[locallost]

While your statement is true your graph is misleading for two reasons.

1) comparison of spent energy for fossil fuels vs electricity is not a good way to do it because electric motors use less for the same output. Compare kWh per 100km for an ICE car and EV. Electrification will lead to a drop simply because of this

2) the graph is global, we have seen energy consumption go down in the developed world. E.g. the EU now uses less electricity than 20 years ago.

[philipallstar]

> comparison of spent energy for fossil fuels vs electricity is not a good way to do it because electric motors use less for the same output. Compare kWh per 100km for an ICE car and EV. Electrification will lead to a drop simply because of this

Yes but there are losses in generating electricity, and in transmitting it as well. If you only measure from energy in your car's battery to motion you're right, but I don't think that's a useful measure.

[triceratops]

Then you also have to account for losses in drilling oil, shipping it to a refinery, refining it into gasoline or diesel, shipping it to a distribution hub, then to a gas station. And all the electricity consumed in doing that. And the navy and coast guard ships that need to patrol all the oceans to keep the oil tankers safe. And...

[philipallstar]

Yes, and the same for building and fuelling the power station I suppose. That's why I'm saying you need to pick a sensible point to compare efficiency at.

[locallost]

There are no losses in generating from solar which is the topic of the article. There is no loss since there is no fuel. There is a loss in transmission but not enough to offset the roughly 4x reduction in energy use. As the other person also pointed out, there is the same loss in transmission for e.g. combustion engines. You don't pour the gasoline that came out of your back yard. It's extracted and processed for most of the world somewhere very far away and then transported. If anything, the losses in electricity are less than the energy required to transport these huge amounts of fossil fuels.

[triceratops]

Building power stations is a one-time cost. If the power station is solar or wind, same thing, only no fuel. Not the case for fossil fuels.

Solar panels or windmills are like oil drills. They aren't oil.

[gregwebs]

I think 2) is a lot more complicated to the point statements like that are misleading.

Take a look Graph of energy consumption of China which is about double the US: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china

The energy consumption of the United States has flat lined: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states

One can argue that the US and Europe have maintained a low energy consumption by de-indusrializing and having China produce all the energy (largely with coal!) to manufacture their goods instead of manufacturing it themselves.

1) Is a lot more complicated as well. A simple ICE vs EV comparison ignores electric grid generation efficiency and transmission losses as well as the massive energy cost of manufacturing the battery.

[tzs]

> One can argue that the US and Europe have maintained a low energy consumption

The US has not "maintained a low energy consumption". US total energy consumption is the second highest in the world, at 2x third (India), 3x fourth (Russia), 5x fifth (Japan), and 6x sixth (India). It was first until China overtook it in 2008. Here's a line graph from 1965-2024 of those 6 countries [1].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-cons?tab=l...

[triceratops]

> A simple ICE vs EV comparison ignores electric grid generation efficiency and transmission losses as well as the massive energy cost of manufacturing the battery

Does it take into account the "massive energy cost" of manufacturing the ICE vehicle then?

[ahhhhnoooo]

Or the gasoline generation efficiency and transmission losses? Or the economic impacts of oil pollution? Getting oil from the ground to the pump isn't free either.

[leonidasrup]

The ecological impact of mining and refining of rare earths, used for permanent magnets in EV motors or in electric generators - wind turbines, is quite large.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine#...

Because of ecology, refining of U.S. mined rare earths was outsourced for a very long time to China. Outsourcing of ecological damage...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/mp-materials-sto...

[ahhhhnoooo]

> The ecological impact of mining and refining of rare earths, used for permanent magnets in EV motors or in electric generators - wind turbines, is quite large.

I don't think I ever said otherwise. FWIW I think cars are bad. Full stop. If they have to exist, electric cars appear to have fewer externalities.

[leonidasrup]

Yes, if cars then electric. But much more importance should be placed on public transport. Air-travel should be in many cases replaced with high speed, electric trains.

[triceratops]

> The ecological impact of mining and refining of rare earths... is quite large

There's obviously no ecological impact of mining and refining fossil fuel. The Deepwater Horizon actually reduced the amount of oil in the ocean.

And unlike batteries, which are non-recyclable and always have been. It's common to throw the lead-acid battery from ICE vehicles into the nearest body of water, for example. It's definitely not the case that 99% of them are recycled today. Whereas recycling coal and oil is trivial and done all the time. /s

[leonidasrup]

BP was fined billions for Deepwater Horizon because it affected US public.

Most in US don't know that recycling of lead-acid batteries from ICE vehicles is outsourced to Africa.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...

https://www.sustainable-recycling.org/reports/urgent-strateg...

"Although efforts to enforce regulations in the United States have ramped up and cleanup is underway at some sites, many lead-acid batteries from the United States are exported to the Global South, where companies continue to cause harmful public health disasters, and US automotive companies subsequently purchase the recycled lead."

https://blog.ucs.org/jessica-dunn/how-recycling-is-done-matt...

[triceratops]

100 percent

[locallost]

Others have touched on the other points, but I would like to point out also that China using 2x the energy with 4x the population speaks more in favour of China than the US. The US also uses fossil fuels to generate more than half of its electricity, and has done so for a long time. Germany for example transitioned from coal to renewables, whereas the US went from coal to natural gas. China is following a similar pattern as Germany.

Overall there is no 100% clean source, there is something dirty in the chain everywhere. The main question for me is, is one thing an improvement over the other, is the improvement massive or modest? I think the improvement is massive and am hopeful for the future. This doesn't mean you can never improve, but I think this is already happening. For instance I saw an estimate from the Rocky Mountain Institute that they expect no further mining of lithium for batteries because it will be recycled. I obviously don't know if this is true, but even if lithium mining is environmentally unfriendly, if it's an improvement over what we have now, and if we can down the road get rid of that too, it's a positive development.

[coumbaya]

Germany didn't transition away from coal. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/all/yearly

[locallost]

It's less than half of what it was even 15 years ago. And it didn't replace that with natural gas like the US but with wind and solar.