Author: giannicatalfamo
www.linkedin.com/it/giannicatalfamo
Protected: Diario – Testamento morale
Perché non banno
Nel corso della mia partecipazione sui social capita che vanga fatto oggetto di critiche e mi capita anche che qualcuno si stupisca della pazienza con cui discuto con persone che, spesso, fanno sospettare di non essere affatto in buona fede.
In effetti, uso pochissimo lo strumento del ban: nel corso della mia lunghissima militanza social (sono su LinkedIn dal 2004) ho bannato meno di dieci persone.
La ragione è molto semplice, e si riallaccia ad uno degli elementi chiave per una presenza social efficace che insegnavo ai miei clienti quando, in una vita precedente, ero responsabile per l’Europa per Social e Digital di una delle maggiori agenzie di comunicazione del mondo.
Per spiegarmi meglio, userò una recente storyline: pur essendo un po’ troppo agé per Instagram, apprezzo la potenza del concetto di storia che si sviluppa nel tempo.
I tre post che riproduco sono stati inseriti nello spazio di una settimana l’uno dall’altro e raccontano la storia del mio viaggio da Pavia a Vigo di Fassa e ritorno usando un’auto elettrica.
Lo scopo era dimostrare che lunghi viaggi in elettrico sono possibili e persino convenienti, obiettivo coerente con il business della mia azienda che è quello di realizzare parcheggi attrezzati con sistemi di ricarica.
Attenzione: “coerente” non significa “sovrapponibile” perché non voglio scadere nella banale pubblicità. In altre parole non cerco di vendere il mio prodotto (rivolto ad un target del tutto diverso) ma di rendere i lettori consapevoli del fatto che la mobilità elettrica è un fenomeno nuovo, sì, ma che sta rapidamente maturando.
(chi volesse vedere i post, li trova qui, qui e qui). Dei poco più di 500 commenti ricevuti complessivamente, almeno l’80% è negativo, un numero parecchio maggiore dei circa 200 “Mi piace” lasciati dai lettori.
Come devo interpretare questo dato?
Beh, in una società che ama polarizzarsi è logico che anche la mobilità elettrica abbia i suoi tifosi e i suoi detrattori, ma la stragrande maggioranza non è né l’uno né l’altro cioè è, per così dire, neutrale e lo posso vedere bene dal fatto che i tre post sono stati letti finora da circa 52.000 persone ma molti meno di mille si sono espressi a favore o contro (lo so, lo so, i lettori sono in parte gli stessi, ma anche i commentatori e chi mette un “Mi piace” dunque ignorerò la sovrapposizione).
Dunque ci sono più di 50.000 persone che hanno letto questa storia, hanno letto i dubbi sollevati da altri e le risposte che hanno ricevuto e, zitti zitti, hanno cominciato a formarsi la propria opinione in merito a questa innovazione.
Audiences limitate, dite? Mica tanto, se considerate che le tirature dei maggiori quotidiani italiani ormai non raggiungono le 200.000 copie al giorno…
Non credo di aver convinto i miei critici, anche se qualcuno di quelli in buona fede avrà forse apprezzato lo sforzo di condividere dati oggettivi. Quanto alle risposte pungenti ahimé, ogni tanto mi scappano. Però, forse, ho suggerito una chiave di lettura a qualcuno dei neutrali e – ricordate? – questo era l’obiettivo.
Dunque un invito che rivolgo a me stesso ma anche a tutti coloro che hanno a cuore la consapevolezza del pubblico di fronte a questa innovazione tecnologica: non stanchiamoci di raccontare le nostre storie; non stanchiamoci di rispondere sempre alle stesse osservazioni: chi ci interessa non sono i mille con cui riusciamo ad avere una interlocuzione diretta, ma i cinquantamila che, silenziosi, leggono.
Bugiardo !
Non capita spesso che qualcuno mi dia del bugiardo, anche perché – lo confesso – reagisco male.
Ieri lo ha fatto il signor Marco Bergaglio, mettendo in dubbio la veridicità di alcuni dati che avevo condiviso, in risposta a dubbi che, però, mi sembravano in buona fede, cosa che invece non mi pare si possa dire in questo caso.
I dati che secondo il signor Bergaglio non sarebbero del tutto esatti sono quelli contenuti nella tabella che ho pubblicato nell’ormai illeggibile stringa di commenti scatenati da questo post su LinkedIn, che sta ormai raggiungendo le 30.000 impressions.
Cosa non piace al signor Bergaglio lo lascio dire a lui stesso:
Le critiche sono sostanzialmente quattro (mi par di capire), e cioè
- non ho tenuto conto delle perdite di ricarica
- il mio contratto di fornitura di EE è “privilegiato” (=non rappresentativo)
- il prezzo del kWh che riferisco non è vero
- il consumo a gasolio preso a confronto non è veritiero
Perdite di ricarica
In tutti i miei calcoli, i consumi sono SEMPRE indicati al lordo delle perdite di ricarica (su cui ho scritto a più riprese sul mio blog professionale)
Fornitura privilegiata + prezzi “sinceri”
Nello slideshow ho riportato le intestazioni delle mie fatture di EE del 2022: come si può vedere, si tratta di normalissimi contratti di fornitura su cui (questo è vero) opero una attenta vigilanza ma sui quali, quando non riesco a stipulare contratti a prezzo fisso come avevo fino ad Aprile, subisco le variazioni di mercato, come tutti.
La tabella dunque può essere espansa per includere anche gli altri dati:
Il prezzo “a casa” di gennaio e febbraio (nella tabella €0,14, mentre dalle bollette sarebbe €0,11) risente di una piccola promozione di cui, nel calcolo del costo “normale”, ho preferito non tenere conto.
Il prezzo “fuori casa” invece, varia in funzione sia dei prezzi di listino, sia dell’uso variabile che faccio delle flat disponibili sul mercato (si veda in tal senso l’esempio di Agosto, rifornito in gran parte fuori casa dove ho pagato MENO il kWh fuori casa di quello a casa).
Il consumo a gasolio infine è quello storico dell’auto a gasolio che tuttora posseggo: sicuramente ci sono auto più moderne ed efficienti, e sicuramente ce ne sono di più piccole, ma questa è quella che ho io e il prezzo lo rilevo alle pompe che vedo (anche se per fortuna ormai uso pochissimo) dalle mie parti.
Tutto il confronto, dunque, è sul MIO caso: non ha la pretesa di generalizzare, ma dimostra che risparmiare anche cifre importanti sul carburante grazie all’elettrificazione SI PUÒ.
In conclusione, il signor Bergaglio (che, giova ricordare, di lavoro produce materie plastiche, presumibilmente derivate dal petrolio)
avvelena la conversazione con affermazioni prive di fondamento nei confronti di chi non conosce. Lui dà del bugiardo a me senza ragione, io preferisco lasciare che il suo comportamento venga giudicato da chi legge.
Risposte a Andrea Cocito
Caro signor Cocito,
cerco di rispondere alle sue numerose critiche punto per punto.
riferisce dei suoi tragitti verso la Sicilia: io posso riferire di un viaggio da incubo da Mendrisio a Stoccarda (447 km) per cui ci sono volute oltre 20 ore
Lei è molto sfortunato o molto inesperto: usando un qualsiasi software gratuito di pianificazione si capisce subito che il viaggio da Mendrisio a Stoccarda (traffico permettendo, rispettando i limiti, e usando la mia Hyundai Kona) richiede poco più di cinque ore, compresa un’oretta di soste per rifornimento. Se lei ce ne ha messe 20, si faccia delle domande (e si dia delle risposte).
Per di più, queste previsioni sono sempre molto prudenziali; se dovessi farlo in modo “competitivo” sono certo che riuscirei a metterci di meno, facendo leva sull’esperienza e su software un po’ più sofisticati di quello dell’esempio che magari mi consentano lettura in tempo reale di temperatura e consumo istantaneo. La zona da lei scelta è poi particolarmente ricca di stazioni di rifornimento, dunque nessun problema di attese o altro.
parliamo della questione dell’impatto in termini di CO2: quello di una elettrica può essere la metà (se l’energia viene dal nucleare e analizziamo i percorsi cittadini) o leggermente superiore (se l’energia viene del fossile e consideriamo le lunghe percorrenze) di un diesel di ultima generazione (confrontando due auto a parità di massa netta trasportata, prestazioni, autonomia e con tempi di ricarica “rapidi”).
Questa non è questione sulla quale si possano avere opinioni, ma solo conoscere i dati. I calcoli sull’impatto CO2e sul ciclo di vita (LCA: produzione, uso e fine vita) delle auto sono stati fatti centinaia di volte da ricercatori di tutto il mondo e le conclusioni sono univoche: le emissioni LCA provocate da una EV sono dal 50% al 75% inferiori a quelle di un’auto a combustione interna di caratteristiche equivalenti, a seconda del tenore carbonico dell’elettricità in un dato Paese.
Chi ha voglia di studiare qui trova un’intera raccolta di studi di questo tipo usciti negli ultimi tre o quattro anni.
il veto per le endotermiche è, rispetto al problema, una foglia di fico che distoglie solo l’attenzione dal problema reale: l’auto privata così come la conosciamo non è sostenibile. L’obiettivo dovrebbe essere di costringere le persone a NON usare l’auto privata se non è necessario (usando invece i mezzi pubblici) e a NON possederne una in ogni caso, noleggiando di volta in volta quella “idonea” (cioè quella ambientalmente meno dannosa, che non è un SUV per andare in centro a Milano, non è una Smart per fare Milano-Sestriere e non è una Tesla in alcun caso).
Devo ammettere che ho faticato un po’ a seguire il filo logico perché non ho capito cosa c’entri con l’argomento di cui si stava discutendo, ma sono d’accordo sulle sue conclusioni. Le dirò di più, ho pubblicato a più riprese analisi comparative sulla densità automobilistica in Italia, sia sul territorio che in rapporto agli abitanti, e il nostro Paese ne esce sempre male.
Dunque meno auto nelle città italiane a tutto favore del trasporto pubblico e della mobilità leggera, ma quelle poche, per favore, rigorosamente a zero emissioni locali!
impatto locale (microparticelle varie: PM10, PM2.5 eccetera) che, sempre “a parità del tutto”, è maggiore per una elettrica che per una endotermica (ibrida), per quanto questo sembri contro-intuitivo. Ebbene sì: se domani mattina tutte le auto Euro6 di Milano venissero magicamente sostituite da equivalenti elettriche l’aria di Milano diventerebbe PIÙ irrespirabile, parlo proprio dell’inquinamento locale da particolato, indipendentemente da come e dove vengono prodotte/smaltite le auto e l’energia per caricarle.
Questa, mi perdoni, è proprio solo un’opinione ed è solo sua. Se posso anche essere d’accordo che le emissioni di particolato da attrito degli pneumatici e asfalto sono sostanzialmente equivalenti tra termica ed elettrica, quelle da usura dei freni sono praticamente inesistenti, visto che – soprattutto in città – la stragrande maggioranza dei rallentamenti avviene SENZA toccare i freni (ma solo con inversione della polarità del motore e recupero dell’energia cinetica). Per non parlare delle inesistenti perdite di liquidi (ad es. lubrificanti o carburante incombusto) che nell’auto elettrica semplicemente NON CI SONO.
Lei lo sa che una parte non trascurabile del carburante utilizzato da un’auto a benzina non viene bruciato ma usato per controllare la temperatura delle camere di scoppio per poi essere disperso in forma nebulizzata nell’aria?
Come diceva Deming, “senza dati sei solo un altro tizio con la sua opinione” sempre legittima, ma lei lo sa cosa dice Harry Callahan delle opinioni, vero?
Lei conclude su una tirata sulla scarsa intelligenza dei legislatori; trattandosi delle sue opinioni (pur con i rilievi fatti appena sopra) non ho nulla da dire in merito se non ribadire la mia estrema contrarietà (e non certo da oggi) ad ogni forma di incentivo che, anche se nasce con le migliori intenzioni, finisce sempre per essere abusato.
Ma questa abitudine non è certo nata con l’auto elettrica !
Debunking best practices
Like many, I sometime engage in debunking mis-information an/or propaganda.
This is a thankless activity, as I often end up as the target of haters and propagandists with ad hominem attacks and straight insults to the point friends are asking me “Why on Earth do you engage with these people? Their motives are often not sincere, and when they are they, are very far from rationality. It’s a discussion you can’t win, and costs you a lot of mental energy”.
The answer is simple: I always think of my kids. All three are grown-ups now, and are very aware of the Internet being a place rife with do-no-gooders who are against Science, sometimes because it’s beyond their comprehension, sometimes because they have an axe to grind, sometimes because they’re engaged in propaganda, plain and simple.
But go back 10-15 years, when they were younger: how would have I reacted if one of their school teachers were a tinfoil hat lunatic and told them the Earth is flat? Would I have sat back thinking “This is none of my business” or “You can’t reason with someone who’s barking mad”?
Of course not (IT IS my business, these are MY children!) and I think all of us would do the same thing (except if I have a reader that’s belonging in the tinfoil hat community, that is).
But I think we must also be aware of the risk facing many parents confronted with a petulant child that keeps asking “Why?” to any successive explanation, the temptation of closing the conversation with “Because I say so !”
So here are my golden principles when debunking:
- Stick to your guns – nobody can be credible in every field of human knowledge so you should stick to subjects where you have strong credentials. My topics of choice are:
- Nuclear Power
- Electric Mobility
- Energy Strategy
- Energy Transition to Renewables.
- This does not mean I don’t discuss other matters such as local or international politics or football, but when I do, I am conscious I am what Deming calls “Just another man with his opinion” and, as Harry Callahan says…
- Know who your target audience is – you would NOT discuss with the teacher, but with his/her pupils; similarly, online you’re not discussing with the person spreading mis-information, but with his/her silent readers (in the ’70s we used to call them “lurkers”); for example, avoid calling people names, as this will encourage lurkers to read on, knowing they won’t just be dragged into another pointless exchange of insults.
- Respect your audience – by providing the full logical reasoning which leads to your conclusion AND offering (linking) as many credible sources as you can. The reader won’t necessarily follow all the links, but the fact you’re offering them shows you’re not afraid of them conducting their own little investigation. Note to media: simply inviting an expert and only allowing him/her to say “This is hogwash!” is NOT enough.
- Pick your sources – in Italian we have an old adage: “Don’t ask the innkeeper if his wine is good”. Sources should be as neutral and independent as possible: a post commenting on official data is always less credible than the data itself. When I comment on the Energy Transition, I try to avoid (whenever possible) linking articles from magazines or websites who are explicitly pro-renewables. Of course, a sub-optimal source link is better than no link at all, so sometimes you have to make compromises…
- Keep an archive – myths and propaganda come in waves. I have found myself repeating the same arguments over and over again, so in the interest of time (and mental sanity) I keep an archive of my debunking posts and sometimes simply respond with a link.
- Use visuals – we all understand a good chart, and in these years I have built a library of over 150 infographics; don’t fret over lack of crediting; you can /like I do) watermark your charts with a discreet attribution note. Remember to link sources also in the chart, because it will travel without your accompanying text.
I will publish this article on LinkedIn, inviting commentary by people who engage in debunking in a much more authoritative way than myself who might have a few more principles to contribute.
Is doubt good?
Being fairly active on LinkedIn, I have had my share of agreements and disagreements. Let me show you the analytics page of three posts from last year; I selected them because they are in three different orders of magnitude when it comes to popularity.
It should be noted that I stick to a relatively narrow focus for my content: energy transition and electric mobility, seldom venturing outside the comfort zone of my expertise.
Wind power provides over 100% of electricity consumption in Denmark.
(June, 2022 – Link)
Only a handful of my posts make the 100k+ category; this did, probably pushed by the unusually many likes it received, though nobody re-posted it.
Many of the comments were positive, but not all (say perhaps two-thirds).
The influence of Big Oil over selected world economies.
(September, 2022 – Link)
The “tens of thousands” group is much more numerous: in comparison to the previous one, it achieved a fifth of the readership with a tenth of likes and a 25th of the comments, but it was reposted 5 times.
It received no negative comments and it also had a more interesting visual, IMHO.
A new study over 88,000 Climate Science papers confirms over 99.9% of them think Climate Change is human-driven.
(January, 2023) – Link)
This post did not achieve a particularly wide reach (even though it might grow in the coming days), but it’s remarkable for its likes-to-comments ratio.
A large majority of comments were negative: as far as I can remember, I have never written a post that attracted so much negative commentary over so little views as this.
Yet the topic of the last post does not strike me as particularly controversial or new: in fact, it’s simply a confirmation (and reinforcement) of something we already knew, i.e. the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed papers by Climate Science researchers and scholars agree that Climate Change is human-driven.
So what are all these negativa commenters taking issue at, and who are they?
Ignoring the simple ad hominem attacks and insults, and a small group of haters who simply dislike anything I say (for reasons unknown, I have never met any of them), none of the negative comments was from someone who had ANY credentials in Climate Science, and very few had anything to do professionally with the energy sector altogether.
They are therefore nothing more than your average Joe Sixpack doubting Science, probably in the same broad category as flat-earthers or moon-landing deniers: “I don’t understand this, but I am scared by the sound of it, so I’ll just refuse to believe it.”
A couple however raised an interesting, epistemological point worthy of some additional commentary, i.e. the value of doubt.
Human knowledge – they argue – advances because someone challenges the statu quo of scientific consensus.
This could be a valid argument, but it’s poorly applied: scientific breakthroughs happen, yes, because Albert Einstein challenges Isaac Newton, but he does so within the accepted frame of the scientific method, i.e. by stating a different theory with adequate mathematical backing and proposing an experimental verification which will either prove or disprove the new theory. Tycho Brahe’s planetary motion observations needed the backing of Kepler’s laws, before elliptical instead of circular orbits were accepted.
The theory and its mathematical foundation must be reviewable by peer scientists, until they are gradually accepted and become the new consensus. Sadly for foaming-at-the-mouth doubters (but luckily for humanity), this process is reserved to the initiated: no popular vote is ever cast to accept a new scientific theory.
The fact that the proposed experiment might not be possible at the time of proposal is irrelevant: Einstein suggested that gravity could bend the path of light back in his 1936 paper on General Relativity, yet the phenomenon was not directly observed until 2017.
In other words, no, simple doubt is not enough.
NIF breakthrough
The onslaught of articles following yesterday’s Press Conference by the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have caused several friends who know my academic background to ask me what I thought its significance was.
I did attend the Press Conference, because my interest was stoked by the astute “leakage” on the WaPo and, like any other soul with some knowledge about nuclear power, I have been following the slow march of fusion towards feasibility since the day I graduated in Nuclear Engineering in June, 1981.
I have written elsewhere about the difference between Fission and Fusion, so I don’t need to repeat that here.
The concept itself is simple enough, and it took only 20 years to go from the initial 80-tons thermonuclear bomb concept imagined by Edward Teller to miniaturized bombs deployed on MIRV ICBMs or submarine-mounted missiles.
But if it’s relatively simple to blow things up, doing so in an orderly manner to generate electricity is many orders of magnitude more difficult, the main hurdle being of course the containment of plasma which needs to be heated to 150 million °C.
Obviously, given the extreme temperatures, a physical vessel is out of question, and two containment technologies were both initially proposed in the 50s, about at the same time when President Truman decided to go ahead with the H-bomb: the first is a magnetic bottle in the shape of a donut (due to Russian scientists Tamm and Sakharov – not everybody knows that the word “tokamak” used to indicate this technology is a Russian language acronym for “Toroidal Chamber with Magnetic Coils”) and the second (initially developed by the LLNL itself) is an inertial containment system obtained by bombarding a tiny (about 10mg) fuel pellet with high energy particles which causes the outer layer to explode sending shock waves into the rest of the pellet which gets immensely compressed to the point fusion is ignited; this compression mechanism is very reminiscent of the thermonuclear bomb principle, but while in the bomb this compression is achieved through the explosion of a trigger fission bomb, here the high-energy particles are shot through an array of lasers.
Each of the two approaches faces immense technical hurdles: the magnetic containment camp needs to overcome magnetic field intensity and stability issues, while the inertial containment camp needs to make sure the hundreds of lasers are focused on exactly the same position and fire at the same instant to avoid asymmetries in the shockwaves.
Many competing research programs have sprung up over time: the NIF at LLNL, the international ITER program located in France, the Joint European Torus in Oxford (UK) , Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, China’s own EAST research program.
For both camps, obviously, the goal is to produce more energy than it’s put in, but this task is so daunting it has been broken into intermediate steps, measured by the progress in the so called Gain Factor (or Q):
- achieving a self-sustaining reaction (Q>1) when the energy generated is more than the energy impinging on the fuel
- achieving combustion (Q>5 est.) when the energy generated is more than the energy needed to service the fuel (e.g. heating it or cooling the lasers)
- achieving ignition (Q=∞) when the energy generated requires zero energy input
An FPP (fusion power plant) can be connected to the grid when it achieves goal #3. Since the late-90s various programs have announced to have achieved goal #1, but since Europe and magnetic containment seemed ahead of the game having achieved Q>1 since last year (a lag also admitted by one of the NIF scientists during the press conference, even though their claimed Q=1.7 is a bit higher than the JET’s own Q=1.25) the LLNL announcement sounded more like a catch-up by the inertial confinement camp, almost a mighty sigh of relief for having proven “it can be done” via inertial containment as, after almost 70 years, it was still in doubt and therefore funding might be cut. I also noticed a creepy insistence by several speakers who stated that the value of this achievement lied in the “further enhancement of our nuclear weapons development” and preservation of “our nuclear deterrent”.
[EDIT Dec. 19th: turns out I was not alone in being disturbed about this: https://bit.ly/3PDw37f%5D
Issues I have
Not a single word was uttered in favor of “clean, abundant energy for all” and THIS remains my biggest gripe about fusion, because I think technology eventually will get there: maybe it will take another 50 years, maybe less; I suspect however that the capital costs of these FPP will be so large to require gargantuan power outputs to give them a chance to compete with ever cheaper renewables, dwarfing the 7-8GW of today’s largest NPPs.
As a consequence, as it happens in conventional nuclear, wind, hydro or solar, while the marginal cost might be zero (or very close to), the produced energy will not be free at all, because the immense upfront cost of the plant needs to be repaid.
Secondly, what worries me is not the technology but the governance of a 100GW FPP: at nuke-level (=very high) capacity factors, ONE such plant would produce TWICE the total electricity consumption of a medium-sized economy like Italy, France or the UK – do I feel comfortable with the idea of one person/entity controlling the EE powering a whole country or two?
Am I confident humanity knows how to protect itself from the risk associated with such a huge single point of failure?
No.
Last but not least, what happened to the rare earths scare? I am constantly bombarded with idiots wringing their hands about the scarcity of Lithium, Cobalt, Neodymium,… you name it (I tried to address these fears here), where are all those people today? If you’re thinking a FPP uses Hydrogen as a fuel (the most abundant element blah, blah, blah…) you could not be more wrong as it does not use the plain-vanilla kind (difficult and expensive enough to make on Earth) but a mixture of two much rarer isotopes of H called 2H or Deuterium (which has one additional neutron in its nucleus) and 3H or Tritium (which has two).
While Deuterium is relatively abundant, Tritium is almost non-existent on our planet and needs to be made by man. In an interesting twist of events, the most economic way to make Tritium is by irradiating……… Lithium !
Debunking the open pit meme
In the last few days, social media are awash with an amended version of the Caterpillar meme I debunked a few days ago.
The text is the usual mix of made-up pseudodata about emissions caused by Lithium mining, but to illustrate it, the trolls are using another picture, which the accompanying text calls “a Lithium mine in China”:
As anyone with a computer can check for themselves, submitting this image to Google Image Search reveals that this is NOT a Lithium mine, NOR it is in China.
This is instead an aerial picture of the Mir diamond mine in Siberia; the article is part of a well-concerted campaign to discredit electric cars, perhaps funded by those who stand to lose the most from the world abandoning fossil fuels.
The reality is that – as we already discussed – the majority of Lithium is extracted from natural brines, with a process not dissimilar to the extraction of salt from seawater. Notable exceptions are the Spodumene mines in Australia, where Lithium is extracted from hard rock in open pit mines like the one in Pilgangora (West Australia).
CO2 emissions linked to battery production has been extensively studied by a host of researchers from all over the world, resulting in a consensus that LCA (LifeCycle Assessment) of an electric car (including production, use and end-of-life) is between 50% and 75% less than that of an ICE car, a gap which will continue to widen as the world’s grids are progressing towards decarbonization.
If you run into such false information, please remember it is your duty to report the person posting it!
False information
≠
freedom of speech !
Debunking the Caterpillar meme
Have you seen this meme?
Let’s start with what is true: this indeed IS a Caterpillar 994-series excavator used in the mining industry.
Before we start dissecting the many falsehoods included in this short meme, let’s take what it says at face value and follow through.
Burning 1 liter of diesel fuel produces 2.7 kg of CO2 (source), so in 12 hours of work our “toy” excavator spews 2,7 tons of CO2 to dig enough Lithium for one battery.
How long will such a battery run? Well, the battery of my electric car is guaranteed for 160.000 km, which is a typical value, so we can assume (unless OEMs are suicidal) that this is the bare minimum mileage a battery is expected to last. During these 160.000 km an average diesel car would produce at least 24 tons of CO2 (assuming 150 g/km, which is rather conservative and certainly not characteristic of a car which can make nought-to-one-hundred in less than 5 seconds), while the electric car would consume around 27.000 kWh causing emissions which vary from country to country, but taking the EU average of 300 g/kWh (source) we can calculate another 8 tons of CO2.
To sum up:
- the ICE will produce 160,000 * 150 = 24 tons of CO2
- the electric car will produce 27,000 * 300 = 8,1 + 2.7 = 10,8 tons of CO2 per year
Whoever thought up the meme, therefore, didn’t think it through carefully, because it actually demonstrates that the electric car EVEN WITH THE MEME’S DATA, cuts emissions by 55%.
But wait, it gets better
However – as I hinted before – there is plenty of false information in the meme, so let’s run the numbers again, this time using real data.
First of all, a Cat994 24hr tank contains a whopping 5,700 liters of diesel fuel (source), so we can assume its consumption for 12 hrs to be around half that, producing 7.7 tons of CO2.
Now, how much Lithium is actually needed for a battery? As you can see, regardless of the chemistry of the cathode, we need about 1 kg of Lithium for every 10 kWh of capacity. Again let’s take the worst case, i.e. the biggest battery in the Tesla range (100 kWh), for which therefore we’ll need 10 kg of Lithium.
Mind you, Lithium hard rock extraction happens essentially only in Australia, as everywhere else it is extracted from natural brines, a much gentler process that does not require excavators AT ALL. Moreover “spent” batteries can be completely and economically recycled, but we’ll not bother with such minutiæ.
The ore containing Lithium is called Spodumene and in the Australian mines, it carries a waste-to-ore ratio ranging from 6:1 to 10:1 to obtain ore whose Lithium content is about 6% (source).
So, to obtain the 10 kg of Lithium needed for our battery we will have to move 10 * 10 / 6% = 1.7 tons of rock.
The bucket of the Cat994 has an average capacity of 40 tons, depending on the options (source), so if each round trip lasts, say, 20 mins, in the 12 hours we are considering, this monster moves 1,440 tons of rock, or enough material to build 1,440 / 1.7 = 847 of the biggest Tesla batteries, bringing the Lithium mining-related emissions of a single battery to 7.7 / 847 = 9 kg of CO2.
To sum up again, this time with the correct numbers:
- the ICE will still produce 160,000 * 150 = 24 tons of CO2
- the electric car will produce 27,000 * 300 = 8,1 + 0,009 = 8,01 tons of CO2 or, if you prefer, 67% less!
These memes are not the work of stupid haters, but come straight from a campaign whose objective is to discredit the electric car; your guess is as good as mine as to who the authors of the campaign could be.
If there is little we can do to stop misinformation, we can avoid helping it, by double checking what we share.
Son of GeekTalk 