Can electric vehicles replace conventionally-powered cars and trucks on a wide scale? There are two significant challenges. One is the production and distribution of additional electrical power to run millions of cars and trucks. The other is mining and refining the metals for the batteries that will store that power to run those vehicles.
In 2022, US vehicles burned 135 billion gallons of gasoline and 47 billion gallons of diesel. If we had the goal of reducing those figures by 25% over the next 15 to 20 years by replacing that gasoline and diesel with battery power, could it be done?
If the new electric vehicles in, say, 2035 will travel as many miles as the vehicles they replace traveled in 2022, we will need electrical power equal to the energy of 35 billion gallons of gasoline and 12 billion gallons (rounding) of diesel.
The constraint is that the United States already uses nearly all of the electrical power that we produce. The US generates 4,120 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in a year. We buy small amounts from Canada (50 billion kilowatts or so depending on the year, net of U.S. exports to Canada) and even smaller amounts from Mexico, but they don’t affect the numbers in any significant way.
Almost all of the electricity currently produced in the U.S. is consumed for residential, commercial, and industrial use, that is, for uses other than powering vehicles. If we are to maintain current levels of energy consumption for things other than vehicles, then the power to move electric vehicles will have to come from new electrical production.
One gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.5 kilowatts. One gallon of diesel is equivalent to 40.7 kilowatts. (Source: EPA.) To replace 35 billion gallons of gasoline and 12 billion gallons of diesel with electrical power means producing approximately 1,800 billion kilowatts of electrical power that is not being produced today.[1]
Where is that electrical power to come from? In 2023, about 60% of U.S. electricity is produced by burning natural gas and coal. It seems pointless to use hydrocarbons to produce electricity in order to avoid burning hydrocarbons as fuel for vehicles. We should not expect state and federal regulators to permit plants that burn natural gas and coal to come online to produce a significant share of the 1,800 billion kilowatts needed to produce power for electric vehicles.
We get roughly 20% of our electrical power from nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is clean in that it does not produce carbon dioxide, but it does produce nuclear waste. Nuclear power is definitely not favored by regulators. It is not likely that nuclear plants will receive permits to come online to produce part of the needed 1,800 billion kilowatts.
About 6% of power comes from hydroelectric dams. There is little to no appetite among regulators to approve new hydroelectric projects.
The rest, nearly 14%, comes from renewables, principally wind and solar power. Renewables face three constraints. One is the amount of land required to produce large amounts of electricity from solar or wind power. A second is the variable nature of the inputs – the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Finally, the new power generated from wind and solar sources will have to be transmitted from the places where it will be produced to the places where it is to be consumed.
A solar array that produces one million kilowatts, a gigawatt, requires 32 acres of land. One billion kilowatts require 32,000 acres of land, about 50 square miles. Using solar power to replace 25% of the liquid fuels consumed by today’s vehicles would require 1,800 x 50 = 90,000 square miles of suitable land. The U.S. has 3,000,000 square miles, so there may be enough land. But are there 90,000 square miles of vacant land in sunny places, not being used for anything else, not part of a pristine wilderness, in a location that can be connected to the existing power grid and where no one is going to protest or raise legal objections? That’s a problem that may have a solution with enough planning. Are there plans being developed to convert tens of thousands of square miles to solar power generation?
What about wind turbines? A wind turbine with a 1.5-megawatt rating produces 0.5 megawatts in practice and requires 2 acres of land. Wind farms that can produce our needed 1,800 billion kilowatts of power would take up something on the order of 250,000 square miles of land.
That problem can be finessed in part by placing wind turbines offshore. The Ocean 1 Project plans to place big 4-megawatt wind turbines off the coast of New Jersey. The project will produce 1,100 megawatts of electrical power when it comes online in the next decade. This is a massive project[2], but 1,100 megawatts amount to, pardon the expression, a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to replace the energy equivalent of 25% of the gasoline and diesel consumed by the nation’s vehicles in 2022.[3]
To address the issue that the sun doesn’t shine all of the time and the wind doesn’t blow all the time, these wind and solar power plants would require backup from natural gas or nuclear power plants. Even the most ardent supporters of wind and solar power concede that natural gas power-generating plants are needed to supplement the power that wind and sun can produce.
Further, if all of the required electricity is produced from renewables, it will have to be transmitted from the places where it is produced to the places it is needed. The existing grid is at capacity, so additional transmission lines will be needed, something well in excess of 100,000 miles of it. There is no sign that the planning, permitting, site acquisition, or procurement needed for such a massive project is underway.
The batteries that will hold the electrical power that will move the fleet of electric-powered vehicles require massive quantities of copper, lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth minerals. A fascinating presentation by a gentleman named Mark Mills projects that the transition to electrically powered vehicles will require the production of ten times the amount of copper currently being produced and (rough numbers) 40 times the amount of lithium, 25 times the amount of graphite, 20 times the amount of cobalt and nickel, and seven times the quantity of rare earth metals now being produced. In fairness, I think Mr. Mills’ numbers are based on a transition of 100% of vehicles by 2040. I am trying to project a transition of only 25%, so we can divide the massive increases in metal production by 4. It is still far more than the world produces or has ever produced.[4]
Mr. Mills adds two other important points. One is that it takes sixteen years on average to bring a new copper mine on board. The second is that if all of the needed metals are mined, the ore has to be refined to produce the required minerals. China is the world leader in the refining of the metals that we will need to bring about the energy transition. It is part of China’s long-term economic plan to be a world leader in refining these minerals.
Electric vehicles take a long time to charge, they have a limited range, and they become fussy when the weather turns cold. Those are some of the reasons that consumers have resisted buying them. My assumption is that all of these problems will be solved. Large numbers of very bright people, dedicated to reducing the production of carbon dioxide, are working on these problems. I frequently see headlines mentioning a breakthrough on one technological front or another. I don’t think you have to be a wild-eyed optimist to believe that these engineering problems will be solved in time.
But developing a quick-charge high-capacity battery doesn’t matter if the millions of batteries needed aren’t produced because of a shortage of (aptly named) rare earth minerals. Nor will the production of those batteries matter until the electrical power to charge those batteries is on hand.
The question is not whether technological breakthroughs will occur. The question is whether the sinews – the power generating plants, the transmission lines, the minerals for producing batteries, and the battery production plants – will be available to deliver the new technology to the people who will need it to maintain their mobility.
— Gerry Bresslour
[1] Of that amount, 1,600 billion kilowatts are contained in the gasoline and diesel that we are replacing. An additional allowance is required for the power lost when a battery is charged. Right now, between 10% and 30% of the power supplied to charge a battery is lost. I’ve noticed this effect when charging small batteries at home. The battery becomes warm during recharging. The warmth is the energy lost in the transfer.
We can assume that charging will become more efficient as time goes by, but it will never reach 100%. The demand to put 1,600 billion kilowatts of electrical power into American cars, buses, and trucks means that some 1,800 billion kilowatts of power would have to be delivered to charging stations.
[2] See ocwfactsheet1021.ashx (azureedge.net)
[3] 1,100 megawatts would be just over one billion kilowatts. As calculated above, we need 1,800 billion kilowatts of power. The New Jersey wind farm will produce less than one-tenth of one percent of the replacement power needed.
The Passing Scene 