What Powers The Plug-in?

China has established a policy that by 2030 40% of all the vehicles sold in that country must be electric.

This objective is being enforced by mandates on manufacturers which must meet these goals or face significant financial penalties each year leading up to 2030.

China has the largest vehicle market in the world.

It is almost twice the size of the United States market.

Source: https://fiatgroupworld.com/2022/03/30/the-global-vehicle-sales-by-country-in-2021/

It is projected that China's vehicle sales will grow to between 30 million and 36 million units by 2030.

Therefore, to put all of this in context, China is projected to be selling about the same number of  electric vehicles in 2030 as the number of all vehicle units (gas and electric) that the United States is selling in total today.

The electric vehicle mandate will put enormous pressure on China's power grid which has already been under pressure due to its industrialization and increasing consumer wealth.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/china-approves-biggest-expansion-in-new-coal-power-plants-since-2015-report-finds

Two-thirds of China's electricity generation is currently provided by coal. Only 5% comes from natural gas and 2% from nuclear. Renewables make up the rest.

China currently has over 3,000 coal fired power plants. Those plants alone generate about the same amount of electricity as the entire Untied States power grid. Coal now only comprises about 20% of the energy source for electricity in the U.S. compared to 68% in China.

China is mining more coal than it ever has. More than half of all the coal mined in the world is in China.

China has been on a power plant building binge to meet rising demand that will only be exacerbated by the electric car mandate.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/energy/china-new-coal-plants-climate-report-intl-hnk/index.html

 

China is surging ahead with coal, a new report shows, rapidly approving and building new power plants despite its own promises to cut back on carbon as the world plunges ever deeper into the climate crisis.

“China continues to be the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development,” said Flora Champenois, a research analyst at GEM.

“The speed at which projects progressed through permitting to construction in 2022 was extraordinary, with many projects sprouting up, gaining permits, obtaining financing and breaking ground apparently in a matter of months,” she added.

China’s emissions are more than double those of the United States, and though the country’s leaders have previously vowed to cut back on carbon, its reliance on coal poses a significant challenge.

Throughout 2022, China granted permits for 106 gigawatts of capacity across 82 sites, quadruple the capacity approved in 2021 and equal to starting two large coal power plants each week, said the report.

You get a sense of how much coal China has been using to power its electric grid from this chart.

 

If one believes that carbon emissions are somehow related to climate change what sense does it make to mandate electric vehicles if the power source that is going to power the electric grid you plug into is relying on coal?

Credit: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/coal-powered-electric-cars-still-cleaner

Carbon emissions from coal are 36% higher than that of motor gasoline.

Despite the large transition in the United States from coal to natural gas for power generation over the last 25 years, natural gas still only provides about a 25% reduction in carbon emissions compared to motor gasoline.

The production of electric vehicle also causes more carbon emissions than that of fuel vehicles. A lot of this is due to the mining of minerals needed for battery manufacture.

An academic study from China found that electric cars actually increased carbon emissions compared to the use of fuel vehicles considering the entire life cycle of both based on the current power grid composition mix in China.

This graph from the study compares electric and fuel vehicles based on various levels of usage over their life cycles.

The solid lines are electric vehicles. The dotted lines are fuel vehicles.

In all instances the fuel vehicles resulted in lower total carbon emissions over the entire life cycle based on the current grid mix composition in China.

Source: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3612

Electric vehicles have the potential to lower carbon emissions but it is wholly dependent on what is the energy source for where the power is coming from that the EV is plugged into.

The reality that few will admit to today is that nuclear is the only energy source on earth today that can provide the energy at scale that is necessary to realize the potential of electric vehicles.

Renewables such as solar, wind, hydro and other alternative energy sources are not as available and reliable as is required to power a 21st century world economy.

It seems that some in Europe have now recognized this fact and pulled back from the "green agenda".

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/eu-climate-diplomats-rethink-push-to-phase-out-fossil-fuels/

You begin to understand how crazy all of these "net zero" greenhouse emissions goals are when you consider that if the UK were to achieve that level of emissions reduction by 2050 the benefit is being wiped out currently by China's current emissions increases EVERY QUARTER.

 

To get to "net zero" UK it needs to reduce carbon emissions by about 350 million tons.

China just increased carbon emissions by an estimated 4% on 12 billion tons of emissions in the first quarter, 2023 alone.

As I considered all of the above I wondered what Greta Thunberg was doing in the week after the five-year mark had passed in which she warned that climate change would wipe out all of humanity unless we stopped using fossil fuels by 2023.

I found that Thunberg was in France last week supporting a radical environmental climate change group that uses blockades and land occupations to cause public disruptions to protest that not enough is being done to restrict carbon emissions,

As a result of the disruptions and accompanying violence the group has caused the French government has shut down the group.

Thunberg has decried the government action as systematic repression.

 

What is nonsensical about all of this is that no other country in the world is generating a larger percentage of its electrical production from zero emissions nuclear power than France.

Does Great Thunberg even understand what repressive is?

She might want to take a trip to China and find out.