Last week, Washington State Governor Inslee signed a bill requiring all vehicles sold in 2030 and after are to be electric.

California Governor Newscom signed an executive order on September 23, 2020, requiring new cars and passenger trucks sold by 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles.

In 2019, Oregon Senator Lee Beyer (D-Springfield) and Representative Jeff Reardon (D-Happy Valley) sponsored and passed SB 1044 requiring that nine out of 10 new car sales be electric by 2035 and half of registered vehicles.

The goal for electric vehicles was 50,000 in 2020, 250,000 in 2025, 1.1 million in 2030 and 2.5 million by 2035 – basically 100%. Behind schedule, at the end of 2020 there were 32,000 registered zero emission vehicles.

ODOT likes to blame not reaching the first goal on cheap gas they say causes people to hold onto their vehicles longer.

ODOT’s Climate Action Plan, issued in July 2021, adopted modifications to 120,000 electric vehicles by end of 2027, missing the 2025 legislative goal.

Most electricity is produced using coal, natural gas, or hydropower.

Cascade Policy Institute reports even with the stringent policies mandating various levels of carbon-free electricity, those policies can’t actually be implemented for several reasons.

The most obvious is that the power sources are unstable and the physics of the grid requires that electricity supply and demand be in equilibrium at all times Getting people to purchase electric vehicles may take more trust in the stability of the supply of electricity.

When HB 2021 passed in 2021 that moved the target date from 2025 to 2030, it also set goals for electricity providers to reduce emissions 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.

There were numerous experts that warned of the likelihood of rolling blackouts related to supply and stability. HB 2021 even allows for use of other sources in unstable periods, which means legislators know the possibility exists.

Hydropower along with natural gas is Oregon’s back-up to supply stability. Still Oregon refuses to classify hydropower as renewable even though the U.S. Energy Information Administration considers it a renewable source.

Oregon is ranked fourth in the nation using renewable energy with hydropower, and sixteen without hydropower.

Biden’s solution for high gas prices is just buy an electric car. They are trying to sell electric cars as an answer to pollution.

But there is more to electric cars than the fuel. Where do you think the materials come from to make the batteries and what happens to them afterwards?

A single Tesla battery weighs 1,000 pounds and requires extracting and processing around 500,000 pounds of mineral ore materials to manufacture. Imagine the huge trenches it will leave behind to meet the supply demand. The life span may be significant, but the majority are not rechargeable.

Disposing of a toxic large battery is something you never hear about. How many restricted landfills and dumps will dot our landscapes? Once a battery starts to degrade in landfills, they can contaminate the topsoil, groundwater, and air.

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When the chemical seeping happens, it can risk entering the human supply chain. Conservationist and environmentalist concerned with fossil fuels need another look at the bigger picture.

On the drawing table is a 1-million-mile car battery, which will drastically reduce the amount of waste in a Tesla. Currently, the best performing Tesla has a single-charge range of around 370 miles and a lifespan of 300-500,000 miles. Even with Tesla’s recycling program, they admit there are parts of the battery that is too costly to recycle. And about 8% cannot be recycled. That’s 80 out of 1,000 pounds that is still headed to the landfill.

Even if we are all given electric cars, the Treehuggers want to also measure carbon emissions from all of the consumed energy used in the processes to produce and construct a building.

It didn’t go unnoticed by Representative Dan Rayfield (D-Corvallis). He sponsored and the Governor signed HB 4139 to establish a pilot program for greenhouse gas reduction that assesses the greenhouse gas emission from concrete, asphalt paving mixtures, steel products, and other products identified by ODOT, and conduct a life cycle assessment and strategies for reducing emissions.

Oregon Department of Transportation meetings on how to spend infrastructure funds brought out those advocating for no more highways. Is that where we are headed with zero-emissions?


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2022-04-07 15:31:00

Last Update: 2022-04-07 17:03:56