🔋Cart Before The Horse
Transportation is the sector with the highest share of emissions with realistic decarbonization potential, however lack of sufficient low emission energy production severely dampen the benefit.
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In the field of climate change, significant decarbonization efforts have been placed not only in the grid, but also the transportation sector. For many, the movement toward electric vehicles has been more evident in their lives than say grid renewables or nuclear power. People see new cars, especially the sleek new electric ones all the time, but don’t see or pay attention to grid stations and large power generation facilities. One of the reasons for the emphasis on vehicles is due to the transportation sector contributing to the largest share of emissions by any sector. I like to point out that even if 100% of the electricity generation was from low carbon sources, that would only eliminate about 1/4th of the total emissions in the US. Focusing on transportation, the majority of emissions actually come from passenger vehicles. Trucks, shipping, and aviation all make up less than 50%. The data for the rest of the world actually skews even more toward passenger vehicles.
Since transportation makes up the largest chunk of emissions, and passenger vehicles similarly within that sector, it makes sense that there would be a large focus on reducing emissions of cars. It is also the easiest, as they have the lowest energy requirement for the sake of switching to electric motors. The way emissions reduction for cars has been done in the past was more efficient combustion engines, hybrid cars, and emission regulations requiring things like cleaner fuel and catalytic converter requirements. Now, since lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have progressed technologically, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and full electric vehicles (EV) are now economically viable for a significant chunk of consumers. Since LIBs are the primary candidate to power vehicles, cost and energy density limit their application in larger vehicles for the time being. For example, current generation semi trucks have a range of around 2000mi compared to the best EV trucks on the horizon which have 300-500.
What else is there to consider? Electric planes are even worse than trucks currently, solid-state batteries or LIB improvements could facilitate better cars and higher energy applications, and fuel cell technology could be deployed for certain applications. Many cities around the world already have extensive battery powered public transit systems. Decarbonizing the transportation sector will be the biggest demand driver for battery materials around the world moving forward.
Norway is known for being early in many of the progressive trends. The country has gone the furthest in selling electric or hybrid vehicles and the majority of new cars sold are PHEV or EV. The US sells a lot more cars, but their share of EV sales is only ~5% and their goal is 50% by 2030. Norway has tremendous hydropower capability going for it as well which allows it to match its low emission energy with low emission transportation resulting in one of the lowest carbon intensity countries in the world.

The transportation sector is a distinct problem from grid but is interconnected in ways. A coal powered EV is likely not very helpful, and on the flipside combustion engine vehicles on a clean grid solves only 1/4th the issue. In reality we are already somewhere in between and improving with some countries ahead of others.
While there is an argument that EVs are better than ICE cars even with a fossil fuel grid, this premise has been debated. When it really comes down to it, vehicles are only as good as the base source of energy due to batteries being merely a storage mechanism. The US has aggressive EV targets which I have been critical of in the past. This comes as the share of renewables has made little difference in overall grid emissions. The most important effort should be a clean, reliable, and inexpensive supply of energy that sits at the foundation of the energy economy. We can layer things like battery vehicles and other efficiency improvements on top, but we can’t put the cart in front of the horse as they say. A strong house is built atop a strong foundation. Insulation, HVAC, and all the decorations are merely junk without a solid foundation. In addition to government incentives manipulating market dynamics and the lack of consideration of PHEVs as a useful technology, this is another reason that the aggressive EV targets are not the optimal path forward in my opinion. Until next week,
-Grayson
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