I scoff at the prof
The prof (if that is what he is) points out himself that "in the UK, 10kWh delivered into an electric car results in average emissions of 5.5kg. In France this is already close to zero, as more than 85 per cent of electricity is generated from nuclear and renewable sources." Why can't this become true of the UK too? This is the main point about electric cars and he ignores it completely. Petrol *has* to involve carbon emissions. Electricity doesn't.
There is another problem in that he does not make a fair comparison: he measures efficiency over different parts of the energy distribution process for each type of car. If he is going to look at electric vehicle's energy efficiency in units of 'energy content of fuel burnt at the power station per mile driven', he should look at diesel and petrol vehicle's energy efficiency in comparable terms, for instance 'energy content, including embodied energy of refining and distribution, of fuel burnt in the engine per mile driven'. That's not a very easy number to get hold of, but using it might increase the energy per mile of petrol and diesel cars by 30-40% (Treloar et al., 2004, cited in Without the Hot Air). That would obviously make electric vehicles look a lot better, even on TODAY'S technologies, and electric cars still have plenty of room for improvement. Although today's electric cars achieve around 20kWh/100km, many current prototypes approach double that efficiency.
In terms of carbon emissions, he aims to mislead again. He compares the CO2 emissions associated with feeding 10kWh to an electric car and to a petrol car: 5.5kg and 2.6kg respectively. We are supposed to conclude that petrol is better for the environment! Even using his numbers, 10kW gets you 50km in an electric and only 12.5km in a petrol car, so driving a petrol car means you emit just under twice as much carbon as if you went electric. That's because power stations are about twice as efficient as automotive internal combustion engines, even including distribution losses*.
Richard Pike accuses the government of woolly thinking but he's guilty of some himself - or else he has an anti-e-car agenda. If so then the real problem with what he's written is that he is spin-doctoring the facts for political ends, while wearing the scientific authority of the Royal Society of Chemistry. There are serious political questions here, about how to manage climate and energy security risk and what to do about them, but science should be about facts. If we let people treat science and politics the same it'll be bad for all of us - we expect to compromise in politics, but you can't negotiate with facts. Its hard enough to separate the science from the politics anyway, this guy should be ashamed of himself for debasing his scientific credibility to dress up his political opposition to electric cars.
*Whereas a decent petrol or diesel engine only converts 20-25% of the fuel's thermal energy to mechanical energy (http://mb-soft.com/public2/engine.html), or just 14-18% if you include the embodied energy of refining and distribution, even an old and creaky large coal power station can convert 36% of the fuel's thermal energy to electricity, and a shiny new one can convert 48% (ok I admit I looked on Wikipedia), which works out as 28-40% after distribution (8% distribution loss figure from National Grid). The equivalent numbers for gas, as already mentioned, are 60% and 52%.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
