Texas Oil and Gas Attorney Blog
I recently caught up with my stack of reading material, and one article that I found especially interesting is an article by Dr.Iddo Wernick entitled “The Many Problems with Batteries”. It is an analysis well worth your time. Dr. Wernick is a senior research associate at The Rockefeller University’s Program for the Human Environment and was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2013 and 2014. Some of the problems with batteries he notes are:
- batteries store energy less efficiently than hydrocarbon fuels, meaning that batteries require much more mass and volume than hydrocarbon fuels. Batteries are far less energy dense than other fuels. For example, the energy density of biomass fuels such as straw and cow dung is 20 times greater than lithium ion batteries, and the energy density of gasoline is 50 times greater than lithium ion batteries.
- half the power of the batteries in an EV go to moving the batteries themselves. (There will be increased highway wear and tear due to the weight of EVs that we as taxpayers will have to pay for).
- batteries release energy very slowly compared with other fuels. That’s why it takes so long (and a lot of voltage) to charge an EV.
- proponents of EVs gloss over the incredible environmental pollution generated by the manufacture of some components of batteries. Dr. Wernick points to the highly polluting and coal powered process of using high pressure acid leaching to make nickel in Indonesia in a Chinese financed facility.
- many people do not comprehend the bulk of battery storage. Dr. Wernick gives an example that the battery storage needed to power the city of Seattle for 24 hours would require a cylinder 60 meters in diameter and 605 feet high.
- Dr. Wernick notes that proponents of battery storage give short shrift to the geopolitical tensions that make large scale production of batteries problematic. Case in point: China owns the lion’s share of the rare earth minerals that must be mined to make lithium ion batteries.
- In a world where only EVs are allowed, middle and lower class folks will not be able to afford basic transportation without massive government subsidies, which means we the taxpayers will pay for these subsidies with higher taxes.
Clearly, both the manufacture of batteries and using them to store energy present substantial obstacles. Yet we have alternatives available, such as hybrid vehicles, and production of electricity using natural gas or nuclear power. The problems with mass enrgy storage with batteries is too problematic to be considered a viable alternative.