An Incredibly Toxic Lake Will Become One of the US's First Lithium Mines (vice.com) 271
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: One of the United States' first major forays into lithium mining seems like it's going to be in the Salton Sea -- one of the most polluted places in the country -- after General Motors struck a deal with a mining company called Controlled Thermal Resources. This is a big, and potentially very complicated, deal for anyone who cares about the planet. Many experts believe that in order to have any hope of staving off climate change, we have to electrify cars and essentially everything else as soon as possible (ideally, yesterday). Lithium-ion batteries are key to this process, and global demand is expected to increase between 5 and 18 times over the next several years. Put simply, we will need a lot of lithium, and the overwhelming majority of lithium in today's batteries comes from Australia, Chile, China, and Argentina. But the American southwest has huge stores of lithium as well.
General Motors is hoping that a CTR mine in the Salton Sea can supply "a significant portion" of the lithium needed for its electric cars. It's a step toward GM's first-in-the-nation commitment to phasing gasoline-powered cars out of its production line by 2035 -- CTR is slated to start delivering lithium to the company by 2024, at which point the company will be well-poised to achieve this goal.
This is, potentially, a very good thing. But it's also complicated: Mining, broadly speaking, is environmentally destructive. Lithium mining is usually -- but not always -- less destructive than, say, strip mining. And the Salton Sea, an accidental reservoir near California vacation mainstays like Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, is one of the most polluted places on the planet due to decades of agricultural runoff. Environmentalists there worry that if the lake continues to dry up, toxic dust on its floor could go airborne and pollute the air between Phoenix and Los Angeles. The lake is understood to hold one of the nation's largest lithium brine stores, capable of supplying up to 40 percent of global demand for the mineral, according to the California Energy Commission (CEC). CTR claims its production process is self-contained and environmentally sound, as it plans to use renewable energy to extract the mineral.
"But to community members around the proposed mines, ramping up lithium extraction feels complicated," reports Motherboard. "Chemicals like arsenic, selenium, and pesticides are rampant in the lake's waters, and their particles have been released into the atmosphere as it dries, which is happening at an increasing rate as drought grips the west coast. [...] So, ramping up mining in one of the state's most polluted counties -- where 85 percent of residents are Hispanic or Latino and 22 percent live under the poverty line -- feels risky to environmental justice organizers like Miguel Hernandez, communications coordinator at Comite Civico del Valle. Hernandez hopes to see producers and local legislators make an effort to inform residents about the possible, yet-mostly-unknown health effects of lithium mining, which is water-intensive and produces a fair amount of mineral waste."
General Motors is hoping that a CTR mine in the Salton Sea can supply "a significant portion" of the lithium needed for its electric cars. It's a step toward GM's first-in-the-nation commitment to phasing gasoline-powered cars out of its production line by 2035 -- CTR is slated to start delivering lithium to the company by 2024, at which point the company will be well-poised to achieve this goal.
This is, potentially, a very good thing. But it's also complicated: Mining, broadly speaking, is environmentally destructive. Lithium mining is usually -- but not always -- less destructive than, say, strip mining. And the Salton Sea, an accidental reservoir near California vacation mainstays like Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, is one of the most polluted places on the planet due to decades of agricultural runoff. Environmentalists there worry that if the lake continues to dry up, toxic dust on its floor could go airborne and pollute the air between Phoenix and Los Angeles. The lake is understood to hold one of the nation's largest lithium brine stores, capable of supplying up to 40 percent of global demand for the mineral, according to the California Energy Commission (CEC). CTR claims its production process is self-contained and environmentally sound, as it plans to use renewable energy to extract the mineral.
"But to community members around the proposed mines, ramping up lithium extraction feels complicated," reports Motherboard. "Chemicals like arsenic, selenium, and pesticides are rampant in the lake's waters, and their particles have been released into the atmosphere as it dries, which is happening at an increasing rate as drought grips the west coast. [...] So, ramping up mining in one of the state's most polluted counties -- where 85 percent of residents are Hispanic or Latino and 22 percent live under the poverty line -- feels risky to environmental justice organizers like Miguel Hernandez, communications coordinator at Comite Civico del Valle. Hernandez hopes to see producers and local legislators make an effort to inform residents about the possible, yet-mostly-unknown health effects of lithium mining, which is water-intensive and produces a fair amount of mineral waste."
It's a win-win-win (Score:5, Insightful)
Chemicals like arsenic, selenium, and pesticides are rampant in the lake's waters, and their particles have been released into the atmosphere as it dries, which is happening at an increasing rate as drought grips the west coast. [...] So, ramping up mining in one of the state's most polluted counties -- where 85 percent of residents are Hispanic or Latino and 22 percent live under the poverty line
If you put in no mine the drying lake will release those chemicals anyway, uncontrolled
If you put int the mine, those chemicals will be controlled by the mine owners who needs to work around them and maintain the general area of the mine.
Furthermore, those people living under the poverty line will have a higher standard of living with the increase in jobs and just spending around the area from a mine going in.
The third win? That's the lithium mined in a monitored area of the U.S., instead of some distant region in a third world country where NO-ONE is paying attention to pollution at all.
The of course arguable the hidden forth win is the benefit offing able to produce even more batteries which will be desperately needed if we really want all cars and trucks and, well, everything to be electric...
That doens't happen without a LOT more lithium.
Re:It's a win-win-win (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people prefer that the lake be turned into a lake again by adding water.
Again?
It wasn't a lake in the first place. It was a desert. The lake was created accidentally, by human action (a poorly constructed irrigation canal spilling the Colorado river into the desert.).
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It has switched between lake and dry lake bed over history and pre-history. From what I understand, it seasonally became a lake as the Colorado river flooded, before the Hoover dam was built.
Anyway that sort of logic doesn't really matter to people who want it a lake because they prefer it as a lake.
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Anyway that sort of logic doesn't really matter to people who want it a lake because they prefer it as a lake.
True, lakes are nice, but I think that going through and cleaning up the bed and water so it isn't one of the most toxic lakes in the country would be even better.
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The toxicness is natural as a result of it being an endorheic lake. You don't want to ruin nature, do you?
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The toxicness is natural as a result of it being an endorheic lake. You don't want to ruin nature, do you?
...which is also why it's accumulated the lithium salts.
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True point. There's not really an easy solution for what to do with the lake.
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The reality the soil is so toxic because what was once a very large dilute lake was turned into a very small one and as the water went away it left alot of the contaminates in it behind which all ended up concentrated in the surface soil that used to be the lake bed.
If the sea was re-filled to its zenith levels, while it probably would not be exactly 'clean' it would not be anything considered an ecological disaster either.
Its understandable why and perfectly reasonable that some people who had property nea
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If you put in no mine the drying lake will release those chemicals anyway, uncontrolled
Why is that the choice? Shouldn't the government either clean it up itself or force whoever polluted it to do so?
Not realistic and you'd have to displace everyone living in the area to perform the work safely, since you're kicking all that up into the air. The lithium mining won't do that.
Another option would be to just make them pump excess water into the lake, more than they need for mining. If it's not drying out, it won't be a problem. But the water has to come from somewhere, and realistically the only place that much water can come from is the ocean. That's a reasonable place to get it because the salton sea is.
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Mine or Harvest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mine or Harvest? (Score:5, Informative)
The Salton Sea is already home to a complex of 10 geothermal power stations, which pump steam from underground into generators and create a saline brine byproduct that is rich in lithium and send it back into the earth. CTR’s proposal would instead send that brine into open pits, where it would evaporate, eliminating water and leaving minerals for processing behind.
Re:Mine or Harvest? (Score:5, Informative)
Ka Ching. We have a winner. Yes, that is how CTR [cthermal.com] plans to extract the lithium from brine brought up from deep underground, in a geothermal area. It will initially be used to provide heat to generate electricity. Then, the brine is either returned to underground, or evaporated and the salts collected. It's already being done at some of the other power plants, and there's a very large such operation at Cerro Prieto in the Mexican portion of the Imperial Valley. Lithium isn't the only thing extracted. The story (or at least the interpretation of it) pointing at use of the Salton Sea is a red herring; the lake isn't the source of the lithium, geothermal wells are. Evaporation ponds in a very hot, dry environment are a use of solar energy. Conveniently, there are also a rail line and an interstate highway not far away for shipping the product out (if you can convince Union Pacific to actually serve the rail traffic; mostly, they want to just carry containers through between the LA area ports and Texas). But yes, there are issues including potentially toxic dust blowing around. Something will have to be done to deal with that. But it would be dust from the evaporation ponds, not Salton Sea. The Sea is a different issue.
For those saying "we'd rather have a lake," yes, Lake Cahuilla was a thing. It periodically formed when the Colorado River diverted into the Valley rather than flowing out to the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez. The river's delta is in fact why there's a dry valley - it's really part of the Gulf of California, cut off from the ocean by the Colorado River delta. The prime geothermal areas are near incipient spreading ridges beneath the valley floor, which are also the sources for small volcanoes. As for the lake, there's some thought that when the lake was there, the water lubricated the San Andreas Fault allowing it to move more; since it's been dry, the fault's been stuck. Of course, since nearly all the water in the Colorado River has been diverted for other things, there isn't enough left to form another lake now; that'll have to wait until the climate cools and gets wetter, and humans learn to live without their dams, again. Last time the lake was full-ish was in the 1500-1600 era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Are you sure the birds can use the water at all? No fish live in those waters. You can't drink it.
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They do use the shrinking waters, and it's a huge problem. As the Salton Sea shrinks, the birds gather in tighter groups, which lets pathogens spread more easily. Huge die-offs of thousands of birds are not uncommon. Those not taken by disease are poisoned by the waters and often die later, spreading the chemicals into other parts of the ecosystem.
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Sea is a misnomer. It’s an artificial lake that was created accidentally as the result of a fuck up during an irrigation project. It’s only been around for about 100 years and will be gone relatively soon regardless. Whatever species of birds use it are used to it not being there as the basin it lies in has been alternately flooded and desiccated many times over the millennia due
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Is it feasible to build a pipeline from the Gulf of California to keep it permanently as a lake?
e.g. there's Salada lake on the Mexican side of the border.
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Most people think of lakes as freshwater. If you pumped salt water into it, it would just be a weird inland bay, and probably stay more saline than the ocean due to evaporation losses and the continued addition of salt water.
I think for this to "work" with ocean water would require cutting the salinity of the input water by at least 50%, and that's ridiculously intensive to do.
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You act as if there have not been any other environmental changes, that may or may not have reduced accessible surface water affecting the birds.
You can't look at something like this in isolation. This is exactly why all these environmental projects are often failures. We are not really good at engineering the planet. You in the 1930s a lot of those damns themselves were talked about in terms of conservation projects. Never mind the migratory fish..
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The same technology has been used to harvest table salt for centuries.
That's fine, as long as they don't get confused regarding which is the table salt and which is the lithium salt...
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The term "lithium brine", and the element's location on the periodic table makes me think the lithium is stored as a salt.
Yep. One of the common sources of lithium is evaporite deposits.
It's the right place for it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Salton Sea is basically an open cesspool already; and it's been even more ugly and foul-smelling every time I have had the misfortune to be in the area. It's hard to imagine any kind of pollution that would make the place worse. If we have to have any kind of horrible polluting industry, it's one of the best candidates.
40% ? (Score:3)
They claim it can provide 40% of the world's lithium .. is that 40% of the current lithium usage? Or, is it the predicted future usage when most cars are battery powered. Currently, less than 1% of cars are electric. Therefore, it would have to supply 100 times whatever the current lithium usage is.
Re:40% ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Current lithium usage isn't much, with only about 82,000 metric tons produced worldwide in 2020. Compare that to gold (3200 metric tons), silver (25,000 metric tons), and iron ore (56 million tons in the US alone). The US has at least three or four promising locations, plus the known deposits in South America and Australia. Lithium production shouldn't be much of a problem even ramping up by a factor of 100, which may not be necessary as lithium battery recycling becomes a bigger market.
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We have a basically endless supply of lithium in seawater:
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org].
The problem is that right now it's basically cheaper to mine it from dirty mines. At some point the demand will be high enough that other ways of extracting it will be commercially viable.
Re:40% ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Synthesizing carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels sounds like an easier way to get to "zero carbon" transportation. Especially for aircraft. Not even the latest lithium batteries in an electric airplane will carry dozens of people over an ocean. Synthesized fuels will.
It doesn't matter if the energy in in a synthetic fuel or in batteries, there needs to be a "zero carbon" energy source. The difference with a synthesized hydrocarbon fuel versus electric trucks and planes is that we have the technology today for practical hydrocarbon burning trucks and planes, and to produce the "zero carbon" fuel.
The cost will be an issue, and that will take development. Still an easier problem than trying to fit batteries in things.
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A somewhat fair point, but firstly, the AC comment above yours (was it you?) was claiming synthesized fuels are needed because we would run out of Lithium --- that is patently false. Second. synthesizing fuel would have to be done on a constant basis (you have to grab the carbon from the air by splitting the CO2 and then making a hydrocarbon from it (either via an industrial process or using algae/plants.) That means you would use a lot of energy. Charging a lithium battery would require less energy becaus
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A somewhat fair point, but firstly, the AC comment above yours (was it you?)
No, that wasn't me. The time stamp suggests we were both writing at the same time.
was claiming synthesized fuels are needed because we would run out of Lithium --- that is patently false.
I agree that we will not run out of lithium, but we could run out of inexpensive lithium. Other battery chemistries are possible, ones not using lithium, but they are not likely to have the same kind of energy density and that will affect costs, range, mass, volume, and so on.
Second. synthesizing fuel would have to be done on a constant basis (you have to grab the carbon from the air by splitting the CO2 and then making a hydrocarbon from it (either via an industrial process or using algae/plants.) That means you would use a lot of energy. Charging a lithium battery would require less energy because you use the energy to charge the battery and don't need the intermediate step of splitting carbon dioxide.
It uses a lot of energy but part of that energy can be heat that would otherwise be wasted in making electricity. There are very efficient processes t
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You have to be careful with biomass though.
If I cut down a tree and burn it (biomass fuel) a lot of carbon goes into the air at once. I can plant a new tree and claim that as it grows it will pull an equal amount of carbon back out the air. Its true but it might take 30 years to do it.
A lot of the biomass companies doing things like wood pellets are running around cutting forests today, replanting and saying they are 'carbon neutral'. This is true over a big enough time scale but in the meantime its produci
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What you are ignoring is efficiency, or to put it another way: how much green energy must be generated in order to power those vehicles however many miles they do.
Synthetic fuels are much less efficient, thus requiring much more green energy than batteries.
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What you are ignoring is efficiency, or to put it another way: how much green energy must be generated in order to power those vehicles however many miles they do.
Synthetic fuels are much less efficient, thus requiring much more green energy than batteries.
With airplanes we can have net carbon transportation now using synthesized fuels or never by using batteries.
There will be many factors into the end costs of the electricity for charging a BEV versus synthesized fuels for an ICEV. If sourcing the materials for batteries are becoming a problem now with so few BEVs on the market then my guess is that the ICEV has a lot of life in it yet.
One way to maximize convenience and range without losing the convenience and cost savings of a BEV for the daily commute is
Re: 40% ? (Score:2)
You are crazy. There are 150 billion tons of lithium just in sea water. Assuming there are 5 billion vehicles needed in the world, that is 30 tons per car! Lithium can be recycled so that should be all we need. Let us assume for environmentalist blocking reasons we can only extract 5 percent of the lithium in sea water .. that is still 1.5 TONS of lithium per vehicle. Right now a Tesla only uses 100 kg of lithium btw, and they recycle.
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How much energy would you have to burn to extract all that lithium? To process every drop of sea water, on an entire planet, most of which happens to be sea water?
See the problem?
Lithium is not an energy source, but an energy storage mechanism. You still have to get the energy somewhere.
BTW, the storage is definitely the bigger of the two problems, in that we can already produce more than we need (but can't get most of it to where/when it needs to be), so I'm all for building out our capacity to do that.
Heinlein had a solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Heinlein had a solution (Score:3)
Sodium? (Score:2)
Compared to lithium, sodium would have the advantage (I think) of being readily available (we have oceans full of it). The sodium ion technology for batteries lags that of lithium ion batteries, but maybe that could be made up by more research. There's a wikipedia article about sodium ion batteries; the bottom line: "Compared to lithium-ion batteries, current sodium-ion batteries have somewhat higher cost, slightly lower energy density, better safety characteristics, and similar power delivery characteris
Re:Sodium? (Score:5, Informative)
The sodium ion technology for batteries lags that of lithium ion batteries
The main problem with sodium-ion is that in metal-ion battery the charge and discharge happen when metal ions intercalate in electrodes. They don't change their oxidation state, but just migrate from one electrode to another. Unfortunately, sodium ions are too large for that, so the efficiency of known materials is too low.
It also amplifies all other issues like electrode swelling and cracking. The same ones that affect even li-ion.
Points and laughs (Score:2)
"toxic dust on its floor could go airborne and pollute the air between Phoenix and Los Angeles"
Yeah, um, clearly the anonymous reader has never been there. It's been polluted for decades.
Your car is not the bad guy. (Score:2)
"Many experts believe that in order to have any hope of staving off climate change, we have to electrify cars"
No. Let's get this into perspective (all figures from epa.gov)
The entire transportation sector only accounts for about 27% of the total man-made greenhouse gas (MMGG) emissions.
Of that 27%, Road transport accounts for 72%, The rest is aviation and marine.
That means only about 19% of all MMGG is road vehicles.
Around 23% of that 19% is from heavy duty vehicles (so 18 wheelers etc are responsible for 4
Re: Your car is not the bad guy. (Score:2)
Salton Sea is not that big (Score:2)
Not that big a deal for a company the size of General Motors that produces millions of vehicles
Not that big a seamore pond not even a lake
Not that big a win to match GM millions of vehicles produced
Not that big lithium deposit - 10 years tops then sand and more sand
Salton Sea’s biggest claim is “stench”
GM’s biggest claim will be its aftermath after a 10 yr. operation is abandoned
It will go down in History as the corporation that ate a Sea and threw up after
What a f#$&ing mess dea
Bury the waste/tailings-no open piles (Score:2)
That should be part of remediation in the first place and it's not as if doing "strip mining in reverse" is an exotic solution.
Opinion (Score:2)
I'd like the idea better if GM wasn't involved. Between the Streetcars [wikipedia.org], their fight against unleaded gasoline, and crushing the EV-1 [wikipedia.org] I don't trust them not to intentionally muck this up if it will make them a dollar.
Dont't weep for the fake sea (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people are unaware that the Salton Sea is not a naturally-occurring body of water - it's basically the result of an industrial-sized human screw-up. [wikipedia.org]
There are NO native wildlife species there to be endangered by any lithium-related activities (anything in the water was artificially added by people in the many years after the faux-sea was mistakenly created). No bird species should legitimately be dependent upon the sea, since it was not there before people accidentally created it.
If environmentalists won't let us do anything to the Salton Sea, then there's no place on Earth they will tolerate new, not-perfectly-clean, industrial activity... well other than China where, apparently, all bets are off.
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Indeed so how does "turn off the aircon" stave off climate change during one of the hottest heat waves? Yeah anything can be said to be "really is that simple" when themselves aren't the one that has to do it. The idea with EV is then any pollution can be centralized and more effectively dealt with. Never mind electricity can be more efficiently generated to begin with.
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The answer is not "turn off the aircon" always but don't turn in off unless absolutely necessary. Not never drive, because vehicles help us live, but reduce the amount we drive, if you don't have to drive don't, design places so you don't have to travel using a car. Stop buying so much rubbish, make products last so don't have so much pollution, the right to repair would be a good start, but having a good way to judge quality would also help. While we have an attitude in society that I will not be inconven
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Of course, they tended to do it by migrating to areas with cooler clients. I doubt that you would have seen the mass migration of people to places like Florida and Southern California without Air Conditioning. If it were to magically disappear overnight, I doubt that many people would be staying if given an option.
Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:5, Funny)
Where do you find cooler clients? At a hipster bar?
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At a hipster bar?
A hipster coffee bar.
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Except for all those people who die during heatwaves. Also other than suck it up, you will need to realize that we would need to do things that we would be considered lazy freeloaders type of stuff, that we make fun of third world nations for.
When the temperatures get really hot, we will not be working, we will be keeping cool in the shade, or in a pool during business hours. We will need to take naps during the day, and not do any labor until it is night and cooler.
So if you want us to Suck it up and pull
TFA is about NOT getting it by strip-mining. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not when you are strip mining Lithium. Lithium is not the answer. It just replaces one finite resources with another.
TFA is about getting 40% of the Lithium needed for building out a US fleet of EVs WITHOUT strip mining - at ONE site, by intercepting it from an existing flow of polluted industrial waste and refining it out of a horribly polluted, drying out, lake before it blows all over a valley.
If they do it right they can also remove the arsenic and several other pollutants without substantial additional cost.
(If they do it wrong they might increase, rather than decrease, the airborne toxic dust. So let's insure they do it right, eh?)
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Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
Normally it's good to try to have a target that's possible. If we all stopped driving it would prevent car accidents too but you have to be realistic. That said, electric public transit is way better than electric cars.
Maybe, but only they have enough passengers. Depending on the route and the time of day, electric public transit can be a net negative in some places, particularly if passengers require multiple transfers and end up traveling more miles. On average, the break-even point seems to be somewhere around 11 passengers per bus.
The bigger problem is that diesel and natural gas buses are much more common, and produce more CO2 than individual single-passenger EVs even when they are almost completely full.
A Model 3 produces about 0.2392 pounds of CO2 per mile, assuming .92 kg per kWh (the national average). An electric bus produces 2.6128 pounds per mile. If you use California's energy mix, divide those numbers by two or so.
A diesel bus produces 9.325554 pounds per mile (using well-to-wheel numbers for a fair comparison). So a 40-to-80-passenger diesel bus is more efficient than a fleet of Model 3 cars only when there are at least 39 passengers.
Using the same metrics, a natural gas bus produces 8.057896 pounds per mile. So the break-even point is 34 passengers.
So basically, EVs are better than non-electric buses unless you keep the buses at or near capacity, and if you use California's energy mix, then even double-decker buses are less efficient than individuals driving EVs unless they are approximately completely full.
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Do you have a source for your well-to wheel figures? I assumed that the extremely precise "9.325554 pounds per mile" was converted from a metric 4.25kg, but my googlefu didn't produce any winners.
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Where are you getting these numbers and how do they arrive at them? For example, how does an electric bus produce 2.6128 pounds of carbon per mile? Tire wear, the cost of putting up the power lines? The cement to build the dam to generate the electricity to run the bus?
Then there's the comparison of natural gas, which is largely hydrogen vs diesel, which judging by the soot, is largely carbon.
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Why don't you start? You're on here with a computer of some sort. Why? The answer is really simple: you don't want to give that up
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Why don't you start? You're on here with a computer of some sort. Why? The answer is really simple: you don't want to give that up
Funny you mention computers. When I compare the computer I use today to browse Slashdot it uses a small fraction of the power it used to. I did turn down my heating. It is okay to wear a jumper indoors during winter, just like it's okay to walk around shirtless during summer.
The answer isn't to give anything up. It's to make tiny insignificant adjustments to your life which have huge knock on effects. What percentage of your shopping trips do you do by bicycle? For me that is 100%. Has been for many years.
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Get a bike with a basket, best thing is you don't need to worry about parking
Sure, once it gets stolen I won't have to worry about parking it anywhere. And that will probably happen in a hot second in Humboldt. A bigger problem is that in order to get to the Grocery Outlet where I shop, because it saves me a lot of money compared to the store nearest me, I would have to ride much much further than I drive. I'd literally have to go a whole town past where I go now to avoid riding on the 101, where people die every day.
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Cars are generally pretty low on the carbon emission scale already. International shipping, flights, and industrial manufacturing are more difficult targets, and that's why they're being ignored.
Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:5, Informative)
Cars are generally pretty low on the carbon emission scale already. International shipping, flights, and industrial manufacturing are more difficult targets, and that's why they're being ignored.
29% of U.S. emissions [epa.gov] come from transportation. I don't have numbers to break that down further, but in Europe [europa.eu], about 60% of transportation emissions comes from cars, 13% or so from aviation, 1% from motorcycles, 38% from trucking, 14% from boats, and 1% from trains and "other". So assuming the U.S. numbers are similar, probably about 18% of U.S. CO2 emissions likely come from passenger cars by themselves. That's not a small number.
And if you can electrify cars, you can electrify trucking, too. So that's 82% of that 29%. International shipping is only part of the remaining 28%, with passenger air and water travel being the rest. So that's almost lost in the noise compared with cars and trucks.
Other big, but easy targets are electricity production (25%), and residential and commercial heating (13%). Eliminating CO2 from electricity production is mostly a matter of throwing money at the problem (building more bulk energy storage, building more green power, building more nuclear power, etc.). And household and commercial CO2 emissions are mostly the result of electricity being too expensive to displace gas heat, which also basically boils down to an extension of the electricity problem. If we could eliminate CO2 from those three sources alone, we'd eliminate O(62%) of our country's CO2 production.
So although eliminating CO2 production from manufacturing is hard, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that doesn't require tackling those hard problems. And the cost of electricity is a major factor preventing the reduction of industrial CO2 production, too, so work towards improving electricity production will help with that as a side effect.
Given that cars are already shifting away from fossil fuels and towards electricity, the main focus going forwards should be on reducing CO2 emissions and cost of electricity production, because that could potentially get us back to 1950s emissions levels by itself.
Do the math (Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer) (Score:3)
And if you can electrify cars, you can electrify trucking, too.
No, you can not.
Moving a person less than 30 miles to their work/school/yoga/whatever and back per day is very different than moving 30 ton grain truck hundreds of miles.
How about some "back of the envelope" math? A semi truck might have 2 tons of diesel fuel on board. Diesel fuel has about 100 times as much energy than even the best batteries available. "But wait," you say, "aren't electric motors more efficient than a diesel engine?" Yes, they are, and for the sake of easy math we can assume them bein
Re:Do the math (Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you can electrify cars, you can electrify trucking, too.
No, you can not.
Moving a person less than 30 miles to their work/school/yoga/whatever and back per day is very different than moving 30 ton grain truck hundreds of miles.
No, it really isn't. The only thing different is the scale. You do know that they have battery-electric freight trains now, right? [bnsf.com]
How about some "back of the envelope" math? A semi truck might have 2 tons of diesel fuel on board.
Theoretically, a semi can have up to 600 gallons of fuel, and 600 gallons is, indeed, about two tons. However, most trucks run closer to 250 gallons — 300 tops. At 250 gallons, assuming 6.5 miles per gallon, that's about 1625 miles per fill-up, or about one fill-up per two 12-hour driving days.
So let's assume a typical rig with 250 gallons of fuel at 1750 pounds, plus another 4000 pounds or so for the engine and transmission, for a total of 5750 pounds.
Diesel fuel has about 100 times as much energy than even the best batteries available. "But wait," you say, "aren't electric motors more efficient than a diesel engine?" Yes, they are, and for the sake of easy math we can assume them being 10 times as efficient.
For heavy loads, diesel is horribly inefficient getting started from zero. That's why trains have been diesel-electric for decades, rather than pure diesel. So I'm not convinced that those numbers are realistic. But even if they are, they're not taking into account the whole system — only the weight of the fuel. And for large vehicles, the weight of the drive train becomes as large a factor as the weight of the fuel.
The Tesla semi uses four Model 3 motors, which reportedly weigh only about 70 pounds each. (This seems light to me; take it with a grain of salt.) If that's true, then when we subtract 280 pounds from 5750 pounds, we get 5470 pounds to use for batteries. Tesla's next-generation power packs reportedly provide about 380 Wh per kg, so they could potentially put a pack that provides up to 943 kWh into it without weighing more than your diesel truck with 250-gallon capacity.
The Tesla truck is expected to go at least 300 miles on a 500 kWh pack fully loaded, which means a 943 kWh battery should have a roughly 567-mile range. The 250-gallon semi would have a 1625-mile range. That's not even a factor of three difference, much less a factor of ten, because diesel engines are so ridiculously heavy for the amount of power that they provide compared with modern electric motors.
You also shouldn't assume human drivers. Various companies are already starting to do tests of self-driving trucks. If you don't have a human driver who needs sleep, you can now run your trucks for 24 hours per day instead of 12. So with the rare exception of trucking companies that currently use two drivers so they can drive continuously, self-driving technology more than makes up for the need to spend 90 minutes per 1500 miles charging instead of 4 minutes filling up your tank. And when you factor in food and bathroom breaks, you could do almost as well as two-driver rigs even without self-driving tech, assuming you can strategically place charging stations and bathroom stops in the same place.
That's why I fully expect trucking to go fully electric within the next couple of decades, tops.
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No, it really isn't. The only thing different is the scale. You do know that they have battery-electric freight trains now, right?
Trains are not weight limited like trucks. Also, that's a prototype, not a production product. Further, a train can do a battery swap easily because there will be plenty of room as making a train longer is rarely an issue. Trucks on the road are constrained in height, width, length, and again on weight. A battery-electric train can be charged on the move with a partially electric rail. There's options like using a "slug" (an electric motor only locomotive) to build up a battery-electric train from a va
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You also shouldn't assume human drivers.
That's fine but that can be applied to diesel trucks too.
Yes, you could apply that to diesel trucks, but you'll be buying new hardware either way, and nothing requires the government to authorize self-driving diesel trucks. You get a ~2x advantage by moving to self-driving, and only an 8% hit by going electric, so the government could rationally decide to require companies to move to electric under the assumption that the 8% hit would more than be made up for by the carrot.
Any time savings are lost because the electric truck will have to stop every 200 miles or something for a recharge or battery swap while the diesel truck can go 10 times as far without a stop.
About one third of all trucking operates at such short ranges that they would not have to
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About one third of all trucking operates at such short ranges that they would not have to charge at all during the day, so there's zero benefit to diesel for any of those.
Sure there is. Short downtime for refueling and kicking the tires. Lower capital expense. No need to retrain mechanics or source new part suppliers for existing operators. Ease of operation in remote areas. Plenty of heat for cold areas. Electrical outages don't mean being left out of service, which will be important for trucks used in emergency services, repair crews, recovery vehicles, and so on.
Most of the remaining trucks will probably continue to be diesel until they aren't able to get diesel trucks anymore. But that's not very far off.
You know, I was just reading this article about a lithium shortage on a website called Slashdot. Have yo
Re:Do the math (Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
and nothing requires the government to authorize self-driving diesel trucks.
Yes, there are things that will require that of the government. One is voters. Voters don't like arbitrary laws. Another is the courts. The courts don't like arbitrary laws either.
If your energy plan relies on laws kneecapping the competition then it is a shitty energy plan. For a website dedicated to "news for nerds" I'm seeing a lot of people hand-waving technical shortcomings away with arbitrary laws.
Here's an idea, come up with better technology. There's nothing wrong with using synthesized fuels to get to "zero carbon" transportation. Again, and it seems if I don't point this out I get people screaming "GOTCHA!" I know that nothing is actually zero carbon. If Tesla can claim to produce "zero carbon" cars and solar roof tiles then a truck burning synthesized fuels is also "zero carbon".
I pointed this out elsewhere but I'll repeat it here. Concentrated solar power claims sunlight to electricity conversion of about 30%. Liquid fuels from Fischer-Tropsch claims thermal efficiency of about 60%. If we assume 45% efficiency with a diesel truck and 90% efficiency with an electric truck then both will get the same miles per BTU of sunlight. This is all estimates and is not all inclusive on the path from sunlight to wheel but it proves the difference is very very small.
Where the two differ is that we can roll out a synthesized fuel process without disrupting any truck company. So long as they get diesel fuel at the same pumps for the same price they won't care if it came out of the ground or from the light in the sky. There's no need for new "mega-chargers" or mining a lake bottom for lithium. We use the same energy sources to make fuel as we would have used to make electricity. A thermal source of energy, like solar thermal, geothermal, and nuclear fission will likely produce liquid fuels more efficiently than a electrical source like solar PV, windmils, and hydro. This is not likely to factor in unless there are few thermal energy sources used, because the electrical sources can provide electricity to the grid and the thermal sources can switch from fuel synthesis to electricity as needed. This is especially true if there's any pumped hydro or batteries for electrical storage, any excess energy can be stored there instead of making fuel. Any desalination of water and fresh water reservoirs gives more options to store energy and shed loads.
Another gain is that we can use the fuel synthesis as general energy storage. If there is a lot of sunshine that day then make more fuel. If there's a lot of wind at night then make more fuel. Nuclear power? Just make fuel at a rate to match supply to demand. If there is a shortage of electrical production then that synthesized fuel can the used to run generators. It can be the same diesel or natural gas generators at hospitals, airports, prisons, police stations, etc. in case of a power line failure so there's no extra anything that needs to be built. As such generators need to be tested regularly anyway there's no real loss if they run on the occasional cloudy and calm day. Unlike a battery that can't hold a charge for months at a time there can be tanks full of fuel for such cases. And since this is the same stockpile used for transportation fuel it is being rotated out constantly, the fuel will not go stale. Since it is not petroleum then there's no sulfur, mercury, or other crap in it to make people sick. The diesel engines we have today burn very clean, as clean as any fuel cell or metal-air battery.
Fuel synthesis is likely to be the only way we get air travel to "zero carbon" within our lives. If we can make jet fuel low enough in cost for practical air travel then we can make diesel fuel that is practical for trucking. Practical synthesized fuels are required for "zero carbon" transportation, practical battery-electric trucks are not. If people need to resort to kneecapping the internal combustion engine in law to make the BEV practical then you missed the point. The point is lowering CO2 emissions, not putting a BEV in every pot and a chicken in every garage. Or something.
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Battery swap and trains (Score:2)
In Australia there is already a start up talking about battery swaps for trucks on major routes. These can be placed half way on longer routes, and the swap only takes minutes. They want to retro fit trucks that need engine reconditioning to be electric. Probably too early.
Trains do not work because they are run by railroad companies. It is just too hard for people to deal with them. Not a technical issue, it is easy to crane a container from a truck to a train and back. But a bureaucratic one. Those
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Re:Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't need to make a billion electric cars - producing vast amounts of carbon in the process. We need to turn down our heating,
A single-digit percentage of CO2 emissions.
turn off the aircon,
Also a single-digit percentage of CO2 emissions.
stop eating meat
If you said "stop eating completely", it would still be only 10% of CO2 emissions.
stop flying
About 2.5% of CO2 emissions
stop buying so much stuff (most of it temporary crap) and stop driving everywhere.
Brilliant. So rather than eliminate the roughly 25% of CO2 emissions that come from cars and trucks, you'd rather everyone just sit at home without heat or air conditioning and never do anything. Sounds like a fun world....
The answer really is that simple but noone wants to do it. Instead, everyone wants to buy (or sell) their way out.
Everyone else wants to find ways to fix the problem in ways that cause the least collateral damage. Electric vehicles have the potential to do that, particularly when combined with greener electricity production.
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Everyone else wants to find ways to fix the problem in ways that cause the least collateral damage. Electric vehicles have the potential to do that, particularly when combined with greener electricity production.
Synthesized net carbon zero hydrocarbon fuels can do that too. The difference is that it turns all existing dinosaur burners into "zero carbon" vehicles with no modifications.
Electric cars may be the answer for cars. For all transportation from scooters to jumbo jets, including cars, we can use carbon neutral fuels.
Re: Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:2)
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So rather than eliminate the roughly 25% of CO2 emissions that come from cars and trucks
I think you may have missed where he also said stop driving. But you inadvertently pointed out something quite relevant: We are wasteful in all our lives and can make improvements everywhere. Even a single digit is significant if everyone does it.
It's okay to wear a jumper during winter, and likewise it's okay to take your shirt off during summer. I don't get this fascination the USA has of opposing the climate in their houses. Like WTF the only place I've ever needed a jumper in summer has been in a USA ho
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This is the entire issue with the environmental movement in the USA. It always comes does to someone claiming someone ELSE should do something because what is easy for them is obviously easy for those other people living vary different lives to do too - right.
So what you get is some guy running a small farm in West Virginia getting a lecture from some asshole in an office tower in some concrete jungle like LA that hasnt even got enough water for its population with importing it telling him he needs to swi
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Electric Cars are not the answer, but they are part of the tools to help solve the problem.
I am in the process of upgrading my home for the 21st century.
So I had done the following.
1. Got a wood pellet stove. This stove generates heat more affordably than Oil heat, I can have that wood stove run during the coldest days that are below 0F. Also while not truely carbon neutral, it is better than burning oil As pellets often come from wood that is being purposed for something else, as well if (a big if) they
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Replace my Oil hot water with an Electric Tankless water heater.
I have one of these. The damn thing breaks every 2 - 2.5 years because it’s overly complicated compared to a tank model and electronics and water don’t mix. Any savings is completely negated by the need to repeatedly repair it over the lifespan you’d expect to see from the typical tank-style heater.
Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why I don’t take my own advice and go back to a tank? Well, the enviro-n4zis decided that electric tanks needed more insulation at some point
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>I generate a small amount of additional e-waste every 2 or so years, replacing broken parts on my shitty electric tankless water heater.
So don't buy a shitty one. Buy a good one. I've never had a problem.
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Don't forget a lot places are now requiring tank models to be heat pumps. So lots of complexity and lots of maintenance there compared with a simple gas jet or electric coil.
The very same people that pushed for all that will then tell you they need to increase subsidies for low income housing because there are no affordable units. Gee wonder why that is...
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Get a vasectomy. Limiting your offspring count is the single biggest thing you can do short of euthanasia.
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We don't need to make a billion electric cars - producing vast amounts of carbon in the process.
We need to make a billion cars sometime within the next twenty years, whether they are EVs or not, because the old cars are designed to wear out roughly on a schedule that has to do with production costs, and it will become increasingly expensive to maintain them until it becomes effectively impossible. Or, we need to replace them with some other feasible option.
But since we won't replace them, we're going to build the cars, and they might as well be EVs.
We need to turn down our heating, turn off the aircon, stop eating meat, stop flying, stop buying so much stuff (most of it temporary crap) and stop driving everywhere.
No, we don't. We need to do those things more efficie
Re: Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:2)
Re: Electric Cars Aren't The Answer (Score:2)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
The Salton Sea is an abomination. A perfect example of poor planning, poor execution, and utter waste that created a toxic mess. Anything that helps clean that up is a good thing.
You have to start somewhere. Any material that we do not import from over seas is a win for the planet.
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This is mostly local news for Southern California. Which is not the whole planet. The belief that it is the only part of the planet that counts is perhaps one of the problems for people who care about the planet.
Or, perhaps it isn't. You're the one erecting that particular stawman; it certainly isn't a position taken in TFA. This is akin to saying the Chernobyl disaster was mostly local news for Ukraine.
That is evident in the language used; even the hyperbole only claims "a significant portion" of the lithium needs of one company that currently has very low lithium needs.
Actually, the hyperbole claims a significant portion of the lithium needs of the world's largest producers of automobiles, whose product line is slated be all-electric in 14 years or so.
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You're the one erecting that particular stawman
I can see your "yer rong" and I'll you a "you fucking moron."
And that was even before I saw your idiotic strawman about Chernobyl. Just because you disagree with my analysis and you erected a strawman does not imply that I'm wrong because I erected a strawman. It only implies you're stupid and don't know what the words mean.
Re: Where old cars die (Score:5, Insightful)
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Eventually, something on the old car breaks that isn't worth fixing, and the old car goes to the shredder to get recycled.
Late model ICE cars have recently become so complicated and filled with bloated electronics that they will not be worth fixing after just a few years. That will greatly accelerate the retirement of gas guzzlers.
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But where does the old car go? It is likely to keep being used wherever allowed (locally or in a developing country), and therefore the electric car does not remove the pollution from the discarded car.
What do you know about my car? What makes you think it will be functional when I buy a replacement? It sure as hell isn't worth exporting, it'll be far cheaper to turn it into a small metal cube.
Old cars can and do get destroyed. Heck the way people drive here a not insignificant number of new cars do too.
Re:We could all stop having kids (Score:4, Interesting)
Decreasing the population going forward would do more for the environment than anything.
I don't like what that implies. Here's an idea, we can work on both. You work on a population reduction plan that doesn't make people want to lock you up and throw away the key, and other people can work on technologies like new batteries, synthesized fuels, and "zero carbon" energy sources. Deal?
Be sure to let us know when you have a plan. Then we can pass that along to have people double check your math.
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Free vasectomies, and contraceptives for all! Make it all free and see how much personal choice solves the problem all on its own.
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What plan? Just don't have kids. It's the kid-having that is complicated and requires a plan.
You seem to be unfamiliar with biology and the result that 2 billion years of natural selection has on breeding choices.
The robots will do it for us (Score:2)
Once they become intelligent not to need us to program them.
Re: We could all stop having kids (Score:2)
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The plan I'm looking for is how you intend to get compliance from people. Everyone alive today is the result of generations of breeding pairs of humans. Getting people not continue that tradition will be difficult.
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Decreasing the population going forward would do more for the environment than anything.
By taking no action, the world population is already expected to max at around 11 billion. This prediction has a high degree of certainty, [gapminder.org] as some of that population has already been born. If the recent decline in fertility rate continues, [ourworldindata.org] the population will then decline. It appears that providing women with basic healthcare, and access to contraceptives, results in a steep decline in the fertility rate.
You can play with the graphs yourself here. [gapminder.org]
There are a lot of problems in the world. However, o