B.C. tops Quebec and California as EV capital of North America

 From an article in the Times Colonist, a newspaper published in Victoria, British Columbia.

Just some excerpts:

British Columbians are opting to ditch their gasoline-powered cars for electric vehicles at a higher rate than anywhere in North America, according to a new report from the province. 

Electric and other zero-emission vehicles — such as plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell electric vehicles — made up 13 per cent of all new light-duty vehicle sales in B.C. last year, according to the 2021 Zero-Emission Vehicle Update released Friday. 

Mark Zacharias, a special adviser for the Simon Fraser University-based research group Clean Energy Canada, says that’s nearly double the sales seen in California and Quebec, North America’s second and third hottest jurisdictions for electric vehicle sales.  

In sheer volume of sales, California accounted for nearly half of all electric vehicle sales in the United States, whereas together, Quebec and B.C. made up 80 per cent of sales in Canada.

In B.C., the number of registered electric vehicles climbed to 80,000 from just under 56,000 a year earlier, a nearly 44 per cent increase in one year. [At that growth rate, sales will double every 2 years.] 

Zacharias says the numbers aren’t surprising. 

“In all instances and in all categories, electric vehicles are cheaper over a lifetime,” he said. 

The average EV owner in B.C. saves between $1,800 and $2,500 per year by ditching their gas-powered car, and even more over the long-term due to lower maintenance costs, according to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation. 

Consider an analysis released earlier this week from Clean Energy Canada, which found a 2022 gas[petrol]-powered Toyota Corolla is 54 per cent more expensive over its lifetime compared to an electric Chevy Bolt. 

At just over $21,000 new, the Corolla is a little less than half the price of a new Bolt. But with half the cost of maintenance and only $8 to fully charge the Bolt in B.C., owners of the electric vehicle would save nearly $30,000 over the lifetime of the car, found the study.

Choose the electric Chevy over the gas-powered Toyota, and an owner driving 20,000 kilometres per year would also cut their annual carbon footprint by 3.3 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

In another example, Clean Energy Canada found the electric Hyundai Kona, Canada’s second best-selling EV in 2021, is $15,000 cheaper to own over the lifetime of the vehicle than the gas-powered Kona. 

“If gas prices were to average $2, as we’ve seen in parts of Canada this past month, the electric Kona is $24,000 cheaper to own than the gas-powered Kona,” the report concluded.

[...]

Zacharias says manufacturing costs are coming down so fast that the sticker price of a new EV and gas-powered vehicle are expected to hit parity sometime between 2025 and 2030. 

Batteries are by far the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and to bring their cost down means making them more efficient. Once batteries can put out a kilowatt-hour of energy for $100, electric vehicles will almost certainly hit parity, according to Bloomberg.

As University of British Columbia energy economics professor Werner Antweiler puts it: “The moment electric cars are cheaper than gasoline cars, it’s a no-brainer. We’re getting to that point.” 

But Zacharias says there have been some delays in those predictions.

Last year, average battery prices fell to $132/kWh, down from $140/kWh in 2020, according to BloombergNEF’s annual battery price survey. That represents a six per cent drop, and though substantial, is less than the nine per cent decline from the year before. 

The Bloomberg report says that is largely a result of supply chain shocks on raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel, key components used in electric vehicle batteries. 

[...]

[T]he number of Canadians considering an electric vehicle has reached a strong majority. 

As part of the Clean Energy Canada report this week, Abacus conducted a poll of Canadians asking how they felt about owning an electric car: 19 per cent said they loved the idea, 31 per said they were interested and 29 per cent said they are open to it.

Together, nearly 80 per cent said they would consider buying an electric vehicle as their next car.

[Read more here]



Since y'all know what EVs look like, here's a picture of Victoria, B C.

Victoria, British Columbia ―  Inner Harbour

An electric plane takes flight

Source: Science Alert

From Science Alert:

The world's first fully electric commercial aircraft took its inaugural test flight on Tuesday, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and offering hope that airlines may one day end their polluting emissions.

"This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work," said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Seattle-based engineering firm magniX.

The company designed the plane's motor and worked in partnership with Harbour Air, which ferries half a million passengers a year between Vancouver, Whistler ski resort and nearby islands and coastal communities.

Ganzarski said the technology would mean significant cost savings for airlines -- not to mention zero emissions.

"This signifies the start of the electric aviation age," he told reporters.

Civil aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of carbon emissions as people increasingly take to the skies and new technologies have been slow to get off the ground.​

The e-plane -- a 62-year-old, six-passenger DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver seaplane retrofitted with an electric motor –- was piloted by Greg McDougall, founder and chief executive of Harbour Air.

"For me that flight was just like flying a Beaver, but it was a Beaver on electric steroids. I actually had to back off on the power," he said.​

McDougall took the plane on a short loop along the Fraser River near Vancouver International Airport in front of around 100 onlookers soon after sunrise.

"Our goal is to actually electrify the entire fleet. There's no reason not to," said McDougall.​

On top of fuel efficiency, the company would save millions in maintenance costs, as electric motors require "drastically" less upkeep, McDougall said.

However, Harbour Air will have to wait at least two years before it can begin electrifying its fleet of more than 40 seaplanes.

The e-plane has to be tested further to confirm it is reliable and safe. In addition, the electric motor must be approved and certified by regulators.

See also:

The first generation of electric planes is here

A Tesla Electric plane?

Truly carbon-neutral aviation

The Titanic moment--beyond the point of no return

‘Knowing how long societies have to react to pull the brake on the Earth’s climate and then how long it will take for the ship to slow down is the difference between a climate emergency and a manageable problem.’ Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

A fascinating article from the Guardian.

Formula for climate emergency shows if ‘reaction time is longer than intervention time left’ then ‘we have lost control’

When is an emergency really an emergency?

If you’re the captain of the Titanic, approaching a giant iceberg with the potential to sink your ship becomes an emergency only when you realise you might not have enough time to steer a safe course.

And so it is, says Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, when it comes to the climate emergency.

Knowing how long societies have to react to pull the brake on the Earth’s climate and then how long it will take for the ship to slow down is the difference between a climate emergency and a manageable problem.

Rather than being something abstract and open to interpretation, Schellnhuber says the climate emergency is something with clear and calculable risks that you could put into a formula. And so he wrote one:

Emergency = R × U 
R= p × D   
U = τ / T

Risk (R) = probability (p) ×  damage  (D)
Urgency (U) = reaction time (τ) /   time left to avoid a bad outcome  (T)

This is a fascinating way to look at it.  

Over the last 30 or 40 years, the perception of p and D has risen dramatically, while T has fallen sharply.  It seemed logical to many in 1970 to argue that the damage (D) from climate change would likely be low, and the thesis that CO2 would raise global temperatures, while interesting, was still untested.  It was also thought that we had lots of time (T) .  It seemed to politicians and the public that action wasn't urgent.  Now we know, as a fact, that global warming is happening, and that it's caused by rising levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and they are caused by us.  And the negative consequences of global warming are happening faster than was thought even just 10 years ago.  R has risen sharply and so has U.  And τ looks as if it is longer than we might have thought.  Getting individual countries to act is taking too long.  Denialists, either funded by fossil fuel interests, or useful idiots, continue to lie about climate change. 

The article continues:

In a comment article in the journal Nature, Schellnhuber and colleagues explained that to understand the climate emergency we needed to quantify the relationship between risk (R) and urgency (U).

Borrowing from the insurance industry, the scientists define risk (R) as the probability of something happening (p) multiplied by damage (D).

For example, how likely is it that sea levels will rise by a metre and how much damage will that cause.

Urgency (U) is the time it takes you to react to an issue (τ) “divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T)”, they wrote.

Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, tells Guardian Australia the work on the formula was just the “tip of a mathematical iceberg” in defining the climate emergency.

“It can be illustrated by the Titanic disaster, but it applies to many severe risks where you can calculate the do-nothing/business-as-usual probability of a highly damaging event,” he says. “Yet there are options to avoid the disaster.

“In other words, this a control problem.”

There is a time lag between the rapid cuts to greenhouse gases and the climate system reacting. Knowing if you have enough time tells you if you’re in an emergency or not.

Schellnhuber used “standard risk analysis and control theory” to come up with the formula, and he was already putting numbers to it.

“As a matter of fact, the intervention time left for limiting global warming to less than 2C is about 30 [years] at best. The reaction time – time needed for full global decarbonisation - is at least 20 [years].”

As the scientists write in Nature, if the “reaction time is longer than the intervention time left” then “we have lost control”.

Schellnhuber says: “Beyond that critical point, only some sort of adaptation option is left, such as moving the Titanic passengers into rescue boats (if available).”

[Read more here]

So let's see what kind of cuts to emissions are needed.  Instead of zero carbon by 2050, let's say we must cut emissions by 90%, to 10% of what they are today, though obviously we will go on cutting emissions after 2050.  It's just that we need to get there by 2050 or the rise in global temperatures will exceed 2 degrees C. The 10% left will be offset by tree-planting (or any other workable de-carbonisation method.)  To achieve a 90% cut in emissions, we need to cut them by a compound 7.4% per annum.  Which will be very hard to do, i.e., τ is greater than T.  Which means we have lost control.  It's an emergency.  A Titanic moment.  The iceberg is up ahead and cretins and fools are still lying about it.

What if we settle on an 80% cut by 2050?  That will require a compound rate of decline of 5% per annum.  We might be able to offset the remaining 20% by tree-planting.  Maybe.

So at a bare minimum, we must cut emissions by a cumulative compound 5% per annum, preferably more, to avoid an emergency.  How?

1. No more coal power stations must be built anywhere, ever.  That means we must lean on China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa and other laggards to stop building coal power stations now.  In the "West", coal power stations are being shuttered, because they're old and getting near the end of their lives, and new coal power stations are too costly compared to renewables and gas.  The exception is Australia, where a government of more than usual stupidity wants to build a new coal power station with a government subsidy.  Just because it'll irritate the "greenies" and "leftists".
2. The big falls in European electricity generated by coal have come about because of the European carbon price, which is (finally!) biting hard.  The moral of that story is that we need a carbon price everywhere, and countries which have one should levy taxes on imports from countries which do not.  I have no doubt that (a) a carbon price won't impact growth (see Sweden and British Columbia and Australia, when we had a carbon price) and (b) will cut emissions drastically.  It could start at $20 a tonne of CO2, rising  by $3/tonne each year thereafter. The small (in absolute) terms rise in the European carbon price has had a significant impact on coal usage.  The proceeds of a carbon tax could be distributed to the people as a monthly "carbon dividend".  This will reduce political opposition.
3. After electricity generation, vehicle emissions are the next largest, and will likely mean that this year's total global emissions won't fall, even though coal-sourced emissions will fall by 3%.  (In the USA, vehicle emissions now exceed emissions from the power sector.)  EVs should get a subsidy of $5-$10K per car when you buy a new one, falling by $1000 each year, because battery costs are plunging and subsidies won't be needed in 5 or 10 years' time.  And the carbon tax should apply to petrol (gasoline) and diesel, to make the incentive to switch even stronger.
4. We need an end to fossil fuel subsidies.  A carbon price will start to offset indirect subsidies (the cost to society of air pollution and carbon emissions) but direct subsidies (cheap govt loans, tax exemptions, export subsidies, etc.) have to be eliminated. 

Those steps will be enough for the next 10 years.  Transitioning electricity generation to renewables and our vehicle fleet to electric engines will cut emissions by 50%.  A 50 % decline over the next 15 years (eminently feasible) would be a compound annual decline of 5%.  It's what we have to do if we are to cut τ to as short a period as possible.  But if, as each year goes by, we see that emissions are not falling by the required 5-7% per annum, we will need to tighten the screws so that they do, for example by raising the annual increment in the carbon price from $3 to $5.  And we need to start working now on iron & steel, cement production, air transport and agriculture, so that in 10 years we can start cutting their emissions drastically too. 

It is unquestionably very close to a climate emergency.  Unless we act now, τ will be greater than T which means we will have lost control.   But we can act.  We are rational, we are informed, we have the technologies to slash emissions,.  Whether we'll cut τ enough remains to be seen.  Only serious, concerted, determined global action by everybody will do.  Think of that when you cast your next vote, or choose your next electricity supplier, or choose whether to have meat or vegetarian for your next meal.  

Sweden's carbon tax

Stockholm's archipelago (source)

If we have to have a tax, we should tax "bads" rather than "goods".  For example, you should tax junk food rather than greens, tobacco rather than water, and so on.

A carbon tax raises revenue for the government which allows other taxes to be cut, or allows spending to be higher, just like any other tax.  Carbon emissions are a "bad".  Burning fossil fuels is unambiguously bad.  Carbon dioxide produced when fossil fuels burn is raising global temperatures, and that rise is imposing costs on society, so on equity grounds we should discourage, even penalise the emissions of carbon dioxide.  Plus burning coal and oil produces air pollution, which causes ill health and death.  This also justifies a carbon tax.  Obviously, when you introduce a carbon tax, you start out low and slowly increase it year by year, because introducing a high carbon tax in one go would cause major economic disruption.

But if it is introduced at a low rate and gradually stepped up, does it reduce economic growth?  The Swedish experience says not.

Sweden has the rare distinction of having consistently curbed carbon dioxide emissions over the past two-and-a-half decades while enjoying solid growth. In so doing, it has set a model that much of the world could emulate.

Sweden introduced a CO2 tax in 1991. At the time, the price was EUR29 per ton, and it has since risen to today’s price of EUR137 per ton – the highest CO2 tax rate in the world. The effect of such a tax on fossil fuel consumption has been, among other things, a rise in the contribution of biomass to district-level heating from 25 percent in 1990, to 70 percent in 2012.

Speaking at a recent High Level Assembly of the Carbon Price Leadership Coalition, Swedish Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson, said “We’ve had GDP growth of 60 percent, and at the same time, our emissions have been reduced by 25 percent. So, it shows that absolute decoupling is possible.”

[Read more here]

By the way, Sweden suffered a deep recession in 1992/93, caused by (what else?) excessive lending for property by banks, and without that, GDP growth since 1991 would be more like 66%.

The tax is more complicated than the statement above implies.  See this interesting blog post.  Industry pays a carbon tax 80% lower than consumers.  Now if the tax were a purely revenue raising exercise, then that might be justified, in the same way VAT is refunded when goods are exported.  But if it's designed to cut carbon emissions, then everybody who emits CO2 should pay the tax, because the whole point is to provide a price signal to discourage the burning of fossil fuels.  Even despite this flaw, Sweden's energy intensity (energy use/GDP) has fallen 54%.  This is a remarkable achievement.  British Columbia's carbon tax also appeared to have no effect on growth while reducing carbon emissions. 

A carbon tax is undoubtedly one of the best ways to reduce carbon emissions.  If it starts at (say) $10 per ton of CO2 emissions, and rises by $2.50 a year, it will push our economies towards zero carbon, while not reducing living standards.  One megawatt-hour of coal-fired electricity creates approximately one tonne of carbon dioxide.  (Source)  So a $10 per tonne carbon tax will up the cost of coal-fired electricity by $10.  As each year goes by, the impulse to switch to renewables would increase, steadily and inexorably, and each year, CO2 emissions would fall.

More on BC's Carbon Tax

Carbon taxes work.   Contrary to our esteemed PM's gabble before the the introduction of Oz's carbon tax, there was no slowdown in Australia's  economy after it came in, just as there wasn't in British Columbia, which introduced one before we did with huge success  Yet in both Australia and BC carbon use fell.  As Grist's article points out, it's likely that BC, Oregon, Washington and California will join up into a single coordinated carbon pricing zone.  This will complement the east coast RGGI and the schemes in Quebec and Ontario.  And Mexico has started to move towards solar power as costs drop (table in Wikipedia piece out of date).  By my calculations roughly half of North America will be part of major carbon emission control measures. And that's before President Obama's new initiatives.

I'm still hoping that sense will prevail.

Carbon Tax Works

And without affecting growth or employment or .... well, anything, except emissions.

And, oddly, the carbon tax was introduced by a right-wing government and opposed by the left.  Politicians.

The full story in the Mother Jones article, here.

And I repeat: no impact on economic growth, just as there hasn't been in Oz, where our esteemed leader, The Cane Toad, repeatedly and ad nauseam stated that the carbon tax would lead to economic collapse.  And was wrong.