Hidden Tailpipe

[SR22pilot]

Well, there are the ships that transport crude. If someone mentions building the electric grid I'll just raise then the pipes for moving both crude and refined gasoline together with the trucks for final transportation to the gas stations.

If you go back to the link that I posted earlier where you can select your car (includes Tesla) and put in your ZIP code and see how emissions compare to a typical gas car, the fine print says the entire chain, for both electricity and gasoline production, is taken into account.

 

[PaulusdB]

There is still the emissions from manufacturing the solar panels.

+1

A very true point, usually not taken into account.

 

[mspohr]

There is still the emissions from manufacturing the solar panels.

And for a complete comparison, there are emissions from constructing the oil refinery and all of the equipment installed there plus the pipelines, ships, and transport trucks and roads and bridges to get the gasoline to you.
This is obviously complex and requires making assumptions. Several organizations have attempted estimates and there is a good summary here:
Life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of energy sources - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Solar PV (home) comes in at about 40 gCO2/kWh. Lowest is wind at 11 and highest is coal at 800, natural gas is 450 and diesel electric is also about 800 (close to coal). (From the IPPC tables.)

 

[Grendal]

Here are a few things I think are very subtle energy costs associated with gasoline that most don't like to take into account in their long tailpipe equations:

Gas Pumps - these are machines that use energy and take a lot of energy to be made. (A lot of people complain about batteries)
Gas Stations - Tons of electricity to keep these things lighted 24/7. How about everything about these places? You've built an entire building to refuel your vehicle. The Supercharger is much more simple place to refuel. A garage where most people charge their EV is nothing at all.
Fuel Trucks and the fuel used by them - These accounted for sometimes.

 

[Robert.Boston]

If only we had a carbon tax, then all these layers of carbon use would immediately become apparent. I'm 100% positive that it would substantially widen the cost-savings from driving EVs, regardless of where you get your power.

 

[JRP3]

Actually, it is about 6kWh of ELECTRICITY (plus other energy inputs).

There are multiple sources on this... here are a few:
Electric Mini: It takes a lot of coal to make gasoline
How much electricity is used refine a gallon of Gasoline?-video added! Gateway Electric Vehicle Club
How much electricity is used refine a gallon of Gasoline?

Actually your second and third links accurately state that it's 6kWh of ENERGY equivalents, not electricity.

Thus, using an 85% refinery efficiency and the aforementioned conversion factors, it can be estimated that about 21,000 Btu – the equivalent of 6 kWh – of energy are lost per gallon of gasoline refined - See more at: How much electricity is used refine a gallon of Gasoline?

As other's have said, very little ELECTRICITY is used per gallon. The main energy input in refining is heat, not electricity, and heat mostly comes from burning extraction and refining byproducts.

 

[CatB]

Well, there are the ships that transport crude. If someone mentions building the electric grid I'll just raise then the pipes for moving both crude and refined gasoline together with the trucks for final transportation to the gas stations.

If you go back to the link that I posted earlier where you can select your car (includes Tesla) and put in your ZIP code and see how emissions compare to a typical gas car, the fine print says the entire chain, for both electricity and gasoline production, is taken into account.

+1 putting gas in a diesel truck and putting it on the highway for x hundred miles creates a lot of emissions. And if you're unfortunate enough to live in a city like DC, can we also count the trucks' contribution to increased emissions from all the traffic backups? or worse yet the backups they cause all by theirselves when they are in an accident and spill their fuel :cursing:??

Plus, all the tieups and wasted energy (and taxpayer money) for the pothole repair crews.

 

[mspohr]

Actually your second and third links accurately state that it's 6kWh of ENERGY equivalents, not electricity.
As other's have said, very little ELECTRICITY is used per gallon. The main energy input in refining is heat, not electricity, and heat mostly comes from burning extraction and refining byproducts.

This is clearly a complex and confusing point since it is difficult to get good numbers and many secondary writers don't clearly differentiate between electricity and other energy inputs to refining (primarily natural gas).
The best discussion I have found is here:
Gasoline and Oil
After analyzing lots of different sources and numbers, he is unable to come up with a solid number for just the electricity needed to deliver a gallon of gas. The closest he comes is the figure (near the bottom of the page) that natural gas energy is about three times the input of electricity during refining and the total energy for refining is about 13 kWh/gal.
There is also a discussion of the amount of electricity used to extract oil from the ground in California which is interesting:
From the California Energy Department website, we find:

1. 3,700GWh or 1.5% of all electricity consumed by the state is used for Petroleum EXTRACTION
2. 7,266 million KWh of electricity for Petroleum REFINING (1997)- 15% of California's manufacturing sector (if 3700 is 1.5, then 7266=2.9%. 1.5+2.9=4.4%. About 1/20th of all Electric usage.
3. 1,061 million Therms of natural gas Petroleum REFINING (1997)- 28% of California's manufacturing sector 48% of energy from Petroleum is used in the transportation sector.

From this we can conclude:

1. The electricity used in CA to extract and refine oil for gasoline (11,000 Gwh) would be enough to power 4 million full function electric cars.
   11000 million kWh / 0.25 kWh per mile /11000 miles per year per car = 4 million E cars
2. Adding the natural gas used to refine oil for gasoline, 1,061 million therms, we could get enough power to run another 5 million electric cars
3. 1061 million therms * 30 Kwh per therm / 50% combined cycle power plant efficiency / 11000 miles per year per car / 0.25 miles per kWh = 5 million electric cars

Adding in the energy used to produce and ship imported oil (over 50% of it is imported now), plus the energy used to distribute and retail oil...

I'd encourage you to read this entire page which collects a lot of useful information from lots of primary sources. I guess the bottom line is that the total energy input into extraction, transportation and refining gasoline is more than enough to power an electric car for a greater distance than the gallon of fuel that is produced. The numbers for electricity alone are difficult to tease out.

 

[JRP3]

Also from your link:

Many numbers may be found at http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm

It says for example that in 2006 that U.S.refineries used 39,353 GWh (39,353,000,000 kWh).

At http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_pct_dc_nus_pct_m.htm
you will find that they produced 45.8% "Finished Motor Gasoline" in 2006. That means 18,024 GWh for gasoline (18 TWh)
At http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp2_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm
you will find output was 1,965,341,000 barrels, or 82.544 billion gallons. (Note 140 billion gallons were consumed in the U.S., so I suppose the others were imported. Someone ambitious should check this. One could scale to guess at the electricity used by the imports, if you wanted.)
Dividing one gets 218.4 Wh/gallon. Thus in a RAV4-EV, one could go 0.72 miles on the electricity used to produce a gallon of gasoline (using 302 Wh/mi). In a Tesla, it would be about 0.87 miles.

Yes it's a complicated system, but gross over estimations of electricity used to produce fuel don't seem to be supported by available data.

 

[Reykjavik]

Even at 6 kWh of thermal energy to refine a gallon of gas, you could run a turbine, transmit the electricity, and charge an EV enough to go a good distance. I'm not sure how efficiently the fuel for refineries could create electricity, but I'd expect it to be similar to natural gas, perhaps a bit less. Ultimately, I'd expect at least 2 kWh of electricity to make it into the battery, which is enough to drive 7-10 miles.

Not only that, but the full extent of the EV tailpipe produces less emissions than just the physical tail pipe on a gas. If you are in a place that is very coal heavy, EVs will be getting the equivalent of 30-40 mpg as far as emissions go. If you use the grid average, even the most efficient hybrids can't compete with plug in vehicles.

One good thing out of this article though is that it mentions that hydrogen also has a long tailpipe. Every energy carrier does, EVs just have the most visible one, and hydrogen proponents are either ignorant or hoping others remain ignorant of their long tail pipe. The oil industry has gotten lucky by being the only game in town, so nobody looked at theirs, but now that they tried to pull the argument on EVs, we're starting to actually look at it.

 

[mspohr]

It looks like there is a total of about 13 kWh of energy used to refine and transport a gallon of gasoline (and that gallon of gasoline only contains 33 kWh of energy which is burned in an ICE at about 30% efficiency).
It looks like most of the energy used to refine and transport gasoline is in the form of natural gas and most of the rest is electricity. If you burned the natural gas in an electric turbine (commonly used as peaking electricity plants), you could generate about 80% efficient conversion to electricity. So combining the electricity that is used directly to make gasoline and the natural gas generated electricity, you would end up with enough electricity (about 10 kWh) to move an electric car about 30 miles. So, just the energy that is used to refine and transport a gallon of gasoline can move an electric car further than the average ICE car moves on that gallon of gasoline.
This just illustrates the incredibly inefficient oil energy supply system.

 

[JRP3]

The best combined cycle NG plants are about 60% efficient, then you have about 7% transmission losses after that, then another 15-20% charging losses. Even using your 13kWh of energy used per gallon, which does not seem to be accurate, that comes out to about 6 kWh.

 

[Grendal]

I believe this chart from the government gives you the numbers that you are looking for:

U.S. Fuel Consumed at Refineries

Last year 46 BILLION kWh of electricity was used in refineries along with 896 BILLION cubic feet of natural gas. Most of that is not used to directly convert oil into gasoline.

I had a lengthy discussion with a commenter on Autoblog Green about this.

Figuring out exactly how much it costs to charge Tesla Model S

This is a link to the comments I referenced.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

Actually your second and third links accurately state that it's 6kWh of ENERGY equivalents, not electricity.


As other's have said, very little ELECTRICITY is used per gallon. The main energy input in refining is heat, not electricity, and heat mostly comes from burning extraction and refining byproducts.

Yes, but energy is fungible. All of the co-generation products that are burned on-site to turn turbines to generate electricity for the refinery could have instead been put out on to the grid. Likewise, all that waste heat that's directed to catalyze chemical reactions could have instead been used to turn turbines. Yet, the carbon has still been put into the atmosphere. 6kWh of energy used is still 6kWh of carbon generated in the production of that gallon of gas.

 

[JRP3]

Sure, but the point is the end result is much less than 6kWh of available electricity. Plus the fact that without the demand for oil and refined products those other cogeneration fuels don't exist, they stay in the ground with the oil.

 

[mspohr]

Sure, but the point is the end result is much less than 6kWh of available electricity. Plus the fact that without the demand for oil and refined products those other cogeneration fuels don't exist, they stay in the ground with the oil.

We can debate the amount of electricity which could be generated but you have just made the important point which is that the oil stays in the ground.

 

[CalDreamin]

Yes, but energy is fungible. All of the co-generation products that are burned on-site to turn turbines to generate electricity for the refinery could have instead been put out on to the grid. Likewise, all that waste heat that's directed to catalyze chemical reactions could have instead been used to turn turbines. Yet, the carbon has still been put into the atmosphere. 6kWh of energy used is still 6kWh of carbon generated in the production of that gallon of gas.

The vast majority of energy consumed in refineries is not used to turn turbines to make electricity. Only a small fraction of the energy consumed in refineries, around 4 or 5%, is electricity. The other 95-96% is thermal energy -- petroleum byproducts (mostly) and natural gas (to a lesser degree) that are burned to heat up hydrocarbons going into high temperature conversion processes or distillation columns. Some energy is used to create steam used throughout the refinery, and some of the steam could theoretically be used to make electricity instead.

While the natural gas is fungible, the petroleum byproducts that are burned are not fungible since they would not exist if not for the high temperature, energy intensive conversion processes.

The heat rejected from refineries could not be used to turn turbines. Refineries have thousands of heat exchangers that recover essentially all of the useful heat. Without the heat exchangers, refineries would consume massively more energy and be vastly more costly to operate. Low quality (low temperature) heat that cannot be usefully recovered is rejected.

 

[mspohr]

The vast majority of energy consumed in refineries is not used to turn turbines to make electricity. Only a small fraction of the energy consumed in refineries, around 4 or 5%, is electricity. The other 95-96% is thermal energy -- petroleum byproducts (mostly) and natural gas (to a lesser degree) that are burned to heat up hydrocarbons going into high temperature conversion processes or distillation columns. Some energy is used to create steam used throughout the refinery, and some of the steam could theoretically be used to make electricity instead.

While the natural gas is fungible, the petroleum byproducts that are burned are not fungible since they would not exist if not for the high temperature, energy intensive conversion processes.

The heat rejected from refineries could not be used to turn turbines. Refineries have thousands of heat exchangers that recover essentially all of the useful heat. Without the heat exchangers, refineries would consume massively more energy and be vastly more costly to operate. Low quality (low temperature) heat that cannot be usefully recovered is rejected.

Here are some interesting numbers from EIA on energy use by refineries (U.S. Fuel Consumed at Refineries)
897,000 million cubic feet Natural Gas ( 1e18 Joules)
46,000 million kwh purchased electricity ( 1.65e16 Joules)
229,670,000 barrel equivalent still gas (6 million BTU per barrel) (1.45e18)

Of course, this is only refineries, there is also extraction and transport to consider.
This table (How much does it cost to produce crude oil and natural gas? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)) shows "lifting costs" to be about $12.00 per barrel and "finding costs" to be about $20.00 (on-shore... off shore is more expensive). Most of the lifting cost is electricity so about 12,000 kwh per barrel. This is interesting in the light of oil at $60.00 a barrel.

 

[N4HHE]

We can debate the amount of electricity which could be generated but you have just made the important point which is that the oil stays in the ground.

All hydrocarbons will be used whether or not used to produce electricity or fill the gas tank. They will not stay in the ground. If we don't use them China will. Nobody uses them cleaner than the USA.

 

[mspohr]

All hydrocarbons will be used whether or not used to produce electricity or fill the gas tank. They will not stay in the ground. If we don't use them China will. Nobody uses them cleaner than the USA.

We can't burn all of the fossil fuels that are in the ground. If we do, then thetemperature will rise too much and we will all be toast.
there is no such thing as clean production of co2. if you burn fossil fuels you'll get co2 it doesn't matter who burns them or where.