Featured Study: Life Cycle, Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Lithium-Ion Batteries

Thanks.

I am loathe to cast stones because this appears to be based on literature review with little ‘hands on’ or lab work. Their stated goal is for carbon neutral transportation looking at one sliver, LiON battery production. I detected a lot of ignorance that is probably due to the newness of the technology. For example, they attributed hybrid efficiency to brake regeneration when the high efficiency ICE and control laws dominate what makes an efficient hybrid.

This is not as bad as the Sunday Mail hack job against the NiMH batteries in a Prius. I detect more ignorance than malice. The problem I have is addressing the errors, is it a good use of time?

Good find but I’ll pass for now.

Bob Wilson

 

i read the conclusions. they seemed to make sense. nothing was conclusive and more studies are needed. i can't disagree, and it keeps people employed. also, we need a comparison the gasoline, diesel and internal combustion engines, to determine what is best for the planet in the long run.

 

I would say, there is probably some accurate work here, that addresses the wrong question. That question is - If we switched to BEVs tomorrow would ghg drop a great deal in the next 5 years. The answer of course is no. Most of the quick fixes, really don't work to drop ghg quickly except for war or slavery. Global ghg is well global, and battery production and green energy is only economic if it grows slowly - say over 30 years not 5 or 10.

A better question was if production like tesla's model 3 (50 kwh, 220 mile aer, no compromises 4 door sports sedan) is carried out, how much less harmful pollution and lower cost will be achieved 10 years from now (2028 production). Here the report sort of answers itself. If you power the factory for the batteries and car and charging, from mainly green sources and efficient ccgt natural gas then there is significant savings compared to the current fleet. It also will allow countries like china and india, the ones growing ghg emissions the most to probably be much lower in both that and unhealthy air 20 years from now.

In a decade batteries of the same capacity will probably use 20%-50% less material for the same range. Couple that with a cleaner grid to manufacture and charge and it will produce 20%-70% less ghg. This also removes demand from the most scarce resource oil, meaning in a decade when considering national security and economics, investing in this type of technology reduces the risks greatly. Now drop that range to 100 miles and add an engine (maybe a flex fuel 3 cylinder spark controlled compression engine like mazda may have out in 2019) and savings on a go anywhere car that may be less expensive to own and produce.

 

maybe they should study how much ghg is created by the studies.

I'm glad I read the summary 1st. It said they don't know. their boldface honesty almost floored me.
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Here is a 2018-published study, authored by a consortium of organizations (including Chevron, Ford, General Motors, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory) on the cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions of gasoline cars, diesel cars, ethanol cars, natural gas cars, hybrid cars, PHEV cars, fuel cell cars, medium-range EVs, and long-range EVs.

Abstract / summary: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06006

Data and references: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.7b06006/suppl_file/es7b06006_si_001.pdf

Here is a summary chart from this study:


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First off, thanks for the reference. It is a dang shame it is behind a 'paywall' even though it was significantly US Government funded. But as I searched for alternate sources, I found and went back to the abstract:

This article presents a cradle-to-grave (C2G) assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and costs for current (2015) and future (2025–2030) light-duty vehicles. The analysis addressed both fuel cycle and vehicle manufacturing cycle for the following vehicle types: . . .​

June 21, 2019 I attended the Munro & Associates "EV Conference" which included tear-down data on a Tesla Model 3, BMW i3-REx, Chevy Bolt, and others. I don't know if any of the paper authors attended or have updates. But this is not the first time that technology has out raced a paper:

• hydrogen FCEV - California has shown they cost 3x the price of just charging a BEV.
• pre-dates the 2170 Tesla cells
• pre-dates the Tesla Model 3

We've seen past "lifecycle analysis" like the notorious "Dust-to-Dust" report by CNW Marketing. I don't sense fraud as much as out of date. But I'm not going to buy a stale paper.

Bob Wilson

 

Do I have to be @tochatihu? You could probably get a free copy by emailing the author.

I'm spoiled by having scientific pub access at work.

 

Bob could do that, but I believe the overriding thought was "what's the point" - me mentioning how fast technology is changing. Clean Tech speed increased back when EV detractors started touting how EV's simply moved the tailpipe to the coal Factory, even though coal use was quickly being throttled down, replaced by Renewables & natural gas. Same thing here, only even faster now.
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I’m retired but reading a stale paper is not a good use of my time. Especially when Toyota has 2019, stockholder presentations that are more interesting.

Bob Wilson

 

The entire study is available here, for free, from Argonne National Laboratory: https://publications.anl.gov/anlpubs/2016/05/127895.pdf .
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BTW, most of this study's claimed gasoline-vehicle greenhouse-gas reductions would only become possible if gasoline becomes biofuel-derived, from pyrolysis of forestry waste. This fuel technology is not currently cost-effective. The study presents details of this assumption and others (see link in my post above). Regardless, the study concludes that EVs have the lowest cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions, now and in the future.

 

Thanks. It's kind of amazing that they took 2015 data on cars and 2013 data on electrical intensity. The tesla model 3 standard plus (240 mile epa range) is very close to what they describe as future tech for the bev 210, and they could have checked it out and modified assumptions in 2018 as most numbers were known or could have been predicted then. Car price is where they said future tech would be ($25K less than the assumption for today's tech), car weight half way towards future tech, most of the efficiency improvements. The things they expect in the future for bevs are significant weight reduction of the battery pack (I don't expect it, I expect money will be invested to bring down cost not weight), and possible great greening of the grid (I expect this).

This is the car (tesla model 3) is the bulk of bev 210 sold today in the US. EPA has it at 150 gm/mile of CO2 on national grid.

There is no phev 10, but many things that are like phev 20. The best selling of these is the prius prime, and it too is more efficient than authors assumptions of today's tech.

 

Good find! I suspected this study was derived from the ANL's GREET model/team, but wasn't sure. Some notable highlights from it:

"Current" costs assumed in their model:


"Future" costs assumed in their model:


The U.S. electricity grid assumptions:


Their 2030 grid case seems way too conservative. The EIA data for 2018 already shows coal being at 27% and total renewables at 17%, beating the studies predication by 12 years. 0% coal with the balance split between NG and renewables appears entirely plausible by 2030.

 

Another gem, the study seems to be pessimistic on the cost efficiency of CO2 avoidance from BEVs as compared to PHEVs/HEVs/E85/Diesels.





A bit hard to tell what's driving this result, but it does seem like a combination of the high initial cost of BEVs mixed with the dirt cheap prices of future gasoline.

The good news is that the 2030 Prius Prime would be well-suited for cost-efficient CO2 avoidance.