The editors of the Washington Post want the Biden Administration to “go bi climate change”:
The danger is imminent. The world cannot afford another round of nice-sounding proposals followed by inaction. Congress must go big on climate change.
And people wonder why the editors of the Wall Street Journal are worried about the budget deficit. Go big on COVID-19 relief; go big on infrastructure spendintg; go big on climate change. I would prefer small, efficient, effective, and incremental with solid performance metrics. At least you can figure out whether the course on which you’re heeded is going where you want to go and, if it’s not, change course.
They boost the Clean Futures Act:
One plan, the sprawling Clean Future Act, released earlier this month by the leaders of several House committees, would have the country reach net-zero greenhouse emissions by mid-century, starting with massive decarbonization of the electricity sector over the next decade. The bill would require utilities to derive increasing amounts of their electricity from clean sources, which include renewables, nuclear power and, for a limited time and at a discounted rate, natural-gas-fired power plants. The bill would invest in electric car infrastructure, compensate coal country for lost jobs and ask states to develop emissions-cutting plans that would address any areas federal programs failed to cover.
As Chesterton waggishly put it, anything not worth doing is not worth doing well. Unless China and India decide to drastically change the trajectories of their own carbon emissions very quickly rather than in 20 years, whatever we do won’t make much difference. That’s the thing about carbon emissions. Where it’s emitted matters less than how much is emitted. And all of the building that’s being proposed to transition from our present methods of generating electricity to “clean sources” means we will be emitting more carbon than would otherwise be the case not less.
As I’ve pointed out before at the present rate of adoption of electric vehicles we will never stop using internal combustion engines. If 100% of vehicles sold were suddenly EVs, it would take 20 years before the overwhelming preponderance of vehicles on the road were EVs—that’s how long it takes for the entire U. S. vehicle fleet to turn over.
IMO given the realities power generation, present emissions, worldwide trends in emissions, and the enormous costs involved if we were to “go big” on anything it should be in putting other mitigation strategies in place than in setting a goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
And I haven’t even touched on Jevons Paradox, scalability of production of EVs, or maintaining baseline power.
Malthusian logic always fails, but whether population or CO2, you can never convince the faithful.
For EV’s to become widespread, they need to be able to operate longer and recharge faster. Batteries are no different than any other fuel source, but presently, they have low energy density.
Energy density is the amount of energy per volume (or mass), and higher density means more volatile. Lithium ion batteries have a higher energy density, but they explode because they are more volatile.
To hold a charge longer, they need to become more volatile, and no amount of money can overcome physics.
Recharging is also a problem, but this has been solved for a long time. For most battery operated items, we simply replace the batteries, and the batteries can be rechargeable. For EV’s, the “gas station” would swap out the batteries, and it is likely that the batteries would become modular.
Modular, standardized and rentable.
Chinese EV maker Nio Is all about that.
But, I see no evidence that the public are clamoring for this step backwards or that the power grid will ever be able to handle the load.
“And people wonder why the editors of the Wall Street Journal are worried about the budget deficit.”
We dont wonder, we know. There is a Democrat in office. If a Republican wins in 2024 debt will again lose importance.
No idea where we end up with EVs but I do find it amazing how people have already decided they will never work. Seems like that has been said about a few other technological advances, like the telephone, television and, yes, the automobile. (I am thinking that if we get self driving cars and combine that with UBER and EVs a lot of people wont even need to own a car.)
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/articles/10-inventions-no-one-thought-would-be-a-success/
Steve
Putting an electric motor on an axle is not new technology.
If being all electric simplifies self driving car tech, that would explain why auto companies and those want to be want electric.
Turning the auto into a cellphone APP solves the problem of getting the government in control of our movements.
Tracking, identifying, limiting by law or by cost.
I have not forgotten the Obama plan to tax vehicle movement by the mile at annual registration ostensibly to save, once again, the planet.
I was listening to some investment analysts; and a point they made was the whole argument about EV’s is somewhat of a sideshow when it comes to fossil fuels.
There isn’t a solution currently for the usage of oil in sea freight or air transport. Or its uses in the industrial sector (petrochemicals and plastics).
Those uses are 45% of consumption in OECD countries. Even if the typical OECD country went 100% EV + 100% renewable power for electrical generation, they achieve a cut of oil usage by 55% only.
The other part is electrical generation. The biggest US non-fossil fuel source is nuclear at 20% and the average age of a US nuclear plant is 40 years old. The most likely scenario is much of the existing nuclear power fleet will be retired in the coming 10-20 years. Most of the additional renewable wind and solar capacity in those years will be replacing nuclear.
I’ve made that point in the past. There is no such thing as a green container ship. I’m not sure what the effect on carbon emissions the processing of petrochemicals and plastics might be. I do know that the three largest carbon emitting sectors are power generation, transportation, and building (concrete production emits a lot of carbon). That’s among the reasons I’m skeptical you can do a lot of building and reduce emissions at the same time. I wonder if the Biden Administration recognizes that their infrastructure building objective opposes their emissions reduction objective?
steve:
IMO you incorrectly interpret the Wall Street Journal. They’re pro-business. They’re only pro-Republican to the extent that they interpret policies espoused by Republicans as pro-business and oppose Democratic policies to the extent that they perceive them as anti-business. They disagreed with Trump on many issues, agreed with his objectives on some. They opposed tariffs and Trump’s limitations on immigration. They supported reducing taxes, particularly the corporate income tax.
RE: Processing Petrochemicals and Plastics
A barrel of oil is like a cow. Any unused parts must be disposed, and the parts are not interchangeable. If only the ribs and tenderloins are used, the unused parts cannot be reformed into ribs or tenderloins.
So too, the molecules that form gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and kerosene cannot be re-used. Prior to its widespread use, propane was flared off, and prior to the widespread use of gasoline, it was dumped into rivers.
@steve
No amount of money or technological advances can alter the laws of physics, as we understand them. Elon Musk cannot alter the way magnetism works, and Edison had far more failures than successes.
Westinghouse used coal to turn the generators because he wanted to make money. Windmills are not some new advanced technology discovered by John Kerry while windsurfing.
Dave- Who owns the WSJ? Was there a big outcry over increasing debt when Trump was in office, or any other Republican for that matter? Not that I remember. Put a Dem in office and you hear no end of it. If they really opposed debt why wasn’t Clinton their favorite POTUS of the last 50 years? They may occasionally disagree with a Republican on some issues but they will always support the GOP no matter how much it might cause some compromising of principles.
Where they are not in line with the conservative base is that they are more socially liberal. They dont really want gays to be stoned to death and dont seem interested in making sure that women stay home with the babies like much of the conservative base. They willingly support the right of the financial sector to screw both whites and blacks out of their money so I dont see the interest in racial divisiveness from them either.
Steve
No and for reasons that I’ve explained: his deficits were from the other side of the balance sheet. That makes a difference to them and it’s not pure partisanship.
Note that I, on the other hand, while I supported his cut in the corporate income tax (it’s an inefficient tax) I opposed cutting the personal income tax. I don’t care which side of the balance sheet the deficit comes from—it’s still a deficit. But I’m not a deficit hawk, either. I think we can run small deficit for an indefinite period.
But that’s not what Biden and the Democrats are intent on at this point. 15% and above of GDP on an annual basis is not a small deficit. I’ve talked about obvious ways to cut expenses like reducing military operations to what are actually necessary for national defense and reducing the defense budget commensurately. And I’ve offered my preferred approaches to increasing revenue which are all more efficient than what we’ve been doing.
“No amount of money or technological advances can alter the laws of physics”
Just based upon the physics we are probably 1/2 to 1/4 of max energy density for lithium batteries, and if we can figure out how to make silicon work we do even better. If we triple the distance you can drive with an EV, a number are already in the 300 mile range, you have a pretty viable vehicle for almost everyone. In many ways it was the improvement in li-ion batteries that lead to the scuds of the Tesla, not anything special done buy Tesla. Since this is engineering and not physics not sure how far it goes. On larger scales we also have the flow batteries and gravity batteries.
I ma not really in the zero fossil fuel crowd. If we can cut emissions where feasible, and it looks like we should be able not cut them a lot, I will be happy. Have to hope that future innovations let us solve the problem. From 2008 to 2015 the battery cost per kWh was reduced 75% while increasing energy density by about 500% and I am sure this has a limit somewhere but I am not sure how you have determined we have already reached that limit.
Steve
I’m in agreement with that.
However, I don’t think it’s worth spending trillions in the pursuit of an illusory objective.