There are a ton of myths with green energy labeling it as clean energy. I follow this hedge fund guy and he always has some really good analysis on reality. Long but worthy read, even if it's a bit biased for fossil fuels. Click the link for some visuals and the rest of it.
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We should replace pollutive gasoline-fired internal combustion engine automobiles with clean electric vehicles powered by renewable energy.
This is a countenanced sounding ambition and an easy sell to the public. It also represents a behemothic financial opportunity ($1.22 trillion by 2027), which is predicated on a half-truth, as we’ll see.
Now, the first part of this premise — replacing fossil fuel cars with clean cars — would be great.
Passenger cars are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions (less than 6% of the total, but still a large contributor).
I bet you thought it was higher, but it’s less than 6%. Here’s the math:
Transportation contributes to 14% of greenhouse gasses.
Passenger cars are 41% of transportation.
That works out to 5.74% of all greenhouse gasses.
It’s the next part of this premise — powering these EVs with clean energy — where the gratuitous and irresponsible greenwashing comes in.
EVs run on electricity and that, unfortunately, means CO2.
Electricity generation (all uses) is the largest single source of greenhouse gases (~25% of all emissions). Only 17.1% of electricity comes from renewables. Renewables are not green, and some renewables are not even bloody renewable.
Other “renewables” are far more damaging to the planet than passenger car emissions, as we’ll soon see.
Electricity must come from somewhere, and coal is the largest generator of electricity in the world by a long shot. Coal-generated electricity is vastly more pollutive than gasoline powered engines when it comes to carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O).
Coal mining produces methane and sulphur dioxide (SO2). It damages the earth’s surface in mining and contaminates water supplies. Coal creates acid rain and is responsible for 41% of the world’s mercury poisoning.
So really, when you’re thinking of EVs… you should be thinking about coal. Everyone should. These are the facts, just the reality of the situation – however an inconvenient truth it might be.
“Wait!” you say. “How about other sources of power? Hydro, for example…? We could use hydro”
Good! Hydro power is also a great reference for greenwashing.
Hydroelectric power generation is among the most efficient, and is the best of the bunch when it comes to renewables, but it comes with its own limitations or outright cons that seem to be swept under the rug when discussing the energy needs of the future.
For starters, hydro destroys entire riparian ecosystems (check out Three Gorges, for example).
It has also led to:
Extinction of aquatic species
Loss of birds in floodplains
Destruction of forests
Wetlands and farmlands
Erosion of coastal deltas
Degradation of water quality
…and many other unmitigable losses.
It’s promoted as being completely clean, but leads to large quantities of greenhouse gases being emitted – yes CO2, but mostly methane (CH4) from rotting vegetation and stagnant water that would otherwise be flowing, as well as significant pollution during construction, maintenance, and demolition stages.
And we haven’t even got into the cost of building, the usual delays and budget blowouts, and the fact that you can’t just stick a dam anywhere – most of the world’s suitable locations have already been used.
Or the fact that if there’s not enough rainfall (like in the case of a drought), then there’s no power being generated.
Hydro has also transmitted diseases to humans such as schistosomiasis and promotes geo-political conflict (recall Ethiopia and Egypt nearing war over Grand Renaissance Dam).
Dam failures are very dangerous, resulting in flooding, drowning, and death. In just one day in China (August 1975), 171,000 died and 11 million lost their homes when the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams burst.
That is 37x more deaths in 24 hours than COVID-19 in China for the year (just 4,634 at the time of writing).
But nobody wants to talk about that. And no, I’ve not mentioned what happens when inevitably the Three Gorges Dam has a disaster.
Nuclear power is another important supply, but with potentially the maximum greatest environmental risks of any source should it have a disaster.
Then we get to the worst of the worst possible solutions, which is biomass. Credit to Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs for covering this in their recent documentary Planet of the Humans, which you should watch if you do not understand why chopping down trees and burning them is really not “clean”.
Other electricity sources include natural gas and oil, which gets back to the “replace fossil fuels” argument, and finally, very small amounts of electricity are produced by wind (4.8%) and solar (2.1%), both of which are also highly destructive to the environment as we’ll get into.
Another inconvenient truth is that electric vehicles require lithium batteries, and bad news I’m afraid, lithium batteries are not green, not renewable, and most especially injurious to the environment.
For context, there is about 8 grams (0.3 oz) of lithium in a smartphone, but the battery of a Tesla Model S has about 12 kilograms (around 26.5 lbs).
As casings corrode, batteries leach poisonous toxins into landfills. They also undergo a photochemical reaction as they decompose which causes greenhouse gas emissions. Lithium is especially volatile and causes landfill fires, which can burn underground for years. Yes, years.
Hydrochloric acid is required to produce lithium and it seeps into the water table. Even tiny lithium batteries used to power smart phones are noxious enough drain to water supplies, killing fish, livestock, birds, and people.
It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce 1 tonne of lithium. Here’s surreal lithium pollution in Chile:
Currently, only 2% of Australia’s 3,300 tonnes of lithium ion waste is recycled. Spent laptops and iPhones end up in landfill, where metals from the electrodes and ionic fluids from the electrolyte leak into the environment.
Even in self-aggrandising Europe, 80% of lithium batteries are simply incinerated, releasing all the toxicants into the atmosphere, later to be brought back to earth in rain, where they re-enter the water supply (familiar theme?).
EVs cannot be built without using fossil fuels and dangerous chemicals. Neither can their “powering up stations” that are popping up in the hundreds of thousands around the world.
Or the roads that they must drive on.
Their manufacture emits powerful quantities of CO2. The non-biodegradable materials used to make EV cars (polypropylene, polyurethane, polyvinyl chloride, cobalt, plastic, synthetics, heavy-metals, paint) come from unsustainable processes with long-lived legacy costs to the environment.
EV car frames are made of lightweight aluminum instead of steel, which marketers often highlight to make you believe they are more futuristic than your stock standard gas guzzler.
But, aluminum uses 8x more energy and produces 8x more CO2 to make than steel.
There’s a lot more we could get into, but that should give you enough to realise the EV industry – as a whole – is not sustainable.
It is neither green, nor renewable. It’s a meritorious and a worthy goal, but a hallucinatory solution.
It is a greenwash.
Not unlike so many issues facing us where the arguments are boiled down to idiotic and unproductive “if you’re not for it, you’re against it” conclusions.
The point is that this whole story is just another head fake, a hide-the-rabbit which goes unquestioned.
The unfortunate thing is productive enquiry about the future of energy is now not allowed to occur, because vested interests are now so integrated into civilisation that a public reframing of the issue would cause all sorts of calamity for our governments, public investment, and pension funds, to name a few.
Besides, what would the institutions creating environmental, social & governance (ESG) products do after spending so much money luring dumb uncritical money into this trend?
The UK is planning to transition to 100% electric cars being sold in 9 years, in an effort to simultaneously reduce greenhouse gasses and trigger a “green economic recovery”.
That sounds great on the surface, doesn’t it.
Well, let’s un-greenwash this. Besides… there’s enough on the internet blindly supporting the magical clean energy revolution, so it’s valuable to take the other side of the argument and focus on the critical issues that no one can seem to address.
First up there’s the environmental issues that we touched on earlier.
The UK is currently unprepared for the existing number of EV batteries that will soon reach the end of their lifecycle, which represents around 250,000 tonnes and half a million cubic metres of unprocessed waste that for the most part and unless things change, will be incinerated.
Nice.
Landfill is not a viable option, as the batteries are comprised of highly volatile materials that once on fire, are very difficult to control, and represent all sorts of issues with nasties seeping into the waterways and the overall environment.
There is no – nada, zero, zip – infrastructure, industry or plan set up to deal with this, but apparently, this will all happen within 9 years.
And remember – these issues are already present for the existing amount of batteries. Not the millions more that will be subsidised into existence from here.
Next, let’s look at how these things are actually made.
https://capitalistexploits.at/investing-for-the-greenwash-bubble/?utm_source=ONTRAPORT-email-broadcast&utm_medium=ONTRAPORT-email-broadcast&utm_term=OWTW%20Send&utm_content=5%20investment%20ideas:%20Our%20World%20This%20Week&utm_campaign=20201011This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 12 2020 09:51am