Could Drought Kill Israel's Electric Car?
by Jesse Fox, Tel Aviv, Israel on 03.14.08
The Sea of Galilee, one of Israel's strained water sources.
The public discussion of Israel's water problems intensified this week, with Israel's most respected newspaper, Ha'aretz, calling on water authorities to shift to regulating demand for the scarce resource. Also this week, we reported on a new study suggesting that a shift to electric cars could seriously impact water consumption in countries where this technology is adopted.
The crux of the study's argument is that, as cars rely on the national grid for energy instead of on gasoline, national electricity generation (currently based on non-renewable sources) must increase, which will significantly elevate power plants' demand for water resources.
As Andrew wrote earlier this week, yes, it takes water to produce electricity - but this does not have to be a deal-breaker. However, in Israel, where ambitious entrepreneurs aim to put 100,000 electric cars on the road by the end of 2010, authorities would be wise to heed the advice of the researchers, and consider the broader impacts of large-scale adoption of the plug-in vehicle.
Located downstream from other regional consumers of water, and with no precipitation for around half of the year, Israel has never been a land flowing with water (unlike milk and honey, which still flow in abundance). And, as Israel approaches the end of the current rainy season, the country is facing the worst crisis the national water economy has seen in a decade. The agricultural sector, already in crisis mode, will probably be the first to suffer the economic effects of the drought, and the local effects of global climate change are only expected to exacerbate the situation over the coming years.
On top of the energy demands of the cars themselves, the factories that manufacture them will likely be built in Israel, and, despite the welcome boost to the country's green economy, will also become major consumers of energy and water. Although Israeli water authorities and green groups have held up transport projects in the past, it is not yet clear how the various groups involved view the electric car project at this stage.
The researchers behind the study on electric cars and water consumption, Carey W. King and Michael E. Webber of the University of Texas at Austin, offer these words of caution to policy-makers:
Overall, we conclude that the impact on water resources from a widespread shift to grid-based transportation would be substantial enough to warrant consideration for relevant public policy decision-making. That is not to say that the negative impacts on water resources make such a shift undesirable, but rather this increase in water usage presents a significant potential impact on regional water resources and should be considered when planning for a plugged-in automotive economy.
The best solution to the dilemma may be a wholesale shift to renewable energy. While Israel currently gets most of its energy from fossil fuels, King points out that, in an energy economy based on wind or solar energy, the electric car's additional contribution to water consumption would be "essentially zero."
Israel is well-positioned to take advantage of one of its only major natural resources, the sun, with considerable academic, technical, and business prowess in the solar field. The solar economy is just beginning to take off, with new regulations allowing private citizens to sell power produced by their solar panels to the national grid and new solar power plants planned in the southern Negev and Arava regions.
Image courtesy http://pini.freeyellow.com/Tour03.htm.
Water usage in electricity generation is primarily used for cooling. Why can't that waste heat be put toward desalination, so that energy plants would end up as net water producers, rather than water users?
Mountain=molehill.
More people should learn about this. EV technology is really becoming impressive, like the new Zap that does 0-60mph in 4.8 seconds. Electric is looking more and more like the way to go.
Don't you just love the logic here : a supposed minor water problem, so the solution? Rip out and replace all of the electrical generating power plants
and replace them. Anyone for the direct approach and piping in seawater for cooling? The foirst logical error here is assuming the extra water needed will amount to very much. It won't. The
extra load on the grid wil in general not occur during peak demand, so the limits of the power plant cooling will not be much affected. Secondly, the load you're looking at will not come all at once- the entire country is not going to suddenly throw away billions of dollars worht of perfecly good vehciles, so any claims about an immiment problem are totally stupid. This is just another example of
how ill-prepared many enviironmentalits are about technology - they are morons. Leave the power generation questions to those who understand what a grid is, and what it must do. Those people, I can say from much experience, are NOT environmentalists, who make arguments based on emotions, not logic nor science. I mean, who else would claim that crappy wind power is anything
but an unreliable, wimpy power source whose advocates characterize wind farms as "100 megawatt" facilities when we know they will never average over 35 megawatts? Or who reefuce to admit that spending money on wind doesn't enable any new peak demands to be satisfied, will not result in the shuttering of a single fossil plant and will require the same amount of new plants tomorrow as demand grows? Their wind cost claims are based on such fantasies.
Been saying for some time now that we are not ready for electric cars.
Can you picture California when everyone plugs their car in at night?
Now once we turn all of Arizona, New Mexico, and most of southern CA into solar electric collectors... then we can talk.
@Pan_theFrog
You may not be able to imagine lots of cars plugging in at night without problem, but EPRI, an utility industry research group, who knows their stuff, can. To see why instantly in a single picture, check out the graphic "Using off-peak power" on PDF page 9 of
http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/EPRI_Journal/2005-Fall/1012885_PHEV.pdf
5 million plug-ins is 15% of the vehicles in California. From the graph, much higher percentages appear possible. For gory details, see
http://www.epri-reports.org/
It would take less less than 600 sq.mi. of Stirling dishes (which are air cooled, by the way) to power all of California's 2050 driving needs. That is a tiny fraction of California's land area; covering whole states is not required.
Thermal electric power plants can be cooled with "dry cooling" instead of "wet cooling". This technology exists, and is used in some places. It could be used in more if needed. The only problem with dry cooling is that can be inefficient when it is very hot outside. For that reason, "hybrid cooling" is sometimes used: dry cooling when the temperature is less than 100F, and wet cooling on hotter days. Using water only on hot days makes the impact minimal. See the EPRI Journal's write-up on dry cooling for details.
Not just power production but also:
"On top of the energy demands of the cars themselves, the factories that manufacture them will likely be built in Israel, and, despite the welcome boost to the country's green economy, will also become major consumers of energy and water."
There is no such thing as a green car.
hey there more than one way to make electricity wind solar coal nuclear nothing is perfect but use only one and you have a perfect problem when it fails from any reason.