Whoops this should be'
However there will be no choice but to buy EVs as the oil
companies slowly reduce their presence in our economy.
Or buy a horse !

Hasbeen, you asked me about the life cycle of the emissions of co2
for EVs.
I haven't a clue about that and to me it is not relevant.
I guess we could look at steam cars, now that would be interesting !
In a time when refineries are closing, major oil fields are becoming
uneconomic, and the tight oil companies are going belly up, what else
is there that can do the job other than coal and uranium ?

Now you are talking Bazz. I believe the future, if there is any future for privately owned transport, would be a chip of nuclear material, installed on the production like, generating steam for the life of the vehicle.

Meanwhile there is plenty of petroleum, we have heaps of shale oil here in Oz, & it will be the cheapest most useful fuel for many decades, unless governments make it less so. With out current fuel excise petrol would be half the price, but all those lovely government services in education, health & a lot of other stuff would not be possible. Getting sick or injured would be a recipe for bankruptcy.

What do you think the cost of electric motoring is likely to be when the replacement cost of fuel taxes is loaded onto it.

Incidentally, I am now paying $20 for the LiPo batteries for my remote control planes, that cost $6 just 3 years ago. Don't expect the reduction in battery costs the greenies promise.

NUCLEAR UNNECESSARY: AS COAL-FIRED PLANTS CLOSE, PRICES ARE FALLING

Second reason I'm swinging away from Nuclear Power Plants - nuclear lacks ramp-up despatchability. Ideas drawn from The Conversation via ABC, 17 March 2021 reports http://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-17/electricity-has-become-a-jigsaw-coal-missing-pieces/13253392

Before South Australia Northern coal-fired generator closed, South Australia had Australia's highest price. In 2021 after closure of Northern in 2016, and 4 years after the closure of Hazelwood in 2017, South Australia and Victoria have wholesale prices one-third lower than those in NSW and two-fifths lower than those in Queensland.

South Australia became a renewables powerhouse. The ANU's Hugh Saddler points out that renewable-sourced power — wind and grid solar — now accounts for 62% of power supplied to the South Australian grid, and at times for all of it.

When the wind doesn't blow and not much sun prices can get high. But coal can barely move.

As with NUCLEAR power, coal-fired power needs to be either on (in which case it can only slowly ramp up) or off, in which case turning it on from a standing start would be way too slow.

Batteries can respond instantly to a loss of power from other sources (although not for very long), hydro can respond in 30 to 70 seconds, gas peaking plants can respond within minutes.

Hydro or gas could be turned on in the morning when we turned on our lights and heaters and factories got down to business, and coal-fired power could be slowly ramped up. To some extent gas will be a transition fuel, able to fill gaps in a way that coal cannot.

But gas has become expensive, and batteries are being installed everywhere. Energy Australia plans to replace its Yallourn power station with Australia's first four-hour utility-scale battery with a capacity of 350 megawatts, more than any battery operating in the world today. South Australia is planning an even bigger one, up to 900 megawatts.

As cheap as coal-fired power was and is, it is being forced out of the system by sources of power that are cheaper and more dispatchable.

Batteries are OK as a standby while gas ramps up, but gas produces too much CO2 as well. After Yallourn and Liddell close we are going to have daily blackouts.

David

Those who seem to have the fantasy that coal will soon be phased out for electricity generation in Australia should study www.anero.id to get views into proper perspective. It provides ongoing reports of daily output of all forms of generation used for the Eastern Australia grid. Note the total small proportion of wind and solar and how with even eg doubling or trebling the capacity it is still not much. Also, they cannot provide reliable base load. Then remember these big expensive batteries can just store a very small proportion of total daily requirements and do not generate anything. Is an idiotical claim that a big battery can replace a coal fired power station.