Editor:
Here are some interesting facts the New Green Deal radicals, our president and our governor probably do not want you to know:
Batteries powering electric vehicles are forecast to make up 90 percent of the lithium-ion battery market by 2025. They are the main reason why electric vehicles can generate more carbon emissions over their lifecycle — from procurement of raw materials to manufacturing, use and recycling — than petrol or diesel cars.
A single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car “consumes” five pounds of earth.
Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile.
By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels — much of it not recyclable — will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.
Oil, natural gas and coal are needed to produce the concrete, steel, plastics and purified minerals used to build green machines. The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil.
If someone out there has similar data on a comparable gas/diesel power car, I would like to see it. From what I can see, the true carbon issues with electric vehicles do not look so good.
Ken Moulton
Rio Rancho