...parts of Sweden, Norway excepted, is generated by the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels.
On my grid, PJM, an electric car is worse than an internal combustion engine for climate impact if one includes the embodied energy, a point I made here: A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."
The question of the thermodynamics of batteries - batteries are devices that waste primary energy, technically called exergy destruction, a point I made here: Pesky Thermodynamics: The Mathematics of Wasting Energy by Storage in Li Batteries. It's a little more complex in the case of batteries than with the hydrogen bullshit and depends on the conditions under which the batteries are charged and discharged, but the case is clear: A battery is a device that destroys exergy, i.e. wastes primary energy.
My opinion - to which I'm entitled - is that handwaving that consists largely of a three card Monty scheme where energy is a concern - is the reason that we are failing dramatically to address extreme global heating.
The issue is primary energy and the big lie, the one widely believed but scientifically beneath contempt, is that stored energy is clean energy. This is a nonsense statement, and is the reason we see numbers like this every Sunday morning:
Week beginning on May 25, 2025: 430.18 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 426.80 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 403.98 ppm
Last updated: June 01, 2025
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
Too many people treat energy issues in a purely religious fashion, chanting essentially.
Electricity, by its very nature, is thermodynamically degraded energy. Thermodynamics is the key and no amount of chanting will address that fact. The laws of thermodynamics will not be suspended by chanting; they are laws of physics; and no government whether a democracy, a dictatorship, or something in between can change them. Neither will they be changed by popular will nor by cult thinking.
We have electric buses in Princeton, run by Princeton University, a great University led by great scientists, who are nonetheless enamored - many of them - of magical thinking - they often bring the asshole Amory Lovins to speak there - but as one of the Democratic Candidates for Governor in the recent debate pointed out, some of the electricity on the PJM grid is produced by burning coal in West Virginia. That means the electric buses in Princeton are powered, with exergy destruction, by coal to an unacceptable extent.
Got it?
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