Mayors of 12 major cities pledge to procure only zero-emission buses from 2025; major areas to be zero-emission by 2030

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GRA

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Via GCC: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/10/20171023-c40.html

The mayors of London, Paris, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan, Seattle, Auckland and Cape Town have pledged to procure only zero-emission buses from 2025 and ensure that a major area of their city is zero emission by 2030.

The signatories of the C40 Fossil-Fuel-Free Streets Declaration “envision a future where walking, cycling, and shared transport are how the majority of citizens move around our cities.” The cities therefore commit to:

  • Increase rates of walking, cycling and the use of public and shared transport.

    Reduce the number of polluting vehicles on city streets.

    Lead by example by procuring zero emission vehicles for city fleets.

    Collaborate with suppliers, fleet operators and businesses to accelerate the shift to zero emissions vehicles and reduce vehicle miles in cities.

In London, the new T-Charge toll on the most polluting vehicles (pre-Euro 4 / IV) went into effect today. (Earlier post. . . .)
 
I've learned to be skeptical of far in the future statements.
Not only do they not actually require anything from the politicians today, they are easily forgotten by the winners of the next election.

Show me a plan that starts from ~ today and I'll be keenly interested.
 
SageBrush said:
I've learned to be skeptical of far in the future statements.
...
Heard a great line tonight, "It isn't future yet!"

The interesting thing to me is whether EV buses have higher or lower TCO than diesel buses. If they truly are lower mandates are probably unnecessary. This isn't like convincing an emotional retail buyer they really aren't ever going to take that spur of the moment cross country road trip towing a 26 foot boat, these buying decisions are made by bottom line types.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
SageBrush said:
I've learned to be skeptical of far in the future statements.
...
Heard a great line tonight, "It isn't future yet!"

The interesting thing to me is whether EV buses have higher or lower TCO than diesel buses. If they truly are lower mandates are probably unnecessary. This isn't like convincing an emotional retail buyer they really aren't ever going to take that spur of the moment cross country road trip towing a 26 foot boat, these buying decisions are made by bottom line types.
I'll guess the answer is similar to passenger cars: Yes, if matched with PV
 
I think that in this case "TCO" is "total cost of ownership" and not an environmental rating. I could be mistaken, but the context suggests that I'm not. The point being that a lower TCO will win sales from entities who have little or no interest in environmental impact.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I think that in this case "TCO" is "total cost of ownership" and not an environmental rating. I could be mistaken, but the context suggests that I'm not. The point being that a lower TCO will win sales from entities who have little or no interest in environmental impact.
The place I've seen firsthand where these buses are being used (Park City) they are all about the environment at least in their minds. While the purchases were heavily subsidized with grants and whatnot I have been wondering how the transit department there would see the bottom line working out even if those subsidies and tree-hugging mentality weren't there. Saving $1200/day on fuel on just one of the routes is significant. I'd think 10 cents/kWh coal by wire is roughly equivalent to solar, maybe even without subsidies. So many subsidies on things these days it's hard to tell what is or isn't a good choice economically. Since the vehicles have only been in service six months it may be too soon to get the full picture. Transit buses are probably hard on trannies and brakes although you wouldn't think as bad as garbage trucks; who knows it may come down to items like that.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
I'd think 10 cents/kWh coal by wire is roughly equivalent to solar
My home PV works out to about 2.5 cents a kWh. This works out to be ~ 10% of the cost of diesel per mile.
 
SageBrush said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
I'd think 10 cents/kWh coal by wire is roughly equivalent to solar
My home PV works out to about 2.5 cents a kWh. This works out to be ~ 10% of the cost of diesel per mile.
That's with the magic of net metering. In other words, 2.5 cents/kWh is not the total cost for providing the electricity you use when you use it. If the bulk of the charging for transit buses is done at night, then there will need to be additional costs incurred to shift the availability of the electricity. That cost is not at all insignificant. In fact, for my family's consumption, the cost of adding enough batteries to ensure 100% self-consumption is astronomical.

As we move toward electrifying transportation, it will be important to come up with ways to move away from charging primarily at nighttime and toward charging primarily during the daytime. My idea to enable this is what I call "BEV Net Metering".
 
RegGuheert said:
SageBrush said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
I'd think 10 cents/kWh coal by wire is roughly equivalent to solar
My home PV works out to about 2.5 cents a kWh. This works out to be ~ 10% of the cost of diesel per mile.
That's with the magic of net metering. In other words, 2.5 cents/kWh is not the total cost for providing the electricity you use when you use it. If the bulk of the charging for transit buses is done at night, then there will need to be additional costs incurred to shift the availability of the electricity. That cost is not at all insignificant. In fact, for my family's consumption, the cost of adding enough batteries to ensure 100% self-consumption is astronomical.

As we move toward electrifying transportation, it will be important to come up with ways to move away from charging primarily at nighttime and toward charging primarily during the daytime. My idea to enable this is what I call "BEV Net Metering".
Nah.

Your argument only comes into play when daytime generation exceeds daytime consumption.
 
SageBrush said:
Nah.

Your argument only comes into play when daytime generation exceeds daytime consumption.
Nonsense. There are additional costs whenever you add renewable generators which produce electricity intermittently. The reason is that pricing for baseload electricity is based on repaying capital costs through continuous operation near 100% output. The cost of electricity from those generators is higher if they do not produce close to full power 24/7. This is precisely the reason why net-metering laws are being eliminated or modified around the world.

And I think you need to reread what I wrote and look more carefully at the implications:
RegGuheeert said:
As we move toward electrifying transportation, it will be important to come up with ways to move away from charging primarily at nighttime and toward charging primarily during the daytime.
In order to electrify transportation, we will need to MORE THAN DOUBLE the amount of electricity that is produced in this country. Imagine that we do that by adding solar generators to the existing generators. Since solar generators produce most of their power during the middle 6-to-8 hours of the daytime, that means that we will necessarily have to increase electricity production during those hours by a factor of four to six times our current production in order to double overall energy production.

Put another way, in order to increase our overall electricity production by about 20% using solar power, if we are unable to store that energy we would need to completely shut down the baseload generators during the middle of each day. Baseload generators are not designed for that type of operation, so even this amount of solar generation is not achievable in the current electricity grid situation.

To go beyond a 20% increase using solar, YOU MUST STORE THE ELECTRICITY AS IT IS BEING PRODUCED. Since the additional demand for the electricity is coming from electric vehicles, which are themselves energy storage devices, the obvious solution is to use BEVs to store that additional production. To do this means to have as many BEVs as possible plugged in and charging during the daytime production of solar-generated electricity. If done properly, the grid should be able to be balanced by these vehicles. Of course the challenge is that most commerce, and therefore transportation, occurs during the daytime, so that is when many of those vehicles are traveling.

Other loads will also need to move to the daytime, as well.

This will be a massive transformation to our energy infrastructure. Fortunately it will take decades to play out, so we have time to make the change. Still, it will be a challenge simply because it is such a large change.
 
In the case of the Park City Electric Xpress the charging is almost exclusively on route, stopping for three minutes at the Kimball Junction transit center under the overhead thingy. The route runs from something like 5:30AM to 1AM during peak seasons though which will be winter, some pretty short days then. Also will be interesting to see how they perform in the cold temps.
 
RegGuheert said:
SageBrush said:
Nah.

Your argument only comes into play when daytime generation exceeds daytime consumption.
Nonsense. There are additional costs whenever you add renewable generators which produce electricity intermittently. The reason is that pricing for baseload electricity is based on repaying capital costs through continuous operation near 100% output. The cost of electricity from those generators is higher if they do not produce close to full power 24/7. This is precisely the reason why net-metering laws are being eliminated or modified around the world.
I don't want to call your post nonsense in turn, so how about howgwash ?

The utility companies are fighting net metering because they lose revenue; their argument that residential PV owners are "not paying their way" is mostly (but not entirely) a red herring. If generally true, the utilities would be pestering their PUCs for an increase in the fixed monthly fees ALL their customers pay. As for the baseload argument, you should look again the capacity factors of NG plants. You know, the plant type that utilities are flocking to as fast as they can.


The utilities have massive over capacity at night, while EV charging during the day would strain the current system without decentralized PV input. So it makes perfect sense for the utility and the system to prefer PV+EV as a pair. Either in isolation is more of a problem for them.
 
SageBrush said:
The utility companies are fighting net metering because they lose revenue; their argument that residential PV owners are "not paying their way" is mostly (but not entirely) a red herring. If generally true, the utilities would be pestering their PUCs for an increase in the fixed monthly fees ALL their customers pay.
Net metering is a subsidy to PV owners, plain and simple. Let's not pretend it is anything else. That subsidy is paid by those who do not have PV and net metering.

OTOH, the two-meter approach which charges retail rates for consumption and pays wholesale for production is a rip-off for PV owners. The reason is that those owners have to pay a markup for ALL electricity, including that portion which they self-consume.
SageBrush said:
As for the baseload argument, you should look again the capacity factors of NG plants. You know, the plant type that utilities are flocking to as fast as they can.
Most (not all) natural-gas power plants are so-called "peaker" plants which are built to come online to handle variable loads. But peaker plants cost more to operate than base-load plants due to the reduced thermal and financial efficiencies which can be achieved.
SageBrush said:
The utilities have massive over capacity at night, while EV charging during the day would strain the current system without decentralized PV input. So it makes perfect sense for the utility and the system to prefer PV+EV as a pair. Either in isolation is more of a problem for them.
More nonsense. In 2016, CA produced approximately 6% of their electricity using solar power. That 6% has already completely eliminated the mid-day peak on sunny spring days and turned it into a valley significantly lower than the nighttime load.

And this is with far less than 1% of CA's total transportation energy coming from electricity. The simple fact is that converting ANY vehicle to electricity which is drawn during the nighttime will increase fossil-fuel usage unless there are wind generators in place and the wind just happens to be blowing at that time. This is true REGARDLESS of how much solar generation is in place. And with any non-trivial penetration level of BEVs we will experience electricity peaks that occur at nighttime. Again, this is regardless of how much PV is put in place.

Similarly, PV penetration levels beyond about 10% of total electricity production will cause serious operational difficulties for the power companies.

Where I live, electricity is the primary source of heat. As a result, in the wintertime, electricity consumption peaks AT NIGHT. If you add loads at night, you simply increase the peak load.

The obvious conclusion is just as I have already stated:
RegGuheert said:
As we move toward electrifying transportation, it will be important to come up with ways to move away from charging primarily at nighttime and toward charging primarily during the daytime.
IMO, there is no way around this fact. Trying to do both without moving EV charging to the daytime will require us to build twice as many batteries as would be required with daytime charging. That would make no sense at all because it would cause excessive damage to the environment while simultaneously slowing the growth of BEVs.
 
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