Air pollution rant

[Seret]

This is why they think bigger is better.

You wouldn't walk away from that in any car though. What's the morale of the story? Everybody should drive 18-wheelers to be safe?

[astropapi1]

Guys, check THIS out.

Once they figure out how to lower the price of their cars, normal ones are going to die pretty quickly. And with Musk at the wheel, they're getting there fairly quickly.

[drakesdoom]

You wouldn't walk away from that in any car though. What's the morale of the story? Everybody should drive 18-wheelers to be safe?

That is an extreme case but even a 350 pickup with a full cargo bed can weigh in at 10,000lb, more if he has a trailer. Every percentage more that the other vehicle weighs than you is more force applied to your car, more steal is not only stronger it also lessens the crash force.

[Guest]

This is why they think bigger is better.

While the driver of the little car had no chance, it's still dangerous in the big truck. You still have to put your seat belt on. It's easy to get thrown through the windshield.

There are many good alternatives to diesel and gasoline transportation. I often wonder why we haven't seen more natural gas powered vehicles. Natural gas is an excellent alternative in some areas. Hydrogen fuel cells don't seem to be catching on for some reason. There is potential there, but the motivation to add infrastructure is lacking. One has to think that oil lobbyists have major financial incentives to keep their product the only game in town. Don't be surprised if everything goes to hell in a handbag before they throw in the towel.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Otis

[Drunkrobot]

Possibly, but I'm inclined to think that if they were going to take off, they already would have.

The fuel cells are expensive, as long as they need platinum group metals they'll remain so. And the hydrogen itself has issues. We've already got a gas infrastructure, but methane is much easier to handle than hydrogen. Hydrogen either needs to be stored at extremely high pressures, or extremely low temperatures. Both of those add further cost. There are also issues in using it for aircraft, given it's low energy density per unit volume. All the hydrogen aircraft designed to date have ended up being pretty bulbous, which is not efficient for most uses.

But the real issue is that almost all currently available hydrogen is made from reformed fossil fuels, so isn't a particularly clean or sustainable fuel. It can be made be electrolysing water, but that in itself is very energy intensive, so isn't a great solution to an energy problem. If the grid electricity you're using to make your hydrogen isn't squeeky clean then you're back to square one, especially given the low energy efficiency of the conversion process. You may have zero emissions at the tailpipe, but the goal is lower emissions overall. I don't hold much hope in large-scale CCS making centralised production of hydrogen for transport use any cleaner than burning oil.

It said somewhere that the Clarity (the car I used as an example) costs somewhere around $100,000 to build, per vehicle. That is to be expected of a demo, of course, and it is a substantial improvement over the $1,000,000 Honda estimated a Hydrogen car would cost in 2005. I would expect the price of the Clarity's successor would eventually come down to the price one would expect of normal petrol cars. Pretty much the only thing new about Hydrogen cars is the fact they run on Hydrogen, depending on physical processes we are very familiar with.

The cars themselves are not a problem. What makes the fancy-pants countries with fancy-pants money cringe is the costs of the infrastructure-production, and storage, of Hydrogen, filling stations equipped with Hydrogen tanks, transporting the Hygrogen around etc. That will cost the world a lot of money to implement. The thing about it, however, is that eventually, there will be no choice. Even the most scientifically illiterate, old money climate change sceptic on Earth would recognise that oil is not an endless bounty (unless we managed to run a really long pipeline from Titan or whatever), and eventually we would have to run the world on something else. The nations that are most prepared for when the drills run dry (whatever point in the future that may be) will charge ahead of those that were a little more shortsighted. If all else fails, sheer paranoia of other countries steamrolling us would provide at least some incentive to make the investment.

Providing the electricity to create the Hydrogen fuel has been the bane of any Hydro-fanboy like me. Today, if you took any random electricity socket on Earth, chances are it feeds back to a fossil fuel plant. This point does lose down meaning in this case, however, since nobody is going to be driving Hydrogen cars today anyway. Pretty much every industrialised nation on Earth is promising to make fossil fuels an ever smaller fraction of the total energy production. Who acts on those promises most will, as mentioned, become the masters of the human race. Longer-term sources of energy are being worked on anyway, so as time go's by, we can gradually tick off that problem with Hrogrogen.

I didn't mention Hydrogen planes, but I'm assuming you are talking about propeller craft being powered by a fuel cell? I'm not sure if that would take off (heh, heh) but I am also a big supporter of the Scimitar concept, by Reaction Engines Ltd. To put it simply, it's a rocket engine that replaces onboard Oxygen with atmosperic air. I don't know how energy efficient it is compared to today's jets, but I imagine it to be more realistic than a fuel cell plane.

[lajoswinkler]

I just love when these discussions start. I just start a countdown until someone starts talking about batteries and hydrogen.

Guess what. Electricity for batteries and hydrogen don't grow on trees. They're energy storage systems, not energy sources (unless black hydrogen is discussed, but as we're postulating the end of petroleum era, we can ignore it).

Don't worry, we'll still burn oil in 100 years from now. As the reserves go down, deeper or less accessible sources (oil infused into sands) will become viable.

[shoveycat]

Every estimate on the amount of oil left is based on the amount left in existing wells, and that grows every day, so really you cant make any estimate on how long we can run off oil.

Personally, i think you were a bit rough with the assumption of everyone who drives a car is a "Fat, lazy, greedy sludge-guzzling planet murderer!" Some people cant really do without motorized transport, if i wanted to ride my bike to anywhere important, id need to bring a tent. However, trust me, id like to see the end of fossil fuel usage just as much as you, but a change as major as this will take A LOT of time, and, frankly, there's hardly anything, if anything at all we can do to make it go quicker. The issue isn't that people aren't using the technology for cheap, emissionless motorized transport, it's that it doesn't exist. Sure, there are hydrogen and electric powered cars, but they're very inefficient, with the current infrastructure, impractical, and in the end, still use as much, if not more fossil fuels. The most that a lot of people can do is wait for technology and infrastructure to improve to allow cheap, efficient, practical, and truly clean vehicles.

You've got to understand, buy asking everyone to stop using fossil fuels, your asking to effectively erase the last one hundred years of industry, and, well i have no doubt it can be done, its going to take a bit.

-Shoveycat

[epima09]

You should visit Beijing

[Seret]

The issue isn't that people aren't using the technology for cheap, emissionless motorized transport, it's that it doesn't exist.

True. You can't get something for nothing.

Sure, there are hydrogen and electric powered cars, but they're very inefficient, with the current infrastructure, impractical, and in the end, still use as much, if not more fossil fuels.

This is an oft-repeated line, but every time I run the numbers for the electric vehicles, it doesn't add up that way.

Let's take the typical energy consumption figures of some common EVs or hybrids running in EV mode:

Prius PHEV: 0.17 kWh km^-1

Nissan Leaf: 0.18 kWh km^-1

Tesla Roadster: 0.2 kWh km^-1

Prius 3.4kWh per charge, approx 20km range. Nissan Leaf. Tesla Roadster.

Let's call that 0.2 kWh km^-1. At a typical grid carbon intensity of about 0.5kg CO₂e kWh^-1 that means carbon produced will be about 100g km^-1. This compares very favourably with average figures for conventional vehicles:

Small petrol: 171g km^-1

Small diesel: 145g km^-1

Medium petrol: 212g km^-1

Medium diesel: 181g km^-1

[source]

Taking embodied energy into account, let's look at the batteries in the above vehicles:

(Assumes Li-Ion batts are 99kWh/kg)

Prius PHEV: 7,920kWh = 3,960kg CO₂e

Nissan Leaf: 29,700kWh = 14,850kg CO₂e

Tesla Roadster: 44,550kWh = 22,275kg CO₂e

So compared to a medium petrol car the electric machines will earn back their extra embodied carbon in roughly:

Prius PHEV = 35,350km

Nissan Leaf: = 132,600km

Tesla Roadster = 198,900km

Obviously these figures are just back-of-fag-packet, and not up to scratch as a decent lifecycle analysis, but it does seem that it's really only vehicles that stay on the road for fairly short lifetimes that don't result in equal or greater emissions due to being alternatively fuelled. If your grid intensity is much lower than my ballpark figure (some countries are as low as 0.2kg kWh^-1), then the EVs and PHEVs come out way, way ahead of the petrol and diesel cars. Many countries are working hard to get their gird intensity down, so the carbon intensity of driving an EV or that embodied in its construction can actually improve over time, too.

As for lack of infrastructure, well, there was a time when there was no petroleum infrastructure either. If the demand is there, the infrastructure will magically appear. Capitalism is good like that.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Seret

[Mr. Scruffy]

What annoys me the most are drivers who are alone in their car. A gridlock with, lets say, a hundred cars could easyly fit in one or two darn buses! So there I am, tired after work, sitting on the bus stop. Counting cars passing by, wondering how many of them carry only one person. Lorries, delivery vans and other "more useful" vehicles excluded, naturally. Traffic acts a bit like a gas. The more you give space to it, the more roads and parking lots you build, the more space it´ll take. And the other way around... If I remeber correctly, Seoul fixed some of its traffic jams by tearing down a highway and restoring the river hidden below it.

That´s true. The more space gets dedicated to traffic, the more traffic you will have. Refreshing to see somebody saying this, instead of performing a grunt-snort of ignorance when being told so. So, if you want more business in your city, more roads (and such) might be the way to go. But if you have a traffic problem in your city, and you just want to mitigate it, building more roads (and such) will tend to be counter-productive. It becomes quite obvious with a little change of perspective: If you dont want people to hang out in front of your house, dont pave the road that leads there.

[lajoswinkler]

Seret, I don't trust those figures. You can't really think that electric cars would have less CO2 impact than conventional modern cars running on petroleum distillates?

Every time you make a conversion of energy, you lose part of it.

Where would the energy for these cars come from? It would come from burning s sh*tload of coal, that's where. Imagine the whole world suddenly turning from gasoline/diesel to electric. They need energy and it doesn't grow on trees.

Unless you use a low carbon footprint intensive source (uranium fission or hydro if available, though there are specific carbon-related problems with hydro) which is unlikely to happen because people are stupid, you end up with burning lots of coal to provide the needed energy. Coal is the worst among the sources when it comes to CO2 output, not to mention the release of heavy metals, carcinogens and radioactive matter through the chimneys.

[shoveycat]

Seret, i want to believe those numbers, but i really think lajoswinkler's making a valid point.

[NASAFanboy]

I'm known as a extremist.

My views are this:

- Earth is doomed. To support our population, we need infrastructure. To build the infrastructure, we need technology. To get the technology, we need research. To research, we need resources. In extracting the resources, we are destroying earth.

Space travel, whether you like it or not, is the future. We can either move our industries, some of our race, and some other things into space, or we can die on Earth.

Those "Greenies" do have a point, but they cannot save Earth for long. We have to move into space, into our solar system, into our galaxy.

Last person to tell me to abandon our technologies and go back to primitive lifestyle and let ourselves go extinct took a fist to the face, by the way.

[Seret]

Seret, I don't trust those figures.

They're not super-rigourous, I mostly used internet sources, but ones which didn't seem too unlikely. Feel free to check them. It's just a rough sketch.

You can't really think that electric cars would have less CO2 impact than conventional modern cars running on petroleum distillates?

It depends how clean your grid is. For typical values of grid carbon intensity they are in fact considerably cleaner if you only consider energy in to energy out. Where the difference gets narrower is when you factor in embodied energy, as I point out above. EVs do work out cleaner over lifecycle if they're used a reasonable amount.

Every time you make a conversion of energy, you lose part of it.

Indeed, which is why for the energy requirements for the EV/PHEVs I used the figure of how much energy it took to recharge the battery, what range that gave and the grid carbon intensity. This factors in conversion losses in charging, the drivetrain, the grid, etc.

Where would the energy for these cars come from? It would come from burning s sh*tload of coal, that's where. Imagine the whole world suddenly turning from gasoline/diesel to electric. They need energy and it doesn't grow on trees.

Coal factors large in many national grids, but not all. You'll find countries that have low grid carbon intensity (eg: Norway, France, Brazil) do so because they don't use lots of coal plants. The figure I used for grid intensity above (0.5kg kWh^-1) is fairly typical for a developed nation (UK, Germany and Japan all cluster around there).

Adding large numbers of EVs to a grid doesn't necessarily create a big problem. Electricity demand would rise, but oil demand would fall by a similar amount. It's just fuel-switching, which is only a problem if you're a company that's in the business of selling the fuel that's being switched away from. Additionally all those batteries plugged into the grid could provide useful amounts of storage if people could be incentivised to give a smart grid access to power stored in their car battery. It's a lot more feasible to at least partly decarbonise an electrified transport system than an oil-powered one.

Coal is the worst among the sources when it comes to CO2 output, not to mention the release of heavy metals, carcinogens and radioactive matter through the chimneys.

Couldn't agree more, it's awful stuff. However, it's getting increasingly hard to rely on coal in the developed nations where EVs are likely to be deployed in huge numbers. EU directives have already shut or severely restricted most coal plants in Europe, with the rest due to either shut down in the next few years or switch to burning biomass. Coal isn't going away worldwide, but at least in developed nations you shouldn't see any large increase in coal plants to satisfy increased electricity demand. Most new generation is gas, which has both higher efficiency and substantially cleaner emissions than coal. Renewables are starting to make non-trivial contributions in many places too, and several nations are planning on building new nuclear plants.

[shoveycat]

I dont think any of us have considered the greatest problem in regards to switching off coal. What will happen to Wales?!

[lajoswinkler]

France would probably benefit from electrical cars. They mostly run their country on uranium fission.

There is one potential problem, though. Electrical cars require rare earth elements for their super strong magnets. China is their top provider because they have most of the ores and most of the infrastructure, and we know how well that country pays attention to the environment.

Unless the West finds plentiful ore sources and develops environmentally friendly factories to produce the magnets, electrical cars production will increase the total world's pollution because I don't really think China will change soon.

Replacing petroleum distillate cars in USA with electrical cars would be a disaster because coal is their number one source of energy and it's going to stay like that for a long time, judging by the politics we see today.

Replacing coal with biomass is not a solution. Coal is a dense energy source, whereas biomass is very poor and you need lots of it. It's absurd to compare coal and biomass. All renewables are like that. There's nothing like coal, it's the best source.

Actually, uranium is way denser and better, but when a country is run by stupid people and the general population is too paranoid (Italy, Germany), you'll stick with coal... or you'll get power shortages and high electrical bills.

[Seret]

There is one potential problem, though. Electrical cars require rare earth elements for their super strong magnets. China is their top provider because they have most of the ores and most of the infrastructure, and we know how well that country pays attention to the environment.

Unless the West finds plentiful ore sources and develops environmentally friendly factories to produce the magnets, electrical cars production will increase the total world's pollution because I don't really think China will change soon.

Well, we've managed to electrify most of our railways, and electric motors are the motive power source of choice in industry. The sky didn't fall in when we did that. I don't see a gradual electrification of road transport to be a big problem in terms of transition. Air transport is the difficult one, can't see us buring anything except kerosene up there any time soon.

Replacing petroleum distillate cars in USA with electrical cars would be a disaster because coal is their number one source of energy and it's going to stay like that for a long time, judging by the politics we see today.

The US has a grid intensity of about 0.7kg kWh^-1, so scale the figures above by about 1.4 to get the US-specific picture. However, bear in mind that the average efficiency of petrol/diesel cars in the US is significantly lower than those I posted (which were from the UK), so the difference might not be that big.

Replacing coal with biomass is not a solution. Coal is a dense energy source, whereas biomass is very poor and you need lots of it. It's absurd to compare coal and biomass. All renewables are like that. There's nothing like coal, it's the best source.

Coal is a terrible source, which is why it's been superseded in virtually everything we used to use it for except large power plants and steel production. Its only advantage is its abundance, which keeps the price down.

I agree large thermal plants switching to biomass is not a great solution, but the alternative was for them to close altogether, which would have made the lights go out. So it's an acceptably pragmatic solution that balances the need for lower emissions with the need to keep the big power plants producing.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Seret

[lajoswinkler]

You can't compare the railways with cars. Cars are like number one transportation vehicle and almost everyone has one in USA.

Look at the figures of road motor vehicles per capita.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita

The numbers are just insane and that's because people are used to drive alone, which causes gridlocks as one of the side effects.

How many trains are there, and how many cars?

If everyone would turn to electric, the first thing that would happen is massive power shortage. After that, the existing coal power plants would have to work like mad to ensure enough juice is running through the country, but that would not be enough. More power plants would have to be built and they would use fossil fuels, mainly coal. Gas doesn't provide enough energy per unit of mass.

I meant to say coal is an rather good source of energy, but a terrible source if we look at its environmental impact.

The first thing people need to do is to reduce their consumption. USA and some other fossil fuel gulping countries are using too much of it. It's about luxury of one person driving low efficiency big ass car to work. That is not a sustainable policy. It will have to end.

[Seret]

You can't compare the railways with cars.

I wasn't comparing them directly, I was providing it as an example of a major transport system that switched from a fossil fuel to electric.

Cars are like number one transportation vehicle and almost everyone has one in USA.

The US is only one country, and even there rail is an important part of the transport system. It hauls a huge amount of freight.

If everyone would turn to electric, the first thing that would happen is massive power shortage.

Nobody is suggesting the change would be instantaneous.

After that, the existing coal power plants would have to work like mad to ensure enough juice is running through the country, but that would not be enough. More power plants would have to be built and they would use fossil fuels, mainly coal.

Most grids don't operate with a large amount of spare capacity, so you can't really just turn up the juice on existing plants. Most new fossil fuel plants being built in the west are combined cycle gas turbines, not coal. As I mentioned above, being CCGTs they've got reasonably good efficiency (>50%), produce comparatively little emissions, and are cheap to build. They've been very popular over the last 20 years, and you'll see vast swathes of them in the US now that their gas price has nosedived.

Gas doesn't provide enough energy per unit of mass.

That makes not the slightest bit of difference. Not quite sure what point you're trying to make. Gaseous fuel isn't limited by the mass of that fuel to the degree a solid fuel is, you can just pipe it around. Gas is easy to handle. It's generally liquified when it needs to be moved in compact form (ie: by ship). It has about twice the energy density per unit mass of coal although energy per unit volume is lower, particularly in gaseous form.

The first thing people need to do is to reduce their consumption. USA and some other fossil fuel gulping countries are using too much of it. It's about luxury of one person driving low efficiency big ass car to work. That is not a sustainable policy. It will have to end.

Completely agree, but I fear that the only thing that will actually encourage people to cut consumption en masse will be rising prices.

Edited October 26, 2013 by Seret

[lajoswinkler]

Could you please link your source on energy densities? I see various numbers, and I'd like something solid and updated.

[briansun1]

So I found out today that you can actually turn in the plate numbers of cars which are smoking and stinking to the police and they will make the owner go get their emissions inspected! ha! take that you inconsiderate 4-ton pickup driving gas-for-brains rednecks!

... so most of Texas...

[Seret]

Could you please link your source on energy densities? I see various numbers, and I'd like something solid and updated.

You'll see various numbers, because the numbers are varied. Coal in particular is highly variable in quality, as it's a mix of a load of different materials.

Rotten old lignite, brown coal, etc, can be as low as 10MJ kg^-1, and anthracite can be as high as 40MJ kg^-1. A good average figure is about 23.5MJ kg^-1.

Natural gas is a lot more uniform, since it's something like 90% of a single element (methane), you're looking at about 50MJ kg^-1.

However, with all these figures you've got to watch out for whether they're quoting Higher or Lower Calorific Value (HCV/LCV). Since water is a combustion product of hydrocarbons the amount of energy that can be extracted depends heavily on whether you recover the energy in the water vapour by condensing it or not. Different sources will quite happily use either of the HCV or LCV figure for a fuel type depending on whether they want it to look high or low.

[Dispatcher]

Its interesting that hydrox rockets (and conceivably hydrogen burning jets) are/ would be relatively clean forms of combustion technologies. If such tech were to be commercially successfully adopted by other industries (automobile, for example), it should have a positive impact on air quality. But that is not our reality right now.

[dr_jt]

This has been my opinion over the past two years of cycling.

People who drive cars are...

24 months ago - Fellow citizens

18 months ago - People in an unfortunate predicament.

12 months ago - Inconsiderate and inattentive bums.

6 months ago - Lifeless scumbags

today - Fat, lazy, greedy sludge-guzzling planet murderers!

I'm sick of it!! when will the petroleum age end!? I don't want to smell it any more and I don't want to be in a city with other people who can't at least move from place to place under the strength of their own body! I'm sick of how it breed antisocial behavior and how it kills so many people all the time! But what drives me crazy more than anything is just the smell.

So I found out today that you can actually turn in the plate numbers of cars which are smoking and stinking to the police and they will make the owner go get their emissions inspected! ha! take that you inconsiderate 4-ton pickup driving gas-for-brains rednecks!

So how much plastic, medicine and food in your life? Without petroleum there would be none of the first and little of the other two. Your bicycle and most of your gear may not even exist. The city you live in would quickly become a memory as it falls to ruin without the products provided by petroleum.

[Smidge204]

Replacing petroleum distillate cars in USA with electrical cars would be a disaster because coal is their number one source of energy and it's going to stay like that for a long time, judging by the politics we see today.

The portion of coal power in the US is currently around 37%, down from over 50% just a few years ago, and falling.

Also, do not neglect the energy required to extract, transport, refine, transport and dispense that petroleum distillate: The US DOE estimates that it takes 7.5KWh of energy (PDF) just to obtain one gallon of gasoline before it even goes into your tank. A competently built electric car can drive as far on that energy alone as a normal car can on that same gallon of gasoline (~26mi).

This doesn't even touch on the efficiency thing...

...or the urban air quality thing...

...or that fact that electrified vehicles amplify the benefits of "greening the grid" making even incremental improvements more significant...

...or the fact that even if an EV is charges entirely on coal power, it is no worst than a Prius in terms of total emissions (PDF)...

...or the fact that electricity - even coal power - is "American" power whereas a nontrivial portion of our petroleum is still imported (some from countries that don't particularly like us) to the tune of some $130 Billion dollars leaving our economy every year, and that offsetting petroleum use stabilizes our economy a bit by making surges in oil prices hurt just a little less.

Electrifying transportation makes sense every way you slice it.

=Smidge=