Tag Archives: DECC

Battery Banter 4: Could the Grid Cope with a Next Generation EV?

Posted on March 27, 2015 | 5 comments

In my last series of posts, I focussed on the war of attribution between electric vehicles (EVs) and traditional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEs).  Due to the recent slump in oil prices, EVs are on the defensive. They need increased volume to get down their cost curves and punch out of their current redoubt of super cars (Tesla) and green credential statement cars (Nissan Leaf). Low gasoline prices has made such an offensive a lot more tricky to pull off.

But let us suppose that a commercial super battery were to emerge that had high energy density and was cheap. What would happen next? Let’s run this thought experiment in a UK context.

First, let’s look a the UK’s existing fleet. Great Britain has a population of 64 million people, who between them drive around 29 million registered cars (source: here, click for larger image).

Registered Cars UK

And annually each car is driven for an average of 8,000 miles, which translates into 22 miles per day (click for larger image; also remember we are smoothing out weekends and holidays).

Annual Average Miles Travelled jpeg

From a previous blog post, I republish the following chart, which shows the kind of mileage per kilowatt-hour (kWh) a battery achieves at present. Continue reading →

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Posted in Technology

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Chart of the Day, 7 Feb 2015: UK Emissions Progress Good, but Not Good Enough

Posted on February 7, 2015 | 3 comments

Last week, the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change published its final figures for 2013 greenhouse gas emissions. At first glance, the picture looks encouraging (click for larger images on all charts).

Emissions of Greenhouse Gases UK jpeg

And we appear comfortably ahead of our Kyoto target and the carbon budget intermediary goals established under the Climate Change Act 2008:

UK Carbon Budget Targets jpeg

Unfortunately, much of the success of the first carbon budget came on the back of the 2008/9 recession. As outlined previously in this blog, carbon emissions are a composite product of population expansion, growth in GDP per head, the energy intensity of GDP and the carbon intensity of energy (this relationship is called the Kaya Identity and is looked at it in more detail here). So when economic growth is slow, greenhouse gas emission growth is slow as well.

To its credit, the 2008 Climate Change Act also established a watchdog called the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), whose remit was to report whether targets were being met. From the July 2014 progress report to parliament on the preliminary 2013 numbers we read this:

CCC 2014 Progress Report jpegEmissions reduction policies suffer from the fact that the low-hanging fruit is aways picked first. If we are lucky, technology will make some of the higher growing fruity easier to pick, but we are in no way assured that this will happen. Against this background, the CCC is not confident that the UK can keep the reduction pace through the 3rd and 4th carbon budgets. As things stand, we do not have the policies in place to create a path to get to where we need to go.

Planned Policy jpeg

Forth Carbon Budget Policies jpeg

And the scale of the challenge can sometimes appear daunting. The 73% reduction in emissions to 2050 required from now onwards will see UK society almost completely decarbonised.

GG Emissions to 2050 jpeg

Yet this is what we have to do. To repeat the Churchill quote: “It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required”.

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Posted in Climate Change

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