Making sure that you’re on the right road to get where you want to go is obviously important when you’re headed somewhere. While this is common sense for a good driver, it is rarely so for central planners. As the presidential election nears, discussion of the “Green New Deal” is resurfacing. The Biden administration’s push to “electrify everything” by mandating the production of electric vehicles (EVs) and subsidizing wind and solar power is a wrong turn from the road to a cleaner future. Existing battery technology, renewable energy sources, and electrical infrastructure are insufficient to facilitate a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. And, those “solutions” are not “green.”
Digging massive holes and covering more land with turbines and solar panels in order to save the earth is counterintuitive. When viewed objectively and holistically, a move to EVs and the use of current-generation renewable energy sources will not accomplish the goal of reducing worldwide carbon output. An astronomical amount of money will be spent to shift output to other parts of the globe, and in the process will reduce consumer choice, punish the automotive industry, and make America highly dependent on an increasingly hostile nation, China.
Consider some of the deleterious factors in the race to replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles with EVs.
Supply-side problems include the dirty business of mining and refining battery components, sourcing components from China, upgrading our aging electrical infrastructure (which will require enormous amounts of materials), and our current energy-generation capacity which is already strained without the addition of millions of EVs, AI data centers, and other electrical appliances. In addition, as EVs are much heavier than similar ICE vehicles, they significantly reduce the life of tires, roads, bridges and parking garages that were not designed for such loads. States are already considering a per-mile tax for EVs to compensate for this increased wear and tear and concomitant loss of revenue from selling gas.
Consumer-side concerns include the much higher (than ICE vehicles) costs of purchasing, insuring and repairing EVs, dearth of charging stations and resulting range anxiety and long waiting lines, poor performance of EVs in cold weather, inability of traditional mechanics to repair them, limited life of EV batteries (which is less than the average age of ICE vehicles on the road today), prohibitively high cost of replacing degraded batteries, extreme difficulty of extinguishing fires that can occur with EV accidents, and the fact that putting millions of drivers in vehicles with much greater power and acceleration is likely to increase such accidents.
Environmental concerns include the negative impact of the aforementioned mining, deforestation needed for new manufacturing plants and energy “farms,” the need to produce (and, more critically, dispose of) millions of toxic EV batteries, solar panels and turbine blades, none of which can be recycled. This is a looming ecological disaster.
Wind and solar energy are intermittent sources that require fossil-fuel backup. According to the U. S. Energy Information Administration, their “full capacity” output is roughly half that of natural gas. Large swaths of land and lots of fossil fuels are needed to produce, transport, and maintain wind and solar farms. Nearly all solar panels come from China, which is opening new mines and coal-fired plants to meet demand. Moreover, use of these panels adds to global warming by reflecting heat back into the atmosphere. Wind and solar are not up to the task of supplying our exponentially growing energy needs. And neither source is environmentally friendly in terms of production, operation or disposal.
Social concerns include questionable practices used in the acquisition of materials needed for batteries, such as child labor and unsafe mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, plus the national security risk of becoming energy reliant on China (while simultaneously pouring billions of dollars into Chinese Communist Party coffers). Electrical grids are already so strained that The Washington Post reported, “[v]ast swaths of the United States are at risk of running out of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean technology factories proliferate.” Our energy demand will increasingly outstrip supply. Not surprisingly, the cost of electricity is already climbing and will continue to do so.
In the courses that I teach at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, I define marketing as “finding out what people want and giving it to them.” This is a market-oriented and consumer-focused process. Government, on the other hand, illustrates the diametric approach: “figuring out what we want and forcing it on you.” The mandate to produce only EVs removes freedom of choice for customers to purchase what they want and harshly punishes automakers. If most customers wanted EVs, no mandate would be needed. In reality, EV sales are slowing, and automotive manufacturers are reporting huge financial losses and growing unsold inventories. Car & Driver recently reported that Ford’s EV division lost $130,000 of every EV it sold in the first quarter of this year. Ford is on track to lose $5 billion by year’s end. This is not an isolated case; most major car companies are scaling back EV production due to weak demand.
If a customer purchases an EV because he or she likes the styling or performance, that is fine. But buying an EV to “save the planet” is a non sequitur. Even if ICEs were eliminated in the United States, there would be little if any global reduction in carbon emissions. According to the Energy Institute, China’s emissions grew more than twice as much as U. S. emissions decreased in 2023. What will result from the government’s aggressive transition mandate? Very little global impact on emissions, a staggering bill for taxpayers, loss of freedom of choice for consumers, significant harm to the automotive industry, rolling blackouts, and increased American energy dependence and security concerns.
Electricity might well be the future of energy, but we are not ready to make a huge leap yet. So, what would put us on the “right road?”
As for vehicles, increasing miles per gallon (MPG) should be a priority. I recently rented an ICE sedan that got 40+ MPG, roughly twice the average for ICEs. Using existing technology, auto manufacturers could improve mileage and greatly reduce carbon emissions. Hybrid cars (which use gas and smaller batteries than EVs) are another step in the right direction. Toyota and BMW are also exploring the use of hydrogen fuel cells to power vehicles. If the trillions of dollars that the government has committed to pushing EVs, wind, and solar were redirected to these and other alternatives, a better market-driven solution might be found.
In terms of generating electricity, nuclear power (the most reliable, true zero-emissions source) should be increased. The Nuclear Energy Institute reports that a solar farm requires 75 times more (a wind farm requires 360 times more) land than a nuclear plant of equivalent output. The Washington Post reports that “America is running out of power” and that “Northen Virginia [alone] needs the equivalent of several large nuclear plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction” to avoid running out of power. As for environmental waste, nuclear plants create a small fraction of the volume generated by wind and solar farms. Yet, while hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested annually in renewable energy, nuclear is receiving little attention or funding.
In summary, we are not going in the right direction to meet our burgeoning energy needs. Moving forward, we would be wise to consider the wisdom of the oft-heard announcement that emanated from older GPS units when a wrong turn was made: “Rerouting.”
