‘Green’ EV Battery Factory Uses So Much Energy, It Needs Its Own Coal Plant to Power It

In order to keep up with the demands for Democrat President Joe Biden’s green agenda, a coal-fired power plant is being expanded to cope with the energy needs of an electric vehicle (EV) battery factory.

The $4 billion Panasonic EV battery factory is being constructed in De Soto, Kansas. The new factory will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV. It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant.

The Evergy Power Plant was slated to be decommissioned as part of the push to eliminate fossil fuels. Plans were in place to transition fossil fuel-burning units at the plant to natural gas.

However, plans have now changed as the power plant will now be used to provide energy for the new battery factory. The plant will now be dedicated to burning coal to provide energy for the battery factory. It will also be expanded to cope with the extra demand.

Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act.” The legislation has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels.

The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s roughly the amount of power needed for a small city.

In testimony to the Kansas City Corporation Commission, which is the state’s equivalent of the Wyoming Public Service Commission, a representative of Evergy, the utility serving the factory, said that the 4 million-square-foot Panasonic facility creates “near term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective,” according to the newspaper.

As a result, the utility will continue to burn coal at a power plant near Lawrence, Kansas, and it will delay plans to transition units at the plant to natural gas.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, are not happy about that. The situation reflects an ignored fact about EVs — they require enormous amounts of energy to produce. Aside from production, the vehicles themselves also require vast amounts of electricity to charge.

A 15-pound lithium-ion battery holds about the same amount of energy as a pound of oil. To make that battery requires 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals that go into that battery. The average EV battery weighs around 1,000 pounds.

All of that mining and factory processing produces a lot more carbon dioxide emissions than a gas-powered car. EVs have to be driven around 50,000 to 60,000 miles before there’s a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

So, as more factories are built in the U.S. to supply EV manufacturers, there will be higher demands on the grid for power.