Norwegians and Icelanders need to stop showing off all their hydro and low population density.
Most countires won’t be able to scale up their electricity generation by like 20-50% or so (to accomodate a large switch of transportation energy) without burning a lot more fossil fuel. Or building many large nuclear plants. Or damming up and flooding several large valleys. Fossil fuel is still the cheapest fastest and easiest way to scale up electricity generation - and ramping up the duty cycle of existing power stations is the easiest in the short term.
Maybe if each EV came with enough additional solar and batteries to offset their electricity consumption (especially at peak).
This’d increase the costs a fair bit but it’d make them much better for net greenhouse gas emissions.
Note that even in an era of fairly rapidly increasing renewables - from 1980s to now - the overall share of renewables in global electricity generation has not increased much, 25-30% ish last time I looked.
This is because new demand has always come along to offset the new renewable electricity generation. This will continue with electrification of transport, heating, plus all this ai and server farms and stuff, add in general population growth and economic development - I don’t believe the world is going to be able to grow renewables anywhere near fast enough to keep up with all that.
Not without some cold fusion type technology leap.
Norwegians and Icelanders need to stop showing off all their hydro and low population density.
Most countires won’t be able to scale up their electricity generation by like 20-50% or so (to accomodate a large switch of transportation energy) without burning a lot more fossil fuel. Or building many large nuclear plants. Or damming up and flooding several large valleys. Fossil fuel is still the cheapest fastest and easiest way to scale up electricity generation - and ramping up the duty cycle of existing power stations is the easiest in the short term.
Maybe if each EV came with enough additional solar and batteries to offset their electricity consumption (especially at peak). This’d increase the costs a fair bit but it’d make them much better for net greenhouse gas emissions.
Note that even in an era of fairly rapidly increasing renewables - from 1980s to now - the overall share of renewables in global electricity generation has not increased much, 25-30% ish last time I looked.
This is because new demand has always come along to offset the new renewable electricity generation. This will continue with electrification of transport, heating, plus all this ai and server farms and stuff, add in general population growth and economic development - I don’t believe the world is going to be able to grow renewables anywhere near fast enough to keep up with all that. Not without some cold fusion type technology leap.
I think we could do it with sufficient investment. But you make a good point, in the short term it will still be a bit before we’re fully renewable.