# Norwegian Study Finds Problems with Electric Cars



## EVDL Archive (Jul 26, 2007)

Journal of Industrial Ecology article by Norwegian University of Science and Technology finds life cycle environment impact more than conventional cars.

More...


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

In case anyone was wondering that study had some major flaws in methodology, and seems to have significant ties to the oil industry.


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## Jason Lattimer (Dec 27, 2008)

Is this the same country that spends a fortune on their hydrogen infrastructure?


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## EVEngineeer (Apr 11, 2012)

"Although EVs are an important technological breakthrough with substantial potential environmental benefits, these cannot be harnessed everywhere and in every condition."

They make it sound like a new concept, when EVs have been around for over 200 years. The public could have bought an EV from a company for over 100 years ago.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

> Is this the same country that spends a fortune on their hydrogen infrastructure?


And get a large income from exporting it's oil, while having an electrical grid almost entirely hydropower, which makes EV's completely clean during their use. Norway probably has the highest percentage of EV's per person in the world.


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## rochesterricer (Jan 5, 2011)

IIRC, there have already been a couple majors studies that have researched the life cycle emissions. From what I remember, they said electric cars are only worse if your grid is powered entirely by the dirtiest coal powerplants in use today, like some of the plants in China.


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## skooler (Mar 26, 2011)

EVEngineeer said:


> "Although EVs are an important technological breakthrough with substantial potential environmental benefits, these cannot be harnessed everywhere and in every condition."
> 
> They make it sound like a new concept, when EVs have been around for over 200 years. The public could have bought an EV from a company for over 100 years ago.


I didn't know there were EV's in 1812


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## jeremyjs (Sep 22, 2010)

rochesterricer said:


> IIRC, there have already been a couple majors studies that have researched the life cycle emissions. From what I remember, they said electric cars are only worse if your grid is powered entirely by the dirtiest coal powerplants in use today, like some of the plants in China.


I even question that, considering that you can run the cars an equivalent amount of miles as a gallon of gas will take you simply on the amount of electricity used to produce said gallon of gas. Then add on top of that almost all of the electricity used to produce gas comes from some of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the US; which are owned and operated by the refineries.


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## rochesterricer (Jan 5, 2011)

jeremyjs said:


> I even question that, considering that you can run the cars an equivalent amount of miles as a gallon of gas will take you simply on the amount of electricity used to produce said gallon of gas. Then add on top of that almost all of the electricity used to produce gas comes from some of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the US; which are owned and operated by the refineries.


I've brought up that point before. Every study I've seen has only used the emissions from burning the gas. I don't think I've ever seen anything that accounts for emissions from producing the gas. 

I'd love to see some kind of study that shows how much energy is used and the emissions produced to harvest oil and produce a gallon of gasoline, compared to the emissions of burning that gallon. Basically, I would love to see the life cycle emissions of gasoline. 

If such a study has been done, someone please link me to it.


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## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

skooler said:


> I didn't know there were EV's in 1812


1828...rounding error.


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## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

rochesterricer said:


> how much energy is used and the emissions produced to harvest oil and produce a gallon of gasoline, compared to the emissions of burning that gallon. Basically, I would love to see the life cycle emissions of gasoline.


But then where would you draw the line? Do you include everything that went into the two carrier groups that ensure that oil makes it to the US? What about the lives lost to wars, ransoms paid to somali pirates, wars funded by those ransoms...

Then there's the daily costs, like people driving out of the way to get a good gas price, and sitting in line burning gas to buy it...

As I was telling my wife last night trying to argue with a cousin, you'd can't fix stupid, especially not with logic, or in this case with numbers. Most oil consumption is just stupid.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

jeremyjs said:


> I even question that, considering that you can run the cars an equivalent amount of miles as a gallon of gas will take you simply on the amount of electricity used to produce said gallon of gas. Then add on top of that almost all of the electricity used to produce gas comes from some of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the US; which are owned and operated by the refineries.


I'm sorry but none of that is true. There is around 6kWh of energy, (not electricity) used per gallon in production, and the small amount of electricity per gallon that is used mostly comes from oil extraction by products, such as NG and petroleum coke.



rochesterricer said:


> I've brought up that point before. Every study I've seen has only used the emissions from burning the gas. I don't think I've ever seen anything that accounts for emissions from producing the gas.
> 
> I'd love to see some kind of study that shows how much energy is used and the emissions produced to harvest oil and produce a gallon of gasoline, compared to the emissions of burning that gallon. Basically, I would love to see the life cycle emissions of gasoline.
> 
> If such a study has been done, someone please link me to it.


Most studies, including this one, use the GREET model, which does indeed include production impacts, not just usage.


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## jeremyjs (Sep 22, 2010)

rochesterricer said:


> I've brought up that point before. Every study I've seen has only used the emissions from burning the gas. I don't think I've ever seen anything that accounts for emissions from producing the gas.
> 
> I'd love to see some kind of study that shows how much energy is used and the emissions produced to harvest oil and produce a gallon of gasoline, compared to the emissions of burning that gallon. Basically, I would love to see the life cycle emissions of gasoline.
> 
> If such a study has been done, someone please link me to it.


According to the DOE it takes approximately 6 Kw/h to produce 1 gallon of gas. I'll have to look around after work to try and find a reference. This only includes the energy to refine a gallon of gasoline. This does not include drilling, transportation,the power the gas stations use, etc, etc; which is so variable it's hard to quantify.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

It's very simple actually. The "well to pump" efficiency of the petroleum industry has been calculated, and ends up about a little better than 80% efficient. Using 33kWh's of energy for each gallon of gas, times 20%, equals 6.6kWhs. Again, this is not electricity, it's potential energy. As I said, any study that uses the GREET model takes this into account.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GREET_Model


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## rochesterricer (Jan 5, 2011)

Good to know, thanks JRP3


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

JRP3 said:


> It's very simple actually. The "well to pump" efficiency of the petroleum industry has been calculated, and ends up about a little better than 80% efficient.


Wow, thats actually pretty good.


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## jeremyjs (Sep 22, 2010)

JRP3 said:


> It's very simple actually. The "well to pump" efficiency of the petroleum industry has been calculated, and ends up about a little better than 80% efficient. Using 33kWh's of energy for each gallon of gas, times 20%, equals 6.6kWhs. Again, this is not electricity, it's potential energy. As I said, any study that uses the GREET model takes this into account.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GREET_Model


Thanks for the links I saw nowhere mentioned that it was 6.6 kw/h of energy not electricity. So it really depends on exactly what form the energy is when they use it. Say best case about 3.3 kw/h of electrical energy equivalent worst case about 2 kw/h. Still enough to go a little ways, but not enough to go an equivalent number of miles.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

It's even less electricity per gallon than that, less than 1kWh if you take all electricity used at refineries and divided it into all oil that is refined, and remember, the electricity comes from petroleum by products. So if you don't drill for the oil to create that gallon of gas you don't get the by products, so you don't have that electricity available to charge an EV. 
It was a nice sound byte that I've used in the past but the idea that not drilling and refining oil would free up a bunch of electricity for EV's isn't close to accurate.


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## jeremyjs (Sep 22, 2010)

JRP3 said:


> It's even less electricity per gallon than that, less than 1kWh if you take all electricity used at refineries and divided it into all oil that is refined, and remember, the electricity comes from petroleum by products. So if you don't drill for the oil to create that gallon of gas you don't get the by products, so you don't have that electricity available to charge an EV.
> It was a nice sound byte that I've used in the past but the idea that not drilling and refining oil would free up a bunch of electricity for EV's isn't close to accurate.


I was looking it with more of a carbon equivalence viewpoint.


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## jeremyjs (Sep 22, 2010)

Looks like the study may have used some dubious numbers to make electric cars look much worse that they actually are.

link


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Yes, as I mentioned previously. It was a crap study with crap results 
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=325674&postcount=2


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

A good link in the comment section of the LlewBlog article showing further errors in the study: http://brainmower.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/why-electric-vehicles-are-worth-building/


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> I'm sorry but none of that is true. There is around 6kWh of energy, (not electricity) used per gallon in production, and the small amount of electricity per gallon that is used mostly comes from oil extraction by products, such as NG and petroleum coke.


This makes absolutely no sense. Previously in this forum we determined that 8Kwh is approximately comparable to a gallon of gas, allowing a small amount of overhead for sag and not going below 80%DOD.

What you are saying here is that it essentially takes a gallon of gas to make a gallon of gas. 

I think you've missed a decimal place, or we could never have built an infrastructure on gasoline...


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

A gallon of gas contains approximately 33kwh's of energy. I'd guess the 8kwh figure is around what is left as motive energy for a vehicle after all the losses in an ICE. 33kwh x 80% efficiency of the drilling/refining operations equals 20% loss, or 6.6kwh's.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

That makes more sense. So, we have to pump 5 gallons in order to use 4.


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## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

Yes, people try to say that the energy used to make gasoline doesn't count because it comes from oil, but that just means they're burning their own oil to get electricity instead of using it from a utility (that probably makes it more efficiently/cleanly).


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Refineries don't burn much oil in the refining process, they use NG and coke from drilling operations, mostly to produce heat, but also to generate electricity.


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## Ellrot (May 17, 2010)

I think the Language used in the headline says it all : "STUDY: Electric Cars *May *Be Twice As Bad For Global Warming As Regular Cars"

So not conclusive. That's media for you... When you don't know all the facts it leads to people to making their own assumptions


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

A gallon of fuel has to be completely cracked and reassembled . This also takes expendable catalysts ( they tell me that is there biggest expense ) Natural gas is more then just heat it becomes part of the oil product H's and C's since everything is cracked , crude is short of Hydrogen . There are so many heat exchangers in the process you wouldn't believe it , each one is about 10% heat loss. 
I would love to hear from someone that knows how much energy it takes to crack crude . Common word around the refinery is it takes a gallon to make a gallon thermally . Good thing natural gas is cheap .


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> A gallon of gas contains approximately 33kwh's of energy. I'd guess the 8kwh figure is around what is left as motive energy for a vehicle after all the losses in an ICE. 33kwh x 80% efficiency of the drilling/refining operations equals 20% loss, or 6.6kwh's.


 That would be 80% loss and 20% moving force exclusive of all other losses (at pump) , that's in the car losses on a good day ( no cold starts , new engine , no lub oil losses etc. 
When they say alternative energy cannot make up the amount of energy we need they don't take it consideration the inefficiency of the current system .


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Much of the NG that is used would otherwise be flared and lost if there is no pipeline to connect to.



> In our refinery we run the following simple philosophy for the use of fuel to our furnaces and steam boiler house. First we burn fuel gas to the maximum, as we cannot export it, and if we did not burn the FG, we would have to flare it, which is unacceptable. Then we burn low grade fuel oil, which is kept distinct from sales fuel oil. This tends to be more cracked material, and lower value. As epoisses suggests, refiners will burn the lower valued material first, and rarely burn LPG (propane/butane).


http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=133000


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