With the proposed phasing out of fossil fuel powered transport, how much thought have you put into what you will be driving in the run up to the phasing out?
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The world has 8,000 gigawatts of installed electricity generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency. In theory, if the capacity ran 24-7 it could generate 69 million gigawatt hours of electricity annually.
The world consumed about 27 million gigawatt hours of electricity in 2019. That electricity warmed homes and ran businesses. What’s more, the world consumed the equivalent of roughly 28 million gigawatt hours of electrical energy to power its cars and trucks. That energy, of course, was stored in liquid fuel. Power plants didn’t have to generate it. Gasoline and diesel make most of the world’s vehicles go.
So 27 plus 28 is 56. The world needs 56 million gigawatt hours to keep the lights on as well as drive cars and trucks. There is 69 million gigawatt hours of capacity.No problem. But the generating capacity of wind and solar, of course, can’t be “on” 100% of the time. And even coal, nuclear, and hydro power plants have to take maintenance downtime. Still, there looks to be some spare generating capacity and the world’s 2 billion or so vehicles won’t convert to battery power all at once.
BTW, lithium batteries are great because they recycle so well.
Study: Recycled Lithium Batteries as Good as Newly Mined > Cathodes made with novel direct-recycling beat commercial materials 15 Oct 2021
And, lithium salts dissolved in hot geothermal wells has minimal environmental impact.
The new 'gold rush' for green lithium Geothermal brine could become a promising and sustainable source of an essential element for the renewable energy transition 24th November 2020
@ElwoodBlues I'm talking accessibility. There aren't charging stations everywhere. A lot of people don't have garages or car ports they can just use (like yours truly and the thousands of people in my apartment complex). I couldn't buy electric even if I wanted to.
@ElwoodBlues you have been researching, I live in scruffy England so a lot of that is useless to me but we are basically USAish so it might be transferable 🤗
But when the go to work they park the car in a car park. Just put a 7 kW AC charging post at each parking space. Such posts cost only a few hundred dollars each and when ordered in such quantities the price would drop even further. The average round trip commute in the US is the highest in the world but it is still only 40 miles. In my Model S that is about 20% of the range, less than three hours charging on that slow charger.
@sunsporter1649 Despite Trump's big promises to bring it back, coal as an electricity source is DYING. We now get more electricity from renewables than from coal, LOL!!!
