Are we ready for the all electric Green Religion
John Shanahan Editor of website: allaboutenergy.netApril 30, 2023
Batteries are a wonderful part of the modern world - for hearing aids, cell phones, e-bikes, devices for playing games, music, and movies on airplanes, cameras, health and safety monitoring devices, emergency lighting in airplanes and theaters. Batteries are essential for internal combustion engine cars.
Bigger batteries for millions of fully electric cars and backup for wind turbine and solar panel electrical systems for tens of thousands of cities have tremendous technical, environmental, disposal, and safety issues,
The United States government mandated that military vehicles be switched from diesel and gasoline powered to battery powered. Where are all the charging stations going to be in multiple war zones in deserts and jungles? Will our enemies like this switch for the USA?
Here is a video clip of regular internal combustion cars on an open deck in a storm on a saltwater ocean. Is this real or fake? I don't know. But it easily could be real with salt water splashing on the batter contacts. When salt water comes in contact with bigger batteries for electric cars, the problems become much worse.
Electric battery storage for wind turbine and solar panel "green" energy is technically and environmentally one of our stupidest nightmares.
When people were this stupid in the past, their villages were overrun by conquerors and survivors were dragged off in slavery. Look what Christian Crusaders did to the people of Jerusalem in the First Crusade.
I tremble thinking what is going to happen to North America and Europe when we are conquered because we followed the Green Religion, article 1, article 2, article 3, article 4, article 5.
The term GREEN RELIGION is used here in the same sense that some religions make absolute statements about their God, their views of the world, and damnation in an “after life”. People must be a member of a particular faith or not get to “heaven.” See Christianity and Islam.
Regarding carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, Green Alarmists insist that atmospheric CO2 is a pollutant is causing end of human life as we know it. They demand that fossil fuels, that created the wonderful modern world, be left in the ground. They insist that we abandon internal combustion vehicles, ICEs, and switch to electric vehicles, EVs.
The batteries in EVs are much larger than batteries for ICEs, cause much more environmental pollution mining for their chemicals, are much more costly, and dangerous to recycle.
There are more than one billion vehicles on the road today. It will be an environmental nightmare to mine special elements for one billion EV batteries and another billion to replace the first billion. It will be an economic nightmare to recycle one billion EV batteries. See photo below of equipment and procedures required to recycle an EV battery. It will be a nightmare to have tow trucks for one billion EVs that have to put in a water bath to take them from the site of an accident to an EV recycling facility.
Recycling a plain metal gas tank is a lot simpler, less expensive, and safer than recycling a lithium battery for an electric car.
The decision to force the use of large lithium batteries in a billion electric cars is not just for a few years. It is for a very long time, tens of thousands of years. This has been given no thought. It is just a demand of the GREEN RELIGION alarmists.
The whole plan to abandon fossil fuels for the long term is a massive crime against humanity and the modern world. It will end up being worse than the killings in the name of faith based religions and historical barbaric, criminal dictators and conquerors.
COMMENTS
Patrick Moore Canada - Ecologist Dear John,You are doing such important and well-presented work. I am proud to be your colleague. You have chosen those 5 articles well. None of us are taking an “anti-fossil fuel” position but we realize they are not infinite whereas nuclear might as well be with breeder technology already operational. The fossils should be saved for things you can’t easily do without them.
John Shanahan USA - Civil Engineer To: Patrick Moore British Columbia, CanadaDear Patrick,
This is the highest appreciation I have ever gotten. It is extremely kind of you. Sincere thanks.
You and I are in agreement that fossil fuels are singularly unique. It will take a lot of nuclear energy to generate synthetic hydrocarbons when fossil fuels are gone.
They should not be squandered, like a billion cars stuck in commuter crawls all over the world five days a week.
Redesign cities to give everyone the opportunity to lessen commuting distances and still have a beautiful life in nature. Maximize electrified mass transportation. Use waste heat from power plants for space heating and hot water in condominium complexes in cities like used to be done in Europe.
Christopher Essex Canada
So true.
Dr. Christopher Essex, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Middlesex College
the University of Western Ontario London, Canada
Samuel Furfari Energy Consultant to the European Union BelgiumThanks, John.
Energy and Geopolitics, Volume 1: Fundamentals
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-7151-8
Samuel(e)
Prof
Furfari GéopolitiqueESCP London
ULB (emerite)
de l’énergie/ Energy geopolitics
Neil Brown
Engineering
USA
ConsultantI think you are going too far "right" on the issue. You are sounding like the wild side of the greens. There are benefits from EVs even if they do nothing to address the issue of climate change.
They reduce noise and air pollution, for example.
Maybe you are getting too religious
Euan Mearns Geologist United KingdomDear John,
Biden is clearly insane. But this is a useful marker for the scale of the Green insanity. Our recent paper: “Are 2-5- emergy transition plans viable? A detailed analysis of projected Swiss electricity supply and demand in 2050.”.
Mervyn Leach Consulting Engineer United KingdomI have several comments regarding your statement.
Firstly, I don't think it is appropriate to call it a "green religion" anymore than you have a "gun religion" or an "oil religion" in the US.
You state that batteries have technical, environmental, disposal and safety issues. Compared to what?
There are no real technical issues - modern batteries are significantly better than they were only a decade or so ago. Just like investment into solar panels has resulted in better and cheaper panels, so the same is occurring in batteries. Modern batteries are now capable of providing significant power without using rare elements, Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries (LFP) use materials that are readily available on the planet.
Environmental - what! Compared to burning oil and gas. See also the next point. Disposal. Redwood in California are a significant player in the recovery of materials from used batteries. They have shown the ability to recover over 90% of the materials for reuse in new batteries. This technology is new, but investment is high and Redwood is expanding fast with new facilities under construction. The same technology is in use in China. In addition, there is also the opportunity for re-use of old batteries. When an EV comes to the end of its life, it doesn't mean the battery is dead - more likely the vehicle will be. The battery will not be at the same capacity when first built (eg 70kW) but will still likely be capable of 50kW of power. Such power could easily be used for self storage supporting home solar panels.
Safety. Yes, batteries catch fire. So do oil tanks, gas pipelines and lots of other things. Doesn't mean we don't continue to have them. Bear in mind we continue to have oil spills and chemical spills with differing levels of volumes around the world on an almost daily basis. All of this is about understanding risk. There is a level of fear that some people have due to poor reporting on vehicle fires, but many of these people are still quite happy to drive a vehicle at unsafe speeds and challenge their body by smoking. Risk is a very personal consideration by everyone. The challenge we face is being honest about likelihood and not scaremongering. Tesla as an EV car company have come in for a lot of criticism, mainly unfounded now - perhaps not so much 10 years ago. Look at where the funding comes from for some of these articles. Just like the NRA in the US heavily funds representatives to ensure they can keep selling guns, so the oil and gas industries fund magazine articles and adverts as do the existing players in the car market who want to keep selling ICE vehicles as that's where their profit is. Tesla have shown it is possible to make a high quality EV and sell it at profit. Ford's recent figures for example show they are losing about $20000 for every EV they sell. They've got some work to do to become competitive (as have most of the other players - Toyota, GM, VW etc. Anything they can do to slow the process to EVs helps them in the long run as they struggle to produce quality EVs and sell for a profit.
As a society we need to wean ourselves off oil and gas. It won't happen overnight, indeed it probably won't happen this century. Vehicles are the low hanging fruit in most cases. Grid support to make best use of wind turbines and solar panels is a sensible option. Ships and planes will be a lot harder. Military equipment too. Just because it is difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Lots of things we take for granted now were considered difficult or impossible once
I have two sets of solar panels on my house. The first set of 4.9kW was installed in 2017. The second set of 4kW was installed last year. The second set has higher efficiency and lower cost (per kW). Add to that a Tesla Powerwall (13.8kW) and my house is virtually self-sufficient through the summer months, and that includes home charging a 40kW Leaf driving around 1000 miles per month.
There are many other favorable comments.