Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I previously wrote about the madness of the “Net-Zero By 2050” push in a post called “Impossible bright green“. Today I thought I would talk about another impossibility, which is to change all of our land vehicles (light vehicles, plus buses and heavy trucks) to electric. the battery.
Here’s how I did about it. I use the R computer language for my calculations. I used several functions to do my conversion, like this:
# watt-hours to joules
wh2j=function(wh) 3600*wh
# gallons of gas to kilowatt-hours
galgas2kwh=function(gal) gal*j2wh(130927880)/1000
# gallons of diesel to kilowatt-hours
galdiesel2kwh=function(gal) gal*j2wh(146765930)/1000
# calculates the months from now to some future date
monthstodate=function(thedate) {
if (is.double(thedate)) thedate = paste0(thedate,"-01-01")
as.double(as.Date(thedate)-Sys.Date())/(365.25/12)
}
# terawatt-hours per year used to gigawatts generation needed
twh2gw=function(twh,peakfactor=2,capfactor=1,transmission=.95) (twh/hrsperyear*1e3*peakfactor)/capfactor/transmission
The first function converts joules to watt-hours. The next two devices convert gallons of diesel and gasoline into their energy content in kilowatt-hours.
The next function calculates the number of months until some date in the future. And the last function converts the terawatt-hours of electricity used in a year into the gigawatts of power generation needed. It takes into account
• the peak factor to account for the fact that peak usage needs to be covered and is generally about twice the average usage.
• a capacity element to include downtime for maintenance, and
• a transmission loss factor.
Then I went and got the mileage driven and fuel gallons used figures in the US for 2017 from United States Department of Transportation. Now, chances are that by 2050 there will be many more miles to be driven…how many? Good, this document says about 50% – 60% more miles, so I’ll use 40% as a conservative number.
With that in hand, here are my calculations. We can’t just divide the total miles driven by the tram mileage per kilowatt-hour, because we need to include both trucks and buses. So the first part of my calculation was figuring out the difference between the energy used per mile for a light car and the energy used for a truck.
In the next section, lines starting with “>” and a pound sign are comments, lines starting with just “>” are instructions for the computer, and lines starting with “[1]”It’s the output of the computer.
> # miles driven light cars/trucks > (light_miles=2877378e6) [1] 2.877378e+12 > # miles driven heavy trucks > (heavy_miles=297593e6) [1] 2.97593e+11 > # gallons gas light vehicles > (light_gal=129178914e3) [1] 1.291789e+11 > # gallons diesel heavy trucks > (heavy_gal=45963416e3) [1] 4.596342e+10 > # kwh in gas used, light vehicles > (light_kwh=galgas2kwh(light_gal)) [1] 4.698089e+12 > # kwh in diesel used, trucks > (heavy_kwh=galdiesel2kwh(heavy_gal)) [1] 1.873851e+12 > # miles per kwh light vehicles > (light_mpkwh=light_miles/light_kwh) [1] 0.6124571 > # miles per kwh trucks > (heavy_mpkwh=heavy_miles/heavy_kwh) [1] 0.1588136 > # extra kwh for trucks > (truckextra=light_mpkwh/heavy_mpkwh) [1] 3.856453
OK, so that’s the first part. Heavy trucks use about 3.9 times more energy per mile than light cars.
Next, we need to calculate the amount of electricity we need. The wall-to-wheel efficiency of light electric cars is about 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. Note that this efficiency is lower than the battery-to-wheel efficiency because losses in the transformer used to charge the battery and losses in the battery itself as heat.
> # electric vehicle miles per kilowatt-hour > (ev_milesperkwh=2.5) [1] 2.5
From this point on, we need to divide the estimated mileage driven in 2050 by the relevant mileage/kilowatt-hours to get the total power required.
> # kwh needed, electric light vehicles > (light_kwh=light_miles*milesinc/ev_milesperkwh) [1] 1.611332e+12 > # kwh needed, electric heavy vehicles > (heavy_kwh=heavy_miles*milesinc*truckextra/ev_milesperkwh) [1] 6.426858e+11 > # total terawatthours needed/yr > (tot_twh=(light_kwh+heavy_kwh)/1e9) [1] 2254.018
So we would need ~2,250 terawatt-hours of electricity per year to move people and goods around. And how many new generations will this require? Well, by comparison, the US is currently using about 3,800 terawatt-hours per year, so we’re going to need a huge, unimaginable increase… and that’s only for electric cars and vehicles download and no more.
How much power will the transmitter take? Here you are:
> # gigawatts new generation needed > (generation_needed=twh2gw(tot_twh,capfactor = .95)) [1] 569.8329
We will need ~570 gigawatts of additional generating capacity. And how long do we have to do it?
The only existing technology capable of providing that is nuclear. And it takes about ten years from conception to completion for a nuclear power plant.
Figure 1. Timeline from feasibility study to actual start-up of a new nuclear power plant.
So that means we only have until 2040 to start the power plants we need in 2050. How many do we need?
> # months from now until 2040 > (time_available=round(monthstodate(2040))) [1] 215 > > # gigawatts of new power plants needed per month > (round(generation_needed/time_available,1)) [1] 2.7
So… to supply an all-electric fleet of trucks, starting tomorrow we will have to build a new 2.7 GW nuclear power plant every month for the next 215 months… and those are the giant plant, 20% bigger than the giant Diablo power plant Canyon Power station in California that the eco fools plan to shut down.
(… Gotta love California. We can’t even turn on the lights right now, and the idiots in charge want to shut down Diablo Canyon and demand that electric cars only be sold in the state after 2035… but I digressed. .)
Oh, and besides building 215 new massive nuclear power plants at a rate of one per month per month for the next 18 years starting this month, we need to raise our entire grid to 60 % from start to finish, all the way from generators to transformers and wiring for your home.
I’m sorry, but doing all of that is politically, practically, logistically and financially impossible.
And what will it achieve? Sweet Fanny Adams, as our British cousins say. Total The US may have a net drop tomorrowand even if we accept the hysterical figures of the alarmists, the temperature difference it will make in 2050 is too small to even be measured… we’ll be throwing trillions down a road and we get nothing.
Well, except for the sharp increase in taxes and much higher energy prices…
He struts, it burns.
w.
My usual requirements: When you comment, REVIEW the EXACT WORD YOU’RE REFERENCE, so it’s no secret who and what you’re talking about.
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