Monday Chart

Monday 14 August 2023

China, the US, and Europe continue to create more than enough new power supply each year from wind and solar to cover all new EV coming onto the grid. The dynamic is especially impressive in China, which is placing not thousands but millions of new EV on the road each year. Last year, 6.88 million EV were sold, and this year EV sales are on pace to reach 7.5 million. That’s not a small volume of new power demand to hit the grid. Last year, new EV in China represented an estimated 20.66 TWh of new demand, and if this year’s projections are roughly right, that will mean 22.5 TWh of new power will need to be created. But as you can see, China keeps saying no problem. In answer to the 20.66 TWh of new EV demand last year, China generated a fresh 171.6 TWh of power from new wind and solar.

Estimates for miles driven and electricity required to run EV fleets vary, of course, from domain to domain. As most people already know, American drivers rack up the most miles given our out-of-date public transportation system, and especially our geography. The US is not like Europe, and is not like China. The average annual power needed to run an EV in the US is 4000 kilowatt hours (kWh). That’s pretty high.

The estimate for average annual power needed to run an EV in China comes in much lower, around 3000 kWh. And this is conservative (the average is probably lower still) but it’s best to slightly overestimate demand when putting together the picture of this transition. The data here is inclusive of both passenger and commercial vehicles, and China has been aggressive in adopting EV in buses, trucks, and other fleets which certainly rack up more miles than passenger cars. For those who want to try this at home: 6.887 million new EV sold in China in 2022 X 3000 kWh = 20,661,000,000 kWh. Divide the kWh by 1,000,000,000 to arrive at 20.66 TWh.

Will China eventually run into a problem, trying to supply all the EV with clean power? No, it won’t. China’s solar deployment is off the hook; wind power is now moving offshore; and the country is the global leader by far with the largest pipeline of new nuclear capacity under development. The country will no doubt soon reach 10 million in EV sales. Again, no problem. Estimating the power demand for 10 million new EV is dead easy, right? Start here: each tranche of a million requires 3 TWh.

The common slur against EV, in China especially, is that “they’re all just coal cars really, pretty much just running on coal-fired power.” With each passing month, that’s less and less true. Coal share of China power stood at 78% in 2010. Last year, 61%. So the slur has no traction, because all the marginal demand from EV is more than covered by new wind and solar. China doesn’t need to burn a single new briquette of coal to transition entirely to EV.

—Gregor Macdonald