Pretty sure I "get it." We're perhaps a little better off here in California, but with hydroelectric (where's the water?) and nuclear (Diablo Canyon is offline?) in a bit of a bind we're struggling. Coal power is not good.


To reiterate, I'm reluctant to argue politics, social issues, etc. on a forum dedicated to cars. I'll play Devil's Advocate all day long though, until the idiocy level reaches my limit.

 

I do get it. Electricity is not free. No one has ever claimed it to be. But centralized production of electricity is or can be much, much, much cleaner than the current alternatives. That's the big difference. There is no "clean" way to produce gasoline for V8s. There are many ways to produce "clean" (or at least cleaner) electricity. Look, I can get some solar panels tomorrow for my house to charge my Tesla. You can't get a home DIY gasoline kit to produce gas for your V8. That's the difference. And my Tesla puts out no emissions. That's a win-win. No matter how you slice and dice it, EV is the future.

 

I realize you get it, and my comments were directed elsewhere. Like you, I was also trained as, and started my career as, a scientist at NASA. I've since moved into executive positions.

I stay away from politics on these forums as well, as it is a futile exercise, but this subject transcends politics. There is no political solution, and there there likely is no solution at all, given the way human lifestyles have evolved. I'm as guilty as anyone. The only people on the planet not contributing to the problem are those totally off the grid, and another large asteroid strike to wipe out the human population may be the only solution.

I also realize that arguing this subject here is also futile exercise, and the fact so many people don't get it speaks volumes. Yet, I persist because I can't help it.

Based upon your response, it doesn't appear that you get it at all.

Right now, while there is a practical way to produce a very small amount of "clean" electrical power, it's minuscule compared to demand--less than 1%. If solar had a chance to put a significant dent in the 67% of fossil fuel-produced electricity, it would have happened. All kinds of incentives have been put in place to make that happen. Despite that, the percentage of clean power isn't increasing.

Solar solutions have been around for 40 years, but haven't made any significant inroads in terms of contributing to the overall supply. As someone else said, you'd have to cover every desert on the planet in solar panels to make bring that number up significantly. Most people aren't going to make the investment to put them on their roofs, and while they are very effective in places like CA, there are many places where the sun doesn't shine for large portions of the year.

And "your" Tesla or Leaf, does put out emissions. They are just located hundreds or thousands of miles away from your vehicle.

 

Your fixed mindset is apparent with the "it would have happened" assertion. That's like a guy in 1920 saying, "there's no way to prevent polio, if there was, it would have been done by now." Renewable energy, including solar, is growing. In many advanced countries renewable energy will be the majority by 2030 (search for renewable energy in Germany). In the US renewable energy continues to grow (more than 10% now), but there is a lot of opposition by fixed minded people like yourself, making the growth slower than it should be. So your assertions about clean power not increasing is patently incorrect. It boggles my mind why some people are so adamant against renewable energy and EV. We still get to power our home A/C and drive our luxury cars to work, it just so happens they are from renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Is there something magical about digging up dead dinosaurs from the ground? I'm officially done with this thread since it's going nowhere. To bring it back to the OP question, indirectly there are government regulations/directives/etc. that is essentially killing the big NA gas ICE, the big V8s, V10s and V12s. More and more cars will go smaller + turbo, and hybrid, then eventually all electric. It's already happening. Look at the new engines Porsche is using...Goodbye V8, hello smaller V6 Turbo. They even have a 4 banger for the Belgium market! Lambo is trying to fight it, but even they are having to go smaller/turbo or hybrid. Nothing to fear, life goes on, change happens. There are already people racing EVs. You can either embrace the change (for the good), or stay stuck in the past trying to cling onto your V8.

 

LOL . . . You still don't get it. I'm not against clean energy, I'm 100% pro-clean energy. I'm just cynical that it will be too little too late, and "drinking the EV kool-aid" as some kind of magic solution is just silly if you look at the infrastructure underlying it. It's very dirty too, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

I love solar, I use solar panels to generate electricity. I'm just educated enough to recognize it's limitations. Solar panels today are still the same technology they were 40 years ago. There have been no breakthroughs. However, I am routing for that big breakthrough.

You seem to have labeled me in your mind as a big V8 or ICE proponent. I'm not and well aware of the effects of ICE. Moreover, I don't have a V8 in any of my vehicles. I just don't like "kool-aid," and I've heard you say several times EV produce zero emissions, which isn't true unless you have blinders on.

 

While there haven't been any breakthroughs on the order of a substantially new technology to collect solar power, photovoltaic technology itself has improved quite a bit since it was first introduced in the 1960's. Today's PV cells are far more efficient at converting radiant sunlight into electricity than they used to be (we have cells in development that can reach 40% efficiency, though most commercial quality cells are closer to 15%) and our energy storage technologies are vastly better now than they were back then. Today's solar cells are also much more cost-effective.

The technology is improving even more rapidly now, as a number of companies are moving into this market. The U.S. solar power industry is expected to reach the $10-$15 billion level by 2025. Apparently, solar electricity generation in the United States is expected to offset 11.02 million tons (10 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide per year by 2027.

That is a bit exaggerated. From what I've read, the US DOE estimates that if we could cover a 100-square-mile area of Nevada with solar cells, that could supply the United States with enough power to meet all our current electricity needs (which is roughly 800 gigawatts of power.) That's using commonly available commercial PV cells which have less than 20% efficiency. Doubling the efficiency of the cells would improve the yield or reduce the field size substantially. Granted not every state has areas as sunny as Nevada, but this shouldn't be a monumentally difficult achievement if it was broken down by state. The US has a ton of abandoned military bases and industrial sites that could be re-purposed for example. Several states have desert areas that would make good places for several nearby states to combine their cells.

If the above was duplicated in other countries, we'd be able to provide clean power everywhere. Heck, there is a ton of desert area in the middle east that is not even being used and has a tremendous supply of wasted solar energy. If we could allocate a section of that say the size of Texas, that would probably be enough to power the entire world.

Not that it is going to happen in our lifetime. Governments and corporations would need to be able to agree on the necessity and costs, and work together to make it happen. So unless something changes to create urgency, its not likely. By the time it becomes urgent enough that everyone clearly sees the problem, we'll have passed the tipping point and it'll probably be too late to do anything about it.

 

Merlin,

Good post, and thanks for the recap. "Covering the deserts" was hyperbole, and I essentially meant what you articulated above. I agree that it is "do-able," just as we're capable of putting humans on Mars, but that it most likely won't be done until we're perhaps past the tipping point.

 

No worries. I mainly clarified that since some people think that solar is so inefficient that you'd need to cover all the deserts to be effective. The required footprint is in fact decreasing steadily as new technologies are developed to improve their efficiency.