So there are a couple of numbers to keep in mind when we talk about ff vs electricity with respect to transportation.
The first is something I googled the other day so it may or may not be 100% accurate I didn’t question the Google results as I only wanted a rough comparison point in it felt believable enough for my estimates at the time.
But google claims 10kW of electricity to do the same work as 1 liter of diesel fuel burned in a engine. I have no reason to question that ratio I am sure the numbers are well know based on the EV industry making cars with know range so I accept it on face value. That sure does look like a massive nut to crack. 10kW per each liter in a gas or diesel tank is some very serious storage demand.
But there is an older number that I remember with respect to EV because it shocked me and the number goes way back modern EV might be even better. An electric vehicle can drive 25 miles on the same amount of electricity as it takes to make 1 gallon of gasoline at the refinery alone. So if your gasoline vehicle gets 25 miles to the gallon you are getting no additional energy benefit from the gasoline it is literally just acting as a storage tank for the electricity used at the refinery. That is before you count the energy used to drill the oil well extract the oil from the ground transport it to the refinery and transportation of the gas from the refinery to your gas station finially pumping that gas out of the below ground tank back up into your gas tank. So it is fair to say regardless of your gas mileage when it comes to transportation ff is only a storage medium not an energy source because it definitely took more energy to get the fuel in your tank than the fuel delivered to your wheels.
So from a pure energy standpoint if we switch to electric vehicles storage issues aside we will consume the 25 miles of electricity per gallon the refinery used per gallon for free. Now we can compare the the total energy put into getting that fuel from and to the refinery with the 15% line loss IIRC for grid scale distribution because that is where the bulk of our society gets electricity. I would be willing to bet there is less energy input to an EV per mile driven than an ICE.
Batteries are the big question. I have no way to estimate the energy required to make an EV or an ICE car. So I will look at the sticker price to buy each. If Elon Musk can truly build the M3 and the cyber truck for the prices he is selling them I would say the cost of making an EV is equal to the cost of making an ICE maybe less. Because the cyber truck is stainless steel and less expensive than the comparables pickup truck not a great parallel to any models but price wise it is definitely in the same range and stainless steel bodies won’t rust out the way my 2005 duramax 2500 is. So I have to believe there is a good chance Tesla can match the total cost of ownership. They claim to get 1 million miles out of the batteries. Even if that is a massive overstatement the odds of the batteries out lasting the avg car is very good.
I also see a future where we don’t use road freight as much but go back to railroads. High speed rail could match most short flights in the USA when you factor in the hassle and delays getting through an airport. It is definitely easier to get through a train station post 911. I think other countries have already taken major steps down that road and high speed rail is largely all electric transportation. I can’t think of one high speed rail that isn’t but there might be some somewhere.
So the question I see is storage. Can batteries be mass produced at the levels needed. The automotive industry seems to be betting in a big way that the answer to that question is yes battery production can be ramped up to match the market demand.
Sorry about the rant. The 10kw per liter and the 25 miles of EV per refinery kW per gallon of gas produced are just things that shook my understanding of our current energy sector.
Hey Bruce, I would say install 5 more kw of panels!. I was off grid for 8 years then grid assisted for 8… that house is sold now. The new place we are building will have 12 to 14kw of panels, a net metered inverter and battery backup leading contender is a company called SolArk. My first system was a 12 volt venerable trace inverter with 4 t105 batteries and at the time a staggering 320watts of panels. I designed and installed for a fairly large company for 3 years so that allowed me a good window into the industry…
Fellows we are all viewing and talking about the same thing:
Where we are now.
And how can we get to where we need to be.
BruceJ. makes the very good point the we Modern society over-all are pretty oblivious to what we are currently using for energies. Their costs. Limitations ultimately in supply. And their long-chain vulnerability to disruptions.
The real hammer home awakening comes with realistically trying to replace those liters of propane, gasoline, and diesel.
I learned doing lead acid battery systems on large equipment’s (with electric extend-retract, haul and swing motors); live on marine; motor homes; and a bit of off-grid back in the 1970-late 80’s.
Damn. The energy density in a gallon of DINO is astonishing.
Feed the beasts and they serve and perform.
So now since 2007 why I wood gas. I always, in some form have woodstoved.
So fine. Batteries are better. Higher frequency inverters more flexible and efficient.
Still . . . you have to make/harvest/convert the systems input power in some way.
And at the other extremes from the housing projects Oblivious; the fully bought-in Urban multi-occupants buildings living. . . .
are the Force-Changers.
Whether they be with more and more constrictive laws, rules and regulations. Illegalizing, tax-punishing all Dino-use and users. Using the money generated to subsidize Techs that can never, ever replace Dino at it’s current use volume and delivered cost.
Or the nightly systems burn down BIg-A (anarchists’) all black wearing “Disrupters” in downtown Portland Oregon.
Each here do as you may individually.
But beware.
Now bio-mass usage is being tagged as earth killers; being a greens stripper; and CO2 generator. And us bio-mass energy users and promoters as nasty, self-centered earth killers.
Think not? Read the articles now trashing all methane use as more shortsighted, greedy planet killing.
And now hydrogen split from “blue” made-from-methane; to “green” hydrogen.
READ their literatures. READ their blogs. READ their “studies”.
Example is that article you quote DanA.
There are five refineries in Washington State. None in Oregon, Idaho, Northern California. So all refined out gasolines, diesel to this whole area comes from these refineries. Yes and they do use our Washington and BC Hydro electricity. But NOT nearly the amount per delivered finished produced as that article quotes. Their greatest energy input needs are heating. They self-generate this as much as possible with out-gasses and intentional forced burning heat making. Oil refineries are located around the world Not where grid electricity is cheap (aluminum production we USED to do here in PNW big-hydro land) but where receiving in and shipping out bulk Dino are the lowest costs.
This fact checks as bogus as Edison paying to publicize trash Tesla/Westinghouse’s AC as much more deadly than his DC.
Ha! And earlier it was the kerosene lighting Kings trashing Edison’s electric lighting as dangerous. spooky, and unsafe.
Concurrently back then with the wooden building shipyards promoting steel ships as “obvious” unsafe. Wood floats, you know. Obviously. Steel sinks. Obviously.
Bogus voter influencing bullshit.
Fellas regardless of new-tech coming on-line the fact is for the lowest personal user costs it is using the older tech thrown-away’s. Until they are all used up.
Sure I personally buy into new Tech as I can. I/we use 1/2 the personal use energies and water as we did 20 years ago. Some by conservation. Mostly by better-Tech energy consumers. Obtained. Replaced out one by one as the older aged out, unusable.
But I only will open pocket book into new Tech’s that keeps me free and independent.
NEVER tech that promotes dependencies.
Never new Tech’s just because they are new, darlings, and popular culture promoted.
Steve unruh
I have a dream of mixed use 750mm electric light freight and passenger rail trains crossing the city and towns.
On the one hand these videos are depressing. The KTM-5 here is as old as me and the rail is in a condition it makes you want to cry. BUT its so cheap to run and keep running that they carry on…
Think of what nice trains and infrastructure we could have if we paid for it and kept it up ( and make free or almost free at least… so people used it )
And we could use Trolley busses…
Also a lot cheaper, cleaner and quiet compared to diesel
But these videos are a warning !
If people do not want to ride them they will drive their cars. The trains must be clean fast and cheap. They must be comfortable and utilitarian. Imagine a train with a desk you could work from or enjoy a movie free internet in a nice safe comfortable seat if your commute was long .
But if we end up with this as amusing as it looks. No one will ride it no matter how cheap the tickets or how expensive the gasoline for your car. These videos are examples of what it looks like when you let your infrastructure no matter what it is go to hell and you have nothing else to replace it with and that’s a scary thought too!
Trying to understand term used to criticize wood power .
“Globiom Study” from 2015. The restrictive regulations of the European legislator for biofuels from cultivated biomass in the Renewable Energy Directive II (RED II) were based to a very large extent on the results of this study. Non-governmental organizations also use the figures from the Globiom study in their papers.
Forgone sequestration
GLOBIOM includes a term for ‘forgone sequestration’, which reflects the loss of future biomass
growth due to returning abandoned farmland to cropping that would otherwise return to a
more natural state with increasing vegetation levels. In earlier work, it was assumed that a
mix of natural vegetation characteristic of the local region would be restored if land were
not returned to cropping, which may include full or partial afforestation. In the new work, it is
assumed that no afforestation would occur, which is described as having the result that, “the
opportunity cost accounted for is at a rather low bound of possible estimates”. The explanation
given for discounting the possibility of afforestation on abandoned land is that it created an
asymmetry with the treatment of natural land, where carbon stocks are implicitly assumed
to be in equilibrium before conversion, and that this discrepancy of treatment could result
in a higher ‘opportunity cost’ assessment in regions with more abandoned land (implicitly
favouring natural land conversion over abandoned land conversion in farming terms). The
upshot is that forgone carbon sequestration is systematically underestimated against central
expectations.
Depends where you live. Most of my trips are less than 6 miles from home and that is most likely where I would have to get on that public transportation.
The Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia is the largest single oil field in the world.
In the beginning, the oil and out of the ground under gas pressure. The oil contained a lot more natural gasoline. So the energy cost of making gasoline then was much less then now. Compared to the Gwahar, the frakkers in the Permian Basin or the Bakken have to overcome a great deal of pumping losses…$60 a barrel compared to $5 per barrel. The trouble is the shale crude doesn’t work well in the refineries in Houston, so it’s sold off shore and the refineries buy Brent crude from off shore.
It’s convoluted and inefficient, but apparently sustainable, til there is no more drinking water or other undesirable environmental effects.
Which is what brings us all together here. Wood is the only alternative to road motor fuel that can be readily adapted immediately.
Electric is starting to be noticed! Yay!
The thing is…we don’t have 25 Quads of road motor fuel grade wood to burn each year.
If you are looking at cutting emissions in half, just roughly looking at the graph. 28q total, 13q light duty, 6q heavy duty. If you reduce those two numbers in half with electric vehicles. You pretty much got it. It is a 66% reduction in use, but the efficiency of electric vehicles greater, and you have a total reduction in energy/emissions used for refining and transport which probably puts it well below 50%.
You can ignore all the corner cases like your loader, bulldozer, tractor, etc. They can be the other 50%.
The Obama policy was intentionally set up to allow a more gradual market adoption strategy that avoided mandates because it isn’t worth fighting over. 50% reduction is -huge- and that is mostly low hanging fruit. By the time we get the 50% done, because of the improvements, other areas will also start to become more cost effective and become low hanging fruit.
The greater point is move slowly and allow everyone to adjust. It will be uneven growth through the 12 things that need to happen. Otherwise, we are just wasting money.
Where I get worried is the like 2030 mandates for EVs in like Washington state, because sure that would work in Seattle, but they already price low/moderate incomes out. The policy doesn’t work so well outside a wealthy metropolitan area. Obama’s policy took that into account whereas im not convinced the rest of the democratic party did.
Exactly.
Wood, wood charcoal, human & animal → then to coal (the black rock that burns) → then petroleum’s. These were all great expansions in available energy.
Fission Nuclear was supposed to be the next leap upward on gross available cheap energy.
It actually does work. How the smaller, more compact higher populated countries like Japan and France have been able to electrify their mainline railroad. Nuclear electricity.
Fusion Nuke, not yet, maybe never.
And tapped out Hydro, expanded wind cannot take full take the place of the last 100 years of Dino energy use expansions.
Ok. Ok.
Tidal. Direct solar in it’s different forms then.
Again big, big infrastructure and distribution changes. And any changing going forward having to jump intended crippling environmental proof hurdles now.
So O.K.
Maybe tree and brush and such can only be a for one billion solution. So what. The other alternative s are not full replacement capable either.
I just choose to be one of the billion wanting to grow and use my own local trees and brush.
NOT the sheeple goose-stepping to the latest over-sold scheme.
Ha! So not a 1%er. Or a 10%er.
Nope. In with the third world truly poor in wealth, but rich in Life, 20%.
S.U.
There isn’t going to be a one-sized fits all solution, we never had that anyway. the grid has always been mixed.
In the US, we shifting to NG for electric generation because it integrates with variable renewable energy better. We also get like a 20% improvement in emissions out of the box, and reduced ‘other problems’ like heavy metal pollutions. And if we git r dun sooner, then the investment losses aren’t are significant. The chances of being completely done with FFs is extremely slim.
In reality, because of the depreciation schedules it is a 30 year shift. The chances of me being dead in 30 years is pretty good. So it isn’t about me, it is really about leaving the next generation in a position, so they are in a position that they aren’t totally screwed.
For some of the technology, there are benefits now, might as well let them take advantage of it and drive down the prices. There are a number of off-gridders that use solar, because it is cost effective for them. There are people who love their EVs, because it saves them time/money. that is fine. It all helps drive down market prices for various components.
One of the big reasons to push for the keystone pipeline was to the Alberta heavy crude to Texas. Tooling costs to change the refineries from heavy crude to light Shale crude are not economic. Those refineries were built with heavy crude in mind from Venezuela. Its also a special economic zone. Canadian crude shipped through there avoids most Canandian and US royalty taxes and the oil needs only to be upgraded for re export someplace else.
Shale oil is very light stuff but you need to run it through some very different processes like Alkylation units to make high octane gasoline from it ( heavy crude goes through a CAT cracker to make aromatics for gasoline… High octane ).
FWI you never want to be down wind of an Alky unit that has an accident. The hydrofloric acid plants will make the living down winders wish they died…
Those refineries are some of the best in the world. It is part of the reason why we allowed exports. They handle heavy sour crude, which is cheaper, then sweet light crude, so it is more cost effective to export light sweet crude which fetches a premium, and crack the heavy sour crude.
This really isn’t a problem. They are talking new car sales that people already finance for about 7 years. Anyone looking to buy a new vehicle is most likely able to budget in a Tesla model 3 or Tesla cyber truck. The total cost of ownership is already lower on the model 3 than many of the midsized cars people buy new and there is a full decade of cost reductions before the 2030 deadline you mentioned. The cyber truck while ugly is cheaper than a quad cab pickup from the other dealership before you consider your fuel bill. $40k compared to about $50k I honestly don’t know how Elon can make that stainless steel monster for that price. But it is definitely in the budget range of anyone looking at a new pickup truck. Just not in the work class of anyone who needs a 3/4 ton but that will come from someone before 2030.
Solar thermal enhanced oil recovery
When the well runs out of gas , producer need to buy gas .
It is cheaper to use solar power .
I read these last few posts with great interest, as it is a topic I think about a lot. My electric truck is almost done, I have taken a couple of spins down the driveway with it now. I need to finish the coolant system for the batteries, and then jump though all the hoops to get it registered. I am going to have to dust off my charcoal generator so I can finally drive on wood!
I go back and forth a lot in my thinking on what the best path forward is going to be for our society. Living off grid, I have come to appreciate that you can live pretty well on 1 or 2 kwhs per day. But, it is a lifestyle that I dont think most people would be willing to lead. Also, when I add in the fact that I burn a couple cords of firewood, the system breaks down. I dont think there are enough trees for 7 billion people to live this way, at least not in a climate that calls for heating (and Oregon is barely even cold).
With a little luck, I might still be kicking 50 years from now, and I suspect we will still be burning fossil fuels. I think it will seem easier to deal with the symptoms than the disease, and massive amounts of energy will be spent on capturing the carbon that our power-hungry lifestyles create. Carbon capture is of course very power-intensive, but it would solve the storage problem of renewable energy. Giant solar farms would catch CO2 during the day in some god-forsaken desert, and we would pump more into the sky every night by burning up every last ounce of coal we could find. That might just buy us enough time to come up with a more sustainable system.
YA I know.
It makes some people ( like me ) a little upset…
We import gasoline export raw unrefined products at very low prices all in the name of free trade.
The only people that make any money off this are the oil companies. And we pay the clean up bill when the seven sisters leave.
If I had my way I would nationalize ALL of like Norway and create a sovereign wealth fund like they have. That would mean tearing up NAFTA or what ever its called now.
I am OK with that…
In the end, it may come down to cost. A good example is the eCaravan conversion. The first flight cost $6 on electric and on jet fuel it would of costed $300.
I think it comes down to taxes.
You don’t pay tax on what you import in the USA and you beat the hell out of anyone that asks a royalty for a natural resource.
What we need is a system of taxes royalties and quotas. That makes sure trade is fair and equal without anyone turning the screws on someone else.
I am sorry, @DanNH, these numbers seems too much. 10kWh of energy per liter of gasoline is OK, but that consumption of electricity for gasoline production looks crazy. USA consume around 130 billions gallons of gas per year. 25 miles of EV represents some 6 kWh of electricity. With your ratios, some 780 billions of kWh, or rather 780 TWh of electricity would be consumed just for making US gasoline. It is 1/5 of your electric power production. So, in my very humble opinion, there must be some mistake in your source. Otherwise your economy could hardly run.
