I wrote: You might not think so, looking at the primary energy of gasoline. The > thing is, electric cars use 4 to 5 times less energy than gasoline cars. So > imagine using 80% less gasoline. Look at these primary energy sources to > get a feel for it. Converting to electric cars would eliminate 28% of > primary energy consumption, while it shifts 7% from petroleum to natural > gas, wind and solar, and maybe a tad more coal for a few years: > > https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ >
That's not quite right. The above graph shows petroleum at 35% of all primary energy. Most petroleum is used in the transportation sector, for cars, trucks and aircraft. This graph shows that 66% petroleum goes to transportation: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/petroleum_spaghetti_2020.pdf Jet fuel and aviation gasoline is only 6%. There may be a few short range electric aircraft in the future, but not many. Motor gasoline and distillate fuel go to transportation. If I am reading this graph correctly, cars and trucks account for 64% of petroleum. If they were all electric, this petroleum fuel would no longer be used. ~20% of it would be shifted to electricity for electric vehicles. 20% of 64% of 35% of total U.S. primary energy is approximately 4.5% of the 93 quads of primary energy we now use. That's 4.2 quads. Energy no longer used would be 80% of 64% of 35%, which is approximately 18% of the 93 quads. So, anyway we would need 4.2 quads more electricity. If all of that comes from natural gas or coal, that calls for about 13 quads of those fuels (generators have 33% Carnot efficiency, conservatively), but nowadays a lot of electricity comes from solar and wind. The transition to electric cars will take decades and we can easily build 4.2 quads of solar and wind by the time it happens, so actually this would probably not take any extra fuel at all. With smart meters, the power company can turn on and off electric car charging as wind conditions and demand vary. They do that already, at a discounted rate.
