NPR did a piece on the lightbulb ban this week. Incandescents were never going to be completely banned, they just needed to be made more efficient. Many of them received filament upgrades and were filled with halogen gas, with a big price tag increase.
If you want to use the light bulb analogy the government would not ban oil usage. They would require vehicle manufacturers use newer technology to make vehicles more fuel efficient than in the past. As that is already the case I’d say oil usage is already being treated like light bulbs. Neither are being banned.
Also, as I understand it, it’s just a ban on the import and manufacture of the lower efficiency lamps. Stores can still sell their stocks.
Note also: For the purposes of this thread, electric power in just about any practical form, can never be cited as a possible alternate fuel. Because electric power must always be generated as a secondary energy, from some other primary energy: That is, electric power must be generated from hydro power, or solar power, or burning other fuels, etc. So, the usage of those other primary power sources become the issue.
Currently, a whole bunch of our electric power is generated by burning fossil fuels, and must therefore be lumped together with fossil fuels for any discussion about eliminating fossil fuels. Hydro and solar power is clean, however, and whatever electricity we get that way is therefore to be counted separately from fossil-fuel-generated electricity. Unfortunately, I believe that hydro and solar power aren’t that big a source of electricity, not nearly as much as fossil electro. Not yet anyway.
So, switching cars and factories over to electric power, in itself, does nothing to reduce fossil fuel use.
This, by the way, was a question raised in the building of BART, the regional electric train system in the San Francisco area. It was claimed that the electric train would reduce air pollution; the counterclaim was mentioned that this would only move the pollution away from the Bay Area to somewhere else, where the electricity is actually generated.
If you read the OP you will see the 20 year time frame and the constructing of new power plants including nuclear to provide the expected increase in electrical power of EV’s.
Also note that coal is on the table as it is not emissions specifically but ‘global (economic) stability’ that is the motivation factor.
This is the part I disagree with. I will agree that there is nothing that can be immediately switched to without major issue. But we are talking about 20 years to build a electrical infrastructure, perhaps based on nuke power, to meet the demands of EV’s. The electric infrastructure is already present in homes and businesses and a way of recharging wherever one is should not be a task that is beyond current internet technology. This would displace gas stations.
Additionally switching to CNG/LNG as a low cost alternative fuel when EV’s won’t work and biofuels taking up the slack. Possibilities of fuel cells, perhaps powered from NG offer perhaps higher efficiencies and EV range extensions.
Safety was mentioned about CNG/LNG compared to diesel fuel. As a firefighter trained in both I would much rather be called to a NG incident then a diesel as NG, ignited or not drifts up up and away, and tends to stay in place, and not flow down hill and ignite other stuff and contaminate waterways and cover people with flaming or flamable liquid if they are unfortunately to be in the way. But that is responding to a incident, and does not involve being at ground zero when it happens which may be different but that was not part of the training.
Another way to tackle this - which would be difficult, ambitious and most likely unpopular, but perhaps no more so than the task of redeveloping oil-free personal transport, might be to change the way people travel - i.e:
[ul]
[li]Develop reliable, flexible, pervasive mass public transport - perhaps supplemented by a rental pool of personal vehicles for journeys not accommodated by the public transport network.[/li][li]Change the way people live in relation to their workplace (arcologies, work-towns, or timeshare-style apartments that whole families commute between for working periods vs leisure periods).[/li][li]Move or re-engineer industrial and retail complexes so that they can be served by a bulk rail transport network.[/li][/ul]
I don’t think this would be easy to implement - some of it would require an investment in principles that would be disdained as ‘socialist/communist’, but it could be done, especially as the control and fairness elements of the thing don’t necessarily have to be in the hands of capricious humans.
Any kind of change is eventually going to cause discomfort and require people to change their lifestyles - that’s the inevitable thing that people are postponing or denying.
Okay. To whatever extent you posit that electricity will come from non-fossil-fuel or specifically non-oil-fuel, that works.
Well the difference is that oil prices will rise and force change,
while incandescent bulb prices were going to DROP and work against change…
Its the price of the bulbs that causes the ban.
I suppose they could just produce an ‘incandescent bulb tax’, but could be challenged as too specific ?? as in, why doesn’t it also apply to flouro or HID,etc