I recently reading Saul Griffith’s Quarterly Essay - The Wires That Bind.
The possibilities of electrifying everything and decoupling ourselves from the unsustainable coal and gas that still powers the majority of our machines was fascinating.
Helpfully, there were some statistics and I’m jotting down a few here for reference:
Residential electricity usage breakdown
- An average family might use about 15T CO2 in a year. To get this to 0 it is made up of:
- About 20% goes by converting general electricity usage (lights, dishwasher, etc) to full renewables
- Heating and cooktop is maybe another 20% when this is converted to electric and induction
- Finally for an average household with two cars (at least one too many in my opinion) this accounts for 60% of remaining emissions if this is converted to renewable-powered electric vehicles.
Brief thoughts
- Cost to run: Thinking about solar panels, financing it, and a depreciated cost and how that compares to paying for electricity over a time period like 5-10 years comes out preferably - perhaps $2000 a year with solar compared to ~$7000 a year with fossil fuels.
- Energy abundance: Griffith talks about extremely cheap or free energy during peak periods. It’s interesting considering the market going further than this: energy so abundant people are paid to use it. What industries can be created when we have such an abundance of effectively free energy?
My take on decarbonisation and our relationship with cars
The biggest emitter of CO2 in Australia is the burning of coal for electricity. The second biggest emitter is fuelling cars and trucks to move us and the things we own and buy around. It is a major area to solve in decarbonisation.
Sure - replacing all cars with electric vehicles is the simplest answer but why not think a bit more revolutionarily than that.
This is an opportunity to rethink our relationship with cars. The current trend is they are getting bigger - this is a foolish mistake. It’s a waste of resources and requires bigger batteries or more petrol to do the same task as smaller, lighter cars.
We simply don’t need so many cars. The average household has 1.8 cars. 25% of trips in the USA are less than 12km. I think in Australia this percentage would be higher. Most of these trips really don’t need to be done by car. Walking and cycling need to be a larger part of the private transport mix, not just to help with decarbonisation but also to reduce congestion and for health and financial outcomes.
Having a car is the biggest waste of money you can have right now. Between registration, maintenance, fuel and insurance - the costs of car ownership are larger than any other cost bar a mortgage or rent.
- Bigger cars isn’t just an individual problem, it’s a waste for taxpayers. Double the weight is 16x more impact on the roads, which increases road maintenance costs for everyone despite the fact that the owner of that vehicle doesn’t contribute more. If you want to drive a big, fat car, pay your fair share.
- Something surprising to me was the that the energy efficiency of cars is not horrendously worse than public transport or bikes. Fossil fuel cars can be up to 10 times worse than something like a tram, or 40 times worse than bikes, but a 2 passenger Tesla 3 is allegedly on par with with a tram trip. However I’m a little sceptical of the assumptions behind it so we’ll leave it at that.
My main worry is that the lobbyists win and we stall on progress. However, given the financial distinction, health benefits, economic opportunities and environmental necessity I optimistically hold onto some hope the transition can accelerate. We’ve made a start at least.
