this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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I mean, OK but there are more people living in New York city proper than there are in all of Norway. There are almost 4x as many people if you count the entire NY metropolitan area. The scale of the problem is kind of different.
It's like comparing moving a boulder with moving a mountain. One is difficult, the other is functionally impossible.
Calling it functionally impossible is a little dramatic. Scaling up our electric infrastructure is absolutely doable, and the US has done a similar upscaling in the past, so it's not particularly new ground.
OK, you're probably right. I think my point about the difference in scale is still completely valid. There are 60x as many people in the US, with more than twice the density. This is a poor comparison.
The link I posted in my previous comment even compares the US to Norway, and says the only difference is scale. After crunching the numbers, there's nothing insurmountable about the US transitioning to EV's, and according to previous statistics of increased power generation over time, would only need about 7 years to be ready for a 100% transition from an engineering standpoint.
This is the difference that matters the most. Every type of infrastructure increases in complexity the more you try to scale it up. Complexity means more time, more resources, more people involved, and more potential for project failure. Scale is incredibly important and can't be dismissed as a minor difference. Logistics complexity scales exponentially.
This is a pie-in-the-sky, no-unexpected-issues-will-present time estimate. There is no way this timeframe accounts for differences in geography, existing local infrastructure, available local energy generation, local market behavior, or even the feasibility of providing all of the required raw materials to the necessary locations.
Is it even possible to acquire the amounts of copper, steel, aluminum, lithium, etc that would be needed to complete the conversion in that time frame? (never mind transport and manufacturing) Which mines and refineries have that kind of output?
Those time estimates are based on the yearly increase in capacity the US is already experiencing. Unless something outside of the norm happens, like another covid, those numbers aren't particularly outlandish, but even in a worse case scenario, 10 to 15 years is more than doable.
On top of that Norway is extremely wealthy because they saved all their oil wealth. They have a national surplus saved of something like $200k per citizen. As compared the the US with $96k public debt per citizen.