Electrification Today Increases the CO2 Emissions

This book is about how to rationally reduce emissions of harmful gases, primarily CO₂, into the atmosphere. Today, this effort is dominated by wishful thinking, incompetence, and profiteering. Both authors were educated at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). One holds a doctorate in chemistry; the other is a physicist. They realized early on that electric cars do not necessarily reduce CO₂emissions – on the contrary, in some cases, they can increase them. This was so easily demonstrable that they assumed the world would soon discover this on its own. But it did not happen. Disseminating this message proved extremely difficult. Clearly, neither the media nor politicians wanted this information. Therefore, this book had to be written.

Per Eidsvig was born in Ålesund, Norway, in 1941. He was educated as a technical physicist at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) from 1961 to 1966 and earned an MSc degree. Per has worked in ore prospecting and construction of instruments for the Geological Survey of Norway from 1967 to 1984. He was involved in seismic processing for Geco Prakla from 1985 to 1997 and for Read Well Services from 1997 to 2013. Per was a lecturer in electronics at Stavanger Technical School from 1987 to 1990.

Rune Lødeng was born in Moss, Norway, in 1959. He received his technological education in industrial chemistry at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in Trondheim from 1980 to 1984, earned a MSc degree and a PhD from 1988 to 1991. Rune has over 40 years of experience in research within chemistry, catalysis and energy-relevant industrial processing.

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In reality, the title and cover of the book says it all. Because I know how the electrical power system works, I have over the almost last 10 years been very surprised by the huge focus on electric cars in Norway. Norway does not have an isolated Norwegian power grid by itself where renewable power production is locked in which this perception seems to be based on. The authors of this book have explained this by the “last power” that still for many years will come from coal sources although Norway does not produce power from coal. So most often the last power comes from coal power stations from all countries connected to this common West European power marked/power grid. A simple way to explain: First, when fossil cars which don’t put load on the power grid are substituted with electrical cars, the electrical power consumption will obviously increase. And Norway has typically exported annually around 20 TWh renewable power into this West European power grid. If Norway reallocates this 20 TWh exported electrical power by using it for charging electric cars or other new electrical consumption in Norway, these 20 TWh loss of Norwegian renewable power outside Norway’s borders must instead be produced by “last power”, since no power consumption there has vanished due to that Norway reallocates its renewable production to be used in Norway. And this “last power” will almost always for several decades ahead be coal power according to existing plans. The reason for this is that there will not be any more renewable power production by increasing power consumption. But as long as there is enough production capacity in coal plants, the power production can be increased by 20 TWh by shoveling on more coal into these power stations. This is pure physics and follows Ohms and Kirchhoff’s laws for electrical power flow. And it gives the same result as the authors have written in the book with their different background in thermodynamics from mine with electrical energy systems. Along with this, it is also worth mentioning that there seems to be a general perception that electric cars and other new items connected to the grid are charged on a power mix from the different energy sources that are used to produce electric power into this power market. This is incorrect since new consumption always need “last power”. In the book the authors find that the CO2-emission from an electric car becomes about twice the emissions compared to direct use of petrol or diesel in a fossil car. I have done such calculations in a little different way, and I can confirm that their results correspond very much with mine. And the same applies to the authors’ timetable for how to implement climate measures the best and probably the only way to succeed in the years to come. Independent from the authors and with my different background, they have come to the same conclusions as me. As written in their book, electrical power from wind and sun are unstable and therefore unreliable. The power system functions just like a car that is driven on cruise control, let’s say at 50 km/h, except that the power system runs on 50 Hz, given by the rotation speed of the electrical generators. And to constantly achieve this 50 Hz frequency, the sum of total power production into the grid must constantly exactly cover the sum of consumption demand plus the energy loss in the grid. Therefore, the sum of electrical power production into the grid must constantly be controlled just like the engine power in a car that is driven on cruise control at a fixed speed. So as useless as wind and sun would be to control fixed speed for the car, wind and sun are equally useless to control the fixed 50 Hz frequency for the power grid. And almost all power consumptions connected to the grid are dependent on the 50 Hz frequency to function properly. Because of this, power production from wind and sun are only useful to a certain amount in the power system to save some energy in water dams, coal stores, nuclear fuel etc. Too much wind and sun will skyrocket investments cost for the power system with their need for increased grid capacity, pump power etc. and make it more unstable. Consequently, wind and sun are totally unfit to solve the increased power demand over a certain limit. On the contrary, nuclear power is stable and predictable, which is the type of power production that is primarily needed, and the 4th generation nuclear power plants(4GNP) like Molten Salt Reactors, are realistic to achieve from 5 to 10 years from now according to the authors. Those large existing nuclear power plants are very slow when controlling the power output. But presuming these new smaller ones might be controlled much faster. Therefore, from a technical point of view, this seems like the far best option now to develop further since other solutions have too many negative effects. So, I totally agree with the authors with this assessment, which I myself have previously concluded. Without going into further details, the authors describe very thoroughly, and where they show a very high level of competence, why except for making hydrogen with oxyfuel method technique, CCS, biofuel and energy carriers like e-fuels and hydrogen either have too low overall efficiency or other problematic properties that for now make them unfit for replacing directly use of petrol and diesel Further, I find chapter 4 very important because here the authors describe how a time plan to most effectively reduce CO2- emissions should be. And this plan agrees very well with the assessments I have made myself. The premise to succeed requires the right action at the right time. But in Europe inclusive Norway and probably also mostly in the rest of the world, they are all doing wrong. So, the authors’ conclusion is crystal clear: The maximum reduction of CO2- emissions in the coming years requires no new unnecessary electrifications, maximum effort on the construction of nuclear power plants and the necessary pumped power plants and/or hydrogen as described in chapter 3.7.5. I totally agree with this conclusion, and it’s probably the only solution based on todays- and close future technology. This applies to all countries participating in this West European power market inclusive Norway. The authors of this book have done a tremendously good job in collecting numerous necessary data, analyzed a number of measures and eventually have come up with a realistic plan for how to reduce CO2- emissions the best way and may be the only way, to succeed. The results are very clear and there is no doubt that the conclusion is correct based on the facts and calculations they have carried out.