This is probably still a positive change on several levels. Plants can be remediated better than vehicles, electrification delinks generation from use to ease later greening, and for particulate pollution (unlike CO2) moving emissions away from population centers is meaningful.
That said... yes. Electrification is a massive improvement in the US, Canada, and Western Europe, but much less useful in Russia, China, and much of SE Asia. Adding to that, pushing pollution sources away from cities reinforces the demographic crisis China has had brewing for a long time, with everything from lead to lack of iodine creating serious permanent health issues in rural regions.
China is in fact not moving away from fossil fuels, they're aggressively expanding their fossil fuel use. They're adding a minority of renewable energy into the mix of their new energy demand, while building a very large number of new coal plants. They're very openly lying about their environmental efforts. They're also aggressively using their state companies to build coal plants external of their borders.
This is the same tactic they use on trade. They're hyper protectionist about access to their economy, and then claim they're free traders.
"China's leading role in financing a wave of new coal plants across Asia is drawing fresh scrutiny as the world’s top climate scientists weigh calling for much deeper cuts in emissions. China, India, Japan and the Philippines rank among the biggest investors in the 1,380 coal plants under construction or development worldwide, according to a study by the German pressure group Urgewald released Thursday."
"The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China. The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet. The report says that at present China has 993 gigawatts of coal power capacity, but the approved new plants would increase this by 25%."
> fossil fuel electricity generation is plateauing^0
The graph you linked mostly shows exponential growth, with a slowdown in the last measured year. But similar kinks are visible twice before, with growth continuing at the same pace afterwards. I wouldn't call that "plateauing".
I flew across China earlier this year, and saw thousands and thousands of windmills that weren't there a few years ago, many had been built around open cast coal mines (and power plants), obviously they're planning on replacing the coal with wind and reusing the sunk-cost transmission lines
From a pollution perspective, is it better to have 1 coal plant generating electricity for an electric bus fleet, or to have a fleet of buses that run on hybrid-electric diesel or CNG?
It's not a simple calculation. It depends whose numbers you use for the calculation. First off, do you only care about CO2, or are you interested in other by products of coal consumption like NOx? Which kind of coal plant, how efficient is it? What kind of coal is in use? Then, on the consumption side, it depends on your electric busses' efficiency, leakage of CNG into methane emissions, honestly there are too many specific parameters left unspecified in your question.
Its not for everyone in every big city but certainly the Dutch model of transitioning cities from cars to transit and pedestrian/cycle focus is probably the clearest model for sustainable and healthy tansport out there.
I live in the Netherlands and I can confirm that. In just a couple of decades they transformed all their car friendly cities and made cars second rate citizens
Cycling infrastructure is amazing. It is almost always faster to travel by bike than by car.
They did it so long ago and the world still hasn’t caught up. I’m very sad about that.
Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL.
A good alternative to this is carsharing. Lots of people in Vancouver don't own a car, they just take one from one of the 5 car-shares when they need one
Pretty common in big cities. That's why everyone in Amsterdam rides cheap old omafietsen ("granny bikes") with huge locks that often cost more than the bike itself.
Not so bigi would say. Lived ~3 years in Amsterdam with an average bike always loosely locked in the street and it has never been stolen.
But to be honest, poverty in NL is also a problem that's been managed quite well ; which does not mean there is no crime (I've had 3 burglary attempts) but maybe crimes that paya bit more than stealing average bikes in the street.
Oh yes. As a Parisian and a big supporter of the electrification of all terrestrial transportation, I want as few EVs as city as possible. Cars simply don't make sense in dense cities (bikes do).
I lived in Paris for a spell, and one of the great things about the city is that it is so bike-able. It's not a large place! And it's dense. Lots of traffic, but the French seem to understand that bikes belong.
We almost never used the Métro, what was the point? Saved money and no one ever stole my wallet!
I take my vélo at least twice a day (to commute) and I still find it far more distressing than taking the bus/métro. No wonder why so few people rides bikes, expect on the week-ends: with all the big petrol cars and aggresive motorbikes, it is still pretty dangerous to ride and not (yet) agreeable. But things are improving so I'm optimist and resigned.
Related to the OP, I anecdotally have an acquaintance that is a bike messenger in the UK, who second-hand anecdotally reports that everyone who does it is an ostensible model of fitness until they 1) get hit by a car or 2) die at 50 of lung disease. There's a chicken/egg thing with regard to non-vehicle transport in that you're more directly exposed to exhaust, and aspirating it more quickly because of exercise. Which exacerbates the negative impact of pollution, which puts you back in a vehicle, which increases pollution :-/
Is there actually proof that it "works great"? Asking for myself every time I try to cross the street in downtown Manhattan and have to look for a cyclist on the sidewalk, going against traffic, blowing through a red light, or fighting with another cyclist.
A city that was never designed for bikes is hell for bikes, so you end up with only the most reckless bikers on the road.
I commute with a bike every day in Paris, France. The infrastructure isn't great but it's OK, and it's improving. The thing is: I'm a big, strong guy who can legally outrun most cars and motorbikes in such a big, dense city. I can fight my way in traffic, mostly because the law authorizes bikes to go both ways in most streets, to run red lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop, to ride between traffic lanes, etc. Most people are terrified to ride here so you only have the most reckless persons on bikes, including me. Although I'm respect the law (which does not make riding safe because no one wants to be anywhere near a big bus/truck, or between vehicles, or stuck in a diesel tailpipe…), I end up riding dangerously making people think that biking is only for reckless guys.
The worst is that, the more I respect the law, the more drivers get angry at me for taking to much space or slowing traffic down. So you move as quick and close as possible to vehicles and pedestrians. That's absurd but that how it is.
It's an infrastructure problem. The more you give space to bikes, the more reckless bikers can finally ride prudently, or prudent people dare to ride (making reckless bikers a tiny minority). It's the same with cars: what would happen if the infrastructure made car driving dangerous? You would only have road hogs and people would just hate cars.
I definitely agree about the last part. I live in London, don’t drive, and cycling would definitely be preferable to relying entirely on the Tube and taxis. But when I see the hell cyclists here have to contend with, and how aggressive they need to be, I know there’s no way I am a skilled or confident enough rider to do the same. But if the infrastructure and vehicle congestion ever improved to the point where cyclists were adequately protected, I would definitely start cycling.
Compared to many cities, London is actually pretty good for cycling now days, at least in central areas. We’re no Amsterdam, but there are some high-quality dedicated cycling routes and plenty of quiet side streets to use. Traffic speeds are relatively low and the vast majority of drivers are considerate and cycle-aware (occasional white-van idiots aside...)
I think I rode a taxi in Paris once or twice, but never a private car - and none of our friends had private cars, either. I assumed parking was a nightmare, and expensive. The narrow medieval roads didn't help, either. Many of the streets around our apartment were closed to cars (at least on Sunday).
Being a cyclist, I thought I found a slice of heaven. I thought about being an urban planner when I got back to the States.
>I assumed parking was a nightmare, and expensive.
I've been a car driver and a cyclist there for ~10 years now. Believe me, being the former is much easier than the latter. If you're on a bike, many assume you're just having a good time (either on vacation or unemployed, as many people says) so the politicians/police/media won't care about your well being and focus instead of the transportation means of "serious people", i.e cars and motorbikes.
It's insulting, because I do have a car (and a parking spot) but everything pushes me to drive it instead of riding my vélo (which makes no noise, does not emit anything, takes very little space, doesn't damage the road, is far less dangerous to others, makes me fit and save health insurance costs...). Go figure.
cycling isn't space efficient and doesn't really scales that good. It is a luxury ttransportation mode for low/mid density US cities not capable/not willing to build true mass transit modes. Look at the packed subway in say Moscow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCZKXHsZo68) and compare to the best possible bicycle situation - mid-80s China http://www.theurbancountry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/83... - around 10 times density difference :) Take that photo, cut 1/5th in height (2-3 abreast) and put large distance between very enthusiastic riders (incl. speeding electrics) - such modern bike lane shows very low efficiency of space utilization/bandwidth and very insufficient capacity to move any significant number of commuting bodies.
Cycling is at least four times the space efficiency of cars, unless all the cars are Smart Fourtwo or equivalent. And that’s when parked, the multiplier goes up with speed.
Additionally, low density US cities are one of the worst places I’ve seen for cycling, because not only is everything spread out, but also the multi-lane roads everywhere make it much more dangerous than equivalently populated towns and cities in Europe. Despite having cycled through central London (UK) and just over 1,000 km along the Rhine, there’s no way you’d see me cycling around Salt Lake City or Sacramento. I’ve cycled around Davis (CA), but Davis has better than US average cycling infrastructure — almost as good as the average level in the UK.
London is getting there, slowly! There are some excellent examples of well-designed, well-used cycle infrastructure such as the new(ish) Cycle Superhighway along the Thames Embankment. This will hopefully serve as a model for future infrastructure.
In general, traffic speeds are low in London and there are lots of quiet side routes that are well suited to cycling. We’re no Amsterdam, but cycling is certainly much more popular and visible than it was 5-10 years ago.
London is unpleasant and stressful, but as Reason077 says, traffic is slow. Compared to the American cities I’ve seen, though, it’s second only to Davis.
A subway is a high latency, high bandwidth carrier. A bike track is a low latency, high bandwidth carrier. That is in a subway all "packets" (people) need to wait for the next opportunity to depart, whereas in a bike system all packets move more slowly, but at a more continuous pace (set by the maximum speed of the transport).
A lot more people can pass any point in a biketrack per hour than they can per subwaytrack, and they can often take a more direct path to their destination using bikes than they can by subway. That also means that a bike system is better suited to a city where both the departure and the destination are diverse among all "packets".
That's not even starting to talk about how biketracks scale much better economically since they are much cheaper to build.
>A subway is a high latency, high bandwidth carrier.
Trains coming in each couple minutes - show me lower latency than that :)
>A lot more people can pass any point in a biketrack per hour than they can per subwaytrack
several hundreds (up to a thousand in rush hour packing) people per train each couple of minutes - beat that.
Anyway, the rest of what you're saying about biking is just a theory that doesn't come even close to the reality of any big dense city in Europe/Asia. This is why those cities has highly developed subway system - the low latency high bandwidth and high speed mode of transportation. You put all these people on bikes and they would choke the city.
I stated from the start that lower density smaller cities (which Copenhagen or Amsterdam are - having density 1/3rd and 1/4th of San Francisco for example) may allow for luxury of letting people to enjoy their commute on bikes.
High density usually isn't the problem for American cities (though it might be for SF, I don't know that one specifically), but rather low density suburban sprawl is. Higher density usually makes it easier to walk or use personal transport like bikes.
For it to be too dense for biking to be a viable transport they would have to be much denser than European cities which would by definition not allow for parking in the places where business takes place (in which case nobody would drive).
Most American cities were clearly designed with cars in mind, while most European where not (having grown organically rather than being designed), and while the American decision might have seemed better for the better part of the last 100 years, that might not be the case for the next couple of decades.
Source for this? My understanding is that there is solid full-life-cycle analysis showing CO2 reduction from ethanol (35% lower on average), but a total mixed bag when it comes to hydrocarbons and various other air pollutants - some better, some worse: https://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/flexible_fuel_emissions...
If the new power is generated in coal plants that might actually be a net minus, at least in particulates and SO2 terms.
EDIT: I'm referencing this:
A series of studies by Tsinghua University, whose alumni includes the incumbent president, showed electric vehicles charged in China produce two to five times as much particulate matter and chemicals that contribute to smog versus gas-engine cars. Hybrid vehicles fare little better.
I found a series of videos on youtube a while back, a set of training videos for people working in steam turbine plans, which really cemented in my head the reasons why this is the case.
For example: the final stages of a steam condensing turbine are actually operating under vacuum relative to atmospheric pressure. To start the turbine a vacuum pump first removes the the air from the turbine. After steams works its way through the turbine it is cooled by feed water (which is then used in the boiler) reducing it's volume by about 1000 times maintaining the vacuum.
An ICE on the other hand expels a good portion of the input energy as hot exhaust gasses several PSI above atmospheric pressure.
From a CO2/efficiency standpoint, you're correct. A modern EV powered purely by coal power plants puts out less CO2 than a gasoline car, largely because of the efficiency difference between large power plants and ICE.
From a SO2/NO2 standpoint, EVs powered by coal would be far far worse, assuming gasoline. Gas/Diesel these days is ultra low sulfur, which reduces SO2 significantly. The only remaining issue is NO2, which is why the catalytic converter is there.
The only caveat is Diesel. Diesel engines, especially older ones, are pretty horrid things. It's only in the last couple of year have we started to get the particulate under control with DPFs, and the NOx issue remains very difficult to fix cheaply (see: VW). Chances are any diesel engines running in a place like China will be old and lack both DPFs and Urea based NOx control systems.
I am uncertain as to whether old diesel trucks or coal power plants produce more NOx.
IMO hybrid is the way to go for transport. I live in an earthquake prone area where a power cut would equal limited range one way or no transport when I most needed it if I only had an EV.
Modern ICE are amazingly sophisticated, EV in comparison have limited range, potential polluting issues, battery creation rare earth component scarcity issues and a massive dead battery disposal problem. We'll get there with a grid and more practical EV's but we're not there yet
Might want to refresh your information about electric vehicles. Nissan Leaf era range is no longer the status quo. Tesla has vehicles with 300+ miles of range and other auto manufacturer are now planning to release or releasing 200+ mile range vehicles. Charging times are also not a problem. In my experience, I can handle my daily commute without doing anything special whatsoever. Super convenient. Just get home and plug in and never worry about range at all.
Total cost of ownership of an EV is getting close to a tipping point where EV is a better deal than electric. One thing pushing that way is the many moving parts of ICE vehicles leading to more maintenance needed. Another is that modern car batteries are turning out to have longevity much higher than what was projected by critics (early Tesla cars still have 90% of initial battery capacity). Another is that the cost per mile in terms of energy is an order of magnitude cheaper. The only thing really stopping electric is that people have been wary to invest heavily in the factories that were necessary to produce the economies of scale that would lower the price. Since Tesla has done that, prices are dropping and everyone else is being forced to follow.
ICE vehicles are losing market share, because the more practical EVs you mentioned are already here.
With an EV, if you are not driving already, your car will likely be almost fully charged at your home or office while the earthquake strikes. You will then have about 300 miles of driving to a place with power.
Does it produce less CO2 than a coal plant? Yes big plants are more efficient than ICEs, but petrol and diesel have a lot of energy in hydrogen bonds, whereas coal is almost pure carbon, so I’d expect the CO2 emissions for a coal plant to be worse despite the efficiency boost.
Gasoline engines top out at about 50% efficiency these days, but the average car does much worse. That’s not even including losses from the transmission, etc.
According to the 2015 DOE analysis, the wheel to wheel emissions from EVs was less than half that of ICE cars. Even in WV, a coal heavy state, EVs produced less emissions than gasoline cars.
You can plant tree, reduce plastics production AND switch to EV. For some reason, every time the case for the electrification of transport is presented, other legitimate, complementary causes are put forward as opposable. As if reducing emissions was a zero-sum game…
Wasn't really an argument against EV's, just an observation that plastics production is a major use of oil and a pollutant (EV's are mostly plastic and alloys for example) at all levels, while the tree planting reality will have a massive positive impact on pollution and seems to be getting overlooked as it is not commercially attractive to big industrialists.
Volume, coal plants produce massive amounts of pollutants. Cars as a source of pollution only just passed power generation and that's because of the switch to natural gas. Individual coal plants can burn millions of tons of coal per year each. Coal ash is also radioactive.
In terms of energy in to energy out it is a lot more efficient. But the amount of particulate matter created by burning a kilojoule of coal is much, much higher than the amount created by burning a kilojoule of gasoline.
It is not. Gasoline ICE typical thermal efficiency is ~20%, large power generation turbine is 35-40%. Also, to refine 92 octane gasoline takes about the same amount of energy as it releases when burning.
If by "electrification" you mean "switch to public transportation," I agree with you. If by electrification you mean "burn dinosaurs four miles away," then I don't agree with you.
This argument is dead wrong and impeding progress. As other commenters have mentioned, stationary sources are much easier to filter. They're also more efficient than thousands of small internal combustion engines. They also produce pollution away from where people are breathing it.
Electrification of surface transportation is a huge win for people regardless of how the electricity is generated.
The argument for public transportation is not dead wrong nor impeding progress. Expanding bus systems is something communities can do today in order to reduce their carbon footprint and their traffic levels.
The argument tarboreous put forward, as the parent, is presumably the one under discussion.
The problem is it presents a false dichotomy, or at least a choice which highlights merely a current state and not a move towards future improvements, and uses that blindless to make a case against EVs.
Thing is, even if a country is 100% coal and ICE right now (which is already not the case, China is not 100% coal), moving the fleet to EVs is still a good move. Putting aside an argument as to whether central power generation is 'cleaner' than distributed (ICE) generation, as long as a country also makes moves to renewables in it's centralized power generation, then the two things work in conjunction.
A lot of the current 'omg greenwashing' push-back is people confusing arguments for 'better' solutions with those for 'perfect' solutions. Which don't exist. Better is still worth doing, and paralysis until 'perfect' comes along is a big ol' waste of everyone's time.
Not a power engineer, but I'd expect burning dinosaurs in one stationary place should allow for cleaner & more efficient combustion, with better scrubbing of noxious gasses from the exhaust. One really big, really heavy, really good catalytic converter instead of millions of small lightweight ones, clunking over bumps & quietly rusting out.
In economic terms, the biggest impact from air pollution is particulate matter in densely populated areas, not CO2. Burning dinosaurs four miles away (more accurately, 40+) has a huge positive impact, because the worst of the particulate matter falls to the ground by then.
It's also much, much easier to filter the output from one plant instead of 40,000 cars. Even if the same amount of pollution were produced (it wouldn't be), nowhere near the same amount would be released into the air.
But we definitely need to improve power plant emission standards as we move to electric.
On top of the excellent comments made by rayiner, tfha, and jwr, we wouldn't even be burning dinosaurs miles away if we switched entirely to nuclear power.
Burning dinosaurs is much more efficient in bulk at a huge power plant than by transporting them to your local storage (gas station) and burning them in your tiny engine. So even if you do burn dinosaurs, you're much better off burning them at scale.
Transportation just passed power generation as the major polluter in 2016. Mainly because of the switch from coal to natural gas. If coal comes back on line expect the positions to switch again rapidly. I agree with your statement but getting rid of coal power plants would have the added benefit of reducing the production of coal ash, a source of particulate matter and heavy metal pollution.
Urban citizens have better access to low carbon transportation (Walking, Biking, Mass Transit).
Urban citizens are easier to reach in many last mile problems. Power lines can be shared by more users. Less network cable needs to be laid per user. Fewer miles of water pipes are required.
Apartments common in urban areas are more fuel efficient for heating/cooling than stand alone houses commonly seen in suburbs and rural areas.
Studies have actually shown that electric cars produce more than 90% as much particulate-matter air pollution as fossil fuel cars.
The reason for this is two-fold:
1. Modern gasoline cars produce very clean exhaust.
2. Most of the particulate pollution comes from wear on tires, brake and the road surface. And electric cars, being heavier than average, produce more wear on tires and road surface.
Electrification is part of the puzzle, but we also need to get people out of giant, heavy vehicles into right-sized vehicles for their trip. (And the majority of trips are less than 5 miles!)
It’s true that tire wear may be increased slightly due to weight, but electrics aren’t that much heavier than combustion vehicles: typically 10-20% more for comparable vehicles of the same size/class.
Under normal road/wear conditions, most tires degrade into relatively large particles that are not actually aerosolised. They end up on the road and get washed away by weather. The main place where they become a problem is in tunnels where the dry conditions and passing traffic keep picking them back up into the air.
Finally, brake pads. Electric hugely reduce brake wear due to regenerative braking. Most EV owners will tell you that they’ve never had to replace their brake pads!
Electric cars will produce very little brake dust as they regenerative braking. In an emergency braking situation they will use friction braking but not for day to day driving.
That means 90% of cars particulate matter must be coming from tyres and the road surface. How far does this travel? Does it just fall back quickly onto the road? Does it get washed away in a rain storm?
Do you have a link to the studies you're referencing? I don't not believe you, but I'd love to share them. Living in CO, there is a problem with electric cars, (somewhat) as the electric is usually produced by coal, so the pollution is simply moved away from the source (although potentially lowered - but not by much if you compare it to a gas-powered econo vehicle)
All pollution is some kind of particle - here it just means that emissions are coming out of the tail pipe as a byproduct of the internal combustion engine, as opposed to the particulate created from braking, etc.
