Electric vehicles cost more to insure. Minor accidents can result in damage that makes the vehicle unsafe or unrepairable. A parking lot fender bender could “total” your so-called green vehicle. But that’s not the only insurance cost driving up the price of EV ownership.
There have been multiple reports in recent years of freight ships catching fire.
Four hundred ninety-eight electric vehicles (EVs) and over 3,200 other vehicles, including 350 Mercedes Benzes, were bound for Egypt on the Fremantle Highway when one or more of the EVs caught fire, costing at least one seaman his life and injuring several others. Curiously, the Dutch coast guard had initially reported that only 25 of the vehicles were battery-electric models.
At last report, the Dutch coast guard admitted that it has been unable to put out the fire and that the ship has taken on water and is “listing” and on a trajectory toward a capsize. Should the ship sink, the total loss would also threaten the Frisian island of Ameland, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is home to over 10,000 aquatic and terrestrial species and located near one of the world’s most important migratory-bird habitats.
No worries. I’m sure all that front-end carbon to build all that and then all the emissions from burning plastic and electronics – including the rare earth metals and toxins (plus the ship), can be offset. Someone just needs to pay for a few indulgences. More than one someone, I suppose. That’s only one of several such fires. And if you recall, Havila Shipping, a self-proclaimed green Norweigen business, banned EVs from all its ships. The risk of EV fires was a threat to passengers, cargo, and crew—and, more likely than that, their insurance costs.
It has become the red-headed stepchild of the ocean freight industry, like child sexual assault in public schools. Everyone knows, but no one is supposed to talk about it, not outside the confines of the local community. Schools are trying to normalize it (grooming), but freight companies can’t do that. They either assume the risk and pay more to insure freight – which adds to the costs paid by consumers – or they refuse to ship them.
Just a year ago, the “Felicity Ace” sank as it was being towed from the site where 13 days earlier a fire had broken out on board. That ship, too, was transporting EVs and internal-combustion vehicles – including 15 Lamborghini Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae supercars valued at half a million dollars apiece. Also lost were 1,117 Porches, 1,944 Audis, 561 Volkswagens, 189 Bentleys, and 70 other Lamborghinis.
And just a month ago, two firefighters died battling flames that broke out on another roll-on, roll-off (RORO) cargo ship docked at Port Newark in New Jersey. Firefighters arrived at the scene when just five to seven vehicles on the 10th floor of the ship were on fire, but the fire quickly spread to the 11th and 12th floors.
We’re talking about hundreds of millions in freight lost, plus the cost of the ship and the injury or death of crewmembers. It can’t be cheap or getting cheaper to cover the risk, which had me thinking along another vein. Having been Hazmat certified to ship lithium batteries in, with, or separate from electronic equipment, I’ve some small sense of the hurdles you must leap before you can ship or carry such material.
Cargo is no different. Every country has rules, plus the UN international rules. In the US, we have the UN and DOT, and no one seems to have resolved this recurring safety issue. The hoops one must jump to ship a tablet with a battery cannot be greater than massive EV batteries in assembled vehicles.
So what’s with the fires?
It’s a common question these days with Arson-induced wildfires in Australia, the US, and Canada—electrical fires in California in Maui. Deliberately set fires, all of which are impacting another green industry – carbon offsets. Companies and individuals “pay” third parties so they can emit like it’s 1979. These indulgences assuage their guilt, but as we’ve reported previously, are often scams.
The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.
According to tecent research published by The American Association For The Advancement Of Science (AAAS),
Thales West and colleagues evaluated 26 REDD+ projects in 6 countries worldwide and used synthetic control methods to estimate how much deforestation the projects prevented. West et al. found that most projects did not substantially reduce deforestation, and that the few that did reduced it much less than had been claimed. Furthermore, the authors show that a subset of 18 REDD+ projects have generated 62 million carbon-offset credits – 14.6 million of which have already been used by entities around the world to offset their carbon emissions. According to the study’s estimates, these projects have been used to offset nearly 3 times more carbon than their actual contributions to climate change mitigation.
When eco-terrorists or other actors set blazes or cause them, through inaction or inadequate action, to get out of control, they may have set fire to someone’s offset while releasing even more carbon and emissions into the biosphere. Just like peaceful protesters burning down black-owned businesses, the whole thing stinks like yesterday’s burneded up EVs.
