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from solar or wind technologies. short for quadrillion BTUs (a one with fifteen zeros). (A BTU or British
• Legislative efforts that either ban ICE Thermal Unit is the amount of energy or heat required to raise one pound
vehicles in certain congested urban of water one degree Fahrenheit.) Coronavirus slowdown aside, total en-
areas (such as Paris) or ban the sale of ergy consumption globally stands at around 550-575 quads per year, and
ICE vehicles outright at some point in the average annual energy consumption per person is 0.000000000125
the distant future. All of these initiatives quads per person.
have the commonality of taking effect at Today, oil remains the largest primary source of energy used globally
some point between 2030 and 2050. Call and deserves special attention as oil’s use is almost exclusively dedicated
these political procrastination policies, to transportation and the production of building materials (petrochemi-
never mind the ethics of passing policies cals). Roughly 80-85 percent of oil’s use is in the form of transportation
for a future generation where a portion of fuels for vehicles (gasoline and diesel engines), trains, tractors, airplanes
expected future voters is not old enough and marine vessels.
to pay taxes or vote in publicly held In order to displace oil for electricity in passenger vehicles, the world
elections. would need to increase the amount of electricity generated by just over
• Applying social pressure on quasi- 150 quads per year. Or to put this gargantuan effort in perspective, the
public investment funds to divest from world would need to roughly triple its electricity production in order to
hydrocarbon-related businesses and the switch from ICEVs to EVs. This need for a massive increase in electricity
sustaining investments to support them. generation results in one of the green energy revolution’s true paradoxes:
An example of this would be sovereign, the electricity supply of last resort is overwhelmingly coal, particularly
pension and retirement wealth funds pull- in China and India. Both countries are at the forefront of the vehicle
ing their money from equities and funds electrification movement, but doing it primarily with coal-produced
involved in hydrocarbon extraction or electricity, which has the net environmental impact of producing more
processing—for example, the Harvard greenhouse gases, not less.
University Endowment selling all of its To generate one million BTUs from coal produces about 225 pounds
ExxonMobil holdings. of carbon dioxide. By comparison, generating one million BTUs from
• All of the above serve the purpose of gasoline or diesel produces only 160 pounds of carbon dioxide (about
re-leveling the playing field in favor of 30 percent less) and natural gas generates only 110 pounds of carbon
“green” or “clean” energy in place of dioxide or about 45 percent less CO emissions. As EVs become more
2
“dirty” hydrocarbon energy. In other widespread, we can expect more pollution, not less.
words, accelerating the clean green revo-
lution. . . that is already here according to INCONVENIENT DETAIL: THE COST
Wall Street. Electric vehicles are expensive. They cost 25-40 percent more to
manufacture, primarily because the engine of an electric vehicle requires
INCONVENIENT DETAIL: different materials than an internal combustion engine. Those materials
MORE POLLUTION, NOT LESS are subject to their own laws of supply and demand and the natural con-
However—and there is always a however— straints of supply and demand. Any large-scale increase in EV production
there are a few inconvenient details that politi- will eventually slam into this economic reality.
cians and other celebrity types frequently fail to First the numbers: although estimates can be a bit fuzzy given the
include when heralding our new energy future. source material, particularly from the developing world, the estimate for
The largest of these inconvenient details is the the total size of the global vehicle fleet stands at an estimated 1.4 billion
fact that oil, coal and natural gas still supply an vehicles or one vehicle per every 5.5 inhabitants. The U.S., by compari-
overwhelming amount of the useable energy son, is roughly one vehicle per every 1.8 inhabitants. By comparison,
that we consume today. Around 80 percent of the total number of pure electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on
the energy used globally is fossil fuel-based the road today stands at just over 8.5 million or about 0.6 percent of the
and the majority of non-fossil fuel energy is vehicle fleet population. If you used media attention and stories as your
either in the form of nuclear or hydroelectric, only source for estimating the size of the global electric vehicle fleet,
both of which come with their own special set most people would logically assume that EVs comprise at least half of
of drawbacks. the global vehicle fleet—just look at Tesla’s stock market valuation!
For reference and understanding see Figure Aside from the relative size of the vehicle populations (ICE versus
1, which shows annual energy consumption by EV), the next inconvenient reality is the vehicle-to-vehicle cost com-
source type in both percentage and absolute parison. The ICE vehicle is typically 20-30 percent cheaper in the initial
terms. Absolute energy is measured in quads, purchase but does cost 5-10 percent more in terms of annual maintenance

SUMMER 2020 Wise Traditions 67