Petroleum for transportation currently accounts for 27% of US energy usage (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/).
If 100% of cars switch to electric (not happening any time soon) - we only need 25% * 27% = 7% more electricity.
We'll be on pace to add that much just in solar in 3 years. It's not going to be a problem to handle electric vehicle adoption over 15 years.
We need to "electrify everything" and for that (including home heating and industry) I've seen figures around doubling our electricity needs (while lowering our energy needs overall since burning stuff is so inefficient).
Luckily, wind and solar are incredibly cheap sources of electricity and not burning fuel in inefficient cars (or home boilers) frees up a whole lot of fossil fuels for other tasks.
(Disclaimer, in full support of electric cars, just want accurate numbers)
Americans used 135B gallons of gas in 2022. Going to ignore diesels for now. Average MPG of a car is 25. 135*25 = 3.3T miles. Teslas get 26 kWh per 100 miles, or about 1/4 kW per mile 3.3T miles / 4 = ~825B kWh = 825TWh or 2.815 quadrillion BTU
I sadly have to run and can't make heads nor tails out of the link posted for US energy usage - but at least we know what goes on one side of the equation now.
Current electricity generation is 37.8q BTU.
It depends how much energy is lost in generating electricity.
Since >90% of NEW generation currently comes from solar & wind - the loss will be minimal compared to current methods (coal & natural gas with an average loss >50%).
I'm assuming that by the time electric vehicle adoption picks up close to ~0% of NEW generation will come from coal or natural gas.
If we would continue to generate ~60% of electric from fossil fuels - it's maybe a net negative trade to move them to electric. But in 15 years - the grid will be <30% fossil fuels, and in 30 it will be close to 0.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/06/a-heat-pump-water-heate...
That's right, the typical household uses more electricity to heat water than they would to charge an EV.
That line of thinking totally ignores the opportunity cost of being able to use the savings from the water heater elsewhere, or not generating the electricity in the first place. Consumption is consumption. You can't pretend it isn't by bundling it with something else.
>That's right, the typical household uses more electricity to heat water than they would to charge an EV.
That's a leap in logic. Specifically, it assumes that "the typical household" uses an electric water heater.
> 25% * 27% = 7% more electricity
There is no relation between amount of petroleum used and amount of electricity generated in the data provided by you. All you can say is we need the equivalent amount of 7% extra of total energy used today. You did not provide any data about how much of total energy used is electricity . If electricity is 7% of total energy usage, then we need 100% extra to charge all the cars.
TLDR: your math is wrong.
There is.
> All you can say is we need the equivalent amount of 7% extra of total energy used today.
No.
We know how many BTU equivalent are used for electricity generation vs gasoline for transportation. And how much BTU equivalent is needed to power electric cars.
> TLDR: your math is wrong.
It probably is. Looks like transportation is 36% not 27% - that comes out to ~9% instead of ~7%.
The point still stands.
Show us the data.
> There is.
There is literally no relation.
"Cars use 27% of total energy in US. And 25% of 27% is equal to 7% of electricity generated." HOW??
According to some sources, electricity accounts for about 20% of total energy usage. So with your numbers, we would need extra 6.75% of total energy used. 6.75% of 20% is an extra 33.5% of electricity.
100.4q BTU total US energy usage.
37.8q BTU electricity (~37% or ~18% depending on how you count loss).
27.5q BTU transportation (~27% OR ~36% depending on how you count loss).
You're assuming that ~60% of NEW electric generation will come from fossil fuels. We won't have a ~60% loss in electric generation from solar & wind - which is currently ~90% of NEW generation. In 5 years, coal & natural gas will likely drop to ~0% of NEW generation.
If you take energy use used for transport (27.47), multiply it by 25% (because it's more efficient), you get 6.87. That's 18% of how much we generate in electricity today (37.75), not 7%.
So we need extra 7q BTU of electricity, right? Which is about 18% of 37.8!
So, not 7, not 9, we would need at least 18% extra electricity.
TLDR: Your math was wrong!