“Imagine it, Smithers, electrical lights and heaters, running all day long.” – The Simpsons
If Dyson® releases an electric car, I think they’ll suck.
This is the next in an occasional series of posts about the economics of energy.
There was one headline from the last few weeks that has really amused me. The Swiss, makers of cheese and hot chocolate let folks with electric cars know: don’t charge them until spring. Instead, they suggested the Swiss citizens continue to use their diesel and gasoline cars.
Electric economy?
No.
In fact, we’re far from that. Again, the electricity has to come from somewhere. Wind is great, when the wind is blowing. Oh, and Lefty environmentalists are against it because it kills bats and birds. Hydroelectric? I love hydro power, except the number of new dams that can be built is approximately zero, since the environmental permitting process and protests don’t allow that.
Solar?
No.
Investing in solar energy won’t happen overnight.
Here is where I have to bring in the concept of Energy Return on Energy Invested. Not dollars. Energy. The idea is simple, if I eat a food that takes more calories to digest than it provides me in available calories that I can use to smoke cigars and think of PEZ®.
If I eat a food that takes me more calories to digest than I get, I’ve invested more energy than I get out of it, and the return is negative. If the price of oil is a bazillion dollars, and I invest more Btus than I can get out of that oil, it’s the same idea. Regardless of the dollar price, if the energy price is too high it will simply make me poorer in terms of energy that I could use.
Solar, in the best case I can find, is about a 10 to 1 rate of return on energy returned from energy investment. The most recent number I saw is 2 to 1. That means, over the whole lifetime of the solar cell, it produces twice as much energy as it takes to make it, ship it, install it, and junk it.
Sounds great, right?
No.
Like a Dyson®, it sucks.
I think if coal is so bad for the environment, we should just burn it all.
Coal is about 30 to 1, even with stringent environmental controls on soot and sulfur and nitrous oxides. Natural gas is about the same. Hydro is 35. Nuclear (by the most recent estimate I’ve seen) is 75, though I think that’s optimistic.
But nuclear isn’t 2. And it isn’t 4, like wind turbines.
Where, exactly, is that energy coming from?
And how are we going to get it to houses? The grid in California can’t take a typical Tuesday in summer, so how is it going to power all the air conditioners and all the PEZ® mines and incubators and tent cities and, on top of that, all the cars?
I tried to sell a tent company to investors. It was difficult to pitch.
It simply won’t. Even now it’s so overtaxed that some summers the electric companies release more energy in forest fires than they do in electricity.
We look for efficiency in the world and are taught a mantra – efficiency is good. The power companies around the country and even in Switzerland have heard that. They have enough power generation and transmission capacity for most days. But not every day. That wouldn’t be efficient.
Mathematicians don’t ever get blackout drunk. They know their limits.
Why not? Most days aren’t peak days. To build that extra capacity in generation and transmission means spending money. And that isn’t efficient. It’s more efficient (and better for the bottom line) to have a series of brownouts and blackouts.
It is.
That’s the way it is, today, with all of the gasoline-powered cars. Imagine a decade into the future with all the Tesla® and Edizzon™ and Voltaire© new-model electric cars, and a grid that goes down when it’s 89°F (34 megajoules) outside. Finally, the achievement of a full socialist worker paradise – everyone has equal-opportunity HVAC with the people living in tents under the overpass.
Does anyone, I mean, anyone still think that controlling energy has anything to do with climate change?
Even if there were a magical energy source (unicorn hair? Obama sweat?) that provided electricity better than sweet, sweet fossil fuels, the investment in the grid in the United States to keep the current standard of living using electric cars would be more than Biden spends on anti-senility drugs and the Ukraine, combined, in a month.
It’s a lot. And that’s ignoring the cost to build the treadmill that Obama would have to run on and the Obama-sweat power generators. Investment of this type takes decades. Decades where we haven’t spent the money – not only in California, but everywhere. Because, instead of wanting resilience, we wanted efficiency.
The end result is this: the Swiss are right. Electric cars are not, in any foreseeable future, the answer. See? You can always trust people who make great cheese and hot chocolate. Heck, I just got a Swiss flag for my collection, and that’s a big plus.
Remember, never give up. Share this with someone who might need it.