

Airplanes, on the other hand, that might be a good thing.

pure-awesome• 7 years ago

Do you mean that if you get electric cars running off coal power plants now, then that frees you up to replace the coal with e.g. solar power later on?

(From a programming perspective - since this is Hacker News, after all - we could view electric power as an "interface" which hides the implementation of how it's generated from the car, as opposed to petrol which is "tightly coupled" to the car)

beachy• 7 years ago

Always love the car analogies.

They're really both interfaces, for petrol you get energy and CO2 emissions for a given quantity. However you don't know that the CO2 emissions are net - the fuel might have been produced via some synthetic process driven by renewables. Unlikely, but as an interface you can't really know the details of the implementation behind the scenes.

JulianMorrison4• 7 years ago

Yes exactly, or natural gas plants, but same thing. Electricity is a universal interface. EVs free up their upstream to change at whim.

That freedom means that greening of the power supply can be solved at a societal, rather than personal level.

aequitas• 7 years ago

Same goes for diesel. You can run cars exclusively on bio-fuel, the cars won't care. Only when you scale it up to current worldwide fuel consumption levels you might even make a worse impact on climate than fossil fuels would right now.

_ph_17• 7 years ago

Well, thats the point - we know that bio fuels have a huge negative environmental impact and won't scale, while we have a clear path to base the grid on reneweable production.

fock3• 7 years ago

We could also have had diesel cars with about 20-40% of emissions of the the current "fleet" for about two decades. But apparently nobody cares and now, instead of thinking about all the other stuff we need to replace fossils (heating, steel and concrete, chemical industry) and slowly phasing out those low-emissions cars, people debate about electric cars, which as of today are mainly used to greenwash the sale of inefficient SUVs and themselves are abominations of the green growth idea (name one advantage of the model x over a station wagon design)...

As it stands now we are experiencing an all out bankruptcy declaration of the idea that free, unregulated markets (which allow monopolies and cartels to thrive) are gonna be beneficial for humankind in the long term.

bsaul2• 7 years ago

I don’t think there ever was an idea in economics that totally free and unregulated markets was a good thing. The most hard core free market proponents always said state should focus on the (minimal) sets of rules to let the market maintain fair competition between participants. That includes anti-monopoly and anti-cartel regulations.

henryackerman• 7 years ago

Exactly. Having electric cars means that you can generate your power however you want. Nuclear (fission or fusion), solar, fossil, biomass - it doesn't matter.

ThomPete9• 7 years ago

That you can doesn't mean you do. Both wind and solar uses ex coal as backup and with only 1% of the worlds energy consumption being covered by those its safe to say that currently evs are powered by fossil fuel. Also look up capacity factor. We arent even close to be able to use solar and wind for anything big scale, although actually creating these giant farms are extremely big scale because the energy density is so low.

_ph_17• 7 years ago

No big scale? Germany is in 2019 at 45% reneweables in the electricity mix so far. At the moment I am writing this, 30% of the electricity is provided by solar, 20% by wind energy.

reitzensteinm8• 7 years ago

Per capita per year, the US consumes 13.0 MWh of electricity and 436.6 gallons of gasoline. With ~132k BTU of energy per gallon, that's 16.9 MWh.

Let's say electric cars are 50% more efficient in terms of energy consumption; that's still a 65% increase in the amount of electricity production required. As we move to EVs and renewables, this extra energy is going to come from keeping fossil fuel plants online that would have otherwise been shut down.

Counting the energy use of EVs as potentially from renewable sources is just feel good and ignores reality. The marginal electrical consumption caused by Teslas coming off the line today will not come from renewable sources over the lifetime of the vehicle, even if you assume a very healthy exponential ramp from today.

You're refuting one bad argument with another, which unfortunately is pretty much par for the course for discussions on energy policy.

Even with this, the shift is still well worth doing, not least of which because the distributed storage it offers is likely the only way we'll be able to hit 100% renewables down the track.

_ph_17• 7 years ago

I cannot comment on the US numbers, but the German numbers are as following: - total electricity production is around 600 TWh/year - switching all cars to electricity would require about 120 TWh/year (44M cars x 14000km/year * 20kWh/100km)

That would be a 20% increase in electricity production required, but from that one can deduct quite a bit for fuel refining and distribution, better buffering of peak electricity production etc.

If you take the energy content of fuel, an electric car is roughly 4x as efficient as a combustion engine. While combustion engines may reach peak efficiencies of 40%, the average over the whole driving cycle is less than 20%, as the peak efficiency is only reached in a narrow band of power productions - usually at highway speeds. That is the reason hybrid cars save fuel, the electric component reduces the inefficiencies of certain parts of the driving cycle.

D_Alex• 7 years ago

Per capita per year, the US consumes 13.0 MWh of electricity and 436.6 gallons of gasoline. With ~132k BTU of energy per gallon, that's 16.9 MWh. Let's say electric cars are 50% more efficient in terms of energy consumption

Let's look up the numbers, instead of guessing.

The average fuel economy of an american car is apparently 24.7 mpg, whereas a Tesla Model S gets 3.0 miles per kWhr.

So if you replace one with the other, you will need about 3.5 MWhr of extra electricity. 27% extra.

The good thing is that we should be able to charge the EVs at the time of our choosing, and maybe even discharge them into the grid when the power demand outweighs the generation. The utilisation of wind, solar and off-peak baseload power should increase.

kowdermeister• 7 years ago

You are missing the point. This is a long run game, since we can easily transition from fossil fuels to alternate energy source without having to replace fundamentally how EV engines work. All they need is electrons, not exploding fossil fuel. These electrons can come from any source. If it's fossil today it doesn't matter. 20, 50. 100 years from now the source of energy can shift significantly while the transportation industry just wouldn't care anymore.

sliken5• 7 years ago

ICE cars are around 15% efficient. Electric cars are generally 85% to 90% efficient. "50% more" is a pretty big understatement. 1.5x * 15 is only 22.5% efficient still around 1/4th as efficient as an electric car.

Also given solar's growth and the time it will take for most cars to be electric there's plenty of room for more solar production. California now requires solar on all new homes, and it's getting ever more price effective to use renewables. Seems like I see a few stories a week about a coal, NG, or similar peaker plant being cancelled, or decomissioned in favor of battery storage, solar, or both... for purely economic reasons.

A 75kw battery in a tesla gives you a range of 310 miles or so. So that's 4 miles or so per kw. So if I install the smallest Tesla solar system (4kw for $8,000) and being in central California I get a fair bit of sun. Should easily make 15-20kwh in the winter, and a fair bit more in the summer. That's 80 ish miles a day in the winter, and more in the summer. I drive about 30 miles a day on average.

So with a 8kw solar system I'd likely handle my driving needs and put a big dent in my other power needs. Tesla's new solar pricing puts it around $2.00 a watt installed. $16,000 isn't cheap, but our power bill isn't cheap either, especially in the summer.

As a nice bonus solar panels noticeably decrease the heat load in the attic, saving airconditioning costs. Amusingly solar panels over parking lots (so they provide shade) actually save a fair amount of gas. The huge win is when everyone runs their AC flat out for 15 minutes when they get into their 130F cars, if their car is closer to ambient they spend much less gas on the AC.

While solar does contribute to the "duck" shaped power production curve, cars typically spend the vast majority of their time parked, and can be programmed to use power whenever there is a surplus/whenever the price is lowest. So while electric cars can consume large amounts of power, they generally aren't picky on when they get it. At least for home users they typically schedule charging for whatever time the cheapest rates start.

Galaxeblaffer• 7 years ago

Perfect example of how a comma can make all the difference in a sentence

simion3142• 7 years ago

I do not understand the point "EVs are extremely useful for daily grid management." and the image https://innovationorigins.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Sch...

I am imagining most cars will be plugged in at night when there is no solar energy produced,do they imply you can buffer energy in the cars battery and you can extract some if is needed or that you can charge it in smart ways, like charge slower if the grid is not at full capacity.

Are there disadvantages for the battery life or charging time?

legooolas2• 7 years ago

Disadvantage to the end user of the car: Cycling the batteries more to do this will shorten their useful life.

sliken5• 7 years ago

Yes, this is true. It's not a huge factor. Keep in mind that the worst 1% of the days of the year are a serious strain on the electrical grid. They often require very inefficient and expensive peak plants to spin up to help ensure the grid doesn't fail. Not only are those peaker plants inefficient when running, they are quite expensive even when not running.

Additionally even on those top 1% days (3.5 days a year) there's likely only a few hours where the load is near max.

So if say 1M (2% or so of all cars) cars in a country like Germany would contribute say 25% of their capacity just 3-4 days a year it could make a significant difference and make the power grid more reliable and allow the least efficient peaker plants to be decommissioned.

Even over a decade of use, electric car owners aren't going to notice 25% of their battery being used 3-4 times a year.

jypepin2• 7 years ago

My memory is blurry as this I read that almost 10 years ago now, and it probably changed since then, but one vision was, assuming you have an electric car that has a capacity of 200 miles. You drive on average 20 miles to get to work, get into the parking lot, plug in your car. It doesn't need to be charged, because you'll be doing the same 20 miles at night.

So instead of charging, the grid is able to "buy" electricity from your battery during stress times (say maybe during lunch hour or something).

You end up having the grid having access to all electric car's battery when not needed.

simion3142• 7 years ago

Won't that affect the battery lifetime? Or this new batteries can be smart about this? I am thinking that replacing an used battery will contribute negatively to the environment.

rini17• 7 years ago

EVs used for commuting will eventually be plugged in during the day at the workplaces (in cities where the grid usually has more capacity), not only overnight at homes. Large part of renewables is wind, which is available overnight, too. Most EV users will surely accept trading, say, 30% of maximal EV range which they don't need every day, for cheap electricity plan.

As long as we stay in optimal operating envelope for batteries (no full charge/discharge with large currents, no temperature extremes), there is no downside for battery life.

bdibs• 7 years ago

I don’t know if that many people today actually think their electric car is far better than traditional ICE vehicles, but that doesn’t matter.

These intermediate steps are required to setup the logistics and economies of scale for a future when our primary energy source is a cleaner alternative.

fock3• 7 years ago

just that some cars and their usage patterns won't matter for the kind of energy consumption required by residential heating, industrial processes and shipping. Those are the real things, where we need to setup logistics and economics and absolutely nothing is done. (Reasonable) Electric vehicles are nice and good and phasing out reasonable (think 50-60mpg) cars for them is an inevitable thing (at least in cities), but it's just the tip of the iceberg

close04• 7 years ago

economies of scale

This economy isn't new. Public transport, much of it electrified already, is the very definition of economy of scale. It will trade some comfort and convenience for increased efficiency and lower cost (not to mention some hefty side benefits like less congestion and reclaiming some land in cities). It could also free up city traffic and allow reclaiming some of the land. It's also not very popular with people who can afford an EV today which leads me to believe this is only about comfort and convenience at the budget you can afford. For some people this leads to an EV, for others to an ICE.

smoovb• 7 years ago

Chase that with this article - "Enough with the 'Actually, Electric Cars Pollute More' Bullshit Already" https://jalopnik.com/enough-with-the-actually-electric-cars-...

jimjimjim• 7 years ago

The jalopnik article was great.

It's one thing for a tech or green website to dispel that narrative but japonik is a fairly hardcore car enthusiast/moterhead site.

NiekvdMaas• 7 years ago

TLDR: the study referenced is inherently flawed. Among others:

* It used outdated NEDC tests instead of WLTP numbers. (Diesel) car makers are known to have cheated NEDC tests for decades, using corrected WLTP numbers changes the whole story.

* It exaggerated the CO2 emissions for production of batteries, Tesla's Gigafactory emits 2.6x less CO2 per kWh than assumed.

* It assumed a battery lifespan of just 150k km. Tesla's rated battery lifespan is over 2M km, so taking 300k as very conservative number changes the calculation significantly.

* It assumed an energy mix of today, instead of an increasing share of renewable energy in the future.

Using corrected data, the Tesla emits actually 63% less CO2 instead of 11-28% more.

pdpi• 7 years ago

It assumed an energy mix of today, instead of an increasing share of renewable energy in the future.

This is probably worth top billing. Even if electric vehicles were to produce more pollution _today_, they would still be a positive in that it would move a large part of the pollution problem upstream, where we have many more strategies available to solve it. Not entirely unlike an abstraction layer that produces worse performance today but enables performance-optimising refactoring tomorrow.

a13n• 7 years ago

How is this news?

rebuilder• 7 years ago

A bit of a sideline, but I'm inclined to agree that simply counting renewable energy produced as carbon neutral isn't right. I'm not even thinking of the emissions incurred in constructing e.g. solar plants. Energy is a liquid market, any consumption takes up a part of the total production of the relevant area, and it's the average emissions in that area we should be concerned with, IMO.

It's probably not quite so cut-and dried. A gigafactory building solar to produce it's own energy certainly seems like it should get a steep discount in emissions. But where do we draw the line? I buy wind power. Does that mean it no longer matters how much power I use? That doesn't seem reasonable, either.

jarvist• 7 years ago

If you want to be more environmental, use power when the current carbon intensity of the grid is low. Effectively you are then providing demand-side management to reduce overall carbon dioxide production. https://carbonintensity.org.uk/

mhandley• 7 years ago

What you really want to know is what the marginal carbon intensity is. In other words, if I add demand now, what form of generation will supply that additional demand? This is somewhat different from what the current mean carbon intensity is.

benj1112• 7 years ago

Its a choice how people decide to account for it yes, the correct answer probably depends on the situation.

If electricity supplied to the grid is 50% wind, and 50% coal. You could sell 50% of your customers 100% green electricity, or sell 50% green electricity to all of your customers.

The former allows customer to put their money where their mouth is, and directly support the green energy build out. The latter may be more suitable for govt mandated targets.

The only thing that's unreasonable is counting green electricity twice.

ZeroGravitas2• 7 years ago

Note the former doesn't fully allow customers to put their money where their mouth is, since a great deal of their electricity/power will be used indirectly. So voting for government mandates will ensure that the companies they buy from are using clean power even if they are suppliers to suppliers to suppliers and so not directly influenceable via consumer action.

mothsonasloth• 7 years ago

Is it just me or does anyone else not think in absolutes for cars, nuclear, renewables etc.

Yes, fossil fuels should be phased out, however we should still continue research to make Diesel and Petrol more efficient and clean. A large proportion of the world still can't afford a car let alone an electric one, those that do buy secondhand imports from the Western world (5-10 years old).

Equally logistics will be reliant on ICE for many years to come, so focusing on efficiency and reducing those emissions.

Stop bashing either technology and focus on improving them together!

sddfd• 7 years ago

I think it is clear that electric is the future, mostly because of better energy efficiency, simpler manufacturing, and falling battery prices.

What I don't know is how quickly this future will come, and whether CNG/LNG (to which engines of cars already in use can easily be converted) is the right thing for the next 10 years until electric vehicles are cheap, and charging and range aren't a problem anymore.

LNG/CNG burns much cleaner than diesel/gas and it is easier to refill than to recharge. As bonus, refitted engines retain the ability to run on gas if needed.

Theodores• 7 years ago

We have had LNG/CNG for forty years. There have been huge fleets of public sector vehicles converted to it in the past but those vehicles were not replaced with more LNG/CNG vehicles. There was also a considerable tax incentive.

It was a failed experiment. It never took off. Already electric cars have better infrastructure and higher uptake and it isn't as if governments are fleet buying electric vehicles for councils/utilities to use. They had been doing that with the LNG/CNG things several decades ago, and building some refilling infrastructure in depots.

When you compare the success of diesel in the European market for small cars you can see a change of fuel is possible. Diesel isn't as cheap as it once was but it still commands a large part of the European market.

I think we need to look to China and what they are doing. It is full steam ahead for electric. The diesel and petrol cars will simply get replaced with new vehicles, there won't be any conversion to LNG/CNG.

We get the full Musk vision of robot taxi cars that do their fleet thing removing the need for car parks and making roads safe to even the lamest squirrel, but the real danger to the automotive status quo is affordable Chinese electric cars that pass the safety tests and are nice to be in just because they are electric. We have had the market changed before with Volkswagen and the Japanese cars coming along and actually being what people wanted, despite being alien to the established industry.

Most cars you see reviewed are refreshes of the existing conventional ICE models, they have updated styling and updated infotainment systems with a revised version of the same platform. Despite the failings, Tesla are 7 years ahead in redefining the automobile product. The incumbents are not really trying, they are just running these ICE refresh vehicles. The market isn't going to be disrupted by them.

Meanwhile, in China they have 5 and 10 year plans to dominate the automotive trade with fully electric cars. Plus the incentives in their domestic market make things possible at scale. Much like how the VW came along with a better value proposition the same can happen with Chinese electric cars. If the payments are easy and the warranty lasts forever with the running costs much lower than ICE then the market for second hand ICE cars will be reduced to scrap value. As soon as it comes to replacing a part such as a bolt buried deep in the transmission somewhere it becomes more sensible to scrap the thing.

aivisol• 7 years ago

I agree with you, as I cannot see, for example container ships or Australian Road Trains [0] converting to electric anytime soon. Also what about freight trains in remote parts of the world?

EDIT: freight trains are for the most part electric, they just carry their own diesel-powered power plants with them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train

StreamBright• 7 years ago

Depends on how do you produce electricity. In France where electricity is produced by nuclear power, it is certainly true. In countries like Germany for example where electricity is produced by burning coal, it might not be true.

_ph_17• 7 years ago

The critisized article uses 550g/kWh for the German grid mix, but in 2018 it already was down to about 480g/kWh and is on track to be lower in 2019 as reneweables are expanded. So that number is quite off already.

H.W. Sinn has made a range of presentations (you can find them on youtube if you understand German) where he tries to show how reneweables are infeasible. Also there, he has the pattern to use slightly out of date numbers as basis of his calculations. I actually have met C. Buchal at university, but that is quite some time ago. He is a really nice guy and as a physicist he should have spotted the shortcomings of this publication. But from what I have read, he is working on synthetic fuels, so that might explain the angle.

T-10002• 7 years ago

Since the electricity produced in the EU is a part of the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), one could argue that any electricity used will have no impact at all on the CO2 emissions. The reason is that in the ETS, there are a fixed amount of emission allowances. So if a coal power plant produces extra electricity, someone else will decide to emit less CO2.

mathfailure• 7 years ago

And one would lose their argument because having quotas on emissions doesn't eliminate the impact (because otherwise they won't be quotas, they'd be a prohibition).

T-10002• 7 years ago

BKS argues that you cannot take solar panels on the roof of the battery factory into your calculations since "otherwise you just take away green electricity elsewhere". My point is that if you allow that reasoning (which I think is correct) then it also follows that using dirty electricity in the EU takes away dirty electricity elsewhere. Therefore, the calculated emission impact of electricity use should probably be much closer to zero.

And since diesel use in transportation is not included in ETS, there is an even bigger impact of switching from diesel to EV: you stop burning fossil fuel in your car and the electricity you use will crowd out emissions elsewhere.

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

The whole diesel/electric/petrol discussion is pointless, the only thing that is actually better for the environment is to drive less. The other three are all about a degree of being less bad, not better.

julienreszka• 7 years ago

How much is less.

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

70% or so of all the daily commutes, and maybe 30 to 50% of all delivery van movements? The impact of that would be huge.

Ygg22• 7 years ago

That advise just fails miseably in practice. We can't go back to non-mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those times.

Can you imagine ships taking months to cross Atlantic? Can you imagine horse being used for delivery?

franky47• 7 years ago

The fact that delivery requires moving a couple of tons of vehicle to deliver at most 50kg of packages is where the problem lies. Larger delivery vehicles will obviously be required for remote locations and logistics, but for edge delivery (to re-use Cloud terminology) in urban spaces, there are many cases where soft mobility solutions would make much more sense, like electric-assisted cycling. DPD has started investing in those solutions [1].

As Dr Elliot Fishman said when Dominos announced pizza delivery by self-driving cars: "If the answer is a 1500kg ton car to deliver a 0.9kg pizza, you're not giving the problem your full attention". - https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568

[1] https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-bike/

viraptor• 7 years ago

You're thinking of going back rather than improving. Why a horse for delivery? How about (for example)

- less frequent shopping, delivered in a more efficient way, than one family car at a time

- improvements in public transport to reduce one-person drives

- more remote work, removing daily commuters

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

We can't go back to non-mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those times.

I really don't see why not.

Can you imagine ships taking months to cross Atlantic? Can you imagine horse being used for delivery?

Yes I can. I can also imagine less shipping by producing more stuff locally.

Can you imagine horse being used for delivery?

No, but I can imagine deliveries to be much more efficient than they are today. Just for one anecdotal example, last week I ordered two memory modules for a NAS, they arrived in two different shipments. Even a moments' reflection would have shown the ridiculousness of partial shipments, for one that particular NAS needs its memory incremented in double banks, for another, you'd have to do two upgrades even if it worked. So two different DHL trucks had to drive a significant distance in order to deliver two very small (less than 30 grams each) devices. The inefficiency there is staggering.

misnome• 7 years ago

The whole how much to drive discussion is pointless, the only thing that is actually better for the environment is to not drive at all.

Every option being "pointless" until it's the absolute perfect universal best solution is a great excuse for never doing anything.

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

Sure, but just to be more structural about allowing people to work from home and to collate shipments from multiple senders to a single recipient (like we used to do...) would already cut down tremendously on un-neccesary mileage.

A very large percentage of the jobs out there could be done just as effective from home as from an office.

perfunctory• 7 years ago

Also in the news: "The European Commission has formally accused BMW, VW, and Daimler of colluding to impede the rollout of emissions limiting technology" [0]

I really hope all these German carmakers become the next Kodak.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18296540/european-commissi...

foxyv• 7 years ago

In the meantime electric cycling and public transportation beat both of these 2 ton couches on wheels. Anyone who has ever tried an E-Bike knows that they are freaking amazing. We can do so much better than electric cars.

Diesel is not better for the environment than electric

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