Joe Gervais: EVs and clean power mandates lack plan for power generation and transmission

This commentary is by Joe Gervais, of Arlington. He is the Republican candidate for the Vermont House of Representatives in the Bennington-4 District.

When I travelled the globe in my work, my translators frequently needed me to explain idioms that I used. As I think of the legislative efforts to address the “climate crisis,” I think of the idiom half-baked, but the reality is Vermont’s climate plans haven’t even gone in the oven yet — they are still raw.

Recently, I attended a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) hearing on upcoming requirements related to electric vehicles (EVs). Vermont is mandating manufacturers sell nothing but electric passenger cars and light trucks by 2035 as well as a large number of medium and heavy-duty trucks. Part of the motivation is the notion that climate is a global problem, and we have an obligation to be good global citizens.

Joe Gervais

Joe Gervais

What is ignored is that zero-emissions vehicles are a lie — the emissions are just exported elsewhere. The emissions still exist with the mining operations for EV battery raw materials, the refining of these raw materials and manufacture of finished batteries, and the power generation to recharge these batteries. For example, the raw materials for a single EV battery requires the mining of half-a-million pounds of ore, consuming hundreds of barrels of diesel just for the mining process, let alone the refining and manufacturing process. Much of the mining and manufacturing is done in countries like China, which already has one of the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world.

Currently, we are seeing large state and federal incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. If the vehicles are so efficient and effective, why do the consumers (or manufacturers) need to be bribed to purchase and produce these vehicles? In the DNR meeting, there was a slide on health savings due to reducing (exporting) vehicle emissions, claiming savings of nearly two-billion dollars. My back-of-the-napkin calculation of continuing federal and state vehicle purchase incentives for the replacement of all 600,000 passenger cars and light trucks in Vermont exceeds seven-billion dollars. In my math, that’s a five-billion-dollar cost, and we’re not even scratching the surface of the costs — ignoring the infrastructure upgrade costs required to support wholesale conversion of vehicles to EVs.

We are seeing constraints and failures today with electric vehicles constituting less than one percent of the worldwide fleet. Mining for many of the materials needed for batteries is currently at capacity. The electric grid and power generation likely needs to see a two-fold or greater increase in capacity to meet needs. Capacity isn’t free — there’s an economic cost as the United Kingdom is currently experiencing with a ten-fold increase in wholesale power rates from near ten pence a kilowatt hour to a pound per kilowatt hour. How do economics work when electricity costs more than a dollar a kilowatt hour. Will we hear the same uproar we are hearing with heating oil and gasoline over four dollars a gallon?

The main concern I have about the mandates for EVs and clean power is the utter lack of a plan for the power generation and transmission. During the recent hearing, the DPR had no answers on the question — it was outside the scope of their responsibility. We’re seeing California, with a significant larger economy than Vermont, currently experiencing severe power shortages and compensating with rolling blackouts when the temperature is too hot, yet presently less than two percent of California vehicles are EVs. Vermont is pushing a plan for clean solar power generation, which is least effective during the high demand winter period driven by new “clean” heat pumps and EVs with short daylight hours and snow-covered panels Lack of air conditioning in the summer due to power failures is generally an inconvenience. Lack of heat in the winter can be fatal. How many people will die in the name of exported emissions due to the lack of adequate planning for the required infrastructure support?

Rob Roper recently published an article in True North Reports on the disarray in the leadership of the Vermont Climate Council, where there is “growing frustration between the committee members eager to put forward concrete proposals to meet the mandates and more politically oriented members who are trying to keep things vague because they know that the second these kinds of details come out the public will reject them.” We saw Governor Scott veto H.715 An Act relating to the Clean Heat Standard because it did not include details on the costs and impacts. It’s time to get real on our climate plans. We need comprehensive plans on how to make forward progress Vermonters can afford. Our current progressive legislative leadership is appealing to emotions while creating unreasonable mandates that have no realistic path forward.

Images courtesy of Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and Joe Gervais

8 thoughts on “Joe Gervais: EVs and clean power mandates lack plan for power generation and transmission

  1. To paraphrase something I saw online, the virtue-signaling liberals, Progressives, and Socialists in Vermont want the rest of us to be cold, poor, sick, hungry, without our dependable gasoline-powered cars which give us independence, and on bicycles. In the winter, we will then be confined to our homes. We are being governed by insane people. But don’t worry. We can further reduce our population by aborting our babies in the last trimester.

  2. If by 2035 there is a totalitarian law that NO VT resident may own a gas vehicle, then gas stations ALL go out of business. But how much of VT is dependant on TOURISM, out of staters who spend so much $$$$ here? Bye bye hotels, restaurants, ski areas? Bankrupt? but NO GAS STATION TO FILL UP out of state visitors. So they won’t come to VT anymore. Bye Bye tourism, skiers, leaf peepers! CAN YOU IMAGINE? A Communist VT gov’t bans VT residents to buy any gas, but the very few gas stations open have MANDATORY ID checks, for out of staters only, to fill up? What will it do to second home out of staters? WHY come here? why buy a second home? And WHAT about huge trucks from out of state who bring in all the merchandie, goods, food, even drugs, clothing etc….. WHAT if trucks cannot buy diesel to make the return out of VT after delivery? How will CAbot Creamery deliver ALL their VT products via trucks to out of state stores…UP AND DOWN THE WHOLE EAST COAST? Bye Bye Cabot from selling ANYTHING out of state? It will bankrupt CAbot and many others similar. HOW WILL THE EV CARS GET DELIVERED TO THE VT CAR DEALERS? HUMM? BY DIESEL POWERED OUT OF STATE TRUCKS 🙂

    This is total insanity by the ignorant, IMBECILE Leftists

  3. These two articles explain a lot about the world-wide “Climate Crisis” scam, which is based on highly compromised surface station measurements, which typically read HIGH.

    So-called climate scientists SUBJECTIVELY adjust the readings for use in their SUBJECTIVE computerized-temperature-calculation programs, which are used in the reports of IPCC, etc., for scare-mongering purposes.

    New Surface Stations Report Released – It’s ‘worse than we thought’
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/new-surface-stations-report-released-it-s-worse-than-we-thought

    Weather- Just how does it happen?
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/weather-just-how-does-it-happen

    Balloons directly measure temperatures. Satellites measure radiation, from which temperatures are calculated.
    Both consistently measure much lower temperatures than the average of 102 computer-generated graphs.

    The balloon data and satellite data is for a 43-y period. See URL
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/grid-scale-battery-systems-in-new-england

    1) Objective satellite and balloon readings increase from 0.00 to 0.5 C, or, or 0.116 C/decade
    2) Subjective computer-generated graphs increase from 0.00 to 1.20 C; or 0.28 C/decade, about 2.7 TIMES AS FAST

    Behind the 102 computer graphs are hundreds of organizations that likely receive a significant part of their revenues from governments and subsidy-receiving wind, solar, battery, etc., businesses. The livelihood and career prospects of the people creating these graphs is more secure, if they aim high, rather than low.
    https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2021/2/22/latest-computer-climate-models-run-almost-as-hot-as-before-71

    The temperature data by satellites and balloons are more accurate than land-based measurements.
    See URL
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset

    Satellite measurements are made many times during every day and systematically cover almost the entire world; +/- 85-degree latitude.
    The satellite data is vastly more complete, and accurate than would be gathered by ground stations (See Appendix 2)

    Balloon measurements, made on a sampling basis, are vastly less complete than satellite measurements, but they serve as a useful crosscheck on the satellite measurements.

  4. I was reading it’s now more expensive in England to charge your batteries then to fill a gas tank..
    Once people learn that fact it’s lost it’s ONLY selling point EV’s ever had.. plus the cost of battery
    replacement will go sky high as the ore’s used become less and less available.. a fools remedy to a
    made up crisis (as reported by Italy’s study on warming that hasn’t occurred)

  5. I remember when Alice in Wonderland seemed to be a childs’ tale…but it was reality based!
    It’s as if the politicians come from an imaginary planet.
    And you vill eat crickets and you vill like it!!!

  6. When you are able to shift the argument to the point of removing rational discourse then you have won.

    We are almost there.

    Prepare for it.

  7. Talking Heads – “Road Too Nowhere”

    Well, we know where we’re goin’
    But we don’t know where we’ve been
    And we know what we’re knowin’
    But we can’t say what we’ve seen

    And we’re not little children
    And we know what we want
    And the future is certain
    Give us time to work it out

    We’re on a road to nowhere
    Come on inside
    Takin’ that ride too nowhere
    We’ll take that ride

    I’m feelin’ okay this mornin’
    And you know
    We’re on a road to paradise
    Here we go, here we go

    We’re on a ride to nowhere
    Come on inside
    Takin’ that ride too nowhere
    We’ll take that ride

  8. Klaus Schwab stated you’ll have nothing and like it. If we stand pat, it about sums up where we’ll end up.

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