Legislators shouldn’t Californicate Virginia or America on EVs and Inexperienced Power
Paul Driessen
Once they open their 30-day session January 11, Virginia’s Senate and Home of Delegates should appropriate some severe vitality errors they made two years in the past, when Democrats managed almost all the state authorities and handed the “Virginia Clear Economic system Act.”
One in every of its party-line provisions requires that Virginia undertake California’s requirement that solely low emission automobiles (LEVs) be bought by mannequin yr 2025 and solely zero emission automobiles (ZEVs) by MY 2035. Meaning in precisely twelve years solely new electrical automobiles (EVs) could possibly be bought in Virginia.
Once more mimicking California, along with EVs, the VCEA additionally requires a large shift from inexpensive, dependable coal and pure gas-generated electrical energy to costly, weather-dependent, land-intensive wind and photo voltaic electrical energy, stabilized and backed up by enormous batteries.
As I’ve defined beforehand (right here, right here, right here and right here), that is unworkable. Texas, Buffalo and the Midwest have demonstrated that heavy reliance on wind and photo voltaic can carry lethal blackouts throughout blizzards. California instructed residents to not cost their soon-to-be-mandatory EVs throughout final summer time’s warmth waves, to stop blackouts. Switzerland may ban EV charging this winter for a similar purpose.
The Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition PAC (SUVGOP) acknowledges these realities, and understands that the wind generators, photo voltaic panels and transmission traces won’t be in Democrat strongholds like Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church and Richmond. They are going to be in stunning rural Virginia, which will even be hardest hit by bans on gasoline and diesel automobiles. SUVGOP has due to this fact gotten the ball rolling on reversing these ill-advised legal guidelines, by launching a marketing campaign to repeal LEV/ZEV mandates.
SUVGOP calls its marketing campaign “Don’t CA my VA.” (Once I lived within the Centennial State, bumper stickers proclaimed a crasser model of this message: “Don’t Californicate Colorado.”)
Arguments for avoiding or terminating LEV/ZEV mandates are compelling – for Virginia and America.
* Whereas nice for brief hauls and a few motorists, EVs don’t get you far alongside in your 800-mile trip journey; recharging can take hours, relying on a number of components; and charging stations are extra restricted off major highways.
* You don’t need to get caught in your EV throughout a hurricane evacuation or blizzard, particularly since already restricted battery life decreases in chilly climate and with heater or AC use.
* EVs (and backup batteries) can burst into chemical-fueled infernos, particularly in the event that they get immersed in water. That may be catastrophic and lethal if the EV is in a house or underground storage (or on a cargo ship loaded with EVs). The fires can’t be extinguished with water.
* EVs require 3-4 instances extra metals than internal-combustion automobiles: copper, iron, nickel, aluminum, cobalt, lithium, uncommon earths and others. These supplies don’t simply seem through Supplies Acquisition for World Industrial Change mechanisms (MAGIC). They have to be dug out and processed, someplace.
China’s BYD Auto firm alone used 13,000 tons of copper to make EVs in 2016. Based mostly on common porphyry ore deposits at present, each 100,000 tons of copper requires processing 23,000,000 tons of copper ore, after eradicating 35,000,000 tons of overlying rock – utilizing explosives and fossil fuels!
Begin calculating what number of billions of tons of copper and different metals and minerals could be required for all of the EVs, wind generators, photo voltaic panels, transmission traces, and grid-stabilizing and backup batteries Virginia, or your state, or the USA or total world, are planning to mandate. Then calculate what number of trillions of tons of ore that will require – and the way a lot mining, blasting, processing and gas.
The place will all that work happen? In whose backyards? With how a lot ecological destruction, air and water air pollution, hazardous waste technology, slave and youngster labor, and human well being dangers?
“Clear” vitality and automobiles? There could also be zero emissions out of Virginia EV tailpipes – perhaps even on the electrical energy supply, if it comes from wind or solar energy, when the wind is blowing and solar is shining.
However there isn’t any “zero emissions” for mining, processing and manufacturing. It simply occurs elsewhere, typically in Africa or Asia, typically by Chinese language firms – affecting another person’s air and water high quality, surroundings, croplands, wildlife habitats, wildlife, well being and wellbeing.
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of acres of Virginia and US lands could be lined with generators, panels, transformers and transmission traces; hundreds of thousands of birds, bats and different animals could be killed yearly.
Backside line: There is no such thing as a such factor as “clear, inexperienced, renewable, sustainable” vitality or automobiles. It’s only a matter of the place and the way and the way a lot the mining and supplies processing, manufacturing and emissions happen. It’s only a matter of how good the “inexperienced” PR packages are; and whether or not US environmentalists, journalists and politicians acknowledge … or cancel and censor … these realities.
Earth’s atmospheric, oceanic and local weather techniques are world. The lack of habitats and species is a world downside. We should always assume globally, and act domestically.
Concerning backup batteries, the VCEA mandates acquisition of three,100 megawatts of storage. Assuming legislators meant 3,100 megawatt-hours, this may require some 36,000 Tesla half-ton 85-kWh modules; and it might nonetheless meet lower than 1% of Virginia’s common day by day electrical energy consumption (and fewer than 0.5% of its peak demand). This doesn’t embrace batteries to stabilize wind-solar grid fluctuations.
Virginia legislators due to this fact want to deal with these vitally necessary points, as nicely – with some precision:
* What number of wind generators, photo voltaic panels, transformers, backup/grid-balancing battery modules, and miles of latest transmission traces will The Outdated Dominion want to exchange current coal and fuel technology?
* What number of extra will it require after half of all automobiles, vans and buses are electrical? After eating places and new and transformed houses are pressured to have electrical residence and water heating, stoves and ovens, as a substitute of fuel – and improve residence and neighborhood electrical techniques to deal with the added masses?
* The place and on whose property will all these “renewable” techniques and energy traces be put in? What number of hundreds of thousands of acres of land and coastal areas (and their wildlife) might be impacted? Will residents or native governments be capable to veto developments? How typically will eminent area be employed?
* What number of hundreds of thousands (billions?) of tons of metals, minerals, carbon-fiber composites, plastics, concrete and different supplies might be wanted? How a lot ore, overburden and fuels? What number of tons of air pollution might be emitted, cumulatively, all through the mining-processing-manufacturing-transportation course of?
* What number of of those supplies (and generators, panels, battery modules and transformers) will come from China or different adversarial nations, or their surrogates?
* Underneath what air pollution management, wildlife habitat and endangered species safety, office security, slave and youngster labor, and different “accountable sourcing” legal guidelines will all this work be performed?
* The place will worn out, damaged and out of date photo voltaic panels, huge wind turbine blades and different non-recyclable gear be landfilled?
* What number of billions or trillions of {dollars} will all this value Virginia and US ratepayers and taxpayers?
It takes greater than declaring that actions taken beneath “clear economic system” legal guidelines are “within the public curiosity” to make it so. It’s important that legislators look past tailpipes, and past Virginia or US borders, to keep away from destroying the planet with wind and photo voltaic, to reserve it from fossil fuels and “artifical local weather change.”
The 2023 legislative session is an ideal alternative to begin reexamining “clear economic system” assumptions, misconceptions and mandates – and implementing reality-based Surroundings-Social-Governance (ESG) ideas. Are Virginia’s legislators as much as the duty?
Paul Driessen is senior coverage analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and creator of books and articles on vitality, atmosphere, local weather and human rights points.
