On 1st May, new regulations came into force here in England, banning some things from
being burned in stoves and open fires. This was widely reported in various UK media outlets
at the time, and the UK Government website says,
People with log burners and open fires can still use them, but will be required to buy
cleaner alternative fuels – if they are not already – such as dry wood and manufactured
solid fuels which produce less smoke. Both of these cleaner options are just as easy
to source and more efficient to burn, making them more cost effective. Burning dry wood
also produces more heat and less soot than wet wood and can reduce emissions by up to
50%.
Sounds good so far, so if you’ve got a log burner or open fire then you need to burn
cleaner fuel instead. Yeah, OK.
The BBC article says: Only 8% of households use them, but they are now the biggest source
of the tiny pollution particles that are most damaging to health, according to government
data.
It shows domestic wood burning in both closed stoves and open fires was responsible for
38% of pollution particles under 2.5 microns in size, three times more than road traffic.
Three times more than road traffic? So the 8% of people in the UK that have a log burner
are causing a pollution problem THREE TIMES BIGGER than ALL of the road traffic in the
UK? Really???
I may be wrong, and I’ll be happy to be corrected, I'm not specifically challenging
those figures nor do I have any research to contradict them, but it looks to me like they [the UK Gov]
may be doing that old chestnut of only talking about the very tip of the iceberg, or tail
pipe emissions in this case - that is, JUST the gases (CO, CO2 and NOx gases) that come
out of cars’ exhaust pipes. Which is a very disingenuous way of measuring just how dirty
combustion cars really are. It’s not like the fuel just appears in their petrol tanks
out of thin air as if by magic - it has to be searched for, pumped out of the ground,
transported, refined and transported again before it gets to the petrol pump.
So back to log burners, I’m NOT against these new regulations - they’re good. But
I just wouldn’t want them being used as a smokescreen (if you’ll pardon the pun)
to distract from and excuse slow movement away from burning Petrol and Diesel in cars,
and generally trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public by saying "look! we're
banning a few people from burning wood in their cottages!" rather than actually enacting
some meaningful policies to get rid of petrol and diesel pollution.
And I’m sure it’s nothing at all to do with people in various governments around
the world being vary pally with people in the oil industry, and vested interests or
anything like that. No, no - I’d never suggest such a thing.
There aren’t many sensible people that don’t agree that Governments urgently need to do
whatever they can to get as many petrol and diesel cars, vans and lorries off the roads
as possible, and get more EVs in their place. And yes, the infrastructure blah blah blah
but it’s already far better than most people think it is, and the laws of supply and demand
surely apply - it would be pointless to click our fingers and have, overnight, the level
of infrastructure that we’ll need in 15 years’ time when EV adoption is even higher
that it is now. We don’t need THAT, right now!
But anyway, before I rant too much that brings me on to a video I want to show you, which
does an excellent job of explaining how much additional pollution there is ON TOP of what
comes out of the exhaust pipe of a combustion car. I didn’t produce this video or have
anything to do with its creation, but I do have permission to show it to you on this
channel. It was made by a channel called GasTroll with the help of the Fully Charged team and
specifically Robert Llewellyn, who did the voiceover.
I think you’ll find it very interesting and really eye opening, and I’d love to
know your thoughts and reactions to just how polluting the whole process is, from first
extracting oil from the ground right through to burning it in cars. And please do like
and share this video so even more people can see it, too.
But enough rambling from me - let’s roll the tape.
So the argument goes, Electric Vehicles don’t pollute but the electricity powering the Electric
Vehicles does pollute.
Some even say that it pollutes even more than a gasoline or petrol burning car.
If we are going to look beyond the EV itself to the energy that powers it, shouldn’t
we do the same for the fossil fueled combustion car car?
So what goes into producing the fuel that you burn in your car every day?
Gasoline or petrol starts as oil, on average 5900 feet below the surface of the earth.
A great deal of oil is extracted using what is called a pumpjack. pumpjacks don’t run
by themselves, in most cases they use electricity.
It takes on average 9,960 kilowatt hours of electricity every month to drive one pumpjack.
To put that into context, that is enough electricity to power a Tesla Model 3 for 34,860 miles.
In the United States there are an estimated 435,000 oil wells using pumpjacks. Estimated
electricity usage for these wells is over 4,300 GWh a month!
That is allot of electricity and that is just to get the oil out of the ground!
If we used that electricity to power electric vehicles directly, it would be enough to power
over 15 Million EVs for a month.
Thats just US oil wells on land, What about deep sea drilling?
The most common way of powering an offshore oil rig is with a diesel generator.
An average oil rig generator uses 20 to 30 metric tonnes of diesel per day…. the electrical
equivalent to this is 300,000 Kilowatt hours.
There are an estimated 1,470 offshore oil rigs in the world using over 1.3 Billion Kilowatt
hours of energy a month.
All this oil pumping combined would be enough to power 19.5 Million EVs. This is just from
the energy used to pump oil out of the ground in the US and offshore.
So not only does fuel pollute when we burn it in our cars, we are also using a huge amount
of electricity just to pump the oil that makes the fuel.
Combining the pollution from the tailpipe emissions with the emissions generated to
pump oil out of the ground… is not a pretty picture.
And pumping oil is not clean, millions of gallons are spilled into the ocean every year
creating havoc for fish and other wildlife!
Then that oil needs to be transported, most of the oil is pumped through pipelines.
There are over 337 thousand miles of pipeline in the world carrying most of the 100 million
barrels a day we consume.
These pipelines use pump stations that use even more energy.
Oil is also shipped, the oceans are unregulated as regards emissions
so ships use the cheapest dirtiest fuel possible to keep costs down, making them one of the
largest pollution sources on the planet.
shipping is responsible for an estimated 1 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, and 10% of
that is shipping oil.
Because these tanker ships pollute so much, many countries do not allow them to operate
near their coast line, so they have to be towed into port where the oil is transferred
to a refinery.
Refining oil takes a huge amount of energy and generates even more pollution.
Refining is done by heating oil up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit or 420º C. Heating 100
million barrels of oil a day to these temperatures requires an enormous amount of energy.
Heating this oil generates so much pollution, refineries create a serious health hazard
anywhere they operate.
Refineries are the number one pollution source in many major cities around the world, It
is so bad that people living near these refineries have a marked increase of lung disease.
Once the oil has been refined, it is transported to fuel stations in diesel trucks creating
even more pollution.
Then this fuel is burned in cars and trucks right in our cities where we live and breathe.
These cars and trucks have internal combustion engines that are extremely inefficient.
70% of the energy from burning fossil fuel is wasted as heat, while only 30% goes to
turn your wheels.
So after we use all that electricity pumping oil out of the ground, refining it, transporting
it, we then waste 70% when we burn it.
Fossil fuel production is an incredibly dirty inefficient process from start to finish.
When we contrast all this to powering an Electric Vehicle, the difference is very stark.
Electricity does not need to be pumped from thousands of feet underground, transported
with trucks, or trains, or pumped along pipelines, it does not need to be shipped overseas, it
does not need to be refined, and it is not polluting where we live and breathe.
Even if electricity is produced from burning coal, the power plant is far away from population
centers, transferred over power lines keeping any direct pollution away from the population.
And if the EV is powered with clean energy, it is clean from start to finish.
In the US 47% of energy comes from sources that emit no CO2.
In Europe it is even better at 56%.
And the percentage of clean energy is growing every year as coal and gas plants are being
replaced by renewable energy sources.
So what about the lithium used in EV batteries?
Lithium is a metal that is mined in the deserts of Australia, China, Argentina, and Chile.
Besides being a key ingredient in batteries, Lithium is also ingested as a medicine for
bipolar disorder.
Much has been made about the environmental impact of Lithium mining but this is all a
little bit over blown.
Australia is the largest producer of Lithium in the world.
if there were any major environmental problems with this mining, some Australians would be
talking about it. But what is Australia really talking about when it comes to pollution?
Oil refining! Yes oil refining is creating a much bigger environmental risk than all
the lithium mining going anywhere in the country.
Australia is not a very densely populated country, they consume 1% of the worlds oil
supply and only refine 1/4th of the oil they consume.
But they mine 50% of the worlds Lithium!
So a country that only refines 1/4 of 1% of the worlds oil and mines 50% of the worlds
lithium, the biggest contributor to pollution and risk to human health in Australia is oil
refineries!
That does not even take into consideration the drilling, pumping, transporting and burning
of this oil, this is just refining it.
The more you look into it, the argument that battery production is somehow as bad as the
cycle of fossil fuels is ridiculous.
All the lithium mining in the world to date has not done anything like as much damage
to the environment as just one major oil spill.
So what about the batteries? What happens to EV batteries when they get
old and are discarded?
When no longer practical in an Electric Vehicle batteries can be used as energy storage to
power a home or business, giving them a second life.
And when they can no longer for this, they are recycled, broken down to recover the valuable
metals in these batteries to be reused in the next generation of Electric Vehicles.
It looks a bit silly to use so much electricity to pump oil out of the ground, create tons
of pollution transporting and refining it, to finally waste 70% of it burning it in our
cars when we could simply use that electricity directly to power Electric Vehicles, eliminating
the pollution from refining and burning gas in inefficient internal combustion engines.
It is obvious when you look at the big picture, oil production is a dirty wasteful process,
especially when compared to the alternative, powering EVs with renewable electricity.
Blue Man, different voice Ah haa, look at that. That doesn’t look
too good, that looks better. I think I am going to try this one out. Ok yeah, nice inside,
wow, Oh sorry! Wow this thing is fast, see yah.
What can you do?
One of the last obstacles preventing many people from going electric besides misinformation,
is people who live in apartments and condominiams with shared parking. Many of these residents
have no way to install a car charger.
If you are a lawmaker, sit on a City Council or local council, if you serve on the board
of any housing association, if you own rental property, you can do something to help. Vote
to install car chargers or indeed install them yourself in car parks or on the street,
so people who live in apartments can have a place to charge their Electric Vehicle.
There are companies that even offer ways that you can make a profit from these chargers.
Support taxing of fossil fuels and using the subsidies to support the shift to Electric
Vehicles, with the right incentives and political will change can happen very quickly.
In Norway they have made a huge shift to electric vehicles in a very short time. Electric Vehicles
sales in Norway have reached over 50% of all vehicles sold.
Support the installation of solar panels wherever possible, Going solar now is cheaper than
buying electricity from the grid and starts paying for itself from day one.
And if you are fortunate enough to own a home, get an EV and install solar panels. You will
save thousands on fuel and electricity and the peace of mind knowing that you are
not contributing to the horribly dirty oil and gas industry.
Share this video, post it to forums like Reddit, NextDoor, Facebook and others to help spread
the word.
Lastly this is an open source video, you are free translate this video into another language
for reposting.
Contact the GasTroll channel for a version you can add a translated voice over and text
to.
The day when our cities are clean of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other toxic chemicals
and particulates emitted from tailpipes and oil refineries can happen.
We have the technology to do this now. Supporting this transition to Electric transportation
will bring this day closer to fruition.
We hope you have enjoyed this video.
Thanks for watching, and stay clean.