There should be a law that electric cars can only be charged by wind or solar power.
If you are giving up fossil fuel, then give it up completely
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ElwoodBlues · M
Another question people often ask is about the capacity of our grid to charge electric cars.
And yes, the US has the electric capacity. Now.
BTW, lithium batteries are great because they recycle so well.
And, lithium salts dissolved in hot geothermal wells has minimal environmental impact.
And yes, the US has the electric capacity. Now.
If all US cars were EVs, they would need a total of 1,106.6TWh, which is 27.6% of what the American grid produced in 2020.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2021/11/13/electricity-grids-can-handle-electric-vehicles-easily--they-just-need-proper-management/Is There Enough Electricity for EVs? Yes. Here’s Who Will Charge Them.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/theres-enough-electricity-in-the-world-for-electric-vehicles-heres-who-will-charge-them-51605368406 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.
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
https://spectrum.ieee.org/recycled-batteries-good-as-newly-mined15 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
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201124-how-geothermal-lithium-could-revolutionise-green-energyGeothermal brine could become a promising and sustainable source of an essential element for the renewable energy transition
24th November 2020
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ElwoodBlues Looking around, the world also wastes vast amounts of electricity!
For a simple example from my own use:
I do not "need" from an environmental perspective to drive to visit friends in the North of England (I can travel there by train), but at least there is a constructive social purpose to my 600-mile round-trip. Yet we do need all those commercial vehicles around me on the roads.
Yet neither the delivery-drivers nor I, nor anyone else, needs the meretricious electro-gimmickry of the motorway's service-stations - shops that do not need be there, amusement-machines of no use to anyone but their lessors, pointless piped music, masses of lighting, illuminated advertising, etc.
While it might behove us all to consider the gigantic international electricity demand that us chatting like this helps sustain!
'
Regarding lithium, vast tonnages thereof....
Whilst mineral-rich brines are indeed a potentially valuable source of this and some other metals, they are not inexhaustible. For a start, there is only a finite volume of the stuff accessible in the ground. Further, it has taken Nature a very long time to hydrolise the minerals from the rocks, or to re-dissolve previously hydrolytes that have become precipitated in fissures (the mechanism forming the ore veins themselves); so there must surely be a point when the supply runs out.
In sites like Cornwall where this is being developed, the original hydrolysis and precipitation would have stopped many tens of millions of years ago, as the effects of the igneous activity responsible faded away. The brine is the result of ground-water very slowly re-dissolving those precipitates.
The water may still be there but the minerals concentration will drop as the precipitates disappear; especially if extraction rate exceeds the dissolution rate, as it may do by some orders of magnitude.
Somewhat similar principles apply to ground-source heat-pumps and simply extracting just water from a borehole: these can be over-pumped and it takes time for the source to become recharged.
For a simple example from my own use:
I do not "need" from an environmental perspective to drive to visit friends in the North of England (I can travel there by train), but at least there is a constructive social purpose to my 600-mile round-trip. Yet we do need all those commercial vehicles around me on the roads.
Yet neither the delivery-drivers nor I, nor anyone else, needs the meretricious electro-gimmickry of the motorway's service-stations - shops that do not need be there, amusement-machines of no use to anyone but their lessors, pointless piped music, masses of lighting, illuminated advertising, etc.
While it might behove us all to consider the gigantic international electricity demand that us chatting like this helps sustain!
'
Regarding lithium, vast tonnages thereof....
Whilst mineral-rich brines are indeed a potentially valuable source of this and some other metals, they are not inexhaustible. For a start, there is only a finite volume of the stuff accessible in the ground. Further, it has taken Nature a very long time to hydrolise the minerals from the rocks, or to re-dissolve previously hydrolytes that have become precipitated in fissures (the mechanism forming the ore veins themselves); so there must surely be a point when the supply runs out.
In sites like Cornwall where this is being developed, the original hydrolysis and precipitation would have stopped many tens of millions of years ago, as the effects of the igneous activity responsible faded away. The brine is the result of ground-water very slowly re-dissolving those precipitates.
The water may still be there but the minerals concentration will drop as the precipitates disappear; especially if extraction rate exceeds the dissolution rate, as it may do by some orders of magnitude.
Somewhat similar principles apply to ground-source heat-pumps and simply extracting just water from a borehole: these can be over-pumped and it takes time for the source to become recharged.