2021 January 28 – GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra has announced that GM will abandon their Internal-Combustion-Engine (ICE) vehicle designs by 2035.
This ignores the potential for renewable fuel powered ICE engine vehicles post energy transition.
While electric vehicles (EVs) do make sense for part of the transportation fleet especially where solar, wind and/or geothermal power is readily available year-round it makes little sense for this to be the entirety of the transportation fleet.
EVs as the only net zero strategy will require us to replace more than 60% of the electrical infrastructure fired on natural gas and coal, replace all of our existing vehicles and it is still unclear how we will recycle all of the rare earth mineral containing batteries in a net zero manner. Land requirements for wind and solar and complete electrification will be insane and not applicable to all jurisdictions.
The cost of full electrification would be high. According to United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimation of material requirements, “1 MW of wind capacity requires 103 tonnes of stainless steel, 402 tonnes of concrete, 6.8 tonnes of fiberglass, 3 tonnes of copper, and 20 tonnes of cast iron.” As IEEE puts it, to produce 25 percent of the global electricity demand using wind energy, we would require roughly 450 million metric tons of steel. And steel is manufactured predominantly using coal, implying that we would require “fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million metric tons of coal.” Solar and wind being intermittent sources of energy will require plants to be designed not just for peak power but for offsetting power in times of unavailability.
Electrification will require batteries not just for the EVs but energy storage as well. Battery disposal and/or recycling will be a carbon intensive process with production highly dependent on rare earth metals such as europium, lanthanum, and neodymium mined under potentially environmentally disastrous conditions.
GM and other ICE vehicle manufactures should consider carbon balancing their vehicle mix with drop-in renewable gasoline and diesel fired engines – something they are already designed to do.
This announcement by GM should be a wakeup call for the EPA to approve the use of bio-intermediates such as renewable crude as proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) October 3 2016 with a Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPRM). Providing renewable crude a RIN would drastically improve the economics of production and would be a gamechanger in the push for a circular economy.
References:
EPA (2016, October 3), Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, EPA-HQ-OAR-2016-0041 (Oct. 3, 2016) (Submitted for publication to the Federal Register) [hereinafter NPRM Oct2016], Enviromental Protection Agency, Retrieved from: https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard-program/proposed-renewables-enhancement-and-growth-support-regs-rule
EPA (2020), “U.S. energy facts explained – consumption and production – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)”. Environmental Protection Agency, www.eia.gov. Retrieved 2020-09-16 from
EPA (2020), “Electricity in the U.S. – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)”. www.eia.gov. Retrieved 2020-09-16.
Hongquio, L (2016 August 25), “The Dark Side of Renewable Energy”, Earth Journalism.net, Retrieved from: https://earthjournalism.net/stories/the-dark-side-of-renewable-energy
Smil, V. (2016, Feb 29), “To Get Wind Power You Need Oil”, IEEE Spectrum, Retrieved from https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/to-get-wind-power-you-need-oil
Wilburn, D. (2011), “Wind Energy in the United States and Materials REquired for the LAnd-Based Wind Turbine Industry from 2010 through 2030), US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey, Retrieved from https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5036/sir2011-5036.pdf