Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the looking-forward-to-electric-planes dept.

Transportation accounts for a huge portion of US carbon emissions. As recently as 2014, it was behind the electricity sector — 26 percent of US emissions to electricity's 30 percent. But as the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) just confirmed, as of 2016, they have crossed paths. "Electric power sector CO2 emissions," EIA writes, "are now regularly below transportation sector CO2 emissions for the first time since the late 1970s."

This is happening because power sector "carbon intensity" — carbon emissions per unit of energy produced — is falling, as coal is replaced with natural gas, renewables, and efficiency.

The only realistic prospect for reducing transportation sector emissions rapidly and substantially is electrification. How much market share EVs take from oil (gasoline is by far the most common use for oil in the US) will matter a great deal.

[...] Today saw the release of a new study from the Grantham Institute for Imperial College London and the Carbon Tracker Initiative. It argues that solar photovoltaics (PV) and EVs together will kick fossil fuel's ass, quickly.

"Falling costs of electric vehicle and solar technology," they conclude, "could halt growth in global demand for oil and coal from 2020." That would be a pretty big deal.

The "business as usual" (BAU) scenarios that typically dominate these discussions are outdated, the researchers argue. New baseline scenarios should take into account updated information on PV, EV, and battery costs. (The EIA doesn't expect inflation-adjusted prices of EVs to fall to $30,000 until 2030, even as multiple automakers say they'll hit that within a few years.)

[...] If these forecasts play out, fossil fuels could lose 10 percent market share to PV and EVs within a decade. A 10 percent loss in market share was enough to send the US coal industry spiraling, enough to cause Europe's utilities to hemorrhage money. It could seriously disrupt life for the oil majors. "Growth in EVs alone could lead to 2 million barrels of oil per day being displaced by 2025," the study says, "the same volume that caused the oil price collapse in 2014-15."

Source: http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/2/14467748/electric-vehicles-oil-market


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 04 2017, @09:25PM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Saturday February 04 2017, @09:25PM (#462936) Journal

    This reminds me of an old pre-cell phone mobile phone network I saw back in the 80s. It used antennas that had been placed at specific points, mostly gas stations. I remember thinking that this would never scale - you'd need antenna's everywhere to get decent coverage!
    .... So that's basically what happened.

    The charging problem sounds very similar. A trivial way to solve it is if you could swap your car's batteries at a "gas" station for fully loaded batteries. That's probably not what'll win out in the end, but there are solutions which make electric vehicles feasible, e.g. charging at work. If every work place can easily charge all the EVs coming in, then your range anxiety is vastly diminished. By the time you leave the office, the batteries will be full again.

    On another note: EVs cost too much is of course just another way of stating "gas is too cheap".If gas prices shoot above $20 a gallon, EVs (and small, efficient cars) will become a lot more popular.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2