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After months of negotiations, the European Union reached a political agreement this week to effectively ban new nonelectric cars from 2035 onward.

An article about it for example here

It will probably be good for those to do with rare metals in the north of Sweden.

It would be cool if bookies took bets on it actually happening, as it seems so obviously improbable. OTOH, it would take 12 years to resolve the bet.

My guess is the car manufacturers are up for it. Battery manufacturing capacity is a bottleneck at the moment but the investment going into that is huge. One of the big manufacturers just announced that their development time for new EV's is half that of ICE models. They are all shitting themselves over the possibility of becoming the Kodak of the automotive industry.

The manufacturing is just one part of the equation and one with relatively little uncertainty. The problems I can see lie in: aquiring the necessary minerals on an unprecedenced scale, adapting electrical production and grid to handle large amounts of extra load, creating millions (probably hundreds of millions across entire EU?) of extra charging points, and the higher cost of electrics vs ICE cars resulting in people being against the ban. Many of those things are solvable via money, so I can see the ban adopted by 2035 in some of the wealthy countries of EU. I cannot imagine it being implemented in for example Poland or Bulgaria though.

zbigi wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 16, 2023 2:33 am

It would be cool if bookies took bets on it actually happening, as it seems so obviously improbable. OTOH, it would take 12 years to resolve the bet.

You can trade crude oil futures out to 2034. That's probably as close as you can get.

There might well be a 'Havana effect' in less affluent parts of Europe. Either way I hope this leads to far fewer cars everywhere.

I had no idea there was a real life Mr.Diesel.

There might well be a 'Havana effect' in less affluent parts of Europe.

More likely is that those countries will just vote against the ban or, if it's imposed anyway, won't implement the legislation (or even leave the union if the damage to the economy would be too large).

[Deleted cuz the linked video was likely more domestically political than appropriate for here.]

I read recently that the UK only needs to go back to 2001 levels of electricity generation to cope with the whole fleet going electric.

As always the poor are going to get the shit end of the stick in this transition. We can already see this starting to happen. For instance Ford has dropped the Fiesta, the best selling small car in the UK. VW is not going to replace the Skoda Fabia, another cheap family car. I expect the bottom end of the market will slowly disappear. These cheap cars were never very profitable for the manufacturers, they saw them more as a gateway to selling more expensive vehicles to customers as their wealth increased.

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 6:39 am

As always the poor are going to get the shit end of the stick in this transition. We can already see this starting to happen.

Yes I expect so although for the greater good it's necessary. Probably Uber and similar will fill the void for the car free.

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 6:39 am

I read recently that the UK only needs to go back to 2001 levels of electricity generation to cope with the whole fleet going electric.

Do you have a link for that? So electricity generation has decreased in the UK in the past 20 years even as consumption has likely increased? I'm guessing imports filled the gap. Either way, it seems unpossible for electricity generation to increase without carbon emissions increasing. Although by the looks of it, it seems like the UK maybe looks more favorably towards nuclear energy than some other places.

white belt wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 1:58 pm

Do you have a link for that? So electricity generation has decreased in the UK in the past 20 years even as consumption has likely increased? I'm guessing imports filled the gap. Either way, it seems unpossible for electricity generation to increase without carbon emissions increasing. Although by the looks of it, it seems like the UK maybe looks more favorably towards nuclear energy than some other places.

Not the link you're looking for but cool regardless, http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Note that coal plants don't run around the year which results in brightsided articles like "the UK has been coal free for 3 months" on an annual basis. IIRC, the acronyms are described on the site, but otherwise, ICT is the interconnect (import/export to other grids), and O/CCGT stands for open/closed cycle natgas turbine, the later being more complicated but also more efficient that the former. NAtgas is less carbon intensive than coal; not exactly clean, but relatively cleaner.

white belt wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 1:58 pm

Do you have a link for that? So electricity generation has decreased in the UK in the past 20 years even as consumption has likely increased? I'm guessing imports filled the gap. Either way, it seems unpossible for electricity generation to increase without carbon emissions increasing. Although by the looks of it, it seems like the UK maybe looks more favorably towards nuclear energy than some other places.

Consumption has fallen. Some of it is de-industrialisation but mostly it is through energy efficiency. My TV from the nineties drew 500W, its replacement is 65W with a bigger screen. On standby it doesn’t even register on my meter.

In terms of decarbonisation we have very little coal left, it is a couple of percent of the whole. There is new nuclear being built but it is longer term. There is a huge amount of offshore wind already on stream.

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:53 pm

Consumption has fallen. Some of it is de-industrialisation but mostly it is through energy efficiency. My TV from the nineties drew 500W, its replacement is 65W with a bigger screen. On standby it doesn’t even register on my meter.

That violates Jevons paradox, but from the data I can find, it seems to be true. Perhaps it's because other factors (war in Russia, decarbonization, Brexit, etc) kept the price of electricity from dropping with the reduced demand? Or maybe it's a chicken/egg scenario because supply was reduced in combination with reduced demand. Either way, I don't see how that trend continues if there is a push for EVs over ICE vehicles and electric heating over fossil fuels.

Edit: Actually de-industrialization could be the answer like you say. If most manufacturing gets outsourced to other countries, that energy consumption (which is generally much higher than household consumption) won't get captured in UK data. China happened to enter the WTO in 2001 and energy consumption has declined since then, coincidence?

white belt wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:25 pm

China happened to enter the WTO in 2001 and energy consumption has declined since then, coincidence?

No, that's pretty much it.

jacob wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:34 pm

No, that's pretty much it.

Right. That would also imply that any moves towards de-globalization might increase carbon consumption at the domestic level but be net positive at the global level since you don't have to burn a bunch of energy shipping goods around the world. Something something metacrisis.

white belt wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:51 pm

Right. That would also imply that any moves towards de-globalization might increase carbon consumption at the domestic level but be net positive at the global level since you don't have to burn a bunch of energy shipping goods around the world. Something something metacrisis.

Yes and also help bring back some manufacturing in western rust belt cities. Cheap goods made in China has made products more available to the less affluent but only at the expense of deindustrialisation and environmental impact. A global carbon tax would do the same but I can't see that happening in the foreseeable future.

white belt wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:25 pm

Edit: Actually de-industrialization could be the answer like you say. If most manufacturing gets outsourced to other countries, that energy consumption (which is generally much higher than household consumption) won't get captured in UK data. China happened to enter the WTO in 2001 and energy consumption has declined since then, coincidence?

De-industrialisation was well on the way in the UK before 2001. However the remaining industry has become much more efficient. Although its share of GDP and employment has been falling actual output has been increasing (at least until Brexit/Covid). Car manufacturing was a success story until very recently but the energy required to make a car has plummeted over time.

Do "peak oil zealots" read the news or just go to echo chambers that repeat, "peak oil is coming peak oil is coming"? These were from last week, oil is plentiful as long as there are qualified people to extract, transport and refine it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/guyana-o ... 00107.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-stam ... 00131.html

The only limiting factor in oil is competent people to extract, transport and refine it. This is like listening to "population bomb" zealots who still believe the Earth has a carrying capacity of 3 billion people and watch "Soylent Green" with envy. EV's, which are powered by coal plants, take 10-15 years to recoup the extra fossil fuel it takes to produce them, few last this long without replacing the battery (especially in climates that get hot, like everywhere in the US except California). EV's will never replace more than 2% f ICE cars without massive government subsidies and taxes, allowing only the wealthy to drive cars.

Peak oil is dead? It was replaced with global warming sometime around 2000-2005.