BEV emmissions

michaels wrote: »

We already have curtailment and negative electricity prices and the technology to prioritise EV charging when this happens so already the assumption that we should use marginal gas generation co2 when calculating emissions from evs is already floored and will become increasingly inaccurate. I suspect currently curtailment is increasing more quickly than bev usage.

I've already addressed this point elsewhere and said it's not fair to allocate it as 100% gas but it's not far off. The reason is the UK grid is not marginal green often. over the last 30 days only about 2-3% of hours were marginal green which is not significant

Also it is incorrect to say the grid will get more hours when it's marginal green (well let's call it marginal wind as that's likely what we are talking about) anytime soon

Over the next 5 years these are the significant changes
2 links to Norway pulling 2.8GW of any excess
8 reactors closed 3.5GW lost so 3.5GW space for wind
3-4GW min levels of fossil fuel to operate the grid goes to 0GW as the grid puts in place technologies to allow some hours of zero fossil fuels

What this means is there will be about 10GW more space for wind power come 2025 without the need to curtail. As such I don't expect this 2-3% of hours where there is curtailment to change much.

And we in the UK are much further along than most of the world
BEVs save no significant net carbon in a gas grid and are worse in a coal grid (Vs an efficient hybrid or ICE) and most the world's grid is still coal heavy. China India USA Germany Japan Indonesia Australia.... Well pretty much most the world...are still coal heavy grids

There is an easy way to improve the situation

BEVs and hybrids could have solar panel roofs
Yes it's not as efficient as on a house but there is no capacity limit to solar cell manufacturing and while a solar cell on a car might be half as efficient as on a home it will probably cost one third as much to put it on a car in a manufacturing plant than on your roof plus no need for an inverter

Musk says the cyber truck can self charge 15 miles a day in a Sunny locations
That's amazing and most the worlds population live in sunny areas.

The model 3 has less roof space but is more efficient it could possibly get the same 15 miles a day self charge.

This would make BEVs and Hybrids about 50% solar 50% grid (or petrol) and is the way to go

Also you are all missing the good news here, there is a pathway to realistic affordable 100g/km hybrids that can be built without battery capacity problems and have lower emmissions upfront since they are about 300kg lighter than full BEVs. This is good news not bad news

I would go further and say if you add a 500 watt solar panel on these hybrids and add just 2KWh larger battery (10kg) this hybrid becomes significantly solar powered. Adding upto 15 miles per day solar range in sunny locations and most the world lives in sunny locations. Making them as much as 50% solar 50% petrol which reduces their emmissions further to just 50g/km

So there is an affordable scalable way to get ICE down to about 50g/km which is very good
In the less sunny months these can still be plugged in if the owner wants to do so gaining about 12 miles pure EV range each time they plug in. It's not huge but the average trip in the UK is only 8 miles.

Don't let idealistic perfection be the enermy of the good
Especially when the idealised BEVs rely on ideal grids which mostly don't exist

Pathway could be

ICE --> Hybrid --> Solar Hybrid --> Plug in solar hybrid --> Pure BEVs
150grams --> 100grams --> 50 grams --> 25 grams --> 0 grams (When the grid is majority marginal green)
Roughly Now --> 5yrs --> 10yrs --> 15yrs --> 20yrs