Fuel Prices....

Goudy

For interest, a major share holder in Octopus Energy is the Australian company Origin Energy.

Origin own and operate Australia's largest coal fired power station, Eraring Power Station and it has been reported that they are Australia's fourth largest climate polluter

Origin have a capacity of over 6000mw but only 240mw is considered renewable.

Octopus's energy might be green but the companies funds certainly aren't.

wongataa

HHarry said:

MattMattMattUK said:

It depends how you define green, but on pretty much every measure EVs are better for the environment over sustained period.

I’d chalkenge that over the whole life of an EV.  Mining precious elements, safely disposing of batteries, we still have to burn fossil fuels to provide the power.

Including all of that over the lifetime of a car an EV produces less CO2 than an ICE car and that is with electricity created by fossil fuel generation.  With greener electricity the difference just gets bigger.

Remember that extracting, transporting, and refining oil for fuel uses huge amounts of energy and creates huge amounts of CO2 emissions.

Construction wise there isn't much between an EV and ICE car.  Yes the EV battery creates emissions that the ICE car doesn't but is vastly outweighed by the fuel use in ICE cars.

You can easily search for these studies.

WellKnownSid

Goudy said:

For interest, a major share holder in Octopus Energy is the Australian company Origin Energy.

Origin own and operate Australia's largest coal fired power station, Eraring Power Station and it has been reported that they are Australia's fourth largest climate polluter

Origin have a capacity of over 6000mw but only 240mw is considered renewable.

Octopus's energy might be green but the companies funds certainly aren't.

You will struggle to find anything which isn't heavily tainted by fossil fuels.  Certainly newspapers and the media - but also ISAs, pension funds, even your mortgage is probably funding an oil well somewhere.  It probably explains why everywhere we look in the media or on social media there is yet another article from yet another person who doesn't drive or own a car telling me how rubbish electric vehicles are to drive or own.

It takes something like 12kWh of electricity to produce a US Gallon of petrol --> 3.8 litres.  At 50mpg that's 42 miles worth.  I can go 48 miles on 12kWh of electricity, no oil refining involved.  Sorry, but I don't see how that's 'not better' except for the $5.3 trillion of oil production (2023) at which might be at stake.

MacPingu1986

HHarry said:

MattMattMattUK said:

It depends how you define green, but on pretty much every measure EVs are better for the environment over sustained period.

I’d chalkenge that over the whole life of an EV.  Mining precious elements, safely disposing of batteries, we still have to burn fossil fuels to provide the power.

With EV’s being so new there’s probably not enough data to say for certain, and those with a vested interest will present that data in a way that suits their agenda.

There's loads of data, reports and analysis from varying sources - all easily googleable if you have a genuine interest in the real minutia of vehicle construction emissions over the entire life cycle.

Grids are constantly getting greener but even grids with a heavy gas/coal dependency there are still the benefits of:
 - a large power station is much more efficient than a small ICE engine - eg: CCGT gas turbines have an effiency rating in the c50% compares to an ICE engine of 10-15%, plus power stations can have other anti-pollution measures and devices like scrubbers more easily fitted; and
 - the pollution that's produced by the power station is produced further away from where people live and major population centers, compared to ICE pollution from the tailpipe into the streets we live, work and breath on. So the pollution that is produced is at least produced in a way that is less directly harmful to others.

born_again

Grumpy_chap said:

born_again said:

Which cars cost 7.5p a mile to run?

Energy cost of an EV - electric cars

Ok.

https://www.zap-map.com/tools/home-charging-calculator

Using my car (Niro) & 30p kWh is still 7.2p

So can you find any ICE?

Nasqueron

HHarry said:

MattMattMattUK said:

It depends how you define green, but on pretty much every measure EVs are better for the environment over sustained period.

I’d chalkenge that over the whole life of an EV.  Mining precious elements, safely disposing of batteries, we still have to burn fossil fuels to provide the power.

With EV’s being so new there’s probably not enough data to say for certain, and those with a vested interest will present that data in a way that suits their agenda.

Define "so new"? The first modern era EVs can arguably date to the 1972 Munich Olympics when BMW 1600 EV formed the marathon support vehicle fleet. Or to skip a little, the GM EV1 from 1996 (subject of the infamous "Who Killed the Electric Car" film). Tesla launched the first >200 mile car in 2004. 

They certainly aren't new in that sense and there is more than enough data to say for certain, as battery tech improves and changes they will only increase the gap from fossil fuels

Goudy

WellKnownSid said:

Goudy said:

For interest, a major share holder in Octopus Energy is the Australian company Origin Energy.

Origin own and operate Australia's largest coal fired power station, Eraring Power Station and it has been reported that they are Australia's fourth largest climate polluter

Origin have a capacity of over 6000mw but only 240mw is considered renewable.

Octopus's energy might be green but the companies funds certainly aren't.

You will struggle to find anything which isn't heavily tainted by fossil fuels.  Certainly newspapers and the media - but also ISAs, pension funds, even your mortgage is probably funding an oil well somewhere.  It probably explains why everywhere we look in the media or on social media there is yet another article from yet another person who doesn't drive or own a car telling me how rubbish electric vehicles are to drive or own.

It takes something like 12kWh of electricity to produce a US Gallon of petrol --> 3.8 litres.  At 50mpg that's 42 miles worth.  I can go 48 miles on 12kWh of electricity, no oil refining involved.  Sorry, but I don't see how that's 'not better' except for the $5.3 trillion of oil production (2023) at which might be at stake.

I wasn't comparing electricity to any other fuel source, I was making a point that what we might perceive as "green" energy might not be always the case.
There appears to be various shades of green if you like.

Take our own current electricity supply.
Around 40% is from fossil fuels (mainly gas with a bit of coal)
15% from Nuclear
8% Biomass
20% renewables, solar, wind and hydro.

Around 17% is cabled in from France, Belgium, Norway and Holland, some of which is zero carbon, though there is a plan for it to be 90% zero by 2030, so we can probably presume it's around the same sort of percentage as our own generation at the moment.

We often over supply but some of that is used to pump water at hydro stations, very little is stored in batteries.

On average the carbon emissions from our generation is around 185g/Kwh. (National Grid Live) but on a whole it will be slightly more due to the imported percentage's source.

We also have around 140,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste in processing at the moment.
Around 94% of which is low and very low level, but that still leaves 6% that is intermediate and high level stuff that will take 100,000 years or more to reach a safe level.

By 2036 which is twelve years away, the amount is planned to rise not by a little but threefold as we phase out the fossil fuel generation.
We are planning to store and process 5 million tonnes of waste by that date, of which it is thought up to 320,000 tonnes will be inter and high level waste.
To put that in some sort of scale, that's over 6 Titanic's worth of really really nasty stuff.

It's all well and good if it's all out of sight (as mentioned in another post) but sadly that isn't the answer.

There's a lot of fuss over on shore wind farms, all that "not on my doorstep" stuff.
I can't imagine there being anything less when it comes to nuclear generation and waste processing, what then, ship it off to a third world country?

The question really shouldn't be about how green we perceive our power to be, but how much we use of it however it's produced.

Stubod

..yes, but have you factored in the enviromental impact when EV's spontaneously burst into flames???...

...i'll get my coat....

wongataa

Stubod said:

..yes, but have you factored in the enviromental impact when EV's spontaneously burst into flames???...

...i'll get my coat....

About the same as when those ICE cars spontaneously combust