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LETTER: Green you say?

Morning Star reader says plans need to be in place ahead of EV success
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Electric vehicles (EVs), yeah! Let’s all buy one and save the planet.

EV advocates like to use the water power example where a guy drives around all day and then stops and dumps a cup full of water back into the reservoir upstream of a hydropower station. The inference is clear.

Use an electric vehicle and save the planet. This is pure unadulterated BS.

It’s really quite simple. Power to charge EV batteries has to come from somewhere. Every carbon footprint reduction plan on the planet includes the de-commissioning of fossil-fueled power generation plants because of their emissions. The worst of the worst are older coal-fired thermal plants. These antiquated installations contribute more in the way of pollution for every mile driven than what we have now with gas or diesel-fueled vehicles. In order to shut down coal-fired plants, we need sufficient “green” energy sources to replace them. The net effect of adding the huge amount of load required to charge millions of EV batteries would be to eliminate, or at least indefinitely postpone, the moth-balling of those plants. To worsen the problem, we have a great number of misguided individuals who will miss no opportunity to protest, blockade or otherwise interfere with the construction of clean sources of electricity. I use Site “C” on the Peace River as a classic example.

And those are just the obvious issues. There are serious environmental issues surrounding the mining processes for metals such as cadmium, lithium and lead which are required to manufacture the batteries.

Also, we have no plans on how to recycle or otherwise safely dispose of millions of tons of spent batteries.

EVs will be a good idea when all these problems are addressed. Until then, they will simply be a means for politicians to grab a few votes and huge profits for manufacturers.

Andrew Kendrick, Lumby