To EV Or Not To EV? One Of Many Questions Regarding Our ‘Clean/Green’ Utopian Future, Part 2.
In Part 1 of this two-part Contemplation I argue that the recent trumpeting of electric vehicle (EV) car sales as a prologue to their imminent mass adoption and possibly ‘saving of the world’ from our errant carbon emission ways is more a projection of hope than reflective of realities behind some rather opaque curtains. This growth may continue as cheerleaders hope — at least for a bit longer, and thus appearing to support their assertions — but there exist some relatively strong headwinds suggesting it will not. Time of course will tell…
In attempting to peer behind or through the curtains one must consider: the pattern of previous technology bubbles created by intense mass marketing and purchases by early adopters; the evidence for the manipulation of sales growth statistics feeding into the narrative of widespread and growing adoption; and, the need for current growth to continue in light of resource constraints, a lack of infrastructure supports, government subsidy withdrawals, inflation impacts, and the cost concerns of purchasers (see this recent Bloomberg news article that highlights the international car rental agency Hertz Global Holdings unloading 20,000 EVs (about 1/3 of its U.S. EV fleet) due to higher repair costs, low demand, and reinvesting some of the sales dollars into ICE vehicles).
There is also growing skepticism towards the most marketed aspect of EVs: they are significantly better for the planet’s environment and ecological systems[1]. One needs to step well outside the Overton Window created by the marketing propaganda of retailers (and regurgitated by much mainstream media and most politicians) to gain a more balanced view of this widespread assertion. And this is where I begin this Contemplation…
Carbon tunnel vision has created a widely-accepted narrative where the most dominant and for many the only impact of concern surrounding transportation vehicles seems to be what exits the tailpipe of an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle and does not for an EV. This creates a very narrow, keyhole perspective that ignores the embodied energy and a wide variety of ecologically-destructive, hydrocarbon-based industrial processes that are necessary for the production, maintenance, and eventual reclamation/disposal of both types of vehicles.
As I point out in Part 1 of my series of Contemplations on carbon tunnel vision and energy blindness: “…the following graphic demonstrates (with respect to particular aspects of the issue of ‘sustainability’) this tendency to narrow our perspective can prevent the acknowledgement of so many other aspects of our world — and the graphic only includes some of the many others that could be considered, such as land-system change and biogeochemical flows. Perhaps most relevant is that this tunnel vision keeps many from recognising that humans exist within a world of complex systems that are intertwined and connected in nonlinear ways that the human brain cannot fathom easily, if at all.
[See an expanded version that includes more variables we’re mostly blind to below]
My own bias leads me to the belief that this hyper-focus on carbon emissions is leading many well-intentioned people to overlook the argument that atmospheric overloading is but one symptom predicament of our overarching predicament of ecological overshoot. As a result, they miss all the other symptom predicaments (e.g., biodiversity loss, resource depletion, soil degradation, geopolitical conflicts, etc.) of this overshoot and consequently advocate for ‘solutions’ that are, in fact, exacerbating our situation.
This rather narrowed perspective tends to be along the lines that if we can curtail/eliminate carbon emissions — usually through a shift in our technology to supposed ‘carbon-free’ ones — then we can avoid the negative repercussions that accompany the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, most prominently climate change. For many this is the only (or, at least, the most prominent) issue that needs to be addressed to ensure our species’ transition to a ‘sustainable’ way of living.
So, let’s try for a moment to open up this rather narrow keyhole and take in a wider perspective. Let’s look at how some of the other significant planetary boundaries are being broached.
When one opens the keyhole wider, the concern with carbon emissions/climate change may be seen as an outsized one in comparison to boundaries that appear to have been more significantly broached, such as: novel entities, biosphere integrity, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, and fresh water change.
This is not to say that the boundary of climate change is not important, it’s to try to better understand why a hyper-focus on carbon emissions is problematic: it’s one of several tipping points that need our attention, and not even the worst. The most pressing areas that we appear to have overshot beyond climate change include:
· Biogeochemical flows: agriculture and industry have increased significantly the flow of phosphorous and nitrogen into ecological systems and overloaded natural sinks (e.g., atmosphere and oceans)
· Novel entities: geologically-novel (i.e., human-made) substances that can have large-scale impacts upon Earth system processes (e.g., chemicals, plastics, etc.) have grown exponentially, even to the point of some existing in all global water supplies
· Biosphere integrity: human demand for food, water, and natural resources are decimating ecosystems (clearing land for mining and agriculture, for example, may have the worst impacts)
· Freshwater change: global groundwater levels in particular have been significantly altered by human activity and expansion (especially our drawdown of aquifers that exceed significantly their replenishment)
· Land-system change: human conversion of land systems (e.g., solar farms, agriculture, etc.) has impacts upon several of the other boundaries (i.e., biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, freshwater change) and the significantly important hydrological cycle
Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Wang-Erlandsson et al 2022.
Carbon tunnel vision tends to help minimise, or at worst, ignore these other predicaments of our ecological overshoot. In fact, what I sense and what some of my conversations did suggest is that the issue of ecological overshoot itself is completely off the radar for these commenters. One, in fact, admitted he had never read Catton’s book on the subject but in ‘skimming over’ the summary notes I sent a link for he simply saw “a bunch of vague assertions…didn’t learn anything…probably heading towards a hard wall…”. He then added for effect: “I don’t see any solutions from you. I do see almost entirely your focus on smearing renewables with the exact same material the Deniers and carbon pollution people do. Exactly the same.””
Leaving aside the competing narratives regarding whether or not carbon emissions are in reality greatly reduced through the production and use of EVs[2] — perhaps mostly due to the source fuel for creating much of the world’s electricity that is necessary for powering EVs (hint: it’s hydrocarbons[3]) — for most critics of EVs the dominant issue is the massive mining that is required for the materials to construct the battery components for the storage of energy to run EVs[4].
Proponents of EVs tend to ignore the significantly destructive mining that is necessary and/or rationalise it away by arguing that mining can be carried out in a more environmentally-friendly manner[5], can be avoided through recycling[6], and/or future technological breakthroughs will drastically reduce its impact[7]. An example of this type of thinking is shared in a discussion at the end of this Contemplation.
Regardless of such hopefulness about future possibilities, mining is currently one of the most ecologically-destructive industrial processes performed by humans[8], and a lot must be carried out for the finite battery minerals necessary to store the electrical power required to run EVs[9] — to say little regarding all of the finite hydrocarbon inputs needed to carry this out[10] and the negative societal impacts that arise in areas where much of this mining takes place[11]. All of this potential additional mining has raised growing concerns about the ecological systems impacts of supposed ‘clean-energy’ vehicles[12], and in fact this is true for all non-renewable, renewable energy-based technologies (NRREBTs) that have been marketed as ‘green’ and ‘clean’.
Then there’s also how EVs will worsen plastic pollution in our ecological systems[13]. For a variety of reasons, but especially because they are heavier due to the weight of battery packs, the industry has increased significantly the use of plastic components in EVs[14]. Plastics, of course, are derived from petrochemicals. This graphic depicts the vast array of plastic components that help to create an EV. It is estimated that close to 50% of an EV’s volume is composed of plastic.
These hydrocarbon-based components are integral to the production of EVs and the industry argues that it is through the continued and expanded use of these hydrocarbon-based products that EVs will become even more efficient. (Note that the plasticisation of ICE vehicles has also been occurring[15] in an effort to reduce vehicle weight, avoid corrosion, and reduce costs).
Add on top of this aspect that it has been determined that car tire and brake wear of all types of transportation vehicles are the primary cause of microplastic pollution[16]. Since EVs tend to be much heavier than ICE vehicles (due to their battery packs), the wear on these components is increased[17] leading to substantially increased microplastic pollution with EVs compared to ICE vehicles.
This particular petrochemical-based, plastic-pollution aspect is one that is rarely discussed and awareness of it needs to be raised since it appears our broaching of this specific planetary boundary (novel entities) is one of our most problematic (see graphic above), yet greatly ignored[18] — particularly when it comes to evaluating the ecological impact of EVs. EV advocates are quick to counter such issues with a reminder that it’s carbon emissions that is the most significant and/or only problem to be dealt with (e.g., don’t condemn the good looking for the perfect), minimising the harm caused by other aspects — a clear reflection of the carbon tunnel vision problem summarised above.
Further, as the curtain gets drawn aside with regard to the recycling industry and the myths that have surrounded it[19], it has become apparent that: only a portion of products actually get recycled, with a lot impossible to recycle and ending up in landfills; it requires large amounts of energy, perhaps not as much as the original product production but certainly not zero and in some cases more (and then there’s Jevon’s Paradox regarding how ‘efficiency’ savings are negated via increased demands); and, depending on what is being recycled and the processing necessary, there is much in the way of toxic pollutants created.
So, the argument that EVs and all or most of their components can be recycled and thus mining for its production can be significantly minimised falls far, far short of reality — to say little about the second law of thermodynamics and the related concept of entropy. And this is as true for ICE vehicles as it is for EVs; some of the components can be recycled (with associated ‘costs’) but much cannot — and this is particularly true for the hydrocarbon-derived, plastic components[20].
Despite narratives to the contrary, replacing billions of ICE vehicles with EVs will require significant quantities of hydrocarbon extraction, processing, and burning; the opposite of what EV cheerleaders argue is the primary reason for transitioning to them — to say little about all the hydrocarbons necessary to build and maintain/resurface the roadways these vehicles tend to travel upon, be they asphalt or gravel. Often, EV enthusiasts will counter this reality with arguments that the goal is to reduce the number of vehicles (particularly if they are ICE-based) on the road at the same time, thus mitigating the replacement problem.
This is not happening, however. The world is adding more and more vehicles every year[21], and the vast majority are ICE vehicles. EVs are, despite the ‘replacement-theory marketing hype’, becoming additive to our globe’s vehicles, not replacing the ICE fleet. Not surprisingly, this is exactly the same pattern with non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) such as solar panels and wind turbines — they are adding to our energy production, not replacing any of the hydrocarbon-based energy production they are supposedly meant to supplant[22].
In fact, as energy analyst/petroleum geologist Art Berman argues in this article localities that have taken up large number of EVs (e.g., Norway, where 23% of their fleet was composed of EVs in 2022) have witnessed little to no impact on their overall hydrocarbon consumption. Despite repeated assertions that hydrocarbon demand will drop with the adoption of EVs, the data indicates this is simply false. Berman’s conclusion: “If you like EVs, you should buy one but the data don’t support that driving one will do anything to save the planet.”
It’s perhaps important at this juncture to recall the opening passage from an article authored by Dr. Bill Rees and Meigan Siebert critical of the entire mainstream energy transition narrative:
“We begin with a reminder that humans are storytellers by nature. We socially construct complex sets of facts, beliefs, and values that guide how we operate in the world. Indeed, humans act out of their socially constructed narratives as if they were real. All political ideologies, religious doctrines, economic paradigms, cultural narratives — even scientific theories — are socially constructed “stories” that may or may not accurately reflect any aspect of reality they purport to represent. Once a particular construct has taken hold, its adherents are likely to treat it more seriously than opposing evidence from an alternate conceptual framework.”
The construct that EVs are ‘green/clean’ and an important component of a global energy transition has been with us for the past couple of decades. It took a strong foothold as earlier emissions standards for an array of pollutants from vehicles and industry, as well as greater fuel efficiency, drove research[23] and subsequent narratives. With the realisation that there were technological limits to fuel efficiency improvements, it was suggested that the most ‘efficient’ engine would be the one that didn’t require traditional hydrocarbon fuel due to energy storage batteries as the ‘fuel’. An added ‘benefit’ would be the elimination of exhaust emissions (ignoring, of course, all the emissions created in the manufacture of the batteries, and/or the electricity to charge them). Thus, through the magic of mass marketing, was born the story that EVs were ‘clean’ and ‘green’.
There has been a concerted effort to spread this notion of EV ‘cleanliness’ far and wide, especially trumpeting the lack of tailpipe emissions. A majority of the ‘positive-outlook’ articles that arose in the wake of this have been from publications that are heavily slanted towards encouraging NRREBTs and/or the financing of/investing in them. These are, for the most part, individuals/businesses significantly ‘invested’ in seeing the rapid and widespread adoption of EVs and other ‘green/clean’ technologies. Their rhetoric is purposely slanted towards placing EVs in a positive light and then leveraging that perspective towards purchasers who may wish to ‘do the right thing’ where ‘the right thing’ is buying an NRREBT such as an EV.
This is Marketing 101: grow business revenue through the expansion of market share by getting the product front and centre for potential customers, particularly via the highlighting of features and/or benefits[24]. And when multiple billions (perhaps trillions) of dollars are up for grabs, multiple millions (perhaps billions) will be ‘invested’ in managing/guiding the narrative via all sorts of avenues — to say little about the mainstream media’s dependence upon funding in the way of advertising dollars, regardless of the ‘accuracy’ of what is being marketed via their product.
The massive and significant marketing propaganda we are constantly exposed to[25] about EVs and their ‘great-for-the-planet’ attributes have convinced a lot of people. The majority of these accept without question the positive aspects highlighted in commercial advertising or preached by EV cheerleaders. The illusory truth effect explains a lot of the power of this propaganda/advertising on beliefs: repeated exposure to information regardless of its validity/reliability comes to be perceived as truthful, primarily because familiarity overpowers rationality. This is why many hundreds of billions (perhaps trillions when one includes ‘public relations’ work/agencies/departments for corporations and governments) of dollars are ‘invested’ annually in advertising and narrative management — it works to impact belief systems and thus behaviour[26].
I would argue that consumers are additionally more prone to such narratives to help alleviate and/or reduce the cognitive dissonance that arises from a growing awareness that industrial civilisation is unsustainable and destructive to ecological systems (i.e., infinite growth — that we are continuing to pursue/experience — is impossible on a finite planet and has significant negative repercussions) yet wishing to also believe that human ingenuity and our technological prowess can overcome and ‘solve’ the predicament of human ecological overshoot and/or its symptom predicaments (e.g., biodiversity loss, resource depletion/scarcity, etc.)[27].
A part of me additionally believes that the narrative that EVs can be part of some grand ‘solution’ to our ecological overshoot predicament and its various symptom predicaments is the mind’s attempt to not only reduce anxiety-provoking thoughts but cling to the notion that we all have agency in/control over a very uncertain future[28]. We story-telling apes are creating tales to support such belief systems and reduce our anxiety. Perhaps buying an EV is subsequently not really about addressing environmental concerns; it’s about telling ourselves a comforting tale and engaging in some virtue-signalling to others to help us maintain our self-image as thoughtful, caring beings with agency over our future[29].
Personally, I view technocornucopian perspectives as delusional in a world of significant human ecological overshoot where the surplus energy to continue pursuing growth and such complex technologies is quickly disappearing[30] (if not already exhausted). We have for some time been pulling growth from the future via financial/monetary machinations and supported by geo/political gamesmanship (i.e., wars over resources and market control)[31].
That governments are not only complicit but encouraging the deception about EVs and NRREBTs being ‘green’ perhaps says a lot about their stake in the narrative. And what is a government’s incentive? Aside from the need in a debt-/credit-based economic system to chase perpetual growth to avoid ‘collapse’, this may be just another racket being perpetrated on the masses as U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler suggested war is.
For myself, I tend to gravitate towards the entire energy transition narrative (of which EVs are but one component) being another in a wide array of profiteering rackets, leveraging the growing evidence and recognition that Homo sapiens are having a profoundly negative impact on the planet’s ecological systems. And those that are benefitting from this story will disseminate and protect it vociferously. Others, well, they’re caught up in the narrative/propaganda.
Given the Ponzi-type nature of our monetary/financial/economic systems, geopolitical stressors, resource constraints, and ecological concerns, one has to wonder just how far and how long the uptake of these NRREBTs can or will continue. In fact, some are arguing that the wheels have already fallen off with increasing numbers of planned projects being paused/cancelled[32]. And despite all the marketing and shouting from rooftops that the EV market is exploding, the sheen appears to be coming off the EV narrative.
Michael Shedlock begins this article with: “The market for used EVs is plummeting. What will car rental companies do with the used ones? Problems started in China but have spread to Europe and the US.” Citing a Bloomberg article, he highlights that “A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles.”
In this article economist Stephen Moore is quoted as stating: “The Edsel was one of the great flops of all time. I’m here to tell you, if these trends continue, we’re going to see the EV market become the next big flop because car buyers don’t want them.”
Let’s dispense with the binary narrative that is often on display and be perfectly clear and honest for a moment. Both EVs and ICE vehicles — along with all the infrastructure supports necessary for their production and use — are detrimental to our significantly important ecological systems. The continuing production and use of one, the other, or both simply exacerbates the human ecological overshoot predicament.
Once again, while the future cannot be predicted with much accuracy, the current reality is much, much different than the bargaining being carried out by those wishing to see a shift from ICE vehicles to EVs — particularly given that the environmental advantages cheerleaders crow on about are mostly founded upon as-yet-to-be-hatched-technologically-improved-and-massively-scaled-up chickens. These potential breakthroughs/improvements may or may not come to fruition. Most likely they will not make it much beyond a research lab or marginal prototype use, and believing otherwise is akin to faith/hope/wishful thinking; it is certainly not reflective of current realities.
We are being convinced by growth profiteers and their narrative managers that ‘smart’ or ‘green’ or the ridiculously oxymoronic notion of ‘sustainable’ growth is the way to maintain ‘progress’ and that human ingenuity, especially where technology is concerned, will extricate us from any and all issues we encounter along this inevitable path. We are not abiding by the precautionary principle and erring on the side of caution, however; not even close. We are travelling full-steam ahead and creating rationalisations/justifications in our story-telling manner to make us feel good about our suicidal behaviour and actions, thereby reducing our cognitive dissonance.
Without a significant, and likely expedient, reduction of both types of vehicles (that we are very unlikely to do voluntarily), there is little point in bargaining ploys to keep the status quo from continuing for as long as possible which seems to be what the narrative around an energy ‘transition’ and the adoption of NRREBTs is.
I had written a suggestive path forward on this issue that might provide some mitigation by avoiding the exacerbation of our destructive tendencies but in reflection see little point in sharing it. Given the human proclivity to pursue the business-as-usual scenario painted by Meadow’s et al. in The Limits to Growth over the past handful of decades[33], I’m certain any guideline would not be pursued and it would simply be cathartic for me.
While most want ‘solutions’ to our overshoot predicament, this demonstrates a weak understanding of not only what a predicament is (it has no ‘solution’) but also displays energy/resource blindness and denial of the ongoing ecological systems destruction that accompanies all complex technological ‘solutions’. The best mitigation any of us can pursue is a dramatic reduction in our consumptive and excessive tendencies.
The best vehicle in terms of reducing damage to our planet is the one not produced, regardless of type. If reducing one’s dependency upon and/or use of a well-maintained ICE vehicle can help to prevent the production of a new vehicle (of either type), then the negative ecological systems damage that accompanies the creation of transportation vehicles is reduced dramatically. Reducing dependence upon and/or use of an ICE vehicle (to zero if at all possible) will likely go much further than purchasing an EV.
You are not a progressive steward of the environment with your purchase or heralding of an EV (or related NRREBTs). That is a narrative we story-telling apes have weaved in order to avoid reality and reduce our anxieties, engaging in denial and massive magical thinking/bargaining along the way. As I’ve said numerous times, we are an intelligent species just not very wise.
The bottom line is as I commented on a recent FB post regarding supposed misinformation about EV battery ‘facts’: Substituting one resource-intensive and complex (and thus environmentally destructive) technology for another fully and completely overlooks humanity’s fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot, and is more about reducing one’s cognitive dissonance than anything else.
[H/T Schuyler Hupp]
A handful of other ecological variables that could be added: land system changes, resource depletion, food scarcity, biosphere integrity, climate change, novel entities, stratospheric ozone depletion. Then add on top of this massive ecological complexity all the socioeconomic and sociopolitical systems that Homo sapiens have created that exacerbate our ecological overshoot.
Here is the discussion that I referred to above that demonstrates the magical thinking some engage in regarding the energy transition being touted by many. It was in response to this posted article.
Me: It would seem we need to destroy our ecological systems to save them…hmmmmmm.
UB: I am always in favor of creative disruption. It is the very concept of “Seneca Cliff,” normally followed by a “Seneca Rebound”
D: With a sad caveat the Good Doctor has pointed at: it must be not that much fun to be creatively disrupted 😉
Me: The one aspect of this energy ‘transition’ that seems to be invariably left out of the equation is the massive and significant destruction that would and is being wrought on the planet (and a planet with already very overloaded sinks). The scale of the mining and processing that is being considered (and requiring a gargantuan pulse of fossil fuel extraction and burning) would surely put us over (if it hasn’t already) any tipping point from which our planet could recover from (let alone Homo sapiens survive, or many other species for that matter). I’ve not seen anywhere a detailed consideration or analysis of this particular perspective; except to mostly dismiss it via omission of the issue.
E: Sorry Steve Bull — but mining for the energy transition will NOT destroy the biosphere. The “Energy Transitions Commission” is a huge global think tank. They estimated the entire energy cost to mine and build the entire Energy Transition over the next decades. The total thing will release about 4.5 to 9 months of today’s global annual emissions. Once. Fossil fuel emissions will have stopped forever. (Figures here — but I converted to months equivalent CO2 emissions for ease of comparison.)
From the link above: “Between 2022–2050, the energy transition could require the production of 6.5 billion tonnes of end-use materials, 95% of which would be steel, copper and aluminium which the energy transition will require,”
Again — fossil fuels are 14 billion tons EVERY year.
Sure, a ‘think tank’ composed of people with very vested (financial) interests and focused on economic growth is guaranteed to be providing objective opinions based on very sound research and models.
It’s a great (cognitive dissonance-reducing) narrative but given how far into ecological overshoot the human species has travelled, whether it is death by a 1000 cuts or 999 or even 900 is truly moot. Both are ultimately suicidal when sustaining ‘growth’ is the fundamental driver (even if it’s not, maintaining the status quo is equally problematic given the amount of resource drawdown it requires).
The most appropriate path would be to attempt to reduce (significantly) all our complex technologies (along with other things like population) rather than attempt to carry on with business as usual via non-renewable, renewable energy-based industrial products.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.
Costs (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
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Book 3: $3.89
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You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially Catton’s Overshoot and Tainter’s Collapse: see here.
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 1
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword and Afterword by Michael Dowd, authors include: Max Wilbert; Tim Watkins; Mike Stasse; Dr. Bill Rees; Dr. Tim Morgan; Rob Mielcarski; Dr. Simon Michaux; Erik Michaels; Just Collapse’s Tristan Sykes & Dr. Kate Booth; Kevin Hester; Alice Friedemann; David Casey; and, Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.
[25] It’s hilarious, in a very sad way, that the advertisements that flood my Facebook feed are almost entirely focused upon non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (e.g., wind turbines, solar panels) and electric vehicles. This is perhaps because I occasionally comment on these posts. What the FB algorithms seem to be missing, however, is that my comments are quite critical of the assertions being made in the ads.
A dozen U.S. states, from California to New York, have joined dozens of countries, from Ireland to Spain, with plans to ban the sale of new cars with an internal combustion engine (ICE), many prohibitions taking effect within a decade. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a feat of regulatory legerdemain, has proposed tailpipe emissions rules that would effectively force automakers to shift to producing mainly electric vehicles (EVs) by 2032.
To ensure compliance with ICE prohibitions and soften the economic impacts, policymakers are deploying lavish subsidies for manufacturers and consumers. Enthusiasts claim that EVs already have achieved economic and operational parity, if not superiority, with automobiles and trucks fueled by petroleum, so the bans and subsidies merely accelerate what they believe is an inevitable transition.
It is certainly true that EVs are practical and appealing for many drivers. Even without subsidies or mandates, millions more will be purchased by consumers, if mainly by wealthy ones. But the facts reveal a fatal flaw in the core motives for the prohibitions and mandates.
Executive Summary Key Points
No one knows how much, if at all, CO2 emissions will decline as EV use rises. Every claim for EVs reducing emissions is a rough estimate or an outright guess based on averages, approximations, or aspirations. The variables and uncertainties in emissions from energy-intensive mining and processing of minerals used to make EV batteries are a big wild card in the emissions calculus…
Many people believe that installing more wind turbines and solar panels and manufacturing more electric vehicles can solve our energy problem, but I don’t agree with them. These devices, plus the batteries, charging stations, transmission lines and many other structures necessary to make them work represent a high level of complexity.
A relatively low level of complexity, such as the complexity embodied in a new hydroelectric dam, can sometimes be used to solve energy problems, but we cannot expect ever-higher levels of complexity to always be achievable.
According to the anthropologist Joseph Tainter, in his well-known book,The Collapse of Complex Societies, there are diminishing returns to added complexity. In other words, the most beneficial innovations tend to be found first. Later innovations tend to be less helpful. Eventually the energy cost of added complexity becomes too high, relative to the benefit provided.
In this post, I will discuss complexity further. I will also present evidence that the world economy may already have hit complexity limits. Furthermore, the popular measure, “Energy Return on Energy Investment” (EROEI) pertains to direct use of energy, rather than energy embodied in added complexity. As a result, EROEI indications tend to suggest that innovations such as wind turbines, solar panels and EVs are more helpful than they really are. Other measures similar to EROEI make a similar mistake.
[1] In this video with Nate Hagens, Joseph Tainter explains how energy and complexity tend to grow simultaneously, in what Tainter calls the Energy-Complexity Spiral.
Figure 1. The Energy-Complexity Spiral from 2010 presentation called The Energy-Complexity Spiral by Joseph Tainter.
According to Tainter, energy and complexity build on each other. At first, growing complexity can be helpful to a growing economy by encouraging the uptake of available energy products…
Rather than expanding our renewable electricity production and developing an EV fleet, a degrowth approach would be to initiate a massive energy conservation programme and investing in cities where we can live, work and play within 15 minutes’ walking or biking
Opinion: Purchasing an EV is something more people are doing to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. EVs are attractive and increasingly convenient.
But is this reaction to the climate crisis an example of the wrong solution to the wrong problem? Is climate change, as serious as it is, even the most important problem to address?
Climate change is certainly an existential threat and more needs to be done to mitigate its worst impacts. Yet even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, we would still face a range of environmental existential threats.
Part of the problem is we haven’t defined the problem correctly. Rather than trying to deal with specific issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and so on, there is an underlying cause that connects these threats. Understanding the cause could provide a new approach to dealing with many of these challenges.
First let’s step back and try to understand just what the threat is. As far as we know Earth is the only planet in the universe with complex living systems, with a biosphere covering its surface.
The biosphere is an intricately balanced network of living and non-living systems interacting with each other in a self-regulatory manner. This rare web of life provides for us physically, economically, aesthetically and spiritually.
A creuseur, or digger, climbs through a copper and cobalt mine in Kawama, Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 8, 2016.MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ / THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES / TRUTHOUT
Much of the excitement over the Inflation Reduction Act, which became law this summer, focused on the boost it should give to the sales of electric vehicles. Sadly, though, manufacturing and driving tens of millions of individual electric passenger cars won’t get us far enough down the road to ending greenhouse-gas emissions and stanching the overheating of this planet. Worse yet, the coming global race to electrify the personal vehicle is likely to exacerbate ecological degradation, geopolitical tensions, and military conflict.
The batteries that power electric vehicles are likely to be the source of much international competition and the heart of the problem lies in two of the metallic elements used to make their electrodes: cobalt and lithium. Most deposits of those metals lie outside the borders of the United States and will leave manufacturers here (and elsewhere) relying heavily on foreign supplies to electrify road travel on the scale now being envisioned.
Adventurers and Opportunists
In the battery business, the Democratic Republic of Congo is referred to as “the Saudi Arabia of cobalt.” For two decades, its cobalt — 80% of the world’s known reserves — has been highly prized for its role in mobile-phone manufacturing. Such cobalt mining has already taken a terrible human and ecological toll.
Now, the pressure to increase Congo’s cobalt output is intensifying on a staggering scale. Whereas a phone contains just thousandths of a gram of cobalt, an electric vehicle battery has pounds of the metal, and a quarter-billion such batteries will have to be manufactured to fully electrify the American passenger car fleet as it now exists.
It might feel like the easy solution — just replace your gas-guzzling SUV with an electric SUV, and if everyone does that, eventually we’ll solve climate change. You can see why California regulators decided last month that by 2035, all new cars sold in the state must be electric. After all, car exhaust is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, so surely switching gas-powered cars to electric ones will make a huge dent in fighting climate change.
Except it doesn’t. For starters, electric cars still pollute. They don’t have tailpipe emissions, but the process of producing and transporting them creates pollution. According to the International Energy Agency, the average gas-powered car will create 41.9 tons of CO2 emissions from the point it’s manufactured until it’s retired, in contrast to 21.1 tons of CO2 from an EV. In other words, while the average EV will pollute about 50% less compared with a gas-powered car, it’s still highly polluting.
There’s also pollution, and other harms, that come before the manufacturing stage, especially in the intensifying global competition to procure rare earth materials (concentrated in China) for EV batteries. In the past, we have often been dependent on the Middle East for oil. Do we want to create a future in which we’re again dependent on countries that may not be aligned with our values for required materials for our transportation system?
The second issue is power capacity. During the first week in September, California faced a historic heat wave, and alerts were issued asking EV owners to not charge their vehicles during peak times. And this is at a time when only 1.9% of cars operating in California are EVs….
Or do visions of ‘clean’ robots supplying mobile freedom steer us down the wrong road?
Makers of EVs also push ahead on self-augmenting automation. In other words, a car capable of driving itself while you doze. Is that truly ‘freedom’?
Fifty years ago, the French political ecologist André Gorz explained that cars masquerade as solutions to the very problems they create. “Since cars have killed the city, we need faster cars to escape on superhighways to suburbs that are even farther away. What an impeccable circular argument: give us more cars so that we can escape the destruction caused by cars.”
Today, cars powered by electricity rather than petroleum have become the promised solution to climate change.
According to Bloomberg, about half of the world’s transportation vehicle sales by 2035 will be electric. Many now assume this switchover is already ushering in a “green transition” to a better world. “Electric vehicles are not just the wave of the future, they are saving lives today,” gushes one environmentally-focused non-profit.
Now, for the record, I own a 22-year-old Toyota 4Runner designed after a Japanese military jeep. My car-savvy wife purchased the vehicle for $3,000 nearly eight years ago. I have never been fond of cars or their associated expenses, but I do appreciate a machine that can last more than 400,000 kilometres. Yet, as my books attest, I am no fan of internal combustion engines, or ICEs, let alone petro states.
However, neither am I an enthusiast for wishful thinking. People who regard the electric car as a significant solution for climate change don’t seem to understand the incredible scale of the problem. Nor do they see that the electric car “solution” accelerates other problematic trends in our technological society.
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The production of electric vehicles requires vast amounts of raw materials such as nickel: Around 32 kg of this metal are needed for the lithium batteries of a mid-range car. To secure access, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is encouraging global nickel mining and is considering investing in the mining industry in Indonesia and elsewhere.
“Any mining companies out there … wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel,” was the urgent appeal to the mining industry by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, a US manufacturer of electric cars. “Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way,” he added.
Huge quantities of metals and other raw materials are needed to build Tesla’s electric vehicles. Tesla is in early talks with the government of Indonesia about a possible investment in the nickel industry, Reuters reports. The Southeast Asian country is one of the world’s largest nickel producers.
In the rainforests of the islands of Sulawesi and Wawonii, nickel is already being mined by Chinese companies, as well as Vale, a Brazilian mining company – with catastrophic consequences for the environment and the people who live there. Ecosystems of great biodiversity are being destroyed, rivers and coastal waters rich in marine life are being polluted, and people are being displaced and poisoned. Nickel mine operators have applied to the Indonesian government for permission to dump the tailings, which are corrosive and laden with heavy metals, in the sea.
Earlier this year, Indonesia stopped exporting unprocessed nickel – not for environmental reasons, but for purely economic considerations: to encourage investments in the nickel industry and the domestic production of lithium batteries.
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In the last decade, China has rapidly expanded its “green” new energy vehicle (NEV) industry but recycling and disposing of hundreds of thousands of tons of used car batteries has become a pressing issue due to environmental concerns.
Growth in China’s NEV industry took off in 2014 when nearly 78,500 NEVs were produced and some 75,000 were sold. As of September of this year, China’s NEV registration reached 6.78 million, of which 5.52 million are fully electric vehicles.
The NEV industry predicts that its production and sales growth rate will remain above 40 percent in the next five years prompting the question of how to best manage the growing numbers of discarded lithium batteries from the NEVs.
Industry data shows that the service life of lithium batteries used in electric vehicles is generally 5 to 8 years, and the service life under warranty is 4 to 6 years. That means, tens of thousands of electric car batteries will soon need to be discarded or recycled, and millions more down the road.
According to the latest data from China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the cumulative decommissioning of China’s electric car batteries reached 200,000 tons in 2020 and the figure is estimated to climb to 780,000 tons by 2025.
Presently, most end-of-life batteries are traded in the unregulated black market, raising serious environmental concerns. If such batteries are not handled properly, they could cause soil, air, and water pollution.
“A 20-gram cell phone battery can pollute a water body equivalent to three standard swimming pools. If it is buried in the ground, it can pollute 1 square kilometer (247 acres) of land for about 50 years,” Wu Feng, a professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, once publicly stated.
Electric car batteries are many times larger than cell phone batteries.
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A lead human-interest story in the weekend Wheels section of a major Canadian newspaper is about a 2-car family’s transitioning from a hybrid to an EV as they “try to be more sustainable”. They upgrade their daily car every few years to seek “improvements in fuel efficiency, reliability and technology”. Electric vehicles (EVs) are feted by the automobile and ecojustice sectors as part of the “just transition” to a future “carbon-neutral”, happy, dignified quality of life. Another news item from the Wheels section was about the costs of home EV battery chargers costing about $2000; the chargers are plugged into electric outlets (electricity commonly supplied from fossil fuels or nuclear reactors), while the costs will be “quickly re-couped in government rebates” as public transportation subsidies continue their decline. So much for the climate emergency and for human justice, for morality and taking responsibility for mounting climate-caused human deaths and mass migration. Nothing in the newspaper about the indignation of ordinary, common people worldwide, especially among the young.
Since the 1988 Congressional definitive testimony of James Hansen and other climate scientists, there is no discourse about “Stop”: elimination of fossil fuel emissions quickly morphed into adaptation and mitigation which is now replaced by “transition”. EVs is a representative example of focusing on one small part, conveniently deleting the whole. The whole EV picture must include externalities, life cycle analysis, consideration of non-essential production, impacts of its production on basic human needs, the urgent timeline due to non-linear climate processes, regional climate and sociopolitical processes and who EVs actually serve, EV’s effects on carbon sinks, pertinent facts about human and climate history, loss and damage obligations and debt to people totally impacted and totally innocent regarding the climate emergency, alternatives, elucidating who is served in a “just transition”.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is the revolution here? The cover of the October 2021 issue of National Geographicsays it is. I agree, though we’re not talking about the same revolution. And what if that difference can make all the difference?
The magazine cover refers to two feature articles on “electric cars, hydrogen-powered planes, and the dream of a cleaner commute.” (emphasis added) Both articles are compelling, and worth reading, but I want to focus on the first: “The Big Bet on Clean Cars,” by Craig Welch.
In his article, Welch describes the massive transition underway from conventional petroleum-powered vehicles to all-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs). That transition is happening unevenly across the world. (The U.S., Europe, and China are leading the charge, so to speak, but there are interesting initiatives in other countries, as well.)
The transition is also unfolding across the entire auto manufacturing industry—from obscure startups developing cars with ranges that will top 500 miles or be powered by the sun, to the big companies with sprawling car lots on the outskirts of your town. Ford, for example, is investing $30 billion in EVs between now and 2025. General Motors is investing $35 billion through 2025, including $2 billion to redesign a Tennessee factory so it can manufacture an electric Cadillac, and another $2.3 billion on a battery plant. And Volkswagen announced last November that it plans to invest $86 billion in the development of EVs and other new technologies over the next five years.
Manufacturers aren’t the only ones betting big on electric vehicles. The current administration believes the future is electric (boogie woogie woogie), and President Biden’s original infrastructure plan included $174 billion to encourage the sale and manufacture of EVs. Wall Street is bullish on EVs, too…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If an energy policy sounds too good to be true, that is usually because it is. Take, for example, just one of the jigsaw pieces in current policy for reaching net zero by 2050: electric car batteries. Jillian Ambrose – who should know better – at the Guardian reports this weekend that:
“Ofgem plans to make it easier for electric vehicle drivers to sell the energy stored in their car batteries back to power grid as part of a move to help make the switch away from fossil fuel cars more affordable.
“Under the plan put forward by Great Britain’s energy regulator, electric vehicle drivers could earn money by effectively transforming their cars into mobile power plants by releasing power back to the energy network when demand on the electricity grid reaches a peak.
“If enough drivers take up the chance to make money from their car batteries by using vehicle-to-grid technology, the UK could avoid investing in new power plants with the equivalent generation capacity of up to 10 large nuclear power stations.”
This is wishful thinking on steroids. While it is true that if all of the UK’s 37 million cars were replaced with battery electric cars, and assuming that all were fitted with a mid-range – 98KW -battery, they could provide 3,100GW of power to the grid – just shy of the 3,200GW from 10 nuclear plants – they could only do it for about an hour. A battery is not a source of power, it is merely a storage medium. For comparison, a recent report the Manhattan Institute finds that:
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Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic. And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the news that:
“More electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for the second month in a row in July, according to car industry figures. It is the third time battery electric vehicles have overtaken diesel in the past two years.”
That is surely great news. But as is usually the case in matters green, we are starting from a very low position. Much more will have to be done to raise the number of battery-only EVs from the current nine percent of registrations in 2021 to the planned 100 percent by 2035. Moreover, the current nine percent is a share of a dramatically depressed new car market… which is the real headline news in this story.
Nobody is actively covering this up; but they are playing it down. According to the BBC piece which celebrates the rise in EV sales:
“However, new car registrations fell by almost a third…”
Insofar as the wellbeing or otherwise of the car industry has been a measure of the health of the wider economy throughout the oil age, a 29.5 percent collapse in new car sales ought to have been given far more prominence. This is particularly true insofar as this year’s decline comes on the back of the massive lockdown-decline in 2020:
Instead we are treated to several implausible explanations for why this is nothing to worry about. First, we are told, the decline is the result of people no longer wanting to buy diesel cars. Certainly, there has been a collapse in demand for diesels in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal and government increases in tax on diesel vehicles…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In many ways, the world is not ready for the EV revolution. While electric vehicles are an absolutely invaluable and essential component of the clean energy revolution and combating climate change and imperative which grows more urgent with each passing second, the world has been unable (or, in some cases, unwilling) to keep up with the necessary infrastructure installations and investments to prepare for the kind of wide-scale adoption which is both necessary and imminent. For one thing, even in some of the most developed countries in the world, aging power grids are entirely unprepared to handle the onslaught of increased energy demand as more and more of the country leaves their gas guzzlers behind and plugin. This problem is far from insurmountable, and can indeed be all but completely solved by making our energy use and production more efficient, but it needs to be addressed in a big hurry in order to make the EV revolution viable.
And then there’s the issue of those pesky car batteries. While you can cut down your carbon footprint by a massive margin by switching over to an EV, you just can’t get away from using finite resources completely. EV batteries contain a litany of expensive and finite rare earth metals and minerals, most notably cobalt and lithium, which cause tricky negotiations with global supply chains and which are not without their negative environmental externalities thanks to sometimes messy mining operations.
The energy revolution’s dependence on rare earth metals, which is only set to intensify, has inadvertently put a huge amount of control into the hands of China, which controls around 90% of the market for some of these resources, and has shown that it is not afraid to use that power to sway international politics and diplomacy…
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