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Vehicle Electrification On The Rise | Earth Wise

August 21, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Nearly 70% of U.S. oil consumption is for transportation and transportation accounts for 28% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, technology improvements in transportation that can reduce emissions are a key element of combating climate change. The highest impact strategy is the electrification of the transportation sector, and it is definitely accelerating.

Demand for electric vehicles is growing for multiple reasons. These include long-term cost savings, tax incentives, declining battery costs, and greater environmental awareness. This year, about 2.7 percent of global passenger vehicle sales will be for electric vehicles. It is still a fairly small number, but that number is growing rapidly. It is expected to be 10% in 2025, 28% in 2030, and more than half of all vehicle sales by 2040. By that year, more than 30% of passenger vehicles on the road worldwide will be electric. The numbers for electric buses, delivery vans and trucks, mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles are expected to be even higher.

The environmental impact of electrification will be significant in reducing carbon emissions and pollution in general. Electric vehicles already reduce oil demand by a million barrels a day. By the year 2040, they will displace nearly 18 million barrels of oil a day and reduce CO2 emissions by 2.5 billion tons per year.

Electric cars still face challenges. They are still more expensive than gas-powered cars, but their cost-benefit analysis is changing rapidly as technology improvements and volume efficiencies drive down the cost of battery packs. Analysts predict that electric vehicles will achieve price parity with internal combustion vehicles in as soon as two years but in any case within the next ten years.

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Electrification of transportation sector nears tipping point

Photo, posted May 7, 2020, courtesy of Mark Vletter via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Second Life For Electric Car Batteries | Earth Wise

June 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The number of electric cars around the world is growing steadily. Battery technology continues to improve and the battery packs in the cars can have a long life. Generally, the batteries are considered to require replacement only when their range has dropped below 80% of its original value. Many are warranted to last for 8 to 10 years or more than 100,000 miles. Some seem to do much better than that.

But however long it takes, there will eventually be a wave of used batteries whose performance is no longer deemed sufficient for vehicle use. A new study, published in the journal Applied Energy, looked at the application of used vehicle batteries as backup storage for grid-scale solar photovoltaic installations where they could perform for more than a decade in this less demanding role.

The study looked at the economics of several scenarios including running a solar farm with no battery back up, running the same farm with brand-new batteries, and running the farm with a battery array made of repurposed vehicle batteries.

They found that the used EV battery array, if managed properly, could be a good, profitable investment provided that the batteries cost less than 60% of their original price. They looked at the technical issues of screening batteries and combining batteries from different cars to work together. They also looked at the economics of removing batteries from cars, collecting them, checking them over, and repackaging them.

Overall, they found that reusing vehicle batteries could ultimately meet half the forecasted demand for renewable energy backup storage over the next 10 years and would be both a technical and an economic success story.

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Solar energy farms could offer second life for electric vehicle batteries

Photo, posted June 10, 2011, courtesy of Nick Ares via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Reducing Emissions From Natural Gas Processing

December 4, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Qatar, a small country in the Middle East with a population of about 2.5 million has the highest per capita income of any country in the world. This is largely a result of being one of the world’s top producers of natural gas. The upshot of that is that the tiny country has the dubious honor of being the world’s leading emitter of CO2 per capita.

Texas A&M University has a campus in Qatar and researchers there in collaboration with colleagues at the main campus in College Station, Texas have developed a new reactor technology that can help Qatar process its wealth of natural gas while reducing the country’s carbon footprint.

The technology processes natural gas and captured CO2 to produce both syngas – which is a valuable precursor for many products – and high-quality carbon nanotubes, all without releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

Natural gas reforming is a process by which syngas – a feedstock for liquid hydrocarbons and ultraclean fuels- is produced. The process requires lots of heat and emits CO2. The new technology adds a novel CARGEN (or CARbon GENerator) reactor that advances the natural gas reforming process and includes a catalyst that captures the CO2 emissions and produces nanotubes. The reactor can be driven by either electric or solar power, eliminating the need to burn fuel that ordinarily results in more carbon emissions.

The result is that Qatar’s CO2 emissions would be converted into two products that are important to its economy. In particular, carbon nanotubes are very expensive and extremely versatile, and can be used to manufacture products such as computers and other high-quality materials.

The next step for the researchers is to partner with industry collaborators to further scale up the technology.

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Qatar Researchers Develop Natural Gas Processing Technology That Could Reduce Qatar’s Carbon Footprint

Photo, posted September 30, 2012, courtesy of Jimmy Baikovicius via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Booming Electric Car Sales

September 12, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric cars are becoming more and more commonplace over time. There is no place in the world where this is more evident than in Norway. This year, about half the new cars sold in Norway have been electric. This compares to only 25% just last year. In March alone, nearly 60% of vehicle purchases in Norway were plug-in cars, outselling gas and diesel cars for the first time ever.

Norway has encouraged the switch to electric transportation by making battery-powered cars tax exempt as well as offering various other incentives. This is all part of the country’s plan to end the sale of fossil fuel cars entirely by 2025.

Although Norway leads the world in electric car sales on a per capita basis, there are many other places seeing rapid growth. In Maryland, for example, so many electric cars were sold in the past year that the state’s tax credit program, which has a $3 million annual budget, ran out of money seven months before the end of the fiscal year. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of EVs registered in Maryland doubled to over 18,000.

New York has also seen robust growth in electric vehicles. There are now more than 40,000 plug-in cars registered in New York State. About a third of those are Tesla models, with the increasingly popular Tesla Model 3 rapidly becoming the dominant plug-in car in the state. In fact, this year the Tesla Model 3 has accounted for about 60% of all plug-in car sales in the United States.

Not only are electric car sales going up, so are the options for car buyers. Within the next year or two, there will be numerous new electric car choices available from multiple manufacturers appealing to the tastes of a growing range of car buyers.

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EVs Make Up Half of New Car Sales in Norway So Far This Year

Photo, posted May 16, 2019, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hybrid-Electric Aircraft

May 20, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The commercial aviation industry is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions and, as other industries try to move towards decarbonization, its share is getting larger. But reducing emissions from aircraft is challenging because powering planes without burning fossil fuel is hard to do.

The biggest problem is that powering aircraft with electric motors instead of fossil fuel motors requires so much energy that the batteries needed to supply it become impractically heavy. While research goes on to develop lighter-weight batteries, an interim concept may pay dividends.

Just as hybrid cars represent a stepping stone towards full electrification, hybrid-electric aircraft may be a way to obtain substantial reductions in aircraft emissions. The idea is to use battery-powered electric motors to power planes, but to greatly reduce the capacity requirements of the batteries by having an on-board fossil-fuel generator to charge the batteries and supply additional needed power.

A study by the University of Illinois looked at the potential emissions reductions for hybrid-electric aircraft taking into account the emissions associated with generating the electricity that charges the batteries in the plane. The requirements in the study were that the plane needs to be able to carry the same number of passengers and travel the same distance as current aircraft.

The results were that a drivetrain that gets 50% of its power from battery charge reduced emissions by about 50% over the full lifecycle of the plane.

As batteries get lighter and the electric grid gets greener, the possibility of making major reductions in aircraft carbon emissions looks increasingly realistic. But there is a long way to go.

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Study Examines Commercial Hybrid-Electric Aircraft, Reduced Carbon Emissions

Photo, posted September 26, 2014, courtesy of Jeff Turner via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Affordable Electric Cars

May 1, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The main reasons that electric cars haven’t taken over are that they didn’t drive far enough on a charge, it took too long to charge them, and, most of all, they cost too much.

In recent years, the problem with driving range has steadily been disappearing as electric cars that can go over two hundred and even over three hundred miles on a charge have entered the market. Charging time has also become less of a problem. Tesla’s network of Superchargers can provide 200 miles worth of charge in half an hour and their next generation of chargers, which are just starting to appear, can cut that time much further.

As for cost, a new report by transportation analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that electric vehicles will be cost-competitive with combustion-engine cars by 2022.

The main reason is that the cost of EV batteries has been plummeting. In 2015, batteries made up 57% of the total cost of an electric vehicle. Today, that number is down to 33% and is expected to drop to 20% by 2025. In addition, the cost of electric powertrain systems is also dropping. The Bloomberg report predicts that over the next decade, costs for motors, inverters, and power electronics could be 25 to 30% cheaper than today.

The cost of electric vehicles has been dropping faster than predicted. Bloomberg’s report on the subject in 2017 predicted cost parity in 2026. Last year, they changed it to 2024. And now, they are saying 2022.

Given that electric cars are much cheaper to drive than gasoline cars, finding reasons not to drive them is getting harder to do.

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Electric Cars Could Be As Affordable as Conventional Vehicles In Just Three Years

Photo, posted November 17, 2018, courtesy of Jakob Harter via Flickr.

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Electric Cars In Norway

February 18, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Norway has long been a world leader in sales of electric vehicles. The country only has 5.3 million people, so the absolute numbers cannot compete with those of large countries. Despite that, it wasn’t until the first quarter of last year that Germany became the leader in number of electric cars sold in Europe and Germany has 15 times the population of Norway.

In percentage terms, almost one-third of all new cars sold in Norway last year ran on batteries. The country offers generous subsidies for buyers who opt to go electric. The government has set a goal of having all new cars be emission-free by 2025. Last year, three of the top five most popular new car models were electric: the Nissan Leaf, the BMW i3, and the Tesla Model X.

Tesla’s Model 3, which has shattered all records for electric car sales in the United States, has yet to go on sale in Norway. When the car becomes available there in the next few months, it is expected to generate very high sales figures.

The 31% market share for electric cars in Norway far exceeds that of most other countries. In the United States, for example, plug-in cars account for only about 2% of new car sales. Only Hong Kong and Iceland are also currently above 5% electric.

Norway’s role in all of this is rather convoluted. The country has copious hydroelectric power resources that provide virtually all of its electricity. Thus, electric cars in Norway are truly clean, green vehicles. On the other hand, Norway is the 15th largest producer of oil in the world and gets about 17% of its GDP from oil exports. Tackling climate change must ultimately deal with the emissions Norway continues to export.

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Photo, posted October 3, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Misconceptions About Electric Cars

February 8, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Tesla’s Model 3 was one of the best-selling cars in the United States last year, eclipsing all but a handful of sedans. This was the first time that an electric car had that honor and is indicative of how electric cars are finally becoming mainstream. A host of other new electric models from multiple manufacturers will be the entering the market over the next couple of years.

Despite all of this progress, there is still a great deal of misinformation about electric cars. A new study commissioned by Volkswagen revealed some of the widespread misconceptions about the vehicles.

Some people believe that electric cars can’t be driven through puddles. Nearly one in five people believe that electric cars slow down as the battery depletes. Many people believe that electric cars are fundamentally less safe than gas-powered cars.

More generally, people are unaware of how far current electric cars can drive on a charge. More and more models can go 200 and even over 300 miles between charging sessions. People also don’t know how quickly cars can charge up either. Fast chargers like Tesla’s Superchargers can add 200 miles worth of charge in about 20 minutes. And people don’t know what it costs to charge electric cars. In most places, it is only a fraction of what it costs to drive the same distance using gasoline.

Despite their limited knowledge about electric cars, the 2,000 people surveyed in Britain were positively disposed towards them with nearly 6 in 10 saying that they would like to own an electric car some day and would even consider one as their next vehicle.

Electric cars will become more familiar and less exotic as more and more of them are on our roads and highways.

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Major misconceptions prevent drivers from buying electric cars, study claims

Photo, posted April 6, 2018, courtesy of Brian Doyle via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/electric-cars-misconceptions-battery-charging-safety-volkswagen-study-results-a8700536.html

Powering Africa With The Sun

December 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who currently live without electric power. Putting in the infrastructure to supply power to these people in their various countries has been a major economic and logistical challenge.

Electric Buses On The Rise

November 2, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric buses are replacing conventional diesel-fueled buses at an accelerating rate that is outpacing the adoption of battery-powered cars. According to forecasts by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, by 2030 some 28% of car sales will be electric vehicles while 84% of new buses will be electric buses. So far, some 12 years away, the actual adoption of electric buses is outpacing this optimistic projection.

Hydrogen Powered Cars

October 31, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Hydrogen-powered cars are trying to make inroads in the rapidly-evolving automobile market. Several major automakers – including Hyundai, Toyota and Honda continue to invest heavily in the technology while selling a limited number of cars around the world.

A Million Electric Cars

September 25, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last year, China was the first country to reach the milestone of having one million electric cars. This year, China will add another million plug-in vehicles. Of course, with its huge population, China sells four times as many cars in total per year as any other country.

A Battle For The Automobile Fuel Business

August 20, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Energy giant BP predicts that electric vehicle sales will increase by an incredible 8,800 percent between now and 2040. That creates a major business opportunity for oil companies as well as a real problem because demand for gasoline and diesel is destined to slow.

The Fight For Greener Cars

June 28, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

U.S. automakers have always been reluctant partners in the nation’s efforts to reduce air pollution and improve fuel efficiency. There have been struggles for decades between the carmakers and the government in setting Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFÉ) standards. During the Obama administration, some of the most demanding fuel economy and emissions standards were mandated.

An Electric VW Bus

June 19, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

For baby boomers, the Volkswagen bus was the iconic vehicle of the 1960s counterculture. It was introduced in 1950, was popular among Gen Xers coming of age in the 1980s, and lasted in one form or another until 2013, when the last one was built in Brazil.

[Read more…] about An Electric VW Bus

The Automobile Future: Dream or Nightmare?

February 21, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Visionaries tout a future in which cars are electric, self-driving, and shared. All three of these things are starting to happen today, but will they come together to produce a future where congestion and pollution are things of the past?

China And Electric Cars

December 19, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

While American politicians were voting on eliminating tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles, auto executives from around the world were gathering to make ambitious plans to sell more electric cars in China.

Corporate Fleets And Electric Cars

December 4, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A group of 10 major transnational corporations has launched a new global initiative to slash vehicle emissions by increasing the number of electric vehicles in their corporate fleets. Known as EV100, the initiative commits companies to integrate EVs in their owned or leased fleets and install charging stations for customers and employees.

An All-Electric Plane

November 14, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The British discount airline EasyJet recently announced a partnership with American company Wright Electric to develop an all-electric commercial airplane that they said could be flying within 10 years. The goal of the partnership is to develop aircraft with a maximum range of 335 miles, which is long enough for many of the European routes that EasyJet flies from its hub in England.

Air Travel And Global Warming

September 25, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Air travel is pretty carbon intensive. For those of us who take plane trips, it represents a substantial part of our individual carbon footprints. It isn’t that plane travel is inefficient fuel-wise on a miles-per-gallon-per-passenger basis compared with driving, for example. It is just that we go so much farther on planes. Currently, aviation accounts for only a few percent of overall carbon emissions, but that is changing for two reasons.