This isn't about cheap plastic crap, this is about buying anything and everything. Everything you buy released CO2 into the air. It was manufactured (or cultivated). It was shipped. You had it delivered or you picked it up. Real conservation and environmentalism is not glamorous.

I'm sure there is a pretty strong relationship between how much money you spend every year and what your carbon footprint is.

 

I had found info on Nimh battery production in the past, but I can't find it now, and I don't remember the details.

If Honda says it costs them $2500US extra to make a hybrid, how much do you think is energy input (including input from suppliers and their suppliers)?

They have the motor, battery, different display, some sort of electronic controllers, a different transmission, something that controls the amount of energy flowing between batteries and motor, high current cables. Do they have something to step down the voltage for other components? They also have a different engine with special valve controls too.

 

I'll ask again, does anyone really believe that any two cars of similar size really vary that much in the amount of CO2 needed to produce them? Presumably, Honda and Toyota probably use the same amount of CO2 to produce a 4 cylinder engine, a 2000lb chassis, and a similar amount of fiberglass and sheet metal. I think that is a fair assumption is it not? Why then would you assume that a Hybrid requires that much more CO2? Again, the only real differences are the batteries and the electric motor. Electric motors have been around for decades. NiMH batteries have been around for years. I don't think either required a great deal of special engineering or production.

 

Does this mean electronics items like a $5,000 file server requires a bunch of CO2 to manufacture? So we are emitting massive amounts of hot air with all the computers interfaced to GH and the hot air in cyberspace?

 

This looks interesting. I'm not done reading it yet.

"Impacts of EV Battery Production and Recycling"

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/B/239.pdf

 

They're using a 25kwh battery in the report since it is for EV vehicles. If you assume 1.3kwh for a Prius battery, the energy usage in electricity is $300 at $0.08kwh. IF the primary power is exclusively electricicity from coal, the production of the battery emits the same amount of CO2 as 368 gallons of gas.

I'm sure there are other less CO2 intensive energy inputs that lower that number, but I think this makes a point, since these batteries are said to be about $500 kwh, the battery ends up being 50% plus energy costs. And since you're paying $3 a gallon to make up the difference, you'd have to save as much as $1104 just to break even from a CO2 perspective. That's before any of the other couple thousand dollars with of stuff going into the hybrid system.

 

But this document is from 10 years ago. How relevant can it be?

The document concludes as follows:

 

CaptainObvious: You're assuming that every power plant uses coal. Out here in Maryland, we use natural gas and nuclear. The CO2 footprint on the Calvert Cliffs facility has to be close to zero. So if you had a PHEV in this state, you'd have a real positive effect on vehicle emmissions.

 

Well, the article is about the manufacturing of the battery itself. The article uses btu as the measurement of energy spent building a battery from scratch. I used electric from coal as a worst case example, but realize that electricity from coal is about the cheapest energy you can get, so it's going to be preferable when available.

In all likelyhood transport and mining energy expenditures were oil based. But the study doesn't break that down.

Chucko, despite the fact that the report is a bit dated, it does illustrate that quite a bit of energy goes into the production of a battery. Maybe someone can find something more current.

 

OK. You conclude that the Prius battery consumes $300 in energy to manufacture. You say the energy cost of these batteries is 50+% of the total. You then say that the battery cost is $500 per kwh. For the 1.3kwh battery, this would be $650. To get the percentage of the cost that comes from energy, you would divide $300 by $650. This is less than 50%. Did I misunderstand something or do you not know how to do math?