A coal-power plant is sustaining Kansas’s new electric vehicle factory.
A new Panasonic electric-vehicle-battery factory in Kansas requires almost 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s a lot of energy. So much energy, in fact, that Kansas delayed shutdown of a nearby coal plant to ensure the EV factory has enough power.
From the Cowboy State Daily:
The situation reflects an ignored fact about EVs — they require enormous amounts of energy to produce.
A 15-pound lithium-ion battery holds about the same amount of energy as a pound of oil. To make that battery requires 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals that go into that battery. The average EV battery weighs around 1,000 pounds.
All of that mining and factory processing produces a lot more carbon dioxide emissions than a gas-powered car, so EVs have to be driven around 50,000 to 60,000 miles before there’s a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
So, as more factories are built in the U.S. to supply EV manufacturers, there will be higher demands on the grid for power.
For all the talk about renewables, less is said about America’s existing capacity to meet energy demand. Although EVs are lauded as low-emission, environment-saving powerhouses, the Daily is right: They take tons of energy to produce and to sustain. At least for the foreseeable future, the U.S. needs fossil fuels to produce EVs and build up EV charging infrastructure.
“People are starting to understand that energy needs are increasing, and these premature [coal-fired power plant] closures are a liability,” Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, told the Daily.
Coal-power plants have started to close in many states. The U.S. will close 173 coal-fired power plants by 2030, and another 54 by 2040, and will have retired in total nearly a quarter of operating coal-powered plants by 2029, the Energy Information Administration boasted last year. That’s substantial.
Kansas’s coal-power plant, Lawrence Energy Center, was one of those set to retire soon. But the state realized it couldn’t power such a massive electric-vehicle factory without it. Some states like Indiana want to slow down the transition away from coal, over concerns that a hasty pivot toward clean energy will produce grid instability. And with clean-energy tax credits, coal can’t compete — Biden has promised wind and solar farms a 30 percent federal tax credit.
Ditching coal isn’t all that simple, not when other energy resources are unaffordable or unavailable. Coal-plant closures are unwise until renewables become more dependable; Kansas’s coal-powered electric-vehicle factory is further evidence of this.