wgriswold wrote:
I got interested in this and so went to Google.
Californians drive 306 billion miles per year.
If we want to replace 75% of that with electric cars getting the equivalent of 40 mpg that will take the equivalent of 5.7 billion gallons of gas per year.
A gallon of gas contains 33.4 kW hr of energy. If we assume 75% efficiency in producing electricity that means we need 256 billion KW hr of energy.
Hoover dam produces 4 billion KW hr of energy a year so we need 64 Hoover dams to make this much electricity.
So the goal of moving to electric cars means an astounding increase in electricity production.
Of course, I could be wrong, so check my calculations.
That's a great point that you make above.
Even if your analysis is rough, I'll bet that it's in the ballpark enough such that something's going to have to give. There's just plain too many people driving around in too many personal vehicles - or soon going to be - for the Earth to deal with. It's only going to get worse if we don't defuse either or both of these two bombs.
I can't buy being blinded further by trying to Science & Engineering our way around it when a fix to the problem is way more basic than that. Going forward the Earth needs to support a far less running average population so humans are using up and/or destroying far less of themselves and everything, everywhere.
Not going to electric cars has nothing to do with being Stuck in the Past. They are not a solution .... only another a stalling tactic.
