Forum Debates the EV for Ireland
Last week the Green Power Forum hosted a panel of experts who each spoke for roughly four minutes on the issue of electric vehicles. There were two sceptics, Paul Witherington of Traffic Watch UK and Dr Will Smith of UCD. The panel also included Joseph Baretta from PSA Peugeot Citroen, Tom Smith from Nissan, Craig Cheetham from GM and ESB’s Senan McGrath.
Senan McGrath outlined the ESB’s commitment to EV infrastructure giving a set target of 1,500 on-street charge points by the end of 2011. Paul Witherington then went on to claim that the electric car is more inefficient than the traditional combustion engine (28% versus 29%). This was disputed by Dr Smith who pointed out that this was probably assuming the worst case scenario of one world and the best case scenario of another. He did, however, attack the idea of EV fleets leading to significant carbon savings. A tenth of the national fleet producing zero emissions would lead to an overall emissions reduction of 1% since transport only accounts for 10% of the country’s overall emissions.
The statements from the representative OEMs were less interesting. Apparently the LEAF is a ‘blast to drive’ and GM gave it’s typical rehashing of it’s plug-in concept. Craig Cheetham did give a delivery date: September 2011 for the Opel Ampera. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.
As the debate opened up to the floor there seemed to be a collective sense of uncertainty but it didn’t accrue. The discussion gradually turned to the Irish context with Mr McGrath repeatedly pointing out that the ESB want EVs alongside its strategy to ramp up on renewables. Paul Witherington did eventually concede that his view of EVs being a ‘non-starter’ were not so applicable in light of what he called the discovery of ‘free energy’.
Mr Witherington’s remarks made it ever more clear that the dividing line between believers and sceptics lies with renewable energy and potentially the green economy as a whole. It does make sense. If you believe that we will never alter a carbon intensive power generation system then the electric car will never lead to a significant reductions in emissions. Mr Witherington pushed this further. If carbon is the issue, then according to his efficiency figures the mass uptake of EVs would actually increase the output of carbon emissions.
His claims take advantage of an odd efficiency inversion with regard to the electric car. On a motorways, roughly the same amount of energy is involved as the internal combustion engine. In an urban context this is vastly different. The stop-start nature of our commuting habits do favour the electric vehicle by a factors of something 2.5 to 1.
It must also be pointed out that Mr Witherington felt at liberty to use the theoretical ‘MUSIC’ combustion engine in his comparisons without taking into account any future developments in battery technology. The floor did ask this question and Mr McGrath explained how a number of different chemistries were being developed., some with highly promising charge times and energy densities.
Dr Smith’s point still stands. You can’t argue with the basic maths. 10% of 10% is indeed 1% but the ESB made it clear than EVs were not being thought of as a panacea. As Mr Smith put it, ‘carbon is a non-issue here’, but only if we look at reduction measures from a very narrow lens. Mr McGrath countered that the 10% target for 2020 was just ‘a signpost’. Taken away from the bigger picture, it’s a relatively meaningless target. The real meat of the policy measure revolves around more distant dates: 2035 and 2050. The ESB plans to be carbon neutral by the former. If they ramp up wind generation capacity, they will need places to store the excess energy and they see electric cars as one potential solution.
It is worth noting that there seemed to be more to the general conviction than load capacity. Graham Brennan of SEI spoke up at the end. He made it clear that transport electrification was about more than shaving a percentage point off our total carbon emissions. It is about energy security and promoting the drive towards a different kind of economy where renewables play a big part.
The meeting finished up on a positive note with most participants armed firmly with an appreciation of the Irish context.
