Are plug-in electric cars the new ethanol?
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
July 1, 2009
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| Peter Arnell, left, Chief Innovation Officer of Peapod, shows Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger, right, the new Peapod electric car in Sacramento, Calif., The Chrysler built Peapod is a low-speed, four passenger neighborhood electric vehicle with a top speed of 25 miles per hour and is legal to operate on roads with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour or less.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) |
In the name of “clean energy,” Washington is subsidizing a switch from gasoline-powered cars to cars powered mostly by coal. In pursuit of “energy independence,” the feds may foster addiction to a fuel concentrated in a socialist-run South American country.
Lobbying by automakers, chemical companies and coal-dependent power producers has yielded a slew of subsidies and mandates for electric cars. However promising a gasoline-free automobile may sound, anyone who followed the government’s mad rush to ethanol fuel in recent years has to worry about the clean promise of the electric car yielding dirty results.
Ethanol — an alcohol fuel made from corn or other plants — has been pushed relentlessly on the American people by a Congress under the influence of a powerful ethanol lobby. Touted as a clean fuel, the government-created ethanol boom has contributed to water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation and even air pollution.
Lithium could be the new ethanol, thanks to the government push for electric cars. Lithium is an element found in nature, and lithium-ion batteries are at the heart of the next generation of electric cars. Compared with lead acid (the standard car battery) and nickel metal hydride (the batteries in today’s hybrids), lithium-ion batteries are less toxic, more powerful and longer lasting.
But what would happen if electric cars and these batteries gain wide use?
Before we even get to the batteries, recall that although all-electric, plug-in cars emit nothing, somebody needs to burn something for the car to move. Here, the burning happens at the power plant instead of under your hood.
The Department Energy estimates that coal provides half our electricity. A recent Government Accountability Office study reported that a plug-in compact car, if it is recharged at an outlet drawing its juice from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4 to 5 percent. A plug-in sport utility vehicle provides a CO2 savings of 19 to 23 percent.
If the cleaner and cheaper fuel of a plug-in causes someone to drive even a bit more, it’s a break-even on CO2. GAO co-author Mark Gaffigan raised the question to CNSNews.com; “If you are using coal-fired power plants and half the country’s electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?”
Back to the lithium: The GAO report warns that “extracting lithium from locations where it is abundant, such as in South America, could pose environmental challenges that would damage the ecosystems in those areas.”
Those more concerned with energy independence than green fuels also have reason to doubt electric cars: About half of the world’s lithium reserves are in Bolivia. A major shift to lithium-powered cars “could substitute reliance on one foreign resource [oil] for another [lithium],” the GAO writes.
The promise of ubiquitous battery-powered cars has spurred billions in subsidies for electric cars and lithium batteries.
The Energy Department budgeted $104 million this year for electric-car research. The 2005 energy bill included $22.5 billion of loan guarantees available for making electric-car factories. Obama’s stimulus earmarked $300 million for the government to buy electric cars, and created a $2,500 tax credit for private purchase of electric cars.
More acutely, Tesla, which currently makes a $100,000 electric car, just received $465 million in loans from the Energy Department as part of a $38 billion loan project to improve fuel efficiency.
Have Congress, the White House and the Energy Department thoroughly researched and answered the questions about lithium’s sustainability before piling on the subsidies?
More likely, the industry lobbying effort has persuaded Washington to press ahead with electric-car subsidies.
Obviously Tesla has lobbied hard for these subsidies, but so have some other interesting characters. For instance, Duke Energy, a power company with no investment in any sort of cars, lobbies for electric-car subsidies and promotes these cars on their Web site.
Why? Duke, which gets about half of its power from coal, profits when drivers give up gasoline for electricity.
And of course, there’s the lithium lobby. FMC Corp. is the largest lithium producer in the United States. The company employs a dozen lobbying firms and operates its own political action committee. FMC has leaned on Congress and the Energy Department for electric car subsidies.
If the electric car lobby succeeds, brace for another harsh lesson in unintended consequences.
