LETTER: Mandating more EVs on the road raises a lot of questions
According to Sunday’s article, manufacturers are planning to produce more electric vehicles to meet fleet emission standards — everything from automobiles to large trucks. When a major part of our transportation system becomes electric, how will we set a mileage tax for road construction and repair with fewer gasoline-powered vehicles to tax? Will people with electric vehicles escape paying anything? How will we raise revenue from road users when fossil fuels are no longer routinely used?
As electric vehicles become common, the load on the electric grid will increase dramatically. In 2019, the United States burned more than 142 billion gallons of gasoline. The electrical equal to that much gasoline is 4.81 trillion kilowatt hours. In 2019, electrical usage in the U.S. was 3.9 trillion kilowatt hours.
Simply stated, if all the gasoline-powered vehicles were electric in 2019, we would have needed more than twice as much electricity as was used. Could our grids have handled that load? How long will it take us to build that much more capacity without adding CO₂ to the atmosphere? Can nuclear energy be the answer?
Now we get 20 percent of our electricity from nuclear power. In the partial meltdown that happened at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1977, no one was injured and there were no ill effects.
The first nuclear power plant went into operation in 1958. We have been generating nuclear power with only one non-injury incident since then. Why can’t we do more?