VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – The following is a news release from the VCSU organization called “What in the World is Going On.”
“Paul Jensen, an energy consultant and owner of Green Ways 2Go, LLC, spoke on behalf of Citizens Local Energy Action Network (C.L.E.A.N.) (cleanfargo.org), to What In the World Is Going On, a VCSU-community informational organization, on Feb. 28 at Vangstad Auditorium.
CLEAN is active in promoting information about and use of electric vehicles as a way of cutting carbon emissions from fossil-fuel vehicles, which is a significant cause of global warming.
He began by acknowledging that he could only discuss 3 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Poverty, Clean Energy, and Climate Change. Because it is known we will not completely succeed in stopping climate change (mitigation), much time will be spent in the future with disaster management (adaptation).
His talk was mainly about mitigation, through the decreased use of fossil-fuels. The solutions for this are complex but necessary, and can’t be done just by governments. Private industry will be very important, not just in the production of pollution-free vehicles, but also in providing charging stations for them. His business does consulting for companies and governments trying to convert their vehicle fleets to electric and providing charging for them.
After quickly discussing the complicated carbon cycle (carbon cycle (noaa.gov)) which has been affected by human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, he showed the relative amounts of carbon emissions from transportation (29%), electricity production (25%), industry (23%), residential (13%) and agriculture (10%).
He discussed the COP 26 (Conference of Parties, link https://ukcop26.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/COP26-Explained.pdf), in Glascow, Scotland last fall, and gave recommendations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the parent organization to COP 26, and discussed the bipartisan-passed Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act (HR 3684, 1600 pages, signed 11/15/21), which came out of those IPCC recommendations.
Of special interest to North Dakota, out of the 16 goals of the bill are 5 which relate to promotion of electric vehicles, private, industrial and urban transport, and creation of a comprehensive statewide network of charging stations. Mr. Jensen is worried that the deadline for submitting a state plan ( to receive a fair portion of the $7.5B) to the Joint Office of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program is Aug. 1, 2022, and he says “that is not far off!”
Because charging stations are complicated and technical, he provided an overview of the 3 levels of charging stations, Level 1 (120v), Level 2 (240V), and Direct Current Fast Charging (400v), and provided a link to a DOT toolkit which contains technical details, https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit.
Boiling Jensen’s talk down to the basics, he said that Climate Change is real. And to decrease climate change Electric Vehicles are a part of the solution, and that people in North Dakota are already driving them.”
Written by Dr. James Buhr.