Posted on 12/01/2020 5:15:01 PM PST by george76
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday that electricity consumption will double if the world’s car fleets are electrified, increasing the need to expand nuclear, solar, geothermal and wind energy generating sources.
Increasing the availability of sustainable energy is a major challenge as cars move from combustion engines to battery-driven electric motors, a shift which will take two decades, Musk said in a talk hosted by Berlin-based publisher Axel Springer.
There’s no unicorn energy source or free lunch. Currently, electric cars are primarily powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Those are the sources we use to generate electricity, after all, according to the Energy Information Agency. Renewables are growing but still account for less than 20% of U.S. electricity.
There’s no free lunch when it comes to renewable energy source, which may not even be all that renewable. Wind and sun are free, but the means of generating power from them are not.
They require batteries, which requires extensive mining and the use of toxic chemicals.
Mining is a dirty business.
...
Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years.
...
the blades can’t easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed. That’s created an urgent search for alternatives in places that lack wide-open prairies. In the U.S., they go to the handful of landfills that accept them, in Lake Mills, Iowa; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Casper, where they will be interred in stacks that reach 30 feet ..
Removing them and transporting them to landfills increases windmills’ energy footprint over time.
...
more electric cars will require more electric generation.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Interesting way to save the environment.
Ping.
I don’t see this as an issue at all.
China is building hundreds of coal fired power plants to fill the gap.
—surprise, surprise—the principles of physics remain in force in the known universe—
Don’t worry, the Biden administration planning to shut down all the coal plants won’t have any impact on this.
Paging Mr. Obvious...
Paging Captain Obvious.
Nuclear power (including fusion) is essential to meet the demand generated by EV’s.
Seems like Musk is getting more realistic and maybe even conservative all the time. Glad he made these statements.
Now about the carbon footprint of rockets ...
At least Musk is living in the real world.
Most Libs think electricity come from a a little thingamagigy on wall that stick a power plug into.
Seriously
Thorium nuclear.
Sure! Wind energy! Carpet the earth with those gigantic eyesores that require the clearing of acres, access roads, and ridgetop locations that raptors use during migration. The giant turbine blades can’t be recycled and have to be dumped in landfills when they’re no longer usable. Real green energy there!
I think the person who figures out how to repurpose these into something useful will become a very wealthy person in short order. No shortage of raw materials in the near term, and in fact, people looking for ways to get rid of them.
duh!
Just figuring that out, Elon? Bright guy; I’m sure he knew it all along.
If you’re aiming for a sustainable, low-pollution future free from fossil fuels, I would think hydrogen fuel would be a good bet, generated from water by nuclear reactors and a touch of feel-good solar panels. That is, unless your real goal is to bring Western society down to its knees.
Neighborhood power supplies are not set up to handle even half of the people having only electric vehicles.
Transformers are generally undersized because they have had very light demands overnite, when they can cool down.
Having every house charging one or two vehicles overnight will cause them to break down.
Further any disruptions to your service from storms or accidents, cars trucks knocking out a line, or a contractor severing a cable, and now not only your home is not powered but you may not be able to go anywhere either.
Interesting . . . especially in Cali where we shut down power because the lines may cause fires in windy, hot, dry weather. Setting up to fail and not do what it is supposed to do which is to be environmentally friendly.
and lithium
If we would like to have a North American standard of living for everyone in the world – say, 1 car for every 2 people – then we would need about 3.4 billion Nissan Leafs. This would use 32% of the identified resources (all known lithium in the world), or 82% of the reserves (all lithium that is currently economic to produce). Even with widespread recycling, that seems like an unsustainable prospect.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
That’s a lot of windmills.
Electric cars has very limited range vs traditional diesel/gasoline vehicles plus the huge fact that electric charging stations are still few & far between.
So with the eventual elimination of liquid fueled cars, the govt has then corralled the mobility and freedom of movement of the people.
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