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Want to Drive an Electric Car? Move to France.
Though I gather some of the statistics it cites are disputed, Bjørn Lomborg’s new Prager U video on electric cars is an excellent example of how to think through an issue. In short, don’t be so enamored of first-order benefits that you ignore the second-order costs, and don’t forget to consider whether there might be better uses of one’s resources, even if the net benefits are positive.
Despite its much rosier spin on electrics, this article actually agrees with Lomborg’s basic conclusion that — taking all matters into account — electric cars are an expensive way to moderately reduce carbon emissions in the United States. If anything, they warrant a shrug more than a subsidy.
The interesting thing is how much electric cars’ emissions vary depending on where you are in the world*. In India — whose electric system is overwhelmingly coal-powered — you’d probably be “greener” driving a Ford Expedition than a Nissan Leaf. Things are slightly better in China, Australia, and South Africa, which also rely on coal.
The countries where the numbers work most to electric cars’ favor fall into two categories: those blessed with vast hydroelectric and/or geothermal resources (i.e., Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Amazonian and La Plata river basins) and France. The former category is ignorable, as these resources are already tapped-out and — last I checked — nobody’s figured out a safe or economical way to build new rivers or volcanoes.
So, what sets France apart, then? Simple: it’s the only country in the world that produces the majority of its electrical power through nuclear fission, as well as a substantial portion of its total power. In over fifty years, it’s proved remarkably safe, reliable, and inexpensive. What incidents there have been were local and relatively mild, and the only two deaths that can be attributed to it didn’t involve the actual production of energy.
Fossil fuels are one of the greatest discoveries in human history, and are directly responsible for much of the material boon of the last 150 years. They’re nowhere near done working for us, either, whether in the developing world or in the most sophisticated economies in the planet. But the sooner we can get over our infatuation with renewables and our hang-ups about nuclear, the more power we’ll have. Literally.
* It can also depend on where you are within your country, especially if it’s a large, geographically diverse one like the United States.
Published in Science & Technology
I can see liberals complaining about Lombourg’s excessive clarity. Thanks for this post!
But…..but….Three Mile Island! Chernobyl! Vermont Yankee!
Speak for yourself. I’m sure Walker’s working on it now.
I am continually amused by misinformed people (usually progressives) who say to me, We just need to build more wind and solar capacity! – as if the problem with those generating sources were simply a matter of scale.
Where’s EJ when we need him?
Good post, Tom.
Environmentalism used to be about cleaning up rivers, lakes, land, and the air. With those problems largely solved in the Western world, environmentalism degenerated into a cult.
Modern environmentalism is allergic to facts and logic. What matters is how it makes you feel in your soul. So what if electric cars and ethanol are actually worse for the planet than conventional cars and fuels? Buying a Nissan Leaf — and berating others who are not “green” enough — feeds an environmentalist’s moral vanity.
This mindset also feeds more power to government, which is why bureaucrats hotly pursue climate treaties and environmental regulations and “green” mandates. “Do what we say, or we’ll kill the planet!” is a great way to rally popular opinion against regular Americans who just want to be left alone.
And the scale necessary is MASSIVE. Your average passive environmentalist has no idea that a single modern wind turbine needs about 10 acres of clear land around it. Or that solar farms use massive amounts of water. Or that power-generation estimates of nearly every large-scale renewable energy project are wildly overstated.
The Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave Desert is state-of-the-art. It cost $2 billion, but is generating only 40 percent of the power taxpayers were promised. And it also has to be “jump-started” every morning by natural gas power. If you can’t scale-up a solar plant in the Mojave Desert, you can’t scale it up anywhere.
I just bought a new car. I started with the premise that I could buy an all electric because it would be my second car. Seldom do we put more than 70 miles a day around town. But when I put all the numbers to it, all electric was marginally less expensive fuel wise. We live in a high electricity rate area. After considering the price of the vehicle and the loss of range and my fear of electrical fires from chargers I bought a conventional car, a Ford Focus. I had been considering a Ford Fusion plug in. Part of what pushed me to the Focus was it made in America and the Fusion is made in Mexico.
I woulda liked the video better if he’d at least mentioned hybrids.
While it’s certainly debatable whether or not the fuel savings from a hybrid outweigh the extra upfront cost, it’s still true that they don’t burn coal the way electric cars do.
The nuclear industry has to do a better job lobbying (yes, lobbying) for the new modular reactors. They could offer so much to this country, if people would learn about them with their heads and not their fears, we could actually have a power source that is clean and efficient.
Your average environmentalist has no understanding of the scale of electricity production in a modern Western country like the US.
Hybrids are verboten don’t you know. They still use carbon spewing products from the evil Exxon!! That includes my Camry Hybrid which is going strong at 138,000 miles! I didn’t buy it new as the mileage savings payback vs initial cost was around 35 years for my usage scenario at the time. I found a low mileage vehicle about two years old and after extensive research decided to give it a whirl. I couldn’t be happier as I’ve had only one major expense, something called a VSC pump which was a dealer only item. ;(( Otherwise I’m satisfied with the performance and comfort of this car. I’m not at all concerned with the emissions as I’m not convinced that we face Apocalypse Now unless we give up all modern convenience as per the global alarmist dicta, I just want a reliable, economic means of transportation. I’m also impressed with my 2002 4runner (185,000 miles and going strong) though it gets less than half the gas mileage it does comes in handy at times.
I’m a fan of Lomborg, but there are a couple of issues here:
That said, I’ve written several times before about how many of the perceived green projects create more pollutants in practice in the real world.
Good point.