EV charging and hydro generation/distribution challenges

[danbrotherston]

I'm going to be a bit of a downer and point out that EVs are a massive step forward in terms of carbon emissions but they still have all the terrible effects on the built form that ICE cars have. They also still have emissions from tire and brake particulates. Should we move to EVs? Absolutely. But we also have to fix the built form (eg grocery store in DTK).

I have the RoW climate change policy direction paper open which I should read and comment on.

As for the thing about diesel buses: Wellington NZ doesn't have LRT and they have only some electric/hybrid buses (they are buying more). It sucks to sit on a bench in the CBD and have 3 diesel buses waiting at the light.

Being ahead of the curve would have been more expensive, probably significantly so. Maybe we still should have been but people don't like paying taxes. (I think people should pay more municipal taxes).

Shipping overseas is incredibly efficient in terms of fuel, although bunker fuel is quite dirty. I think that the shipping from the port to your house is more carbon than from China to Canada.

I mean, I don't think you're a downer at all. It's an entirely accurate and reasonable point that a large fraction of "environmentalists" in our region (and worldwide) are in complete denial of. It's why we have buildings like evolv which have massive surface parking lots (with resulting environmental costs there) right next to transit stations and yet are heralded as a massive success. No environmentalist should consider that a success.

Being ahead of the curve wasn't even more expensive. I remember regional officials saying that the buses paid for themselves, but only just barely...therefore they'd just buy normal diesels. So it wasn't something at cost us anything, but since it also didn't save us money, only healthcare, noise pollution, etc. So we didn't do it...it was insane.

You are probably right about carbon emissions, the marine fleet is incredibly efficient in CO2 tons / freight ton mile, the "dirtyness" is an air pollution problem, which mostly affects port cities, and the nobody in the middle of the ocean. The fleet has also become more efficient, as a result of lowering their average transit speeds, and are investigating wind power.

At the end of the day, if airplanes and ships were the only things using fossil fuels, we wouldn't have a climate emergency, and those are the two things farthest from being able to transit away from fossil fuels. Everything else we have every day solutions right now, that we are choosing not to implement. Some of these solutions are new technologies that let us do what we're doing now but cleaner (renewable power generation options) and some of them are cultural changes (consuming fewer disposable goods) and some are somewhere in between (maintaining our mobility by using other modes of transportation).