EV's saving the planet?, page-28

I'm not sure that chart helps your case much Justis. In most cases they simply started burning more gas rather than coal which can clearly be seen on your chart. Your chart clearly shows that burning coal, gas or petroleum is still overwhelmingly providing our energy.

More importantly look at the pathetic contribution of renewables across the board except Tassie. In fact there are only two states that have more than 10% renewables and both of those are in the low population end of the spectrum. Its easier to achieve a higher percentage when demand is low to start with.

You should also be aware that Tassie, the only place with truly meaningful levels of renewables, produces this power from hydro. This capacity was mostly created long, long ago before the green movement put a stop to most new dams in the 1980s. This hydro power is not a new thing as part of any move away from fossil fuels. They feed lots of power via underwater cables to the mainland which contributes to the percentages of renewables elsewhere however as their own consumption grows its possible that over time their contribution to other states may in fact drop so that they can keep up with domestic demand.

Take away the half century old hydro capacity then look at the paltry contribution of renewables. Then realize that hydro isn't likely to increase much from here and you can see the scale of the problem. The non-hydro renewables are only a tiny few percent of our total energy mix.

No point focusing entirely on the burning of coal because thats just a tiny part of the problem. Coal is being phased out which creates a massive 30% hole in our supply. At the very same time there is a push to replace petroleum with electric vehicles creating an additional 40% hole in our energy supply. That 70% is between 25 and 30 times the total non-hydro renewables that we have today. And thats ignoring the fact that 20-25% of our energy will still be burning gas.

I'm all for renewables and really wish there were some easy answers here. I think we have to be realistic. It will be decades before renewables can even replace the coal in existing electricity demand. Every new electric car adding to electricity demand will be serviced by non-renewables. We cant all just pretend that our houses and cars are consuming renewables because we want them to be. Its simply not true and won't be true for the foreseeable future. It will however be true that every new electric car adding to electricity demand with limited supply will continue to drive up electricity prices.