zlacker

>>Brajes+(OP)
I'm starting to wonder whether the conventional wisdom of reducing carbon emissions in favour of more electricalisation is really solving the actual problem. As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives, and generate other pollution along the way. Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment, without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment or what impact the mines themselves will have.

With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances, such as propane, should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Naively, it feels like we understand C, O and H, better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing in the name of climate change.

>>alexch+Ei
Electric cars are a terrible representative of electrification. When people talk about electrification as a climate mitigation a big part of that is the significant increase in the energy efficiency of electric systems. For example a heat pump in a well insulated house will significantly decrease the energy consumption over a gas heater. Likewise delivering electricity to a saw mill will yield power with much more efficient energy use, than an on-site diesel powered machinery.

Now electric cars are definitely more efficient than ICE cars (despite being heavier; excluding today’s monster trucks like the electric Hummer). However a the transportation needs of a significant majority of people could be much more efficiently solved with public transit, even if that public transit is diesel powered. This is why climate policy experts quite often point out how electrification of private cars is generally regarded as a rather poor (and expensive) climate solution, next to other options.