2023.12.31 It looks like electric buses are the flavour of the week for anti-EV disinformation providers.

Here's a media report that examines one of the stories going the rounds.
Was Oslo paralysed after all of its electric buses broke down due to the cold? (euronews)

I am not saying that there are not real teething problems with electric buses which are coming to light with a few years of use. There are, and given it is a new technology, they should be expected, especially when transit operators tend to select the lowest cost options from the lowest bidder on a product that they should expect will need vendor support and where the operator doesn't have decades of experience. This is why most operators I have seen purchase small quantities initially for 'pilot projects', and then tend to torture them with worst-case scenarios early on and neglect maintenance after a while as the machines prove reliable in early years.

In this case, the issue seems to be cold batteries. Those of us who use vehicles in cold climates know that battery capacity diminishes in the cold. That's why so many people with gasoline and diesel vehicles need jump starts or battery boosts to start engines on cold days. New battery technologies suffer the same effects, if less so.

With my early EVs (1980s), we solved this problem with battery heaters (operated when vehicles were parked and plugged in), thermostat controls and removable insulation. Old problem, easy and inexpensive solution. I also installed fans on thermostats to run ambient air across the tops of batteries for cooling on hot days, again with thermostats. I called it battery thermal management. We also used cabin pre-heaters on cold days for about 30 minutes before starting a trip so the interior was warm and vehicle defrosted before setting out, and the warming tended to last for 20-30 minutes before on-board heaters were needed (and we were usually at our destination by then). Still, it looks like Oslo is learning these lessons now. Sadly, I expect other operators will also choose not to learn from those that have already solved these problems, and will independently repeat these mistakes and have to learn for themselves the hard way. "Not-invented-here" continues to be a fundamental problem for technology world-wide.

2023.12.28 The big takeaway here is that continued improvements in batteries will mean more and less expensive EVs in the future.

Retrofit batteries should appear in a few years as some of the early volume production vehicles like the Nissan Leaf reach numbers and ages where replacement batteries can be a significant market.
World's First EVs To Ditch Lithium For Sodium Batteries Roll Off The Assembly Line (Hot Hardware)

2023.12.27 What do you try when fossil fuels are expensive and a nuclear physicist says nuclear isn't the answer?

Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done (The Guardian)

2023.12.26 Solar thermal should not be overlooked by home and building owners - it works and saves money

Most Americans are missing out on these money-saving home features: ‘Homeowners see savings of $781 on energy costs’ (The Cooldown)

2023.12.26 Nameplate capacity does not equate to total energy production over time. Coal power takes time to ramp up and down, but is considered a firm supply. Intermittent wind power is not considered a firm supply (dispatchable power), but that can be resolved by putting battery storage with the wind installations so that the electricity can be supplied as required (load-following), which is even more valuable than dispatchable firm power.

In Montana, wind is about to overtake coal generation capacity (Electrek)

2023.12.25 Sea level change is already happening as part of our climate change trajectory, and forecast to accelerate.

Archaeologists Found 2,000-Year-Old Lesson on Sea Level Changes Destroying Societies (Science Alert)

2023.12.24 LNG isn't as ridiculous as H2 as a 'clean fuel', but it's still not financially or environmentally viable

Bill McKibben Lists Five Reason New LNG Terminals Won’t Be Approved. We Add One More (CleanTechnica)

2023.12.23 Contrary to reality, the disinformation engines are saying EV sales are dropping

For a while now, as a long-time EV owner and user who has decades of first-hand experience with the gentle beasts, I have noted that for-profit ("mainstream") media and engineered social media have a rather distorted view of EVs which seems disconnected from reality. Unfortunately, a lot of people who don't have first-hand experience with EVs tend to take this disinformation at face value, that is, as truth. Unfortunate. The disinformers have created a web (pun intended) of disinformation which leverages mythology, perceptions and fears of car buyers. And I understand that many car buyers see vehicles as big financial decisions, though many focus on sticker price rather than total lifetime cost of ownership. So, I'm sharing a couple of EV-disinfo items that appear to have been resurrected from past debunking and are going around again.

The world is a big place, and if you have an agenda you can cherry-pick some outlier example and pretend it's the general case, when it's not. This time Bloomberg started the storyline, and the echo chamber cranked it up (Yahoo, NADA, and others) and I'm going to pick Fortune for my representative link because of the headline and photo they chose for visual impact.
No one wants to buy used EVs and they’re piling up in weed-infested graveyards
The photo is related to a specific story from earlier this year. Note the vehicles look to be in really good shape and all of the same model. Because they are. This is not about individual consumers ditching end-of-life or even 3-year-old EVs; this is a fleet. And it's a specific fleet.
The real story behind the photo was a rebuttal to a July 2023 disinfo story about fleets of allegedly new EVs not finding buyers in China.
The Real Story of That Chinese EV Graveyard Isn’t What You Were Told (They’re left behind from a big business gone bust, but that business wasn’t making EVs.)
It's also worth noting the key industry figure quoted is from Toyota, which for all intents and purposes does not build or sell battery EVs (the bZ4X fiasco aside). Their hybrids are electric-assist gas cars; a very few come with a plug, but they all come with a sizable gas tank and filler door.
Be skeptical when those telling you that EVs have issues are those who stand to lose when EVs are a success.

In this case, Snopes has done the debunking of a story making the rounds mostly on social media about the obvious risk that people will freeze to death because EVs will get stranded on roads in winter storms.
Pic Shows Electric Vehicles That Failed In German Winter Storm?
It's a great photo, but the supposed event (EVs that failed in German winter storm) never happened. If you're dissing EVs, and you can't find an outlier event to support your disinformation narrative, it's totally cool to just make stuff up to wind people up. I mean, who's going to let facts get in the way of their story?

And I'll close with this one where a major UK news source has also noted this trend and debunks - again - the blather about EVs creating more total GHG emissions and pollution than petrol vehicles. Do electric cars really produce fewer carbon emissions than petrol or diesel vehicles? (The Guardian)
Note, most studies of how much GHG pollution is created by petrol vehicles only count those directly associated with burning the hydrocarbons at the vehicle, and not the upstream emissions from getting the crude oil out of the ground and to the vehicle fuel tank.

2023.12.22 Giving voice to those with the biggest imposed risk on climate change (lack of) action

'Overwhelming relief' for youth activists cleared to sue Ottawa over climate change (CBC)

2023.12.21 Ironic silver lining: strong storm increases wind power production for UK

Wind turbines generate more than half of UK’s electricity due to Storm Pia (The Guardian)

2023.12.21 'Grassroots' opposition to offshore wind projects in U.S. not as organic as it appears

As with many other 'local' groups opposed to renewable energy projects, funding often seems to track back to fossil fuel industries that could see demand for their products reduced if projects proceed.
Brown University researchers ‘map’ anti-offshore wind movement (WorkBoat)

2023.12.21 Another reason for homeowners to consider home-based energy storage and electricity production

for at least their critical needs (heat, food storage, communications): increased severity of power outages due to climate change and longer waits for service restoration due to cuts in basic maintenance by utilities.
Years of reduced spending on tree clearing preceded major N.B. Power outage (CBC)

2023.12.20 CSIRO (Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) shows (as others have before), that nuclear is the most expensive 'mainstream' way to generate electricity, while on-shore wind-power and solar (even with storage) are consistently the least expensive.

So, why are big utilities and big government so fixed on building new nuclear now, which won't be online until well after we are in full-on climate crisis for real, while wind and solar can be installed in a fraction of the time, with lower environmental impact, and are actually renewable sources? All without the potential radiation release and long-lived waste baggage.
The U.S. already has a pile of nuclear fission plants that did not live to their advertised life span, are too expensive to operate, let alone repair, and are now labelled 'stranded assets'. Why more of this? Solar and on-shore wind provide cheapest electricity and nuclear most expensive, CSIRO analysis shows (The Guardian)

2023.12.19 Nuclear fission already carries decades of baggage and unsolved problems.

Ramping nuclear up on an accelerated basis won't solve any of those issues, and will cause new ones.
"Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear options."
The nuclear energy numbers racket (National Observer)

2023.12.19 The oil, gas, coal and nuclear purveyors keep saying the world can't run without them.

You know the old saying? “Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.” - James Baldwin The transition process is under way.
Renewables cover more than half of Germany’s electricity demand for first time in 2023 (Renew Economy)

2023.12.14 Funny story, gas and diesel vehicles are electric-grid-dependent, EVs are not

You can make your own electricity if the grid goes down. Can you make your own gasoline?
Only EVs Can Make Fuel Off-Grid, Keep Working During Long Power Outages (CleanTechnica)

2023.12.13 Fossil fuels mega players used COP 28 they have no intention of actually reduding their GHG emissions.

Fortunately, it seems the world has a different plan - and are transitioning away on the demand side, because renewables are less expensive than coal, oil, nuclear and now, natural gas.
A U.S. energy milestone is just around the corner (Axios)

2023.12.12 About those reports of declining demand for EVs ... Volvo joins the chat

Volvo CEO says what lack of EV demand? Electric car orders are strong (Electric Autonomy)

2023.12.12 About those reports of declining demand for EVs ... Canada says, not so much

ZEV registrations up 22 per cent in Q3 over Q2, says new StatsCan data (Electric Autonomy)

2023.12.12 CO2 removal options are diverse, but they only matter if they SEQUESTER the carbon (dioxide).

If we let the fossil fuel sector 'store' carbon dioxide, they will simply use it to produce more fossil fuels (e.g. Enhanced Oil Recovery).
New report outlines opportunities to remove CO2 at the gigaton scale (Phys.org)

2023.12.12 Europe shifts from fossil fuels to renewables in a big way on electricity production

Europe's top economies slash carbon intensity of electricity (Reuters)

2023.12.11 Fossil fuels funds more astroturf disinformation to block wind power projects

Dark money tied to fossil fuels helped stop offshore wind energy in the US Great Lakes (reve)

2023.12.11 So, it seems Carbon Capture and Storage actually increased lifetime GHG emissions

The Saskatchewan government's Boundary Dam CCS project is specifically called out as a real-life example of increased emissions due to CCS implementation. Note, this is the technology now being touted by the Pathways Alliance to justify continued expansion of the oil sands despite its high emissions production processes.
Carbon capture extends project lifespan, worsening emissions: expert (BNN Bloomberg)

2023.12.11 Fugitive emissions have to be counted as part of the production emissions inventory

Alberta Sets a Methane ‘Super-Emitter’ Record (The Tyee)

2023.12.11 When will we figure out that climate change mitigation would have been (and still is) cheaper than 'adaptation'?

Climate change battering municipal finances across Canada (BNN Bloomberg)

2023.12.08 Alberta collects super-emitter status, but Saskatchewan is a solid player based on methane emissions intensity

Saskatchewan’s oilpatch is leakier than you think (National Observer)

2023.12.08 Painfully slowly, mainstream media is shifting from 25 to 80 as the multiplier for the global warming potential for methane relative to carbon dioxide as GHGs.

Spoiler alert: the appropriate number is 104. That's the UNIPCC's number for the 10-year impact of methane, which lasts about a year in the atmosphere. Not exactly breaking news: published by UNIPCC in 2018. (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf)

Here's why food waste is a major climate change issue (CBC)

2023.12.08 Hansen and Mann agree that climate change is happening and is an existential threat to our species.

Right now, they disagree on how soon we'll go over the cliff. I'm tired of corporate media pretending this is an important difference. The real take-away is that we're driving to the cliff-edge, with the accelerator pushed down. Does it really matter whether our swarm of fossil-fueled vanity F-350 single-occupant commuter vehicles goe over the cliff at 150 km/h or 200 km/h? Or perhaps the focus should be on letting up on the accelerator pedal and turning the steering wheel to avoid going over the cliff.
What I really need to see is serious conversations about phasing out GHG-emitting fuels (yes, fossil fuels), reducing activities that produce a lot of waste heat (that's you nuclear fission and 'green' hydrogen production, storage and use), and profligate waste of resources of all kinds.
COP-28 is turning out to be the oil-industry-driven farce I had feared. Time to end those charades.
Similarly, if we're serious about reducing GHG emissions, measures have to have teeth and consequences for misses, and start in a couple of months, not 3-8 years from now.
There are lots of available options that will accomplish what is needed, and they don't include bet-the-planet one-shot geo-engineering gambles. Every measure we implement has to have an 'off-switch', whether it is via degree of implementation or actual control over level of operation.
The disagreement between two climate scientists that will decide our future (The Conversation)

2023.12.08 I don't often disagree with Nikiforuk, and I know electric cars are not a panacea, but ...

Yes, we should put telecommuting, transit, walkable and bikable options ahead of cars - all cars. However, in an Ottawa winter, where transit is a joke and walking and cycling are dangerous when walkways and bike routes - including streets - are not properly cleared, then cars become the next logical choice among current options. Then, we should be looking at lower-cost, shorter-range, lower performance models as key to a rational implementation, just as we have gasoline econoboxes today. The transition to renewables for charging and building those vehicles is already underway - we call it greening the long tailpipe. However, we should be accelerating that transition.
The computerization of vehicles means there is a lot of copper in a fossil-fuel vehicle, too.
Yes, a lot of materials go into building an EV, like fossil fuel vehicles. Most of this can be recovered via recycling. There will be a blip as we move through some battery technologies, such as cobalt gets eliminated from the next generation of EV batteries, and we shift from lithium to sodium, and then onto solid state batteries. Yes, a lot of transport fossil fuels are used by trucks which are bigger and travel farther than typical privately-owned cars. However, transitioning long-haul freight to low emissions is on the horizon with better rail systems and electric cargo trucks. Still, even Nikiforuk notes that global motor emissions fell by 4% between 2010 and 2022, while EVs still make up less than 2% of the world light-duty vehicle fleet.
Yes, EVs are typically heavier than fossil fuel vehicles due to battery weight. But batteries are still evolving and improving, and have a trend line that shows the energy density by weight and volume is increasing with time. Eventually, the batteries will also become part of the vehicle's structural integrity.
Californians were charging EVs at night when CO2 emissions from electricity were higher - because there was a financial incentive to do so. This is changing to encourage more charging when emissions are lower, which is more predictable now as more solar generation is powering the California grid.
On the Consumer Reports EV reliability issue, what CR really found is that the newest technologies have the lowest reliability while the stuff we have built for 100 years seems to have reached higher reliability forms. That's part of the learning curve.
Poof Goes the Electric Car Dream (The Tyee)

2023.12.04 Another UAE shocker (NOT): UAE's GHG emissions rose 7.5% in 2022 (world average 1.5%)

Al Gore slams COP28 climate summit host UAE, says its emissions soared (Reuters)

2023.12.03 We have spent 70 years going in the wrong direction: the cliff edge is in sight.

Open secret at climate talks: The top temperature goal is mostly gone (Politico)

2023.12.02 Are you shocked that the UAE is promoting ammonia as a low-carbon energy carrier, when its energy cycle clearly shows it is not?

‘Low-carbon product’ promoted by COP28 president 3 times more damaging than ‘regular’ fuels (Euronews)

You can find many earlier postings (going back to year 2000) related to climate change at:
Keith's List Archive and
the Sustainable Biofuel List Mail Archive.

I present a lot of information in this blog and on this website. If you need some help sorting through the noise level and getting a forward-looking, proactive approach to climate change for your business, I can do that work for you via my consulting business. Contact