I follow and read anti-EV material.
It's worthwhile as it broadens my perspective and spurs me to research more in-depth.
However, some points of view are based on psychological worldviews rather than facts.
"I'm angry at the government telling me what to do, and I'm scared of change... so x=y".
Hey, I'm scared of change too. And also, I don't particularly appreciate being told what to do. But I'm also really interested in how and why things work.
Arguing with shadows
Imagine this: I take my reusable plastic cup to the cafe. The person using a throwaway coffee cup gets annoyed that I'm using a fossil fuel product.
That's what ICE vs EV arguments are like.
I wonder if the person is angry about perceived virtue signalling. Or maybe at themselves for being too unmotivated to change to a reusable cup. Perhaps they pre-judged me as pretentious? Who knows?
All of those things are to do with their state of mind.
Factually, my one cup reused over and over leads to less waste and fewer emissions than the throwaway cup.
Is it perfect? No.
The best solution for emissions, pollution and traffic accidents in the vehicle world is to have no car. If you can't do that, have a scooter or bicycle.
The great irony is:
Why are you driving a fossil-fuel car if you care so much about other people's emissions?
Go carless, for goodness sake. Walk.
Get a bicycle (but you better ensure it was manufactured without any fossil-fueled energy).
We're all hypocrites, okay?
So let's work together to make incremental improvements for the sake of our descendants (and if you genuinely care about emissions, you better not have any descendants - that would be irresponsible 😉).
Do EVs in New Zealand use power from burning coal?
New Zealand has an impressive proportion of low-emission energy production.
FACT SOURCES: MBIE Quarterly and Transpower live data.
The latest MBIE quarterly says "renewable share of electricity generation for the quarter was 89.6 per cent".
The non-renewable comes from natural gas and coal. Of the coal, some is produced in NZ, and some is imported. The amount imported increased up to 2021 but has since dropped (thanks partly to the Turitea wind farm going online and a wetter 2022) (source).
The fact that NZ imports coal when we can produce it locally is another issue.
How much coal is your EV consuming?
Anything from nothing at all to a little.
- If your EV is charged from home solar, there's no coal.
- If your EV is charging from the grid, some of the electrons may have been produced from burning coal.
At the time of writing this (summer's day), 1.7% of power generation was coming from coal. This would increase during peak times (such as 6 pm on a cold winter evening).
As an EV owner, you can mitigate this by charging during off-peak times (it's cheaper too).
Takeaways:
- Some (but not all) EV charging can come from burning coal, but it is a very small amount.
- A portion of coal consumption comes from imported coal (it peaked at 50% in 2021 but has since dropped back down).
- The EV owner has some control over this by using rooftop solar or charging at off-peak times.
- Despite the coal generation, the high amount of renewable electricity production in NZ means a battery EV has lower emissions than a petrol or diesel vehicle (NZ source).
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