December 14, 2010
This article appeared in the Globe and Mail on 2010.12.13, under the by-line of Gwyn Morgan.
The text in italics is from the original article, and my responses are shown in regular font.
I submitted this to the Globe and Mail Letters Editor (via e-mail) today.
Paving the way ahead for electric cars
The long, hard road ahead for electric cars
Only one week after the much-hyped rollout of electric cars at the Los Angeles Auto Show,
Canadian news media carried reports about how Ontario electricity costs are expected to double
over the next 20 years.
That forecast must have Ontarians questioning whether buying an electric car is a good
idea. But there are other questions all Canadians would be wise to ask about electric cars,
and the electricity needed to power them. Let’s put those questions into perspective.
Does that perspective include the prospect of oil selling at $200 a barrel by 2020? Or
gasoline priced at $2.50 a litre? These are credible forecasts in the oil industry today;
more than double today’s prices within 10 years or less. That makes electricity at twice
the price in 20 years look like a bargain.
Will there be enough electricity?
Even the staggering electricity rate increases announced by Ontario would not
generate nearly enough power to handle a large auto-recharge load, nor could already
stretched power grids handle it, either. Hydro-Québec recently said its distribution
grid could accommodate a meagre 1,000 car plug-ins. In other provinces also, costly
retooling of power generation, mainline transmission and local distribution grids would
be required.
Actually, Hydro-Québec said they could easily accommodate 1,000,000 electric car
charging outlets. With time, they can ramp that up if demand warrants. Much of the
‘costly retooling’ will be done anyway over a period of years as regular maintenance
and implementation of the ‘Smart Grid’.
I have done the analysis for Ontario a couple of times in the past few years.
Assuming that most electric car charging is done at night (to qualify for lower off-peak
prices), the difference between daily peak and lowest demand in Ontario (weekdays) is
sufficient to charge approximately 7,000,000 vehicles, with no increase in generating
capacity needed. That is more vehicles than are currently licensed in Ontario.
For a Canadian analysis,
see the Electric Mobility Canada backgrounder I wrote.
Won’t wind and solar generate a lot of the power needed for electric cars?
Wind and solar generate less than 1 per cent of Canada’s power supply, and most
provinces have subsidies aimed at increasing that portion. The most spectacular example
of the sky-rocketing 16 times as much for solar power, and three times more for wind,
as the current average electricity rate. Ontario’s 20-year power plan calls for
$23-billion in subsidies to the wind and solar industry, supposedly allowing coal-fired
power to be phased out. But its own numbers show that with wind and solar capacity
available less than 30 per cent of the time, these costly projects still won’t bring
about the end of coal. Meanwhile, electricity consumers will be hit with price increases
of 46 per cent over the next five years, making Ontario industry uncompetitive with
almost all provinces and American states. No wonder Premier Dalton McGuinty’s green
dream is turning into a nightmare as an election looms.
Renewables (other than hydro) are the new kids on the generation block, but they are
the fastest growing segments. Governments in Canada subsidize the oil industry as well,
and they’re a mature industry making historic profits. Wind and solar are intermittent
energy sources, but the fuel is free, zero emissions and does not require tailings ponds
or billions of dollars to be spent on clean-up. With its large hydro resources, the
Ontario grid is not at any risk by accommodating large amounts of wind and solar
electric generation. In fact, solar generation is highly sought after, as it produces
maximum supply at the time of maximum demand – hot summer afternoons. If Ontario has
to buy electricity on the spot market at such times, the price is very high.
In the meantime, we will continue to import oil to keep the internal combustion fleet
running in the eastern half of the country, while exporting western oil to the U.S.
At least we produce electricity at home, creating jobs here instead of Venezuela and
the Middle East.
Are electric cars really “green”?
That depends on how the electricity is generated. Water generates most of the
electricity in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and B.C., while Alberta
and Saskatchewan generate nearly all power from coal and natural gas. Overall, about
75 per cent of Canada’s electricity comes from water and nuclear power, and 25 per
cent from fossil fuels. When measured by fossil-fuel emissions, use of electric cars
in Canada can generally be considered green. The situation is the reverse in the
United States, where fossil fuels, mainly coal, generate 75 per cent of electricity.
So operating an electric car there would account for more fossil-fuel emissions than
a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle (thus making GM’s Chevy Volt a tougher sell
to eco-conscious consumers, the target market for electric vehicles).
Studies (1,2,3) show that even in areas where electricity comes 100% from coal,
electric cars are still better for air quality and greenhouse gas emissions than
gasoline powered cars. It is easier to clean up 1 smokestack, than 100,000 tailpipes.
Individuals have the option of making sure their personal electricity consumption is
off-set by green generation.
Perhaps the natural gas used to extract crude from the tar sands in Western Canada
should be used instead to help create greener electricity by using it to replace coal
with natural gas as a fuel in the thermal generating plants throughout North America.
Is it more lucrative for the natural gas industry to burn this relatively clean
(compared to coal) fuel to produce crude oil?
Are electric cars practical in Canada?
Besides of their high price tag, limited range and the inconvenience of long
charging cycles, there’s another factor that even the greenest Canadians need to
consider before buying an electric car: our northern climate. Anyone who has had
trouble starting a car in cold weather knows that battery performance plummets
with temperature. In our dark, cold winters, we also need battery power to heat
the car and run headlights. The combined result is a much shorter driving range
than they’ll be touting in the electric-car showroom.
Practicality, like beauty, rests in the eye of the beholder. I have been driving
electric vehicles since 1979 in Ottawa, where we know something about cold. We
have a solution for keeping the batteries warm – insulation. Driving range is
reduced somewhat in winter (about 10%), mostly because of additional drag due to
snow and slush. Ironically, the way we keep the gassers ready to start in cold
weather conditions is to plug them in (so the block heaters can keep the oil in
the engine sump from turning to frozen sludge).
As for the high price of electric vehicles, that will come down with volume
production, like it has for consumer electronics and advanced batteries that
power portable devices. The limited range is a non-issue for typical urban driving.
For occasional longer trips, people can rent a gasser or use a plug-in hybrid.
Fast charging facilities exist, although they have not yet been installed in quantity.
Personally, I find that recharging my car overnight (while I am also recharging) works
very well, and eliminates the need for regular additional stops for gasoline fill-ups.
How long does it take to recharge my electric car? About 10 seconds: 5 seconds to
plug it in when I get home; and another 5 seconds to unplug when I’m ready to leave.
The green-car race is imploding as beleaguered citizens, struggling to deal with
tough economies, see their electricity rates soar and expensive wind and solar power
missing in action when most needed. Other jurisdictions are rapidly changing direction,
but Ontario keeps whistling merrily in the wind, bound for uncompetitive green oblivion.
The current state of economic mismanagement has nothing to do with the desirability
of cleaner cars. Other jurisdictions with plans to green their grids are doing just
fine economically, e.g., Germany, Denmark. If Ontario can stop importing coal, that
would likely be beneficial for the provincial balance of trade, not to mention health
care costs associated with asthma and respiratory diseases.
Just last week, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the development of an
electric-car battery to be competitive with the internal combustion engine might
be five years away. “The storage capacity of [electric] car batteries needs to be
increased by six or seven times, their lives need to be extended by 15 years, and
their cost needs to be reduced by a factor of three,” he said at the UN climate
conference in Cancun, Mexico. I think I’ll sell my GM stock while I’m ahead.
Actually, the current state of electric vehicle technology looks pretty
competitive now. Range of 400 km or more per charge, fast recharging stations,
maximum speeds in excess of any legal speed limit on the continent, less expensive
to fuel, less expensive to maintain, can be charged at home while I’m sleeping,
and no tailpipe. Even so, battery technology will continue to improve, as Secretary
Chu says. All that remains is to find the courage to proceed. Innovators all over
the world have worked on perfecting the technology, and somewhere in
the near future, electric cars can possibly replace regular cars.
Darryl McMahon
Author, The Emperor’s New Hydrogen Economy
Member, the Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa
Owner, electric car, electric tractor, electric boat, electric bicycle
1) http://www.electroauto.com/info/pollmyth.shtml
2) http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/Executive%20Summary%20final%20with%20cover%20secured.pdf
3) http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es702178s
June 1, 2010
If you want to see a vibrant electric vehicle industry in Canada,
producing vehicles that people want to buy, then you want to support
the innovators that put cars like this together, and all the
components and gadgetry that makes them possible, right here in Canada.
Of course, if we took this car to an Ontario licence bureau this week,
we
would not be allowed to license it, simply because it runs on
electric power.
Ontario's No EV Policy Now 3 Months Old 2010.05.07
Early in February 2010, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation
stopped accepting registrations for electric vehicles in the province.
There was no announcement, and no consultation with EV advocates
or owners. The first few EV owners turned away at licence bureaus
did not even get a reason for the refusal.
When pressed for information, MTO officials offered up some
weak reasons. First, apparently large numbers of Ontarians were
fraudulently claiming their vehicles were powered by electricity,
so as to avoid Drive Clean tests. However, MTO's own data show less
than 100 cars and light trucks are registered as electric in Ontario.
(I can personally identify about 40 of those that are legitmately
electric powered.) MTO has the authority to inspect anything
they deem suspicious, and there are stiff penalties for false
statements on registration forms, including fines and jail time.
Prior to the secret licensing ban, electric vehicles in Ontario
were subject to exactly the same safety inspection, licensing and
insurance rules as any other vehicle on the road. The question MTO
still has not adequately answered is why this small population of
clean-air, environmentally-friendly vehicles has been singled out
for this degree of persecution, when street-racers actually have
to commit an offence to suffer any penalty, and gross polluters
can continue to operate on 'conditional' passes. For a government
that claims to support green vehicles, this government has a very
strange way of showing it.
Reasoned discussions with MTO officials since the secret ban
was discovered have dragged out over many weeks, with little sign
of progress toward getting the vehicles re-legalized in Ontario.
The only incentive the Ontario government offers for buying or
making an electric vehicle, small as it is,
ends on June 30, 2010 with the introduction of the HST.
For
more information on the Ontario electric vehicle licensing ban,
visit the 10n10.ca Web site.
April 23, 2010