A reader of EarthTalk posed an interesting question a few weeks back – does the expansion of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles mean an increased reliance on coal?
Certainly if more and more of our sources of transportation utilize electricity instead of gasoline, that will increase the amount of electricity the United States uses. So where does that electricity come from? Looking towards the future there are two important benefits of shifting towards electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. First, it decreases our reliance and consumption of foreign oil, which has multiple environmental, economic, and political benefits. Second, it sets up the potential for our transportation industry to be powered primarily with alternative energy.
Right now, though, the infrastructure is not in place to power our transportation industry primarily with alternative energy. That is not a problem now because there are not enough electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road for this to be an issue. But what if the transportation industry grows faster than the alternative energy industry?
On the EarthTalk article, it was argued that perhaps a temporary expansion of coal would be necessary to meet the growing electricity needs of this country. Currently, coal accounts for more than half the electricity in the United States. New coal plants continue to open around the country, including one in Northeastern Wyoming just yesterday, one of just six in the area.
A train delivers coal to the Gillette Plant in Wyoming (image from Flickr)
Coal may be our most abundant resource, but it is also the biggest contributor to global warming. Is it really worth it to expand such a destructive yet necessary industry so that we can put more electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road. Or, should we wait for the alternative energy infrastructure to be in place before we expand the transportation industry?
I believe the two — renewables and EVs — will fuel growth in each another. For example, I had only moderate interest in electric cars until I realized that we could cover 100-percent of our home electric use and 12,000 miles an electric car with a home solar system.
We’re going solar in June of this year (in sunny Colorado, a 5.5 kW system, $8,300 after utility and federal tax rebates/credits). The EV is next. I estimate that millions of people in sunny areas of the U.S. (California, Nevada, Arizona, NM, Colorado, Florida, etc.) could fully, or partially, power their EVs off of a home solar system. Same is true in Australia, Southern Europe, Mexico, Central America, SE Asia, etc.
Will this be too expensive for most individuals to do? Depends.
In our case, with great solar rebates in Colorado and Federal and state tax credits for EVs (and with the Nissan LEAF costing us around $20,000 after these tax credits), we’ll actually save money over the next decade, thousands, by driving an electric car on sun rather than driving a polluting gas-powered car.
–Christof Demont-Heinrich
[snipped to remove company name/promotion - MG]
One of the great things about plug-in EV’s is that they can level out the peaks and troughs in energy supply, so that there’s no need to construct new power stations to charge them.
Basically, there is enough energy capacity in the system to provide for the maximum power demand. At most times of the day, however, the amount of energy actually being used is *below* that maximum.
Electric vehicle charging grids can be set up on a different tarrif structure so that they charge when demand for other electricity is lowest – which is also when electricity is cheapest.
As such, EV charging grids can work to utilise and stabilise some of the variability that comes with renewable energy. Bonus!
According to the Brussels based Global Wind Energy Council, 37.5 gW of new wind energy capacity were installed last year alone, bringing the world total to 157.9 gW. The U. S. share of that was about 10 gW last year. Assuming a 35% capacity factor, that 10 gW will generate approximately 30 billion kWh per year. The average EV will use about 3,000 kWh per year. That new wind alone is enough to power 10 million EVs.
Add to this several hundred megawatts of solar energy installed last year and every year going forward for decades to come.
One can argue that the wind and solar industries are going to keep installing for the foreseeable future at an increasing rate, so I don’t see how the auto industry will ever catch up to the new renewable capacity.
Therefore, we can, and should, make the argument that the renewable energy being installed will far outpace the new demand from plug-in cars.
One more thing… most Americans living in single family homes waste more kWh than they would use in an EV. So, our number one task is to reduce this waste through progressive tiered rates that steeply increase in the upper tiers. This provides a natural incentive to reduce waste and provides funds for helping lower income people afford solar.
I’d like to second what Anna was getting at.
When would we most likely leave our electric cars plugged into walls for charging? At night when demand is low, and power plants are just wasting energy since they’re producing amounts meant for daylight hours.
Peak demand happens on those hottest summer days when everyone has the air conditioning running, but for the rest of the year, we have more supply than demand for power.
So even if we never built another wind or solar turbine, I don’t think using EV’s would substantially increase our coal usage.