Diesels greener than battery cars, says Swiss gov report

Get a TDi estate not an EV, and save the planet!

By Lewis Page Posted in Environment, 31st August 2010 14:57 GMT Swiss boffins have mounted an investigation into the largely unknown environmental burdens of electric cars using lithium-ion batteries, and say that the manufacturing and disposal of batteries presents no insurmountable barriers to electric motoring. However, their analysis reveals that modern diesel cars are actually better for the environment than battery ones. The revelations come in a new report issued by Swiss government research lab EMPA, titled Contribution of Li-Ion Batteries to the Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles. The Swiss boffins, having done some major research into the environmental burdens of making and disposing of li-ion batteries - to add to the established bodies of work on existing cars - say that battery manufacture and disposal aren't that big a deal. However, in today's world, with electricity often made by burning coal or gas, a battery car is still a noticeable eco burden: The main finding of this study is that the impact of a Li-ion battery used in [a battery-powered car] for transport service is relatively small. In contrast, it is the operation phase that remains the dominant contributor to the environmental burden caused by transport service as long as the electricity for the [battery car] is not produced by renewable hydropower ... A break even analysis shows that an [internal combustion engined vehicle] would need to consume less than 3.9 L/100km to cause lower [environmental impacts] than a [battery car] ... Consumptions in this range are achieved by some small and very efficient diesel [cars], for example, from Ford and Volkswagen. Actually quite a lot of the new diesels are in the better-than-battery ballpark, according to UK government figures. The notional battery car considered by the EMPA analysts was a Volkswagen Golf with its normal drivetrain replaced by a battery one: but it seems that you would be doing slightly better for the environment to buy an ordinary new Golf with a 1.6 litre "BlueMotion" injected turbodiesel - which would be a lot cheaper. That would consume 3.8 l/100km, not 3.9. So would a new Mini Cooper D hatchback or a new Ford Focus, actually. And if you could bear to go for something a little smaller - VW Polo rather than Golf - you'd be streets ahead on the environmental front, down as low as 3.4 l/100km with more than 15 per cent of the car's in-service emissions clipped off compared to the 3.9 l/100km battery-car baseline. As the Swiss boffins tell us, it's the in-service energy use and emissions which count most. You could even treat yourself to a small estate car - the Skoda Fabia - and beat a battery Golf by a large margin in terms of eco-credentials, according to the EMPA analysis. Of course, battery car lovers will argue that's not the point. Swiss electricity is already largely generated by carbon-free nuclear and hydropower plants (carbon-free provided you don't count all the concrete used to build them, that is). These and other technologies not yet much used (solar, wind, tidal etc) may one day put the battery car far ahead of internal-combustion ones in terms of carbon emissions. And if nobody buys battery cars now, they'll stay expensive and scarce forever, so it's still possible to view the act of buying one as green even today when they actually do more damage to the environment than the right internal-combustion model. But if you just want to emit less carbon right away, it seems you should buy a modern eco-diesel rather than an electric vehicle.

Hefty physicist: Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'

'Academia corrupted' by flow of green greenbacks
By Lewis Page Posted in Environment, 11th October 2010 15:58 GMT Updated A heavyweight American boffin has dubbed the global warming movement "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist", and resigned in protest from the American Physical Society, saying that the society has deliberately stifled debate on the subject. The prof's resignation letter is quoted in full at the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the warming-sceptic think tank set up by former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and energy minister Nigel Lawson. The GWPF, apart from various British politicians, counts among its academic backers the renowned physicist Freeman Dyson. In the letter, physicist Harold Lewis (emeritus prof at the University of California) writes as follows: It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS [the American Physical Society] before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare ... I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist. Lewis goes on to describe his and other climate-sceptic physicists' running feud with APS headquarters, in which the sceptics sought to prevent the APS from describing the case for human-driven global warming as "incontrovertible". The professor states that he and other sceptics were repeatedly stifled despite the fact that there were more than enough of them to call for a debate on the matter under the Society's rules: the sceptics weren't even allowed to email other society members. In Professor Lewis' opinion, physics in particular and science in general has been corrupted on the issue of climate change by the very large amounts of research funding and large numbers of academic jobs which are now completely dependent on global warming being a massive global menace. (As an example, British universities nowadays have on staff lecturers in "Carbon Management", advising us not to wash so much: famous US institutions also have such people.) Addressing APS President Curtis Callan of Princeton uni, Lewis writes: Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise ... I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

The letter can be read in full courtesy of the GWPF here. We've asked Professor Lewis for any further comment but haven't heard back from him as yet: we'll let you know if there's anything more.

Updated to Add
We've now heard back from Professor Lewis, who confirms that the letter is indeed his work and he stands by it.