This week I watched the CNBC Europe program the opening bell. There was a commentator who spoke about the drive in the autoindustry to introduce cars driven bij electricity. In his opion it is impossible in Europe to produce the elctricity to power if electric cars are introduced on a large scale. In his view would take up to 1000 new nuclear electricity plants in Europe. In my opinion the trend could be to produce electricity at homes and businesses combined with the heating and/or coolingprocess. In this way it is easy to add new electricity production capacity as new heating and or cooling equipment is installed along with the demand for electric cars. Losses along power lines would be limited in this way. I don't know if my idea is a viable one.
What you described is the old dispute between the "old" and the "new" energy players:
The traditional players (electric power companies, that do currently own the huge power distribution networks they invested in for decades) argue, that only centralized generation of energy will give us secure and stable energy supply ... and are hence investing in centralized renewable energy production from wind or biogas (or huge concentrated solar power plants like the much-discussed Desertec).
The new entrants in the energy market (like producers of solar panels or small in-house generators for cogeneration of heat and electricity) affirm, that the energy supply of the future will rely on many many many decentralized sources of energy (generation or harvesting) that are linked by an intelligent Smart Grid. Advantage is, that energy would be produced closer to the consumer, and losses for conversion and transmission are reduced.
I'm quite sure, that we will see both in the future (and decentralized production will be much bigger than today). Regarding the energy that would be used for powering electric cars, I have once heard the following statement: If all cars in Germany would be electric cars instead of using an ICE (internal combustion engine), then these cars would need as much electricity as 6% of our todays electricity consumption. Hhhhmmm, sounds doable for me.
Besides: If we are going to use much more renewable energies (solar, wind, geo-thermic, biogas...) in the future, then many of these energy sources will be very unsteady / variable ones. The "vehicle to grid" concept could help a lot here in acting as a smart energy buffer that could absorb "excessive" energy during supply peaks and provide energy during demand peaks.
