There has been a lot of talk about electric cars being the way of the future, a way that we can supposedly retain our automobility yet at the same time confront problems with declining oil supplies and the effect of transport on climate change. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald from December last year, reproduced in the lastest “Going Solar” newsletter, suggests that electric cars may not be the answer. Quite fascinatingly, it shows that electric cars are definitely nothing new:
I do think electric cars are definitely part of the solution for the longer-term transport problems we face. However, I think they’re definitely not the solution on their own. In the end, we need to reduce our auto-dependency – whether or not it’s petrol-powered auto-dependency or electric-powered auto-dependency.
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Internal combustion engines aren’t exactly ‘incredibly efficient’. They are actually very inefficient at converting the stored energy in petrol into motive power, I think it is only something like 10% of the total energy in the fuel consumed that makes it to the wheel… however because oil fuels have such an incredibly high energy density to begin with it is still quite an effective form of motive power, as a car could go maybe six hundred kilometres carrying only 30kg of petrol.
While electric cars might sovle fuel and emissions issues (or might not depending on how we charge them, using coal or oil fired power plants won’t do much) they certainly won’t do anything for auto dependence, traffic congestion or transport costs.
About the only thing they are guaranteed to do is reduce smog over the freeway.
I guess in New Zealand their environmental benefits are greater than in Australia, as we generate most electricity via renewables. However, as you say that does nothing to fix auto-dependency and the poor urban outcomes that result
“as we generate most electricity via renewales”
Our renewables % has been falling steadily as our electricity demand grows, but we have stopped building new sustainable power stations. Thanks to pols like Hone and other folks who feel that tidal power stations will kill snappers like the plague, and it is better to give National an excuse to ram through some new coal stations via emergency legislation (just wait for it!) because all new hydro plants have been prevented by misguided greenies. And I say that even though I vote green myself!
That’s true ingolfson. I’m a huge fan of tidal power – apparently Cook Strait could generate a huge chunk of NZ’s power.
Tidal power scares the fish, wind power scares the horses and hydro power floods the land (plus most of the good sites are gone). Also Tidal power is really expensive for the amount of power it generates and wind isn’t to much better.
I still think we should put in a nuclear plant somewhere, that would sort us out for a while, with modern technology they can be made very safe (there were plants designed in the 60’s that couldn’t meltdown but they weren’t developed as they didn’t produce plutonium as a byproduct which can be used for bombs).
Also the big problem with electric cars is that battery technology hasn’t advanced much. If we could improve that both the efficiency and cost would improve.
“Tidal power scares the fish.”
Sorry to be so blunt, but sounds very wrong to me. Modern tidal turbines are slow-moving (though huge) things. The Kaipara turbines are to turn twice a minute, I think, slow enough to not even hurt dolphins much if they stray too close. Also: So what if they scare the fish? Have you ever been diving or snorkeling with fish swarms? They are the most easily scared things ever – if they had an evolutionary problem with being scared, they would have died out by now.
Also, why Cook Strait? We need the power here, and have two harbours with huge tidal lifts close by.
“Wind power scares the horses”
Why would horses be scared of something moving several hundreds (or thousands) of meters away? Also, just pay the farmers to NOT keep horses, then.
“hydro power floods the land”
True, but we can just as well pollute it with coal and petrol exhaust if we don’t do anything. Lakes are nothing BAD (there are lots of natural ones around).
“(plus most of the good sites are gone)”
There are plenty locations left, all around the country. Unless you define “good” as areas where there are no locals and no widlife.
“Also Tidal power is really expensive for the amount of power it generates”
Maybe, but that would come down with mass production of hundreds of turbines. It is also much more efficient and reliable than wind.
“I still think we should put in a nuclear plant somewhere, that would sort us out for a while”
It would sort us out alright – with years and decades of societal grief as we fight over it, and bills so high we might as well import power in batteries from Australia.
Nuclear power is cheap only if you do it large-scale, like France. A country like us, with no manufacturing base, no nuclear experience/nuclear engineers, no governmental nuclear safety watchdog… we would have to import EVERYTHING, pay through our noses to get it up running and keep it running, and then pay more for new fuel and for someone to take the spent fuel off our hands. For what?
“with modern technology they can be made very safe”
I do agree with you here – but that won’t change people’s perceptions (fear is irrational) or their general dislike, nor the other problems I have mentioned.
Sorry to be so dismissive Matt – I don’t want to come across as a prick, but…
Ingolfson, I agree with you, I’m not opposed to any of the “Green” power sources, I’m just stating some of the arguments that that certain groups of people have used so far to block or try and stop their development.
As for mass producing tidal power, no-one really does it now so we would have to build the plant to do it. I think there are only a handful of sites around the world that are trialling it and the return on investment is so low. Even with the scheme proposed on the Kaipara was only a fraction of what other stations produce with a much larger cost to build. Geothermal seems like a better option and we have heaps of it around.
Your minimum nuclear power plant costs about $US8 billion to build. We’d need a backup one for when the main one was being maintained… so that’s about $US16 billion as a minimum if we want to go down the nuclear path…
… plus other concerns about safety and what to do with the waste.
I agree that electric cars aren’t that great in countries like Australia (and much of the rest of the western world) that get most electricity from burning coal. IN NZ where most electricity is hydroelectric this is not an issue, so electric cars can be promoted. However they still will not deal with issues like congestion etc, so are no silver bullet.
I agree having 100% of NZs electricity generated from renewable resources is a good aim, however:
1) A range of sources should be used. not just hydro and wind to ensure we still have power if it is not windy and there is a drought
2) The 100% renewable goal should not be the holy grail of emissions reduction efforts. if it is cheaper to continue to generate electricity using gas (which doesn’t pollute nearly as much as coal) and direct the savings to reducing emissions elsewhere so be it.
Regarding nuclear, there are currently real cost concerns, although future technology might change that. Since its hard to build small nuclear power plants, only big ones, and we don’t have a huge power shortage to cover, its usefullness to us is limited. But is can be a mighty good thing for larger countries like Australia etc that mostly use coal, and have limited renewable options (Australias low rainfall makes it unsuitable for hydro).
One note on hydro, I have heard one claim that flooding a valley to build a dam can also release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere as previously sunk carbon in vegetation rots and bubbles to the surface.
How does the output of a pair of nuclear plants compare to the demand on the national grid? I get the feeling you could run the whole country off a couple of these things.
“How does the output of a pair of nuclear plants compare to the demand on the national grid? I get the feeling you could run the whole country off a couple of these things.”
Oh, sure you could. We are a tiny country after all (population-wise). But “a couple of the things”, as Jarbury pointed out, cost… well, a couple dozen billion. And then we start paying for uranium, which is ALSO a “fossil” fuel – i.e. it is not inexhaustible, and apparently starting to get dearer to extract too.
As for any carbon releases from rotting vegetation – sure, but one Australian forest fire probably does a lot more, and it is after all, a once-off issue, whereas the reduction in carbon emissions from the water power plant is pretty much inexhaustible.
I think the “big bang” approach to increasing power generation isn’t the right approach. Really what we should have is a more distributed system so that the loss of power through transmission is reduced, and the network becomes more resilient. Of course that seems harder as you can’t fix all the problems in one big go, but in the longer run it’s probably a better approach.
I like tidal and geothermal because they are renewables that can replace baseload power plants – because you can rely on them to produce power when you need it (geothermal) or are completely predictable about when they will and won’t produce power (tidal). Small-scale hydro is probably OK, although we have probably used most of the large-scale sites.
I think the real answer is reducing demand through efficiency…
The localised generation vs transmission investment trade-off could be made easily when you had one entity running the whole show. However now they are all separate it is very difficult to do that.
Just like public transport the electricity market sounds much better on paper than it does in real life.
Exactly the same buzzwords like innovation and efficiency were thrown around at the time of electricity reforms and PT reforms, but they both largely failed to materialise.