EVs and virtue signaling


Electric vehicles are a good trend insofar a the world transitions from carbon-based energy. But I had a FB exchange with an EV owner who was extolling the fact that he wasn't paying for petroleum-based fuel. I don't know where he lives, but here in Missouri, we still get ca. 70% of our electricity from coal. Coal is not only polluting as it burns, but coal mining is environmentally destructive and the coal ash residue is toxic and must be stored indefinitely.
He suggested that we could fuel an EV using our solar panels. Well, we could, but then we'd have to use more coal-based electricity to fuel our house, so that doesn't fix anything.
The economics of rooftop solar aren't yet realistic for most people. We got our 22 panels nine years ago, when Ameren paid half the cost and we could take a 30% tax rebate on the remainder. Even then, we won't get our investment back in nominal dollars for another 2-3 years, and that doesn't even take into account the fact that we could have invested that money at ca. 5%/year over all that time. It would be worse if we'd installed more panels to generate power for an EV. We could only charge the car at peak power, and when we weren't charging, the excess goes back to Ameren, which pays us 10% of what they charge us. Yeah, we could buy batteries, but they aren't cheap.
Right now, owning an EV in Missouri is mostly virtue signaling. If you live somewhere where most of the electricity is green (nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind), then it at least makes sense in terms of mitigating global warming. Otherwise, you're just exchanging gasoline/diesel for coal/natural gas.

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