Does your analysis of hybrid cars’ energy use account for all the fuels used in shipping cars and parts to different countries, making the batteries, and so on?
--Branden in Austin, Texas
Yes, the analyses I consulted, such as those from Argonne National Laboratory, include "upstream" and "downstream" inputs to the manufacture, distribution, and disposal, or to use another weary metaphor, “cradle-to-grave inputs.”
Shipping by sea is nowhere near the energy drain some anti-globalist and locavore zealots claim. The amount of energy required even to send a car halfway around the world only amounts to only a tiny fraction of what it’s gonna burn on the road! A huge ship can move more than ton of material 1,000 miles on only a gallon of fuel. The international shipping average is estimated around 422 miles per ton per gallon, and that’s a fairly conservative number because it includes less efficient ships that may well use more fuel that those hauling cars. Like it or not, this is a major reason why multinationals can afford to be multinationals.
Right here on terra firma is where we burn the bulk of our fossil fuel. In fact, of all the cargo shipped by sea, about a third is oil itself, almost all of which is burned by us clueless land-lubbers. People who harp about the evils of long-distance shipping might just be projecting their own local energy waste onto “distant ships sailing into the mist,” as Bob Dylan pictured them in his astoundingly allusive and complex “Jokerman.”
A typical semi truck with a 30-ton load burns about six to eight times more fuel per ton-mile than the biggest cargo ships, but that’s nothing compared to air freight, which can guzzle from 30 to 100 times more fuel per ton-mile as a large ship. Also, a lot of the fuel used in ships, known as "bunker fuel," is actually recycled oil, though this isn’t nearly as environmentally friendly as it sounds. This fuel is, as you can imagine, quite dirty, so the real problem with ships is less energy use than toxic emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxides, lung-clogging microparticulates, and other pollutants. This is why the International Maritime Organization has begun to take steps to force ships to clean up their emissions near U.S. and Canadian coasts – thanks in large part to a long campaign by our friends at Friends of the Earth.
Finally, to the hybrid-cars battery controversy. There’s been some substantial clouds of blog-fog from chronic hybrid dissers, in which the claim is that it takes more energy to get the nickel for a hybrid’s batteries than a Hummer would burn in its entire supersize life. As I’ve noted, if this were the case, hybrid manufacturers couldn’t even afford the batteries, let alone the whole bleepin’ car, since the Hummer would burn more than $15,000 worth of gas at today’s prices before it hit 100,000 miles. The nickel used to make the batteries is mostly recycled, which requires far less energy than would be needed if it had to be mined and smelted anew.