Volts for Oil | Fully Charged

As requested.
How much electricity do we use to refine crude oil in the UK?
(it's quite a lot)

[@geraquiroz6288]

From the solar perspective, using the roof of a house, porch or any other structure is simply using space already available that otherwise is wasted.

[@PawelMrozik]

Excellent video. Let's take an even deeper look at the energy that's required for us to get fuel at the pump. 1. Crude oil must be extracted 2. It then must be transported by sea, often halfway across the world 3. It must then be transported once again to the refinery 4. The refinery process itself uses electricity 5. Diesel or petrol is then transported to different locations countrywide 6. According to the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, “EVs convert about 59%-62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17%-21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.” Now let's look at electricity. 1. Produced locally 2. Existing infrastructure does not require transport in the traditional sense Even when using coal power plants, there's no comparison. I wish I had the stats, but the above sums it all up. I think California will set the standard as to the kind of environmental impact EVs will have very soon. Only 4.13% of its electricity is generated by coal. As the number of EVs and plug-in hybrids increases, there will be an improvement in air quality. That in itself will reduce respiratory issues for the local population and most likely have an impact on cancer rates, the quality of local produce, etc. The only negative is battery production, but in the end it is the lesser of the two evils. We will probably see a shift in the job market as well. I mean - oil change?

[@GreenNeighbour]

Very well said, sir! A thoughtful analysis.

[@skolariuskadare4799]

Robert, I love you. You are doing a great job. Please continue...

[@wiaton]

This is one of the best videos out there. Glad i watched it and invested into TSLA and renevables 👐🔥 Many thanks!

[@MrJetexjim]

This is a great video and essential viewing. One also notes, a byproduct of the oil refining process is the production of hydrogen. So now we know where the continued push for these absurd hydrogen powered vehicles is coming from.

[@GreenNeighbour]

Well said, sir!

[@Nikenik2001]

Please do an updated version of this wonderful video and use global figures, not just for the UK. Everyone in every country should see this. :)

[@A785R]

Turns out that it takes about 13 kWh of 'energy' (natural gas & electricity) to make a US gallon of gasoline from oil sands bitumen. Here in Alberta, electric car can go over twice as far as a gas car could even before burning the gasoline.

[@petersilva037]

source? It is great information, but without reputable sources... it doesn't help the conversation.

[@A785R]

Two years ago when I posted this I was using this article for the 13kWh figure. www.hybridcars.com/the-oil-sands-surprising-new-nemesis-plug-in-vehicles/ This article was shared amongst quite a few different media outlets at the time. In hindsight - it seems to be not correct. A while back, I had a conversation with someone in the energy industry who pointed out a few of the steps mentioned in the article were incorrect and the figure (depending on the oil sand extraction site) is probably more around 7.5-9 kWh, not 13 kWh to make a US gallon of gasoline from oil sands bitumen. From what I understand, the industry average is about 5-6 kWh of combined 'energy', to make a US gallon of gasoline from oil, not 'electricity' - there is hardly any electricity used. It's mostly natural gas.

[@ApMignonne]

Thanks for the update - this is very interesting! One could argue that oil sand stands for the margin production of gasoline ("when we need more gasoline, we make it from oil sands; if we need less, we decrease the oil sand production"). In that case, the 7.5-9 kWh/gallon is a very valid figure, and still means that electric cars will travel further than oil cars with the same amount of electricity. Or was it electricity for the oil sans figure? If it was general _energy_, the figure is again more complicated. But all in all it seems like electric cars make a whole lot of sense even from just an energy use perspective, especially if you look at the margin production. To actually transform the whole vehicle fleet we might need to produce a lot of new electricity, which we can (sustainably). I also hope that the future means more sharing of cars and better city planning, so that we need to drive less in total.

[@zolikoff]

It's general energy, and it doesn't come from electricity. Some of it comes from the crude, some of it is natural gas, and only 10-15% of it is electricity. The data for electricity use by refineries (at least in the US) is available for the past decades. Look at how much electricity they used, and how many barrels of oil was refined. It comes out to 0.2-0.5 kWh per gallon of product, of which usually half is gasoline. An electric car can go 1-2 miles on that energy, assuming no charging losses (charge-discharge efficiency is around 80% for BEVs, varies by charger type used).

[@A785R]

Hi Petter, sorry for the delayed response. I think Zolikoff who commented just above is much closer to the actual figure of electricity used to refine a gallon of gasoline - 0.2-0.5 kWh per gallon of product. I gave another EV presentation just the other week but NOW say in my presentations "over 6 kWh equvilent of fossil fuel energy (nat gas, crude, & electricity) to get oil from the ground to gas to the pump". "That energy could have been used for an electricty car and no tailpipe pollution" - or something to that affect. Here in Edmonton Alberta, it turns out we have so much annual sunshine that we'd only need a 4.5 KW solar array on the roof to generate enough electrical energy that an EV would need on an annual basis. With the gasoline $$ savings put towards paying off the solar array instead, that array would be paid off in less than FIVE years!! but BIG OIL doesn't want you to know that..... :)

[@Seoulhawk01]

Every so often I come back and watch this video. Great video.

[@cambscot]

Also factor in the carbon emissions from the tankers used to deliver the fuel to the filling stations, the power used to refine the fuel THEY use too, and the emissions from running the filling station.

[@gasdive]

yay!!! I've been jumping up and down and saying this for years. This is the first time I've seen anyone else saying it. I feel somewhat relieved that I'd not gone stark raving mad. It's always seemed obvious to me that electric cars use less electricity than petrol cars, but perhaps that comes from having worked in an oil refinery and having seen first hand the giant high voltage substation whirring away 24/7

[@najeebullah9055]

Thank you so much for informing us about the facts

[@daniele_go]

Thanks a lot! I have never thought about those facts, and I will for sure use them to discuss pros-cons of EV with my ICE friends!

[@thorbjrnhellehaven5766]

I just love this video! Comparing enegrgy spent to make fuel. I would love a follow up, on the full chain well to tank. From this video I deduct. Energy required to refine oil to fuel, is approximately 50% of energy if you used it to charge an EV insted. How much to search, drill, transport crude oil, distribute fuel? How close to 100% do we get?

[@hardergamer]

It's now 2023 and I would like an update too.

[@GreenNeighbour]

As would I!

[@FlorestanTrement]

Thank you so much for that old one. Would be worth a refresh & recast.

[@chrishar110]

Five years later, I agree!!!

[@billwhite9703]

This is a brilliant production.

[@jim-elainestack5151]

This is very good information. They should also point out that electric use at night is very low but they can't turn down COAL, Nuclear or EVen hydro so they have excess at night. Most electric cars plug in at night while the owners sleep. Most cars have a timer so you can charge at 2 am or 4 am . It only takes an hour or two.

[@JonathanMaddox]

+Jim-Elaine Stack Coal, nuclear and hydro power stations *do* reduce output and fuel (resp. water) consumption when demand is low, which is not just at night but also when the wind is up. Wherever did you get the idea that it's not possible? It may be a little bit less efficient to run them at part load, but it happens frequently. The owners would no doubt prefer to run them at full capacity around the clock, but that's an economic decision, overruled by concerns about pollution.

[@CurdinGees74]

Hey thanks a lot for this great video revealing an important figure. Problem is.. it will take years before they stop production.. unless they would have to produce the power they need themself as they should be cut off from the Grid!

[@JonathanPorterfield]

Well put , next stop Orkney Sir ! ( I will keep banging on about orkney !) All of Orkney's power is from wind and tidal , FACT according to SSE , perfect for EV's

[@Dizzzais]

This one is very very strong argument!

[@KevKevAllen]

This is absolutely brilliant. I wish someone would do the same for US oil companies, except (according to news anchors here in the US) most of our oil is from overseas.

[@MrAlbedo39]

+KevKevAllen As of around 2012, almost 40% of the US's oil is domestic. 15% is imported from Canada, 20% from Latin America and 26% from overseas. Source: www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised

[@quantum12b]

Wow! Wow! Impressive stats! Who knew! Now I do ;0) Thanks for sharing :0) I will be sharing this ;0)

[@Laura-S196]

The video confuses the total energy used with the electricity used in oil refining. The electricity used in oil refining amounts to around 0.2 kWh per gallon. For example, see Table 3-3 of this EIA report www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/special/pdf/california.pdf You are not using 30 times more electricity per gallon in the UK.

[@JonathanMaddox]

YES. I can't find exact figures online but US EIA ones indicate that UK refineries produced about 16.5 billion (US) gallons of refinery products in 2005. If electricity consumption of refineries in that year was 5.62 billion kWh, that's 16.5 gallons per 5.62 kWh, or about 3 gallons per kilowatt hour. Not 4.5 kilowatt hours per gallon.

[@xperyskop2475]

@@JonathanMaddox Did you accounted for gallon diffrences UK the imperial gallon (imp gal), defined as 4.54609 litres, USA US gallon (US gal) defined as 231 cubic inches (exactly 3.785411784 litres),

[@JonathanMaddox]

@@xperyskop2475 the figure I'm disputing is wrong by 1250% but you're wondering if I accounted for the 20% difference between two obsolete units of the same name. The UK does not use imperial gallons for retail sales of petrol nor for official statistics. Only the US uses gallons for that. I quoted US EIA figures which are in US gallons. Anyone quoting some per-gallon statistic pertaining to petrol in the 21st century must either be talking about US gallons or being perverse for the sake of it.

[@dnboro]

Add to this the fuel used to transport the Crude Oil to the refinery and then the distribution to service stations. Yet another part of the ICE CO2 emissions that are excluded from tailpipe emissions comparisons.

[@zolikoff]

A semi loaded with 10,000 gallons of gasoline, with about 6 MPG, uses 250 gallons of fuel to take that gasoline 1500 miles. That's a 97.5% transport energy efficiency, it's not 100% but not that relevant really. Tanker ships taking the crude to the refinery could be a more significant emission, but that could be solved elegantly by simply making them nuclear powered. No CO2.

[@xchopp]

Yes, let's make oil tankers nuclear powered. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, it's not like oil tankers ever run aground, is it? Seriously, it's hard enough to keep nuclear electrical generation safe on land (though I am not completely against that in the short term, just until we can scale renewables and efficiency up).

[@GreenNeighbour]

Thanks for this. Well done.

[@liam3284]

Thanks, I have been using 1kWh per litre estimate I found from a few sources. Good to see it backed up.

[@701983]

It's less than 0.1 kWh ELECTRICITY per liter. But more than 1 kWh ENERGY per liter. Fuel production consumes mainly thermal energy, like natural gas or oil fractions for crude-oil-distillation. If you correlate the mentioned 5.6 TWh with the 793 TWh of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and fuel oil, produced by british refineries in the year 2005, you get 0.7 percent. This would be 0.07 kWh per liter diesel equivalent. And Robert shouldn't do math without help. The calculation at the end results in BILLION miles, not TRILLION miles. The high ELECTRICITY demand of fuel production is a myth.

[@EleTruk]

Please note that these figures apply only to the refinement of oil. There is still quite a bit more energy expenditure involved. First, how much energy does it take to drill a well? Changes considerably depending if it's a deepwater well vs. land well. Also consider transporting the oil from the well to the refinery, On the low end is a pipeline, on the high end are supertankers. Then of course once the oil is refined to fuel additional energy is required to get that fuel to your local gas pump, and then also consider that you may be wasting fuel actually having to drive to a gas station, and home again. Wonder if we will ever get real world numbers for those energy costs?

[@64jcl]

Not to mention that you have to transport the petrol to a gazillion stations as well, and people have to drive to them to fill up their tanks. Its really an amazingly inefficient and wasteful way of going about things when we already have wires directly into our homes.

[@Hirotoro4692]

Assuming a fuel tanker does 8 mpg (generous figure for a tanker) and the refinery is 4.5 kWh per gallon refined, the tanker is using up 560 watt-hours per mile (not including the tanker's return trip!) just to merely transport the refined product to your local pump. That's over 50% more watt-hours per mile that the average electric car driven by Mr. average can do. And that's just the fuel tanker alone! So so far we've only counted the tanking stage of the well-to-wheels process and it's already used up more electricity per mile than the electric car has. ...and to think people always argue about 'where the power comes from to fuel the car' or 'how it will run the grid dry once everyone's plugged in'. Bah. As Elon Musk says, if we stopped bloody refining, we'd have shit loads more electricity to play with.

[@grsmith06]

The last time I visited an oil refinery they had built there own power station on site.

[@timwatterson8060]

And they use the dregs of the oil barrel/refining proccess that they cant sell to "fuel" it which is AFAIK much worse then coal.

[@kvfive]

This is amazing, I never realised this ! (I'm sure I'm not alone either) certainly makes you think :( and be a little concerned !

[@pareshpanchal91]

You should put the link to this video in the description of a new video to try and get more people to see this!!

[@stevemilwa]

Very interesting! I did not know this!

[@CTimmerman]

Not only the refining takes power; also the locating, extracting, and transporting of fossil fuel does.

[@GreenNeighbour]

Exactly!

[@epicwolf2880]

Good drawing skills!

[@albedo0point39]

Robert - this is very illuminating, and good work on your part. Throwing big figures around makes you just as guilty of spin as your opponents though, unless you actually boil this down to a figure that can be compared directly to electric car usage.

[@albedo0point39]

One of your commentors has... so we learn that 4.5kWh would drive a leaf for 15 miles. That gallon of petrol would drive a similar car for maybe 60 miles. In short - a petrol car uses gasoline + 1/4 of the electricity of an electric. This provides a clearer picture than handwaving and giganumbers.

[@AndY1ksi]

albedo0point39 I don't know about the Leaf, but I can do 35km with the Ampera on 4.5kWh of electricity. Please, do tell me, which comparable ICE car consumes 4 litres of gasoline per 100km (in real life, not factory PR figures). You can use this link: www.spritmonitor.de/

[@albedo0point39]

Andrej Potokar I can do about 60 miles on 1 UK gallon of petrol in my (oldish) Nissan Micra, if I'm driving frugally. Usually I get less, as I'm less careful. The point I'm making is not pro-gasoline (I love the concept of electric and will happily convert when the cost/benefit works for me) - I just think that spin degrades Robert's very valid argument.

[@AndY1ksi]

albedo0point39 I said to use a comparable ICE car, not the smallest one on the planet ;-) You can't compare apples to oranges. Comparable ICE car to a Leaf would be a VW Golf 7 TSI. Here, let me help you: www.spritmonitor.de/de/uebersicht/50-Volkswagen/452-Golf.html?powerunit=2 The average is 7.93l/100km.

[@eldictator1]

albedo0point39 Yes, if you can do the figure suggested that's only the energy used to refine the petrol...now do the figures for the energy in the fuel also

[@zlozlozlo]

Much obliged.

[@Hirotoro4692]

I've been doing a bit of maths here and there, but without figures I can't tell for sure how much more power the combustion car is using, per mile, than the electric car. Yep, you heard me right; I said MORE. I mean, there are too many variables such as transmission lost (power is lost on its way from the plant to the charger), the efficiency of the refinery, the size and efficiency of the tanker that drives the fuel to the pump, and the energy used in extraction. The entire infrastructure of getting petrol to the consumer is a far more intricate and power-hungry ecosystem than you'd believe. I did, however, work out that a fuel tanker can achieve around 4-8 mpg depending on size, conditions and quality of engine, and can carry anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 imperial gallons. If you were to make the assumption that a fuel tanker drives 100 miles from the depot to your local station, averaging a very generous 8 mpg, then it's used 12.5 gallons just to transport the fuel. The fuel for that tanker, in itself, took (by Robert's figure) 56 kWh to refine. Those 100 miles took 0.56 kWh, or 560 Wh PER MILE! Obviously, as these maths are napkin and ignore a lot of variables, I've assumed a very good 8 mpg for the tanker. As it unloads fuel it becomes lighter and consequently more efficient with every petrol station it subsequently visits, but I won't get into any of that. Let's just stick with 8 mpg because it gives the electric car the harder side of this little test. Conversely if we assume someone is driving a Tesla Model S electric car, the 85 kWh model can do up to 300 miles in ideal conditions. Let's assume more realistic conditions and say this driver drives efficiently and manages to achieve 260 miles on a full charge. (85 kWh) as this should account for efficiency loss in the DC motor, temperature, drag, etc. The grid estimates around 6% of energy is lost during transmission, so the Tesla is more realistically using 90.1 kWh to do the 260 miles provided for this example. The result? 347 wH per mile. So we can identify that the energy used for refining the fuel that powers the tanker that then carries the fuel to your local pump, IN ITSELF, uses up SIXTY PERCENT more electricity per mile than a Tesla Model S driven under a more realistic range on a full charge with transmission losses accounted for (actual Model S owners ARE getting 260 miles on a charge if they drive economically!) ...and I haven't even touched on the energy used to scout, drill/pump and all that jazz also involved in getting petrol or diesel to the customer. I'm not great at maths, but it doesn't take a genius to realise that no matter how you look at it or how many variables you play with: Electric cars use less electricity to run than combustion cars. Even if you were to factor in the production of the lithium batteries, the case remains true. The batteries last years. Fuel is used up only once!

[@MrFreddiew1]

Hi Will, I remember reading once that typical transmission loss is around 30%, thats gearbox & differential combined...So a 100 hp car puts 70 hp on the driving wheels....Add this to the inefficiency of fossil fuels and you have a huge amount of losses with petrol/diesel cars in comparison to EVs....

[@micheals1992]

MrFreddiew1 so if the engine directly drove the wheels you'd get 43% more out of the car... so a car that does 50mpg would do 70mpg without a complex transmission?! :O

[@micheals1992]

***** Maybe the extra economy the better cars have is because they have more efficient gearboxes though... along with smaller engines

[@MrFreddiew1]

***** I guess so, something like that..But direct drive is not practical because your speed would be limited by the max revs of the engine...And I guess more economical cars have a mixture of more efficient engines and drive trains..Front engine & front wheel drive is the most economical configuration, the same would apply to rear engine and rear wheel drive.

[@JonathanMaddox]

Yes but Robert's figure is out by more than a factor of ten. Yes, UK refineries used 5.62 billion kWh of electric energy in 2005, but they also produced around 16.5 billion gallons of refinery product. That works out at one third of a kWh per gallon, not four and a half. Refineries do use much more energy than that (in kWh units it's up to 6 or 8 kWh per gallon of product), but most of that energy comes from the crude oil itself, and some from gas. Grid electricity is a very small fraction.

[@SlimMasterFlash]

Now that the fullychargedshow has more regular watchers, I'd love a re-make of this video. I think this is info is still really important to get out to the general public

[@701983]

But if he would do the calculations right this time, the figures wouldn't fit the intended statement. Only the initial number of 5600 Gigawatt hours seems to be correct (is at least plausible), but the deduced numbers are completely wrong. I give you two numbers from the IEA statistics, you can do the math for yourself: Output of oil products from UK refineries 2015: 62,449 kt OE (62.4 million tons oil equivalent). Output only of motor gasoline and diesel: 37,711 kt (37.7 million tons). Even if you count only motor gasoline and diesel, you get only about 0.45 kWh per gallon, a tenth of Robert's number. If you include the rest of the oil products (jet fuel, heating oil,...), which you should do, it's even less. The high electricity demand of oil refining is a widespread myth, probably based on a confusion of "energy" and "electricity". Refineries need a lot of heat energy, but not that much electricity. 5600 GWh may sound a lot, but referred to the fuel production, it's peanuts. And if you count 2000 GWh only for car fuel and give it to 20 million cars, each car gets 100 kWh, which would suffice for around 350 miles.

[@701983]

I used American gallons, not British. Sorry, I'm used to the metric system. However, this doesn't affect the basic argument.

[@xchopp]

@@701983 I don't think we care about the kWh _per_ _gallon_ -- we care about the total electricity that could be used to power EVs. But you are correct about the accidental double-counting: 2,000,000,000 kWh (2 billion kWh) is 8 Bn miles at 4 miles per kWh. OK, that could move 20 million EVs "only" 400 miles -- but the 8 BILLION MILES of total travel is still pretty impressive. Of course, you'd need everyone to drive an efficient EV that gets 4 mi/kWh (e.g., Model 3, Kona, Niro...) and many people just gotta have their i-Pace, eTron, Taycan, Rivian, IONIQ5, EV6, and so on and those can barely scrape 3.5 mi/kWh.

[@701983]

@@xchopp Sorry, but it doesn't make much sense to look at electricity consumption numbers that way, without considering the production numbers, they are related to. Without any reference, you can make look ANY number big. An electric car in average use consumes about 3000 kWh per year! An impressive number! With this amount of electricity, you could power a fridge for 30 years! Or you could power an electric bicycle for the distance earth - moon. You see what I mean? I'm a big fan of car electrification, but I don't like bad arguments like this fairy tale about the high electricity demand of fuel production. ENERGY consumption of fuel production and supply is "impressive", but not the electricity consumption.

[@701983]

@@xchopp And I especially criticize the conclusion, which many people draw of this myth: That we hardly need additional electricity production for car electrification. Because we can use the electricity that was used for fuel production so far. But this pretty small amount of electricity will hardly make any difference, we will need new electricity production for virtually the whole demand of electric cars. That's no unsolvable problem, but people should be aware of it. And should not dream of such a "magical" solution.

[@jackphillips1953]

Very informative and very political also. I use 10 kw solar to charge 2 Volts so I use really no electricity (net).

[@ShapeCZ]

Thank you!!!

[@josejosiane4359]

I love this kind of YTthings... helps me to defend on stupid arguments! TNX!

[@thewallstreetjournal5675]

The same people who criticize electric cars for being run of the coal grid will start driving them when the price point falls below that of a gasoline car. They just mistrust the technology because they fear it will cost them more money and get hoisted on them.

[@ra5928]

Also, when they realize that the Volt is much cheaper to operate. I will only have to change my oil two or three times during the life of the car. My brakes should last about the life time of the car. Go to KBB's 5 year cost of ownership and plug in any gas car that compares to the Volt's sticker. Even without the credits, the Volt almost always comes out ahead. Throw in $7,500 and it amazes me why people don't take that into consideration. It takes money to operate a car. The question is, which is more? KBB tells it like it is.

[@ICEGTN]

+ra5928 5 year is not enough. I want to know 10 and 20 years.

[@mogensdanlarsen4837]

ra5928 æ

[@NeilCaldwell]

Awesome information, a little concerning that the UK/USA/Australian government is in the pockets of the oil industry.

[@TheFilces]

Nice vid! :)

[@701983]

For users of the metric system: Robert didn't display the fuel production numbers. If he did, probably more viewers would have recognised his completely wrong calculations. UK refineries produce roughly 38 million tons of motor gasoline and diesel per year (IEA statistics, 2015). 5642 million kWh per 38 million tons of fuel is 0,148 kWh per kg of fuel. Not that much, right? But: - Not only cars use diesel - Refineries produce not just gasoline and diesel, but also heating oil, jet fuel,... 5642 GWh are for the complete production of the refinery, the share of car fuel might be around 2000 GWh for maybe 23 million tons of car fuel. Then you would get 0.087 kWh per kg of car fuel. And 2000 GWh for 20 million cars is 100 kWh each. Which would suffice for a few hundred miles. I like fully charged. I like electric cars. I like Robert Llewellyn. But I don't like fake news. Sorry, Robert, this video is a shame! Maybe you can do a "correction and apologize"-video some day and link it here. Maybe Helen Czerski could help you with the maths.😍

[@Dr.Gehrig]

I wish someone would combine that refining electricity with the average electricity to extract, transport, store, pump to a vehicle, AND run all of the associated infrastructure.

[@philreed6933]

After yesterdays announcement and the shockingly poor news reporting in the media, this video has become so important. Are their any newer figures that it could be updated with? I will be sharing this!

[@701983]

The calculation is completely wrong. Probably the only correct number is the initial 5642 GWh. Maybe more viewers would have recognised it, if Robert had displayed also the fuel production numbers. If you count only the 38 million tons of motor gasoline and diesel (for cars AND OTHER vehicles/machines), you get about 0.45 kWh per gallon, a tenth of Robert's number. If you count the 62 million tons of all produced oil products (also jet fuel, heating oil,...), you get about 0.3 kWh per gallon. Not that much, right? The mentioned production numbers are from the IEA statistics 2015. I like electric cars, but I don't like fake news.

[@TheNiceJackass]

Is there any more episodes of CarPool in the works?

[@hamoudix]

Found some more up-to-date figures about how much energy the refineries use in the UK, this document is for 2012. See section 5.14 for some interesting figures. Also note the graphic on page 112 which shows just how much energy is "wasted" in conversion, transmission and distribution, which really makes a big case for more localised generation. www.dropbox.com/s/qj238pddvdf82x1/DUKES_2013_Chapter_5.pdf

[@fullychargedshow]

I'm very late in seeing this and I hope you get to read my thanks. This is brilliant data and I hadn't seen it before, Downloaded and consumed with vigour. Thanks

[@hamoudix]

fullychargedshow I'm glad the info is of interest, glad to help out as I think you are doing a great job with Fully Charged. Looking forward to "News from the Clouds" too :-)

[@HorzaPanda]

Interesting to note here that the entire UK uses about 350TWh (350,000GWh), so UK refineries use 1.6% of our total energy capacity. That sounds like quite a bit for a single industry.

[@hydrojedi]

I'm pretty sure that 5,600 Gwh is 5.6 trillion watt hours. Either way excellent video!

[@TekAutomatica]

By the way I like EVs (for cities at least) and enjoy your videos!

[@didzisstalidzans5232]

This is one of main argument against e-car skeptic preaches.

[@701983]

Fortunately, it's not a main argument. Because the calculation is wrong. And 5642 GWh of electricity isn't really much considering the gigantic amount of gasoline, diesel, heating oil, jet fuel,... these refineries produce. Probably around 2000 of the 5642 GWh account for the production of car fuel. 2000 GWh distributed to 20 million cars are only 100 kWh for each car. You won't go far with 100 kWh. That's one single charge of a Tesla Model S.

[@TekAutomatica]

Ok so if we assume 500g/kWh on UK mix then my 100mpg 12 year old car pumps out an additional 14g/km CO2 based on your refining figures. That's still much less when added to the 81g/km than a Nissan leaf using the same amount if co2 per kWh.

[@leerman22]

Do the refineries produce more GW/h worth of fuel than they consume GW/h of electricity? It's looking like they're suffocating a fire to put it out by burning down another building!

[@NAY2GAS]

Time for a 2023 update to this video. How much COAL is still being used to make Electricity in the UK?

[@johnburns4017]

There was to be none but due to Covid/Ukraine a few were still kept in commission. But we have replaced coal to burn lots of wood pellets which also emits toxins. The video is still valid in that the grid need not be increased in size to accommodate EVs.

[@Parabueto]

Kinda fun how things are changing. Just six years on there have been significant periods of no coal power in the UK and an end to it altogether in sight! Sadly not enough renewables and nuclear to get rid of oil and gas though :-(

[@notsyort]

I suppose it should be clarified that we couldn't go without refining altogether, because then we'd have to go without plastics, which are made from the lighter compounds. But if the refineries weren't powered by coal plants, then the effective carbon footprints of running old-fashioned vehicles would halve. So it's to the petrolheads' gain, to make the whole grid more carbon neutral :o)

[@martinwinlow]

hiddengrousefarm Besides which, we can already synthesise many types of plastic - or make plastic components form man-made materials that perform just as well if not better. The only reason we don't (nor spend money on making synthetic materials cheaper to make) is because oil has always been so cheap… not so much any more! MW

[@notsyort]

camillionmonkey: My saying "halve" was meant to be a vague, hand-wavey gesture, because i didn't want to declare the unwarranted precision of percentage figures :-P hiddengrousefarm: Thank you for that. I thought all plastics came from oil, but that's probably because i do live in Otherpartsoftheworld :-)

[@motoarzan791]

Plus it takes even more oil to transport gasoline and diesel to every single one of the thousands and thousands of fuel stations in every remote place in the country. Electricity is already everywhere and can be transmitted in massive amounts for hundreds and hundreds miles in a split second for pretty much nothing.

[@0hypnotoad0]

How in fuck does this video only have 70,000 views.

[@MarriageEq2013]

Robert, I'm a Volt owner and am a likely customer for Tesla's future 3rd generation car. I've watched all the episodes of Fully Charged that I'm aware of and they are great. I'm eagerly looking forward to watching future segments. But.... this recent episode titled "Volts for Oil" on the grid electricity use by refineries in the UK appears to be repeating misleading and inaccurate claims. You state that the oil industry no longer releases data on this after 2005. Yet I found UK annual data up to 2010 after a few seconds of googling and more recent data is apparently available from the UN in an offline publication. You also quote some unclear source as saying that it takes about "4.5 kWh of electricity" to refine every gallon of UK gasoline but you don't show the math. According to data.un.org, UK refineries used 4,459,000,000 kWh in 2005: data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=EDATA&f=cmID%3AEL%3BtrID%3A0925 And, UK refineries produced 22,620,000 metric tons of gasoline: data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=EDATA&f=cmID%3aMO%3btrID%3a013 That 2005 UK refinery electricity use is slightly different from the number you use in the program (5,642,000,000 kWh) which also came from the UN, according to you. The numbers vary from year to year and the number you used is almost exactly the same as the UN online 2007 number. In any case, the precise numbers don't matter that much in the scale of the final calculations. And yes, gasoline is sometimes measured by weight and that converts to around 8,104,621,999 US gallons, according to various sources including this US government conversion calculator: www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=about_energy_conversion_calculator-basics So, 4459000000 / 8104621999 works out to 0.55 kWh of electricity per gallon of refined gasoline from a UK refinery. A typical refinery produces 19 gallons of gasoline for every 42 gallons of crude oil or 46% by volume, according to Wikipedia and other sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Energy_content Therefore, the energy used in refining needs to be shared with the other outputs of the refining process like diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, heating oil, etc. If we assume that all refinery products require roughly the same amount of processing then 0.55 kWh x 46% works out to 0.25 kWh per US gallon. A UK gallon is 20% larger so adjusting for that we get 0.3 kWh per UK gallon. Similar calculations based on US government data (which roughly matches UN data on the US) shows similar results. So where did the "4.5 kWh of electricity" per gallon claim come from? Similar claims of around 7 kWh of electricity per refined gallon of US gasoline per used in early Nissan marketing materials for the LEAF but were later abandoned. Others have calculated that about 6 kWh of energy is used to refine a gallon of gasoline using US government data. These numbers likely represent calculations of the kWh of energy, not electricity, used in refining a gallon of gasoline. Just like gasoline is sometimes measured by weight, non-electrical energy is sometimes measured in kWh and this can cause confusion. The vast majority of energy used in refining gasoline comes directly from fossil fuels -- mostly natural gas and leftover output from refining earlier crude that can't be economically sold to customers such as "still gas". Here's a page that breaks down the energy input used by the refining process in the US. Although it isn't obvious at first glance, if you calculate the energy value of the various inputs you will find that they total about 20x to 30x kWh larger than the electricity listed there or on the UN site for US electricity usage by refineries: www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm Since this is an important story and is often misunderstood, I suggest that you find and interview an expert on the gasoline and diesel refining process and then use this to update and republish your episode with better information. Thanks for all the effort you put into making Fully Charged an excellent forum for promoting plugin vehicles! 

[@migazzimatys]

The best comment I have ever seen in my entire life.

[@malcolmmiddleton5883]

wow thats insane

[@marcusmangelsdorf9211]

Dear @fullychargedshow, I would like to add translated subtitles to this video to make it reach a wider audience. Could you please enable subtitle contributions for this video?

[@oscarradikoro6041]

Jesus! I didn't know this! I thought they pump it from the ground straight into our cars!!!!

[@brianzinszer9365]

Im a supporter of electric cars and hear this argument frequently. It’s nice to have something to go off of, however. The other argument people insist on being up is the lithium used in the batteries. Do you have a video for those too?

[@jocodashcam295]

Search for a video titled, "EV or Gas, What Pollutes More?" by Gas Troll.

[@paperbark1]

Photons on Sun > 8.3 minutes > photons reach Earth > photons converted to electrons in photovoltaic cells > electrons travel down power lines at speed of light to be stored or used. Amazing hey :)

[@paperbark1]

Area of PV panels needed to replace all US power stations 115 km x 115 km . Lithium is abundant, power for refining no problem, storage no problem ...

[@martinwinlow]

Viewers should probably know that a 'considerable' amount of the electricity used by refineries is produced by the refinery itself in a process known as co-generation. It uses some of the less useful by-products of crude as fuel for the process. How much it uses will depend on the type of crude and the cost of grid electricity (amongst other things). Obviously, this doesn't matter much as far as the point of the video is concerned as the co-generation still generates CO2 and probably lots of (maybe even worse) pollution than burning petrol, diesel or coal. In the US, with their woeful car efficiency - currently no better than about 20% - the amount of electricity used to make fuel is at about parity with its effective energy content i.e. you can go as far in an ICEV running on petrol as you could go in an EV running on the electricity used to make the ICEVs petrol. MW

[@JonathanCranfield]

1 litre of petrol produces around 3kg of Co2e - that is including the refining process. Yes it uses electricity and this electricity will still be required if we all decided to own an electric car - plenty of materials and products are produced in oil refineries which are also placed into electric cars. You then power the electric cars using fossil fuels so you are shifting the pollution from the tailpipe to the power station. Alternative energy sources are needed to coal and that also includes nuclear...

[@Miata822]

fascinating

[@kcutoob]

4.5 kWh to refine a gallon? Or 0.222 kWh (1/20th?)? Strikes me as very odd that ~ 3:00 he gives a specific number for kWh used by refineries, and then goes on "guess" regarding kWh per gallon refined? Why not use the actual numbers? I did just that, using his 5642 Million kWh number for 2005, and this source: www.ukpia.com/docs/default-source/default-document-library/statistical-review-2017---final-website.pdf?sfvrsn=0 which says in 2008 (closest year), UK refineries had ~1800 th bbl a day capacity, and ~ 80% utilization. Some math and factoring 31 G diesel/gasoline from a 42 gallon bbl, and I come up with ~ 0.222 kWh of electricity consumed to refine a gallon of fuel (not even accounting for the other products). That 222 watts won't even take an EV a single mile. That's way off from 4.5 kWh! I got a similar number from US sources (385 watts/gallon) adding the major fuels: www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp2_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm Instead of saying the substation was "huge", we need a number. It is very suspicious to me when those numbers are hidden, and then a numeric result is presented, w/o the intermediary math, or the numbers involved. And people accept that?

[@mil3761]

Wait so all these people who say that, the UK national grid can't support EV's if everyone converted to EVs is wrong. If there's 5,600GWh of energy used each year just to refine oil then isn't that more than the energy cost of driving an EV? So as people change to EVs, the amount of oil that needs refining will proportionally decrease and thus it would lead to less energy usage overall? Is that wrong or does that make sense?

[@NeilBlanchard]

The electricity for the refining stage alone is enough to power a Nissan Leaf for about 18 miles. That is leaving the oil in the ground. I'm fairly sure that oil extraction also consumes a lot of electricity, and a lot of natural gas is used in refining - and the natural gas has it's own energy overhead, that needs to be accounted for. Suffice it to say, the "long tailpipe" argument against EV's is moot.

[@rbtx99]

According to the video the refining process needs 4.5KWh per UK gallon thus 1KWh per liter. The gasoline energy content is 33.3 kWh/US gallon thus 8.8KWh per liter. So if we stopped refining oil as Elon Musk claims how does he propose that we deal with the 88.6% energy shortfall? And aren't we still going to spend the electricity to obtain all the other chemicals we refine from oil?

[@Fennecbutt]

rbtx99 Brushless motors are 80-90% efficient. Hydrocarbon engines are 30ish% efficient.

[@EETechs]

+Fennecbutt AC induction motors have been brushless since 1888. It's only "new" technology to you R/C guys out there...............

[@lucasskywalker]

Stan Meyer's water fracturing engine is the way to go. No powerplants needed anywhere to run vehicles of all types. Hydrogen from tap water using virtually no power to start. Yummy future!

[@augnkn93043]

Silly

[@rainbowsalads]

We want to transition from petrol to electric cars, but it is a slow transition due to the quintillions of pounds invested from spark plugs to petrol station pumps. So how can we speed up the transition? Could we compensate these companies? Could we promise them a deal that would tempt them to help speed up the change?

[@GreenNeighbour]

Hey good folks at Fully Charged! I've got a question for you. When I divide 5,642,000,000,000 watts by 250 watts (a reasonable figure for the watts used to power an EV for a mile), I get 22,568,000,000 miles, or about 22.5 billion miles. However, you ended up calculating "just under 20 trillion miles." Which one of us is off? (I hope it's me!)

[@701983]

You are right, he is wrong (besides "watts" for energy). And if you correlate the 5.6 TWh with the amount of produced fuels, you get less than 0.1 kWh per liter. The high electricity demand of fuel production is a myth.

[@GreenNeighbour]

@@701983 Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

[@truthseekers666]

I like the video but wasnt sure if when it says 20 trillion miles for those 20,000,000 cars with only one recharge... which would make the average per electric car of 10,000 miles. Petrol cars (30 million of them) so an averga of 9000 miles a year so you would need an additional third of extra power if all cars were electric but we still would need jetfuel, some petrol and diesel and plastic... It is interesting though and I think we could go all electric one day with enough other sources other than fossil fuel/gas/. Also was Robert talking American billions or UK billions as they are different and one needs to be clear ;-)

[@osdias]

Beautifully debunked. I hope Clarkson lives long enough to see what an ass he made of himself in his less old years since he's too narrow minded to see it now.

[@TomUlcak]

It amazes me that people are ok with huge centralized power stations and huge electric towers carrying thick wires marching across the landscape but these same people consider solar panels and wind turbines as eye sores.

[@TomUlcak]

and it amazes me that these same people have no 'range anxiety' with a gas powered car. why? do you just fill up the tank once and that's it until you sell the car?

[@MarioAlvaradoJ]

It is hilarious to see 7 thumbs down for this video...

[@701983]

I just added one more. Actually, it should be much more, because the only probably correct number in this video is the electricity demand of the refineries: 5642 GWh per year. This may sound a lot on the surface, but considerung the fuel production of the refineries and the electricity consumption of 20 million electric cars, it's not really that much. You would get only a few hundred miles for each electric car, if you could use the electricity from car fuel production. For more numbers and the calculations, see above at "For users of the metric system:"

[@hardergamer]

Can we have an update, please?

[@701983]

What about a correction? Look at "volts for oil corrected"!

[@701983]

5600 GWh used for the production of 3,659,500 TJ oil products (UK 2005, IEA statistics) is 0.055 kWh per liter diesel equivalent. Or 0.2 kWh per gallon diesel equivalent. Let's say 2.5 gallons of diesel for 100 miles equates to 0.5 kWh of electricity for fuel production. Which would suffice for ~ 2 miles with an electric car.

[@AgentSmith911]

Most refineries in the world use a combination of electricity and natural gas. Still a lot of energy.

[@TandalfBeast]

I'd like to know how much 5,600 GWh is out of the UK's energy production?

[@JonathanMaddox]

The UK generated 385 TWh of electricity in 2005. 5.6 TWh was 1.45% of it.

[@JonathanMaddox]

Bastian Colding on the other hand, electricity generation is not even a majority of the UK's *energy* usage. Gas and oil products used directly for heating, transportation and chemical manufacturing together make up well over half of the UK's energy usage. Exact figures are here somewhere... www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/296183/pn_march_14.pdf

[@JonathanMaddox]

... and I'm still not quite properly answering your question. UK domestic energy production is somewhat lower than its consumption, because since the turn of the millennium it has become a net importer of oil and gas after decades of being an exporter. This is due to declining production of oil and gas, not increasing consumption. UK consumption has actually fallen quite dramatically over the last fifteen years, partly due to relocation abroad of energy-intensive manufacturing but also thanks to improved efficiency in almost all other sectors of the economy.

[@TandalfBeast]

Thanks I couldn't find this piece of information. Shouldn't it be 1.45%? It sounds like a lot when he talks about the cars and I still think it could be used better, just maybe it isn't that much compared to an entire nations consumption of energy

[@JonathanMaddox]

Bastian Colding "Shouldn't it be 1.45%?" Er, yes. I'll correct that, sorry!

[@MalcolmParsons]

The symbol for gigawatt hour is GWh, not gWh.

[@oscarradikoro6041]

Malcolm Parsons leave him alone, you get the idea

[@Bvic3]

Malcolm Parsons You can't expect such people to know actual science. Otherwise they would use proper comparaisons for orders of magnitude instead of cities and number of cars. 2% of electricity is used to refine oil. That's quite small.

[@rubenayla]

small??!! He has told you the power of electricity needed for a gallon of oil, if that's not a proper comparison tell me what is

[@TekGriffon]

@@Bvic3 That's just a single part of the value chain. I'd like to see the government fund a clear and comprehensive study fully comparing the two, and use the results to drive legislation on future infrastructure projects. Oh wait, we can't do that. I forgot, conservative voters exist.

[@Benjiffy]

With the advent of graphene ribbon batteries and quantum charging, electric cars are going to be much more attractive in a few years... Provided the car companies make use of such things...

[@pol1250]

And in this equation all transport and oil drilling aren't even considered!!

[@MacXpert74]

This information still doesn't give a complete view of the difference in energy consumption between a petrol powered car and an electric powered car. Because you would also need to look at the production of the car itself. More specifically; A electric powered car needs a whole lot of batteries to store all the required energy. Those batteries contain difficult to obtain metals like Lithium. Lithium is obtained by isolating it from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride. It is done by electrolysis. This requires great amounts of electricity. This needs to be taken in consideration when comparing electric to petrol powered cars. Also there are believes that there simply isn't enough Lithium on earth to power all vehicles if they would all be electric powered.

[@Geckogold]

+MacXpert74 Actually, you can get lithium from ocean water if there's enough demand for it, so that's not a rare resource. You're also ignoring that lithium can be recycled once the electric car's battery is deemed no longer road-worthy. Or it could be used for stationary power storage, which will put less demand on it than moving a car around does. And as the power grid is cleaned up, EV's get cleaner as well. A gas car will always pollute no matter where its gas is obtained from. Oil is finite, despite us being able to find increasingly new ways to get to it. A large portion of it also comes from countries which don't have the friendliest of people either, so they may decide to collectively jack up the prices. And it's going to run out sooner or later, and I'd rather that we weren't still heavily dependent on it for gas. I'm not saying oil isn't useful. It's still has lots of uses for many things mentioned in this video such as plastics, tires, and pharmaceuticals. But I don't think burning it in a gas engine is a good long term use for it.

[@TheDrumminguy]

+Ashelm56 perfectly said, nothing to add here

[@MacXpert74]

+Ashelm56 My original comment was about energy use, what the video is about. And again you, like the person in the video is ignoring the energy requirements in production of the batteries for EVs. And that would also include recycling as well! Reading more about lithium production it seems scientists are still in debate about the available amout and environmental effects on acquiring it. It's not the 'closed case' you make it out to be. From wikpedia: Opinions differ about potential growth. A 2008 study concluded that "realistically achievable lithium carbonate production will be sufficient for only a small fraction of future PHEV and EV global market requirements", that "demand from the portable electronics sector will absorb much of the planned production increases in the next decade", and that "mass production of lithium carbonate is not environmentally sound, it will cause irreparable ecological damage to ecosystems that should be protected and that LiIon propulsion is incompatible with the notion of the 'Green Car'".[49] However, according to a 2011 study conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, the currently estimated reserve base of lithium should not be a limiting factor for large-scale battery production for electric vehicles because an estimated 1 billion 40 kWh Li-based batteries could be built with current reserves.[86] Another 2011 study by researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Company found sufficient resources to support global demand until 2100, including the lithium required for the potential widespread transportation use. The study estimated global reserves at 39 million tons, and total demand for lithium during the 90-year period analyzed at 12-20 million tons, depending on the scenarios regarding economic growth and recycling rates.[87] On June 9, 2014, the Financialist stated that demand for lithium was growing at more than 12 percent a year; according to Credit Suisse, this rate exceeds projected availability by 25 percent. It's a bit long, but if you read all of that, the conclusion is basically, They don't know if availability will meet the demands.

[@ericbeaugiuet]

Your video is excellent if you want to translate the subtitle in french I'm ok to help you

[@Raf_P.]

Yes... 1l=1kW...so electric car consuming 18kW per 100km or for small car 5-6liter gas/diesel ...so we have 18kW by electric car od 5-6kW by gas car (from oil)... We have only 25% power for electric car...so we should build a lot of power plant for elelctric car. For example if one car will drive for 15tys km per year we should have 3MWh energy for ONE car...for milion car...we should have 3000000MWh so it's 3000TWh per year and this about 6-7% more than existing power producing in Poland... :)

[@karlod2630]

for petrol car with 6 l/100 km you need 9kwh to produce 6l. 15000 km /100 x 6 = 900 l of petrol x 1,5 kwh = 1350 kwh (1,4MWh) x 1000000 cars. 1400TWh to produce petrol!!! And 6 l/100 is for 10% of cars. Other spend 10-15 (SUV). so there's your 3000TWh electricity for EVs.

[@joshhwa]

This is truly amazing. It basically means that producing hydrogine is a much cheaper, cleaner proposition. Too bad the other side holds all the cards.

[@MiguelSilvaX]

Sad but funny indeed, and the pump itself also uses electricity to pump into the car, otherwise it would require an electric starter :P

[@geraquiroz6288]

No matter how you spin it. There is no way fossil fuels are more efficient than Electrics. Electrics can be fed any number of ways. Solar, hydro, geothermal, wind, and/or a combination of all. Energy quantified, gasoline contains 33.7kWh per gallon. That's after refining. The volt can go ±90 miles on those same 33.7kWh. A diesel big-rig gets ±7mpg if they're lucky. The last time I fueled my rig I payed $1000 and DIDN'T EVEN FILL UP ALL THE WAY (2x 150 gallon tanks), granted I could travel 1800 miles before having to refuel.

[@notenoughtime23]

Lol I worked it out to the equivalent of 6miles per gallon so a car that does 30mpg is really doing 24 real miles per gallon

[@scoobrs]

That doesn't sound accurate. 4.5 kWh in my LEAF provides 17.5 miles. I average 3.9 miles per kWh in MN, but any warmer state will have better efficiency.

[@fidorfsmf6349]

leicester champions !!!!

[@NealeUpstone]

Exactly. If that can happen, anything is possible. World peace, a sustainable planet, you name it ;-)

[@Neojhun]

An argument against electric motor based cars that annoys me the most, is the stupid over criticism of Shipping Litthium based batteries & Mining it's raw products. Stupid arguments like it take so much resources just to supply the production network & battery matterial are extreme toxic death to the world. While these people have total retrograde amnesia about Exxon Valdez and the countless other oil spills from ships. Shipping and "mining" crude oil that is one off burnt and emmitted. Unlike batteries which have life span of many years and can be recycled. At the end of the day it's relative risk, risk that is order of magnitued safer. How The Exxon Valdez Disaster Still Affects Victims Today

[@Neojhun]

camillionmonkey Facts like these are usualy ignored or not understood by those who over dramaticize. It's a game of fear rather than reason.

[@OtisAdonisChad]

Wait you forgot wars for black gold

[@LibertarianSamurai]

Coal is... at least DOMESTIC energy. Hundred percent coal powered power grid is better than paying for oil to the Saudis in the Middle East in my opinion.

[@martinwinlow]

Don't be daft! Haven't you heard! We don't produce coal any more. It's all imported from Poland!

[@LibertarianSamurai]

Martin Winlow I was thinking about the United States LOL! Sorry about that. If you are importing coal (transportation burns oil) and burning coal then it is not good at all. Water, wind (offshore wind farms and new floating wind turbines that could collect strong jet stream winds), and solar are the way to go for any country that cannot produce oil and/or coal domestically.

[@sigiwi]

need this in german Language

[@701983]

It's 20 billion miles, not 20 trillion. For instance 20.000 miles x 1 million cars. And you should consider the production of other oil products beside car fuel. So it's rather 10.000 miles x 1 million cars. There are more than 30 million cars in the UK. Argument failed.

[@tom7601]

And do you propose to make this switchover today, tomorrow, or gradually, over decades? I ask this because if fuel suddenly stopped flowing, those of us without electric cars, or the money to buy them would be stranded; not a good move. The burden of raising the price of fossil fuels, through clean air regulations would necessarily fall on the middle and lower classes, the ones who can't always afford to run out and buy an electric-only vehicle. A Tesla, costing $60,000 to $70,000 may be chump-change for CEOs and Hollywood actors, but us commoners only make half that much in a year so it becomes a bit harder. I guess the bottom line is that we need to have the base in place before throwing out electricity from fossil fuel. Can you imagine the landscape with thousands of windmills and acres of solar panels, dotting the area? How romantic that would be...

[@martinwinlow]

Sorry - not sure if your last 2 sentences were sarcastic or not… but never mind. The point I wanted to make was that we are not going to have to wait to for governments to increase the price of oil as it is happening now, has been so for years and the increase is exponential. But don't worry too much, there is no need for EVs to cost any more than their ICE equivalents. The high cost of EVs is just early market thing which, like mobile phones and flat-screen TVs, will fall dramatically quite quickly - assuming they become mass market items. The cost of the constituents of EV batteries, generally palmed for the high cost of the whole car, is not high - maybe only one tenth of the cost of the cells in the marketplace today. In fact, the whole EV drive train is so much less complex and requires so little in the way of highly engineered components compared to an ICEV that I wouldn't be surprised if they end up somewhat cheaper in due course. They'll probably be giving them away in 20 years… MW

[@Bvic3]

TLDR: 5.6 TWh in the UK in 2005. UK annual electric consumption is 310 TWh. So 2% of electricity is used for oil. That's nearly nothing compared to the energy provided by oil. It's shameful to make such an empty video.

[@Cardhu56]

Let's see how this video actually stacks up to real data. Before we begin, let me say the following to establish exactly where I stand on the environment, energy, and pollution: The evidence of global warming is abundantly clear and undeniable: Arctic ice melt: www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2009-02/arctic-melt-reopening-naval-frontier Loss of Arctic habitat disrupting the Inuit way of life: news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070515-inuit-arctic.html Ocean deoxygenation: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/nsf-ept042916.php www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163855?journalCode=marine Ocean acidification: www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/explore/pristine-seas/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/ Coral bleaching: www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-devastating-great-barrier-reef--20295 Vast forest deaths from excessively warm winters: ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosner-text Climate change from global warming is real, is happening now, and is being exacerbated by human production of greenhouse gases. Humanity has to change how it produces energy. The future of energy has to be renewable and clean sources free of atmospheric pollution: Solar, wind, hydroelectric, wave, geothermal, and nuclear. Likewise, the future of transportation needs to shift from greenhouse gas-producing combustion engines to electric and hydrogen propulsion as much as possible.

[@Cardhu56]

So having refuted the claim that refining petroleum uses more electricity than powering electric cars would (and we addressed that claim only for cars. We did not even consider bus and train mass transit), let us look at the real issue: Pollution. The whole purpose of solar, wind, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear power, electric cars, and hydrogen cars is to reduce pollution. Specifically, air pollution. The following claim is a common one made by all-electric car promoters: "Studies have found that even cars charged on dirty, coal-powered grids have overall emissions no higher than a very fuel-efficient internal-combustion car." www.greencarreports.com/news/1103896_making-electric-car-battery-cell-anodes-more-sustainably?fbfanpage That statement is false. The studies alluded to address only "carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)" emissions. CO2e only includes: Carbon dioxide (CO2) Methane (CH4) Nitrous oxide(N2O) Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) CO2e explicitly excludes the following emissions: Particulate matter (PM) Nitric oxide (NO) Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) Sulfur dioxide (SO2). Coal, oil, and biomass electric sources compare to gasoline combustion engines as follows: CO2e: 1/20th PM: 1732 times more Sulfur dioxide: 1530 times more Nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide: 4 times more. These non-greenhouse pollutants pose serious health hazards, killing 3.7 million people globally per year from heart disease, heart failure, and cancers. “PM affects more people than any other pollutant. The major components of PM are sulfate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water. It consists of a complex mixture of solid and liquid particles of organic and inorganic substances suspended in the air. The most health-damaging particles are those with a diameter of 10 microns or less, (≤ PM10), which can penetrate and lodge deep inside the lungs. Chronic exposure to particles contributes to the risk of developing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as of lung cancer.” www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/ So these other emissions are actually the top killers of people from outdoor air pollution. The article on approaches for manufacturing car batteries with less pollution is an important contribution to openly, honestly, and factually discussing the advantages, disadvantages, and problems presented by all-electric cars as contributors to solving human energy and pollution. The KZbin video in comparison is an incomplete and openly biased promotion. We need honest factual dialogue, not sales brochure promotions. .

[@Cardhu56]

A complete well-to-wheel analysis of the complete lifecycle efficiencies and emissions for coal, oil, biomass, natural gas, and gasoline-powered cars based on data from the : The European Environmental Agency; The California Air Resource Board; The US Energy Information Agency; The US Environmental Agency; Argonne National Laboratory, and many other sources is available here: philboettgesmutterings.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/an-unbiased-examination-of-all-electric-car-environmental-consequences/ The conclusions of that analysis are: 1) In order for all-electric cars to be truly "emission-free," they must be powered by renewable and clean energy sources; 2) Powering all-electric cars with coal, oil, and biomass sources produces hundreds of times more lethal pollutants that kill people than combustion engines do; 3) Powering all-electric cars with natural gas contaminates fresh water supplies and causes property damages from earthquakes, both caused by fracking to extract the natural gas. So natural gas is not sustainable either; 4) Some regions of the world are powered mostly or completely by renewable and clean sources. These regions include Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland, and much of Canada. These regions can immediately replace combustion engine cars with all-electric cars and reduce their transportation greenhouse gas emissions; What is needed is open, comprehensive, factual, and honest dialogue about the world's energy and pollution problems and options for solving them. This "Volts for Oil" whiteboard hand-waving is none of that.

[@fullychargedshow]

+Cardhu56 A very impressive and comprehensive analysis. If I am reading this mass of data correctly, what you are saying is this: If you drive an electric car powered from a grid where the electricity charging the battery is 100% generated by burning coal, gas and or oil, then the resultant pollution made by that vehicle is WORSE, more toxic and more dangerous to human beings than a vehicle that is burning gasoline/diesel travelling the same distance. Is that the gist? If so, I don't agree but it is a very important and valid point. We need to stop burning coal, gas and or oil. Now. Today. This tragic situation may very well be the case in certain states in the USA where burning coal is still the main source of electric power generation. However, there is one vitally important caveat to all this. Presently in Europe, the amount of power generated by burning coal is rapidly decreasing. Last month Scotland closed its last remaining coal burning power station, Portugal hasn't burnt any coal to make electricity since 1994, even in the backward UK we are phasing out coal as fast as possible, France has no remaining coal burning plants operating, Denmark has one, the Netherlands have two. The fastest growing sector in the electricity generating sector is renewables, I'm talking about Europe here, which still includes the UK, and this is the key argument. Electric cars are 'fuel agnostic.' They work just as well with electricity generated by the filthiest coal burning plant or a solar farm, wind farm, tidal array, geothermal generator or nuclear generator. A fossil burning car can only burn fossils, and those fossils have to be refined, and that refining, hidden from our day to day lives, consumes a great deal of energy, either from the crude oil itself or from electricity generated from burning coal. That energy use and the resultant pollution, toxic gases, particulate emissions etc etc is never referred to in the tsunami of misrepresentation pumped out by the fossil lobbyists and their willing spokespersons. That is the point of this video and I stand by its claims with vigour and determination. Regardless of electric cars we have to stop burning coal, I agree 100%, it is the most ridiculous fuel source, Victorian, steam age, dated, dirty and disgusting and indeed, no longer cheap. Land based wind turbines now undercut burning coal, without subsidies, and that's what I want to use to power my car.

[@Cardhu56]

+fullychargedshow : Re: "Presently in Europe, the amount of power generated by burning coal is rapidly decreasing. " And that is a really good thing. However, perceptions of "rapid decline" are irrelevant. What really matters is: - How much fossil fuel electric production needs to be replaced? - How fast is it being replaced? - How long will replacing the rest take? Cold hard facts and mathematical analysis count. Perceptions do not. So here are some facts for America: The US added 1,291 megawatts of renewable power capacity in the first 3 months of 2016. thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/16/3778542/grid-70-times-renewables-natural-gas/?.com& That is 1.291 gigawatts. We're well on our way, right? The US generates 3.83 million gigawatt-hours per year www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=2&pid=2&aid=2 of which nuclear and renewables only generate about 34%. www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 So the fossil fuel sources that need to be replaced comprise about 66% of total US generating capacity, or about 2.53 million gigawatt-hours. That is equal to a power capacity of 289 gigawatts generating per year. The fossil fuel generating capacity of the US to be replaced is 289 / 1.291 = 224 times larger. At that rate, it will take another 56 years to switch the US from fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy. And that is only to replace what America has now for generating capacity. The capacity to replace combustion engine cars with all-electric requires 43.4% more generating capacity. The best projections we have for switching from fossil fuels to renewables is 35 more years: news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-50states-renewable-energy-060815.html ecowatch.com/2015/09/21/100-renewables-2050-greenpeace/ motherboard.vice.com/read/guess-who-accurately-predicted-the-explosion-of-the-clean-energy-market Stanford is one of the 10 best research institutions in the world. The Greenpeace study has 16 years of proven accuracy behind it. That is only to replace what America presently has for generating capacity. Adding capacity for replacing combustion engine cars with all-electric and hydrogen cars requires another 43.4%. Adding that capacity would take another 15 years at the Stanford rate. The world needs to plan for reality. The reality is that the world's energy and pollution problems are _huge_. Pulling humanity out of its present energy and pollution mess is going to take at least 5 decades. Humanity needs to plan for that realistically. Part of that planning has to be adopting all-electric cars in a responsible manner that does not cost human lives. The present approach being taken by the electric car industry does not demonstrate such environmental consideration for human health and safety.

[@Cardhu56]

+fullychargedshow : Re: "That energy use and the resultant pollution, toxic gases, particulate emissions etc etc is never referred to in the tsunami of misrepresentation pumped out by the fossil lobbyists and their willing spokespersons That is the point of this video and I stand by its claims with vigour and determination." I stated in my very first post that humanity's sources of energy infrastructure and transportation must change as soon as possible and why that change is absolutely essential. The issue has to be stopping pollution and saving lives. The discussion of how to shift from fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy must be based on complete, accurate, and unbiased facts; science; and honest quantitative analysis. The "Volts for Oil" video makes claims about the relative mileage of combustion engines versus all-electric vehicles in miles per kilowatt that stand refuted. This video does not contribute to accurate, factual, and honest discussion of the issues facing humanity.

[@gerdzeller602]

Where are the sources?