By what year, should all fossil fuel passenger vehicles be banned from use on Australian public roads?
So that is both new & used vehicles
Doesn't include freight trucks, mining vehicles or trains (in this poll).
For those who choose 'Never' - do you accept the relevant science of the health effects of airborne carcinogens/pollutants from vehicle exhaust? Do you accept the science of anthropogenic global warming?
Yeh goto texas, no healthcare, basically no holidays, no rights at work, all hail the glorious founder and ceo.
@gaynamedpaul: Life is a bit more complicated than buying a hamburger. You forgot the cost of having a kid in hospital is $100k, while in Australia its free. Another factor to consider is crime and the ever present worry about gun shootouts and gang warefare which basically dont exist in Australia. Or lets talk about work, in Australia you get many freedoms and protections like a liveable minimum wage, which is also why theres a significantly less crime here. Poor people earning $3 an hour, get hungry and snap and they turn to robbery because they need to eat.
Do you really think a government subsidy would make cars cheaper ?
Of course not - it just means the car will increase in price by the same amount. The vendors arent stupid exactly the same thing happened in the housing market.
If you're in favour of banning fossil fuel cars, you'd also have to be for banning electric cars (due to the carbon emission created during production) at a later date in favour of only using bikes, buses and trains.
Buses and trains also have a carbon cost.
Building those roads and train lines including digging tunnels isnt free. Concrete setting accounts for 10% of all carbon in teh world.
Yeah let's just forget about commercial and private jets, shipping etc because it's individuals with their ICE vehicles that's really ruining the planet.
It is a decent percentage. Passenger cars are responsible for 41% of the carbon emissions of all transport, and transport is 20% of all carbon emissions. That makes passenger cars responsible for over 8% of all carbon emissions.
Only the sale of new vehicles should be "banned". Many people have no option but to buy older vehicles and there isn't much stock of either new or used EVs and it will probably be a decade before there is a reasonable supply of used EVs. I also expect that demand will exceed supply in late model used EVs for a couple of decades.
How about banning the use of fossil fuel for power generation/cooking/heating etc? we can then go back to stoneage!
EV's are a great idea except for
- people who live in houses that don't have a permanent parking spot to charge their cars
- people who live in shared accommodation, where there is more than 1x car to a house
- people that have more than 1x car in the household.
- people who live in apartments that don't have the infrastructure to install charging points
- people who drive for a living and require constant charging
- people in regional areas that drive greater distances everyday
Hybrid cars would be a good compromise for that population. Petrol stations won't disappear because trucks etc will need them. But they might switch to selling diesel only. So maybe they'll start making diesel hybrid cars.
hybrids still require fossil fuels to function, so essentially still an ICE vehicle.
that's not what the OP was asking
Fair, with that interpretation of the OP the answer has to be never because there will be fossil fuel-only trucks and trains for a long time after fossil fuel-only cars are gone.
I do think hybrids will continue to be sold though. They'll be less popular once EVs are ubiquitous and fossil fuel is harder to get but the people that need them should retain access
@Quantumcat: don't forget machinery, generators, ships, planes, construction, mining, farming,
fossil fuels will always be around.
it's more of a question of, sustainable and "RELIABLE" power generation, renewables are not and far from being a RELIABLE source.
balance between, traditional energy creation Vs renewable to maintain energy security as a nation as well as a global community member.
cars whether that be EV or ICE is only small fry in the bigger picture, whats the point of having electric cars when we don't have a reliable and sustainable energy generation to charge these cars
@Archi: You don't need fossil fuels just because renewables are intermittent, you need better storage technology. Fossil fuels will eventually disappear. Might take 200 years but they don't deliver anything that we can't do another way.
@Quantumcat: The 'Tesla big battery' in South Australia cost $90 million and can store 129 MWh of energy.
To put this in perspective, that amount of energy is used in Australia every 17 seconds.
@trapper: The first 100MW/129MWh was completed in November 2017 and a 50MW/64.5MWh expansion was completed in September 2020.
But anyway, we need to look at that battery with the right perspective. Don't think of it as supplying massive amouts of power, instead it provides grid services including fast frequency response, frequency regulation, energy arbitrage and inertia. I won't pretend to fully know what all those are but apparently they are important.
https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/07/27/hornsdale-b…
@rentonc: I know what it was designed for.
What I am trying to illustrate is that electricity 'storage' does not exist on anything even remotely close to grid scale.
We would need thousands of these things.
@Quantumcat: Correct. What many of the commenters here don't seem to realize is that up until around 100 years ago, supply of fossil fuels was also intermittent, and firewood was the main source of fire for households, machinery, transportation, etc.
Technology for renewables and electric vehicles is evolving at a similar pace, so it will happen sooner or later. A lot of people don't want to give up ICE vehicles just yet because the value for money and functionality in EVs still can't compete. But they're getting better each iteration.
@Quantumcat: storage is not the solution. clean, sustainable, reliable and economical generation is where things need to improve,
you still need to generate the power to store it. whether that be renewable or not.
@Archi: Hmm not really, we already have plenty of different technologies for generating energy. We make so much solar energy just from residential rooftops that energy prices sometimes go negative. Plus we have wind, geothermal, hydro and others. We have an embarrassment of riches in this country when it comes to renewable energy. The challenge is storing it when it isn't wanted and making it available when it is. There are technological advances on that front every year.
@Quantumcat: yet
- our energy security is low,
- risk of outages and blackout high,
- cost of coal and gas high,
- investment into increased capacity like snowy hydro 2 failed
- wind power is expensive to harvest and maintain
- solar has limited availability
- storage capacity is low
when we can go through summer or winter and not think about the cost of energy or the availability of this energy, i think it's when we have a good energy security.
imagine your own grand mother is afraid to turn on the heater in the middle of winter because it is unaffordable. that too me is not energy secure,
we as a society rely on energy as the backbone of our existence, if we can't get that right, what hope do we have,
@Archi: Again, the problem is storing the energy and making it available when it is needed. Our current problems are due to the war, making fossil fuels much more expensive, as we have relied on fossil fuels to be the stopgap when renewables aren't being generated. Once we have good storage technology and it is deployed we won't need fossil fuels to fill the gap and we won't have to worry about expensive energy, it will be very cheap. Where did you read that wind energy was expensive? And how does solar have limited availability? We have more sun than practically anywhere in the world, and millions of km2 of land that isn't useful for agriculture or for humans to live on.
Again, the problem is storing the energy …
Yes and that problem is not going away.
There is no technical solution to this, and nothing even remotely on the horizon either.
And how does solar have limited availability?
You may have noticed it's dark half of the time…
@Quantumcat: There is no storage, and nothing we could possibly create to do this.
People need power at night.
@trapper: Hence improvement in storage technology is what is needed 🙄 I'm sorry I didn't seem to make that clear in every single one of my previous responses. There is storage, but the technology we have so far is expensive for the capacity and longevity. It gets better every year however.
@Quantumcat: There is no 'improvement' even theoretically that could be developed to store this amount of energy. We need a whole new understanding of physics.
The best we can do at grid scale is store only seconds worth of energy. Just think about it.
@trapper: People have been storing energy in a thing called dams, for thousands of years.
Got extra energy pump water back up and fill the dam from downstream, need energy release the water, rinse and repeat.
@CowFrogHorse: Like this? https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/24/australian-consortium…
So 4.5GWh for $5.5 billion. Well this could supply our energy needs … for almost 10 minutes.
Might need a few of these lol
@Quantumcat: I would like to see Hybrid hydrogen vehicles or just more hydrogen in general.
Hydrogen on the fly or fuel cells. This means of energy storage is being ignored in Australia but is the main goal for Japan. The only thing I've heard about it is the proposal for a coal to hydrogen facility in the LaTrobe Valley that will be exported straight to Japan.
I know a common argument around hydrogen is that it is not as efficient compared to battery storage, but if there is excess generation during the day it's less about efficiency and more about the infrastructure we already have that could adapt to utilize it. Apparently you can convert a diesel vehicle to run on Hydrogen.
Rather convert water to hydrogen than cop a sun tax and encourage garbage like crypto to 'use the energy' at peak.
@A-mak: That would be amazing - and it can be trucked or trained around the country instead of needing to upgrade transmission lines
@A-mak: Hydrogen gas is a tricky fuel.
Can't be liquified, so occupies a large volume even when highly compressed.
The molecule size is so tiny, it leaks easily through almost any type of seal, very hard to work with and keep it contained.
Extremely explosive when it does escape.
@trapper: Those are all valid points, I believe there are some hydrogen fuel stations in California usa and a small number of hydrogen vehicles. There would definitely need to be more scrutiny than they give LPG systems on vehicles. I hear the hydrogen fuel cell technology is 'quite safe' but I'm just an uneducated shmuck. It would just be nice to see Australia looking at all options, rather than the ones that seem to mainly benefit large corporations.
To add, we only capture methane from a small number of garbage dumps in Australia. Would also be nice to see action in that regard to alleviate them frackers.
@A-mak: Hydrogen is not practical. While the fuel is very light it requires extremely strong and heavy container vessels, a 100kg tank to store 1kg of Hydrogen which provides the same or less than 40L of fuel isnt a win.
@A-mak: Hydrogen is a terrible battery. For starters the amount you put in versus how much you get back out is a major loss.
Go to a public charging point, yes it takes 30 min of your day but you are helping the enviroment, remeber when people would wake up at 6am to try and find toilet paper
good point,
there are suburbs with dozens of streets of houses with no garages so if everyone on the street went to a public charging point at the same time, i.e after work
will there be enough?
infrastructure isn't there, and it will never be. from where you are a suburb like south Melbourne with many streets full of terrace houses with no garages, telling people to go to a public charging station is not the answer. especially if you are talking mass migration into EV's
Luckily we have a thing called technolgy and smartphones to find a ev booking site
@Stopback: that's great,
"hold on dear, i'll be home soon for dinner, after i charge the car 3 suburbs away because the traffic was a little heavy and all the one close to home have already been taken, just tell little timmy to read the book himself" ahh what we sacrifice for the environment. ohh wells
i'm not against electric vehicles, but bucket loads more needs to be done before talking about any banning of sales of ICE vehicles or migration into EV only society
all i'm saying. EV's are not for everyone, and you can't make everyone buy/own EV's
@Stopback: Yeh before people only wasted 10 - 20 hours in traffic or car parks … now they can waste even more of their lives driving to a site and wait another 30 mins or whatever.
All of those problems can be solved. There is no reason whole streets couldn't be 'electrified' with a charging plug at every parking bay for example.
The problem that can't so easily be solved is; where does all this electricity come from?
At the moment it's mostly from burning coal, and that isn't going to change significantly in the coming few decades at least.
exactly,
a sustainable and reliable energy creation is a far more important discussion to be had
…it's mostly from burning coal, …
Some of the greenies don't care about that. They think that as long as they themselves aren't the ones shovelling the coal into the fire, it's not them that are the evil ones.
Pretty sure that coal is in the process of being phased out here. Most of it will be gone by 2040.
And replaced with what? There are no serious plans to replace it with anything.
You do realise tht batteries dont grow on trees… and they come from mines.
What do you think mines run on ?
What do you think is going to happen to those batteries ?
Please show me anywhere in the world where more than half the batteries are recycled… heres a clue google "EV battery recycle".
Some cars have had a self-destruct mechanism built in.
Examples:
P76
Holden Cruze, Camira, Gemini (Diesel), Barina
Datsun 120Y
Daewoo
+1 for the camira
What will be done with the ~80L of petrol per barrel of oil?
Switzerland Considers Electric Vehicle Ban To Avoid Blackouts
To ensure energy security this winter, Switzerland could become the first country to limit the driving and use of EVs, German daily Der Spiegel reports, citing multiple media reports on the Swiss four-stage action plan to avoid blackouts.
Driving EVs could be banned in Switzerland unless in cases of "absolutely necessary journeys” in stage three of the power conservation plans. The country also plans a stricter speed limit on highways in the recently proposed action plan, which has yet to be adopted.
…just ban petrol vehicles and all the problems are solved!!!! /s
I think you smoke the wrong thing: Sweden tried to make millions with a little show girl, selling heavy guzzlers, crappy music etc.
Idiotic greenies are everywhere, blocking traffic etc!
Sweden didnt try and make anything. Greta was not sponsored or created by the Swedish government nor was she voted in by them.
When the alternative/s is reliable and readily available for people to use.
While our own government is still producing the majority of our electricity with dirty old coal it's pretty damn cheeky to be trying to guilt car users over their CO2 emissions.
We need to start building new nuclear plants now or this is only going to get worse as millions more EV vehicles need charging.
One decent plant up the Hunter and a national DC grid to power the whole East Coast! Leave SA in the dark…..
For those who choose 'Never' - do you accept the relevant science of the health effects of airborne carcinogens/pollutants from vehicle exhaust?
Yep, along with millions of industries that blow shit out their factories daily globally…. Dont care.
Do you accept the science of anthropogenic global warming?
Don't care. I'm here for <40 more yrs… after than dont give a shit.
Here here! Stuff the future generations!
Exactly… Caveman didnt think of us either!
I'm intrigued to know more, if you can be bothered sharing? I'm genuinely just curious.
E.g. Any idea what lead you to have this kind of attitude towards life?
Would be interesting for scientists to study people like you to then try to understand the causes. If anyone has any links on the topic, feel free to share.
Hurray, I won the game of "guess who the poster is before you open the thread" for today.
I used to care about the planet and thought I could make a difference by switching to a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, but then I started to look at the world around me.
The amount of garbage Maccas gives you for a single item is ridiculous.
The amount of households I see who fill their bins beyond capacity every single week is crazy.
I frequently see people pull out of a driveway, and drive 20 metres to the shops.
Kmart sell something called dog Halloween costumes.
I see loads of overweight people eating way more food than they need.
I've seen documentaries where couples have 15+ children / future consumers.
And I've seen a documentary where some young woman married a Millionaire / billionaire and all she does is buy stuff and seemingly creates more waste in 1 day than I would in a lifetime.
Hard for me to take planetary health seriously with all of that going on.
Yep, we could start with say 200% gst on sugar and unhealthy crap food just to see the difference!
Sooner than later imports need to be taxed again.
wow 20 metres, 26 steps, that's like next door 😂
Cars make up about 8% of australias carbon emmissions, how about banning coal and gas power stations first?
I upvoted you, but then read again and saw the gas power station part, so had to remove it sorry.
Our focus right now should be on coal.
Natural gas is super clean compared to coal and is and a stepping stone that we need right now while we screw around for another decade or two until we can get serious about nuclear power.
I don't want to ban anything until a suitable replacement is found, so you do you with whatever 'power' you have. My argument is mostly retorical and the point is 92% of Australias carbon emissions come from sources other than passenger vehicles and we should try and clean those industries up first.
china and india total 600 million cars…around 300 million each
australia has 20 million cars
…what will banning ice vehicles in australia achieve, exactly?
That we get to be called a "global leader" 😃
Since you are only one person i guess by your logic why bother using a public toilet and just take a dump anywher eyou like next time. I mean you are only one person it hardly matters.
Never wins, get rekt hippies
OP is very naive. Australia currently gets only 6.2% of its energy through non-fossil fuel supplies. To increase that by just 1%, it requires more than $50 to $100 billion in new investment to build the infrastructure required to move off fossil fuels. In other words, over just one decade, we'd need around a trillion dollars just to get from 6% to 16% renewables. Long way to go.
What would you want to do to stop using fossil fuels in the meantime? Ride everywhere on a pushbike (electric vehicles still pollute, just not at the exhaust), throw away your mobile phone and laptop you charge every day, no more air conditioning for the next 50 years, shut down the Internet entirely, turn off all lights in the house, stop taking hot showers, and [insert any other energy consuming high living standards].
As long as your Instagram shows you are pro green, you should be right though 'ey?
"The Australian renewable energy industry accounted for 32.5 per cent of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2021, which represented an increase of almost 5 percentage points compared to 2020."
https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/resources-hu…
Not sure where you've got your stats from but very misleading to say 6.2%. I read your comment and thought no way that was the case
It's currently 8% of total energy consumption. My data was a little out of date, but you can check the official government source https://www.energy.gov.au/data/energy-consumption.
To be clear; Australian energy consumption in 2022 - by fuel type:
Oil : 36.2%
Coal: 28.7%
Gas: 27.1%
Renewables: 8.0%
The figure you are quoting is misleading and lazy research, as it only includes electricity. If you think Australia's energy needs are met just by electricity, then you are as naive as the OP. For example, in the mid-1960s renewables provided 26% of Australia's electricity needs (source: https://www.energy.gov.au/data/renewables). It is completely irrelevant to the topic.
Oil only contributes to 2% of electricity generation in Australia.
Electric cars means less oil burnt and more electricity required.
A versatile electric car battery doubling as a home battery being charged by home-solar and connected to the grid seems like a good idea.
@Eeples: Who says EV cars dont require oil ?
Do you know where the batteries raw materials come from ? Do you know why EV car batteries cost thousands ? Its because the mine burns thousands of dollars in fuel to do the mine thing.
Just go here:
https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=7d&interval=30m
34.6% from renewables in the past 12 months.
Lazy research.
Look for total energy consumption, not just electricity production. If you wanted to look that up, then look back at 1960s where 26% of Australia's electricity was produced by renewables.
Current official data https://www.energy.gov.au/data/energy-consumption:
Oil : 36.2%
Coal: 28.7%
Gas: 27.1%
Renewables: 8.0%
Don't forget to update your Instagram.
In my opinion, if most drivers move to EV's, the biggest growth industry will be small businesses with a tilt tray table top truck. These will be for all the EV owners who run out of power between country towns and need to be taken to the next town that has an EV charging station.
With ICE vehicles, one can always carry a jerry can of petrol in case of emergencies like that. As far as I know you cannot start an EV car with a set of jumper leads and transfer sufficient electric current to get out of this situation.
Automobile clubs are already cashing in on the stupid!
This sounds like quite a niche concern. What percent of the population really drive around with a jerry can of petrol in their vehicle?
I've personally never met someone who simply just ran out of fuel mid drive. I think people with EVs will be equally sure to plan trips accordingly. Sure, it will take a bit more planning at the moment, but infrastructure is going to get a lot better quickly.
Also, there's just not enough lithium to go around, a number of studies clearly show this. The battery tech needs to get much better first. Nuclear energy used to create hydrogen is my top pick.
And the carbon cost to MINE the lithium is very dirty and energy intensive. Ironic, because combustion energy vehicles have a much lower carbon footprint to manufacture.
THe cost of the car batteries is not pure profit. Most of that price is going to wards buying fuel to run those massive machines aat the mine etc.
I'd say, 2050 for a total ban, but ban for new might be doable petrol/diesel by 2030/35, and then allow 20 years for those vehicles to go through their lifespan.
Having said that, I expect that getting petrol/diesel will be increasingly difficult and expensive (given it is non-renewable, and the easier-to-get sources will dry out soon).
And yes, there is a lot of investment required into the electric infrastructure and innovation.
We can do it when it is practicable to do it. And that depends on a lot of things we can't predict.
Let me give you an example. Just a day or two ago it was revealed that BYD will launch a smaller cheaper EV using sodium-ion batteries next year. Sodium-ion batteries don't have the capacity and therefore range of lithium-ion batteries, but they don't use scarce and expensive materials. Batteries are a big component of the price of EVs. So by switching to sodium-ion BYD will be able to sell an EV at a price that far more people will be able to afford.
You first.
Didn't think so.
I know many people who have happily switched to electric already, and they are never going back by the sounds of it.
So not yourself either, funny that.
One day perhaps, if I feel the need to own a car again. For now, public transport is convenient for my partner and I in the city.
(I'll caveat this by noting that I grew up in /regularly visit my small rural town of origin, and have done my share of driving in the past. So I realise the transition to electric may take a little longer in those areas, in the same way public transport doesn't make sense there either).
@Willy Beamish: Public transport is significantly more environmentally friendly than indiviudal passenger vehicles. That's like, one of the key benefits of mass transit. Australian cities are rolling out zero emission buses as we speak.
Anyway, getting a bit sidetracked here? The main point is that your original comment is funny, because you think no one wants to get an electric vehicle, when in fact demand is continuously growing.
@Alderson: The only funny part is that you misunderstood the first post I made.
It was in no way commenting on people not wanting to get an electric vehicle, don't know how you got that…
It was a comment on the people that keep talking about this issue are never the ones to actually make the change themselves first, they want everyone else to change around them without actually following their own advice.
@Willy Beamish: If you write vague 5-word posts, don't be surprised if people interpret it differently.
Also, if that was your intended meaning, I don't really see why you think that is the case? What are some examples you have seen of that?
I'd think the people proposing a ban on ICE's are clearly also going to be interested in switching away from ICE's themselves.
Like how I think we should stop eating meat… And I have stopped eating meat.
If we all use the "you first" excuse, we'll never change.
@Alderson: Your problem is you think just because you want it to be X way, everyone should change to meet what you want.
"you people" need to focus on making the changes in your own life and let everyone else live their own lives how they want.
I'm sure you wouldn't want people telling you what you should be doing in every single aspect of your life.
Also for your reference, if Australia entirely switched to electric vehicles that reduction in emissions would barely even register on the chart compared the pollution produced by china, we just don't have the energy sources available to sustain electric vehicles in Australia unless you want to go for nuclear power, which most uninformed people think is the boogie man but it's not.
@Willy Beamish: This poll is a decision that would affect society as a whole. People are expressing their opinion (the outcome of which will affect everyone else) all throughout this thread.
Why do you only think one side of the argument is bad /overbearing?
I could equally push back against the people who don't care about tackling climate change, and ask why they force the impacts of their choices on the rest of us, couldn't I?
There are plenty of aspects of your life that don't affect the rest of us, and I'm happy to have no opinion on those.
Your China argument is just another "you first" excuse, which will get us nowhere. I think we need to move past this way of thinking. As it stands, people in China could fairly point to Australians as some of the highest per capita polluters and ask "why should we change when rich Australians aren't doing their part?"
@Alderson: Not true. Public transport is significantly more environmentally friendly per person per km when enough people use it.
I can't be bothered looking up the break point. But outside peaks, when trains might have 100 people or so. They are definitely not more efficient. They are significantly worse.
Zero Emission buses that might be different though.
Government subsidies…
Mandatory environmental checks…
Communist scum.