KyTrucking.net 19 Some groups in the climate debate are misleading the public over how and when our transportation sector can successfully and securely transition away from carbon-based fuels. The trucking industry shares the goal of cleaner vehicles and has the record to prove it: These gains show the power of innovation and are a testament to what’s possible when the industry’s brightest minds get to work. Truck manufacturers continue to lead research and development into technologies that will define the zero-carbon future for freight transportation, with real promise in the areas of clean diesel, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cells. The issue with government-mandated “net-zero” carbon timelines is that they kick innovation and reality to the curb — both of which are necessary to develop viable solutions that can actually be sustained over the long-term. When states like California jump the shark in banning gas-powered cars by 2035, they stifle innovation by forcing technologies to market without the necessary infrastructure and before they are scalable. The American people should know that a haphazard mad dash to decarbonization will exact human, social, economic and environmental costs. Such an approach doesn’t accelerate the arrival of a solution — it prolongs it. Take battery-electric vehicles, for example, which many regulators see as the go-to replacement for internal combustible engines. A new study from the American Transportation Research Institute raises profound questions for any official selling the idea that the U.S. vehicle fleet can soon transition to BEVs. Electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet would consume 40.3 percent of the current total electricity usage at a time when our aging grid can hardly sustain current demand. California, whose residents already experience rolling blackouts, would need to generate an additional 57% its current total electricity output. Where does California plan to get all this extra power? To mass produce lithium-ion batteries, tens of millions of tons of cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel will be needed, which could take as long as 35 years to acquire given current levels of global production. Expanding that capacity carries a giant environmental footprint, producing considerably more CO2 and pollution than the manufacture of internal combustible engines. In some operations, a minimum of one million gallons of water are used to produce a single pound of lithium. Moreover, child and other exploitive labor practices are common in many of the countries that produce these minerals. In the Congo Republic, which exports more than half of the world’s total Cobalt, at least 40,000 children are enslaved in the labor trade according to the United Nations.
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