The Biden administration is currently preparing regulations to drastically cut the number of new combustion combustion-powered vehicles sold in the United States. The new regulation being prepared by the EPA would require that by 2032, 64% of all new cars sold in the U.S. would need to be electric vehicles, an elevenfold increase over their 5.8% market share now. According to the administration, this massively costly intervention into the market is necessary to save the world from the “existential threat of climate change.”
Aside from its fantastic costs, which also include building millions of electric vehicle charging stations, the strategic, economic, and environmental consequences associated with vastly expanding our nation’s reliance on Chinese rare earth metal exports, and the question of whether electric cars really do reduce overall carbon emissions, there is a fundamental problem with this initiative.
Electric cars require electricity.
Biden wants to use our grid to drive America’s vehicles. But we don’t have the juice to power them. Not by a long shot.
In 2021 the United States used 26.9 quadrillion BTU’s (or quads) of energy to power its transportation sector. At the same time, it produced 12.9 quads of electricity, over 99% of which went to existing residential, commercial and industrial users.
It’s true that internal combustion engines only have an efficiency of 28% while diesels have an efficiency of 43%, so that between the two, America’s vehicle fleet is about 35% in converting 26.9 quads of fuel into 9.4 quads of motive power. The electrical utility system is also about 35% efficient, outputting its 12.9 quads of electricity from 36.7 quads of raw energy input. That’s why powering an electric car using grid power produced from fossil fuels does little to reduce overall carbon emissions. Furthermore, charging the battery of an electric car is typically around 83% efficient, and the car itself is 90% efficient in turning the electricity in its battery into motive power, for a net vehicle efficiency of about 75%. That means that it would take about 12.5 quads of electricity – roughly equal to the entirety of our current electric power output – to drive the current American transportation fleet.
Of course, Biden is not demanding that we switch our entire fleet to electric vehicles instantly. He only wants two thirds of new vehicles to be electric by 2032, and it would take some time after that before they constituted a large portion of the fleet. This would give us time to expand our power generation capacity. So let’s say we have 20 years to expand our grid enough to power half the current fleet – or about 40% of the anticipated fleet size of the year 2053. To do that, we would have to increase our power output at a rate of 0.337 quads per year. This is equivalent to adding 99 billion kWh of output (or 13.3 GW of capacity operating at 85% full load) to our grid every year for the next 20 years.
In contrast, for the past 15 years, The United States has increased its electric power output at a rate of 3.3 billion kWh per year. To implement Biden’s plan, America would have to immediately start bringing new power plants online at 30 times the rate it now does.
In principle, that is not impossible. From 1957 to 1977, the United States increased its electric power output at an average rate of 70 billion kWh per year, 20 times the current rate, and that was accomplished by a country with (in 1967) one-third of America’s current GDP. Based on orders received during this period, from 1981 to 1991, U.S. nuclear electricity output alone was increased at a rate of 35 billion kWh per year.
But then regulators slammed on the brakes. U.S. nuclear capacity today is no more than it was in 1991, and total electric production capacity, from all sources combined, has barely increased at all since 2010.
If Biden’s program is to be implemented without crashing America’s power grid, what is required is a total reversal of the regulatory state’s War on Energy. Furthermore, if the electrification of transportation is to actually result in a reduction of carbon emissions, the vast amount of new capacity required will need to come from a carbon-free source.
The only way to do that is through nuclear power.
The bad news is this administration is filled with idealists who do not have the scientific background and expertise to think through what they mandate. The destruction of the natural environment to create the batteries, the energy needed to to create them, their toxicity once created. Already the charging grid is challeneged and there is no imediate plan to expand it to service the new mandate. These decisions are being made in a vacuum, the ivory tower isolated from reality.
King Biden’s forced electric energy policy is just a reflection of more of his administration’s plethora of promise, but programmed deficiency in the results. Joe and his policies are another sterilized Democrat vasectomy looking to produce something with a fecund American woman who can only create life with fertile men of virility, and most importantly ENERGY. Biden and most of his people lack both. His energy policy is as inane as his gender policies where if wishes were horses beggars would ride, and if gasoline were his energy source of choice, WE THE PEOPLE would not only ride and ride more cheaply, but be respected enough to be allowed to make our own life decisions in a political environment where he who controls the energy, also controls the environment,,,political or weather wise. It’s all about the politics, not the environment for Joe, and he fools nobody,,,,but remember, this is from the guy who can openly sniff the hair of creeped out young girls, and believe not even the fathers present are not just fuming inside, waiting for an opening to get even.
joe23006 April 19, 2023
” The bad news is this administration is filled with idealists who do not have the scientific background and expertise to think through what they mandate…”
150 years ago America replaced windmills with fossil fueled power plants , now democrat, SOCIALIST/Communist President, Joe Biden wants to replace FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS WITH WINDMILLS.” AUTHOR UNKNOWN.
That’s their agenda. FILL ALL THE upper echelons of every dept with FOOLS and incompetent buffoons, who just fill DIVERSITY wickets.
To paraphrase this Quote,” Mirror, Mirror on the wall,”- Who’s the biggest fool of all.?
Why it’s democrat, Socialist, president Joe Biden- that’s who.
By the time ByDumbs dumb ideas get proved wrong,he’ll be dead & buried,sooner rather than later! Clueless Joey!
I must agree that the current administration is a group of clueless and ignorant folks who actually have no idea what they are doing but think they know what is best for everyone else. This article just addresses the state of electric powered vehicles here in the United States but what about the rest of the world? What about demands from other countries who have also bought into the unscientific malarkey about climate change? The Chinese have quietly cornered the market for themselves in regards to the materials necessary to build EV batteries, what about the recycling of these batteries or their disposal? How about the safety of these EV batteries; will this become another situation comparable to the Ford Pinto of the 1970’s? For the average commuter traveling to and from work or running simple errands close to home the range limitations are only a small concern, however, what about people who use their vehicles to tow a trailer, etc., how about longer trips and what about the trucking/hauling industry? At what point do non-electric powered vehicles replace all internal combustion powered vehicles; twenty-five, fifty or a hundred years in the future? Look at history and see that electric powered vehicles were very popular over a hundred years ago but their glaring limitations assured that they became obsolete until now.
Heck, what of when folks live in forest fire areas/tornado areas and have to evacuate, BUT CAN’T BECAUSE THE POWER IS OUT??
The idea is to freeze the citizens. No unauthorized travel. The Left only use climate as a Trojan horse…..just like they use race and gender issues.
To paraphrase this Quote, ”it’a hard to free”- those on welfare- from ”chains they revere.”
He only wants two thirds of new vehicles to be electric by 2032
This will never happen the only question is how will this plan crash and how much damage will it do to the country.
Please understand, no one pushing this nonsense is concerned about “the existential threat of climate change.” They know perfectly well that “climate change” is a hoax. The point of this agenda is the same as the rest of their idiotic ideas – to break the back of the middle class, destroy the country, and allow the implementation of the one-world-government, with themselves in charge. They have made no secret that this is their plan, that they intend to reduce the world population to a “manageable” 500-million, and that their “utopian” society will be made up of nobility (them) and serfs (us) with nothing in between.
You have cited compelling numbers against the electrification of the “national fleet”. Had someone gathered similar data regarding the impossibility of building the necessary infrastructure to support the transition from horses and horse or ox drawn vehicles, we could easily still be in the wagon era.
I realize that I am one lone voice, but someone needs to speak civilized political and optimistic values. If we would come together with resolve, we could do what is needed. You don’t believe in climate change when the signs are all about you in the heavens and on earth. We were suddenly drawn into WWII. Did we squawk about the impact on us of converting our massive industrial capabilities to fuel the war machine the way we gripe about things we need to do now? No! None of the issues we are so divided on now exist in a vacuum. They are all interconnected. If we don’t accommodate one another, we are doomed as a democratic republic that is a light on a hill.
Conservatives are guilty of the same overreach that they accuse the liberals of. The reverse is also true.
Wake up America! We are ignoring a foundational issue and that is destroying confidence in our system. It will cause us to come to ruination and domination by despots. There is a potential despot in our midst. He would love to be our despotic emperor. It isn’t Biden. It isn’t even DeSantis. It is former President Trump. I am not afraid to make that declaration here.
Trump has nothing to do with the electrification issue. If Trump were President, none of Biden’s crazy policies would be in place. Biden and his comrades have a crazy zest to control the economy, central planning on steroids. They have a religious zeal to save the planet, a road to economic serfdom.
sotheseedsofliberty2
I hit the star button on your post by mistake, I don’t agree with you about Donald Trump,- sorry!
In his environmentalist zeal, Biden is simultaneously forcing the auto industry to sharply reduce production of ICE vehicles demanded by consumers and force the grid into using costly and unreliable intermittent power production. In addition to ICE vehicles, Biden and his comrades are trying to replace efficient NG heat with inefficient electrical heat. Intermittent/seasonal power production is not feasible for most of the USA during the dark days of winter. Expensive battery capacity cannot generate power. Intermittent power production cannot provide necessary power production during the dark days of winter at any cost. With large increases in power demand from heat and transportation, large parts of the USA will be cold and dark. The grid is a fragile, distributed system with only limited connections. Infrastructure of any kind is hopelessly slow with opposition from many sources. Even without any other problems, just delays and even cancellations of infrastructure construction will crush any plans to increase electricity generation capacity to meet future needs. Biden and his comrades are committed to a future of reduced consumption and prosperity with the world’s highest energy and transportation costs.
All according to plan, no doubt.
Correction to quote –
” In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
” NOTHING Happens in politics unless it was planned that way.”
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT