I disagree that it isn't happening. Solar PV capacity is growing rapidly. Vehicles are increasingly powered by electric batteries.
These things were all prohibitively expensive for most people in Western countries, but their declining cost has made them more affordable and more used.
By powered, I don't mean to say the battery is the source of the energy it stores.
In analysing the effects of increased usage of electric transport, what's important is where new electricity generating capacity will come from. In the US that's primarily natural gas and solar. Coal generation has actually been decreasing.
Of course, that's not to say that if everyone suddenly started driving electric cars that all the new supply would be green energy.
However, even coal power stations taking into account powerline losses are more efficient than a typical car's engine, and in Western countries usually cleaner as far as particulate and nitrous oxide pollutants are concerned.
Worldwide the share of coal in energy production is at 40% and the United States it has dropped from 56% to 40%.
Coal still produces 40% of every KWh consumed with Nuclear making up a fair portion of the remainder.
Renewables are at 20% and (fortunately) rising sharply but for the moment fossil energy sources are by far the bulk of the energy consumed by electric vehicles.
Yes, but to use this as an argument against electrification of transport is silly.
Even in countries that still have coal-fired power today, an electric vehicle is certainly no worse than a fossil-fuel one.
And, as grid share of renewables and other cleaner energy sources increases, each EV becomes greener and greener over time. But each fossil vehicle remains just as polluting - or perhaps even gets worse as it ages.
> Even in countries that still have coal-fired power today, an electric vehicle is certainly no worse than a fossil-fuel one.
I've yet to see an end-to-end over the lifespan of the vehicle report that was factual enough that it was possible to make that call.
Keep in mind that EVs have been subsidized a lot, that the batteries themselves are made with technology that also pollutes and emits CO2 and that a new EV is almost certainly a net negative compared to continuing to driver an older ICE because the ICE car already exists and the EV has to be built new.
That makes the whole equation so complex that I really do not feel comfortable saying that an electric vehicle is certainly better or equal to a fossil-fuel one, it would very much depend.
I'm writing this as a long time renewable energy nut that would very much like to see our dependence on oil reduced to manageable proportions and not for something like transport where we have other alternatives. Even so, if this is all to succeed then the best way forward is to be realistic rather than to hype EVs and the reality is that right now people claim their EVs are 'green' when in fact they are to a large extent turning decentralized pollution into centralized pollution.
It would certainly be an interesting thing to know. Back of the envelope for ICE is ~20% from tank to wheels, From coal plant to wheels of an electric vehicle you'd be looking at line losses first, then AC/DC conversion losses (5% or so) in the charger, battery loss during charging (Ri of the battery comes in to play both ways), again during discharging and then probably a better figure for the drivetrain of an electric car versus an ICE based car because it is much simpler, but the motor would still lose some energy to heat due to its internal resistance (another 3% or so).
Thermal efficiency for a coal plant is ~35% give or take (depending on how new the plant is) so that would be your starting point.
Charge/discharge losses for a large (20KWh) pack that I used were around 25%, a modern EV might do a bit better but probably not that much better (because the internal resistance of those cells they use is quite high).
Putting all that together:
.33 * .75 * .95 * .97 = ~22%, and ~24% for a high
efficiency coal plant.
With line losses un-accounted for because they vary very much depending on the location of the plant and the consumer.
So it's actually pretty close, better than I expected.
Would you like to run some more numbers? You only did 'tank to wheels', I'd like to see oil deposit to wheels and the similar calculations for coal deposit to wheels.
Thanks for running the numbers. My recollection relied on "Sustainable Energy without the hot air". The bit about (electric) cars is available online at https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_131.shtml (and the author comes to similiar-ish conclusions).
Oh, solar is happening. My caveat was about any large scale move to nuclear definitely not happening.
Right now new fission power is not economic because of enormous capital costs---but most of that is quite negotiable. Nuclear could be much cheaper, if we only held it to the same standards as eg gas. (I am not even proposing holding it to the same standards in terms of life lost per Joule as coal---coal is aweful on that metric.)
These things were all prohibitively expensive for most people in Western countries, but their declining cost has made them more affordable and more used.