Re: "GM is projecting an all-electric future..."
@John Robson
"Even if we burnt the petrol in a power plant we'd still reduce emissions, because we'd need less of it to power the vehicles on the road."
That doesnt seem to work. Petrol is a fantastic store of energy which we have in the tank and use only at the point where it is needed. Petrol in a power plant to power cars would have transmission losses before reaching the battery which would lose charge (a huge problem with the green revolution is no effective means to store electricity). Thats without considering that the generation of electricity must be available on demand and not at a preset time.
"And we could use relatively heavy/bulky equipment to capture the nastiest emissions and reduce the damage further. Additionally those emissions would be made somewhere that wasn't densely populated by people breathing it all in."
That is probably true.
"If we had an additional 40kWh storage available, maybe across half of the vehicle fleet, that would be a rather substantial battery to cope with the variation in generation from other sources as well."
I am not sure how effective that would be but the electricity losses going back and forth while draining someones personal transport of fuel because the grid needs energy would need serious working out. I dont know how that would work (do tell if you have information on this, I just dont know of working solutions).
"Our energy prices have been artificially far too low for far too long"
How is it artificial? We have and still do generate energy from fuels that we know work and we know how to harness and extract in useful ways. The price has been low due to the cost being low. One lie used to sell monuments to a sky god was how cheap it was and would be, which has failed miserably. But more concerning is we are still building such monuments which then increases our reliance on fossil fuels (to make the stuff) and then we still need fossil fuel generators because the monuments deliver so little.
I must admit I really hope some green champion MP states that the winter fuel allowance should be scrapped as an idea because energy prices have been artificially low for too long.