EU pushes electric driving

Unfortunately, Germany has stopped its resistance, and new cars in the EU must be electric starting in 2035. That exacerbates the power shortages of now and soon and the increasing scarcity of lithium, cobalt, and copper. As a result, the prices of those metals will continue to rise, becoming less and less accessible to somewhat less wealthy parts of the world. Moreover, we will be nowhere near 700 billion kilowatt-hours of green power per year available for hundreds of millions of electric cars until 2050.

About this column:

In a weekly column, alternately written by Eveline van Zeeland, Derek Jan Fikkers, Eugène Franken, JP Kroeger, Katleen Gabriels, Maarten van Andel, Bernd Maier-Leppla, Willemijn Brouwer, and Colinda de Beer, Innovation Origins tries to figure out what the future will look like. These columnists, sometimes joined by guest bloggers, all work in their own way to find solutions to the problems of our time. Here are all the previous installments.

I know of no concrete implementation plan for all the motors, batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels needed. I expect that sometime before 2030, it will become clear that such a plan cannot be made either. We can already calculate now that it is completely impracticable (based on resource and space availability, production, and installation capacity). I miss critical people’s representatives and journalists questioning those in power about it.

In the past five years, six of my predictions have come true: We are not going to make it with solar and wind (Lower House), biomass is not sustainable (European scientists), we need to build nuclear power plants (cabinet), hydrogen does not save CO2 (EU), we need to invest in natural gas (cabinet), and home insulation gets priority (cabinet). I fear the debacle of mandatory electric driving will be the next prediction to come true.