This tectonic shift, while it will take decades instead of the seconds of the Christchurch cataclysm, will be more broadly disruptive. We can manage it wisely or foolishly, yet it will still occur.
are taking advantage of my time here to have me give a series of talks in the major cities.
The discussion was interesting, including a call in segment. The hosts were quoting analyses by international organizations on emissions payback periods of EVs under different grid CO2e intensities, and getting the numbers right. In New Zealand’s hydro, geothermal, and wind-heavy mix with an emissions intensity of about 150 grams of CO2e per kWh, it only takes a year for the average driver to pay back the carbon debt of the batteries and car manufacturing.
But the car-heaviness has an interesting corollary — quite a large percentage of electric cars. While crossing the Auckland Harbour Bridge after a session of wing-surfing in an extinct volcano — possibly a peak New Zealand experience — in a hybrid Uber, I counted half a dozen electric vehicles on the bridge with us. And the share car I rented to explore a broader region was a BYD Atto electric small SUV. The same provider, Mevo, has Tesla Model 3s and MGs in the mix as well.
Christchurch is flat and deeply sprawling, with hills much more remotely in the distance. It sits on tens of meters of layers of gravel and silt built up by multiple periods of glaciation. Its aquifer is, like the Biscayne Aquifer in southern Florida, a bubble of fresh water in a permeable sub-surface matrix, with fresh water additions from the hills preventing incursions of brine from the sea.
One of the visible differences of New Zealand is the sheer number of bookstores — actual bookstores selling new and used books made of paper and pretty much nothing else — compared to other cities in the world. A bookstore staff member suggested the lack of big box foreign stores like Amazon and Borders, as well as more niche electronics like book readers taking longer to arrive in New Zealand possibly explained the bookstore disparity.
And so to the tectonic shifts occurring in energy globally. The thread of my talks is the radical electrification of transportation that we’ll be seeing in the coming decades. All ground transportation will electrify, with batteries on the roads and grid-connections on rail. All inland and most short sea shipping will run on batteries.
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