City Sets Sights On
Electric Garbage Truck

An added bonus to more efficient and cleaner vehicles is the reduction of air pollution and potentially asthma rates in the city by converting the garbage trucks to an all electric fleet.

Who's pockets will be lined by this boondoggle. Green energy and electric vehicles are going to be a scam of epic proportion on taxpayers nationwide.

This is a really good thing. But you still may want to keep the ear plugs. While electric motors are decidedly quieter than diesel motors, the trucks still will have noisy compactors, brakes, etc.

HH, that train has left the station. In response to climate change, vehicle makers and nations around the world have committed to phasing out fossil-fuel vehicles. A partial list includes Ford, General Motors, Honda, Merecedes-Benz, BYD (a major Chinese automaker), the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, and Japan.

This feel good green battery power is going to be a fail of epic proportions. You think the train has left the station but the tracks don't go beyond the city limits leading to disaster. Auto manufacturers aren't going to be phasing out ICE vehicles anytime soon. There isn't enough battery elements in the world to make the transition. You people fall for everything the media/government throw at you. Heather C. it is one garbage truck, sure make it a fleet and it is still a drop in the ocean for the reasons you cite. The truck costs an estimated $570,000 (as of December 2021), Zinn said, compared to the $321,900 that the city would spend on a diesel-powered truck.
While the upfront cost of an electric truck is higher, it may ultimately save the city money, Zinn said. When has the City ever come in with a plan that saved money? This guy is just shooting from the hip, he has no clue and I guarantee you they will never make up that difference over the lifetime of the vehicle.

The scam of epic proportions is how beholden our elected officials have been to the fossil fuel industry for far too long now. The US seriously lags the industrialized world in developing and implementing more sustainable transportation and infrastructure as well as preparing for the inevitable dwindling supply of fossil fuels. The pockets being lined are fossil fuel companies that keep us stuck in the 20th century and paying up the nose while they reap record profits. What is your proposal Henry?

There’s 50 Trillion dollars worth of oil reserves sitting in the ground and the fossil fuel industry obviously doesn’t want to abandon that. But they have to and it’s not a matter of consumer sentiment due to energy prices. It’s a matter of the escalating insurance costs (due to both immediate and long term environmental degradation) of delaying action on climate change.

HH, electric vehicle sales in the U.S. have doubled over the last year. In China (the world’s largest auto market) they tripled. https://www.iea.org/news/global-electric-car-sales-have-continued-their-strong-growth-in-2022-after-breaking-records-last-year (For what is worth, the source of the data has no interest, financial or otherwise, in electric vehicles.)

Any reduction in noise pollution is welcome.
The Mayor should appoint a citywide task force to address noise from ALL sources and develop a plan and a timeline for banning noisy mufflers, boom boxes on wheels, sirens, barking dogs, airplanes and everything that causes stress to residents. Why do sirens go full blast on even empty streets? Why do they have to penetrate our homes? Surely something new and different can be engineered. Car horn blasts by impatient drivers should maybe be replaced by a horse's whinny. We need some comic relief.
The downtown is unbearable and Q. Ave in the Heights is an ongoing cacaphony.
This is doable.
Who wants to be a hero and get it done?

Tailpipe emissions will be eliminated with an electric truck, true. They will be replaced with powerplant emissions. Contrary to what had been posed on such previous stories, the correct way to analyze the source of the energy that will power such vehicles is to use the Marginal Source method. While a portion of our current electricity comes from renewables, all renewables added to our system are dedicated to making our existing electric load carbon free. Therefore, every new addition to that load, be it an electric truck, an electric train or an electric car, will be "fueled" by electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. Sorry, but that's just an analytical fact. That burning may or may not be "cleaner" that burning in the vehicle, but one thing is certain, it is less efficient. We will burn more fuel to generate, transmit and use the electricity than we would use burning it directly in the vehicle. That is a manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (for you nerdy science sorts!).

Heritage, not quite. It is appropriate to include generation emissions when evaluating EVs vs. fossil-fuel vehicles. But these emissions vary dramatically on a geographic and temporal basis. In CT, fossil fuels play a substantially smaller role in power generation than in other states. And if an EV owner recharges their vehicle overnight, the associated carbon emissions are minimal. The vast majority of the power produced at that time comes from Millstone and renewable generation, mostly wind. If you want to get really wonky, you can look at the data produced by the Independent System Operator - New England, which runs the regional wholesale electric market. https://www.iso-ne.com/

And you are partially correct on overall energy efficiency. About two-thirds of the energy in fossil fuels is lost in generating electricity and transmitting it to the end user. But a substantial part of the energy in oil is lost in transporting it, refining it into gasoline, and then transporting the gasoline. And electric motors are more than three times more energy efficient than internal combustion engines. EVs also benefit from regenerative braking. On a “well to wheel” basis, EVs are more energy efficient than gas-powered cars, particularly in areas such as CT where renewables are a substantial part of the generation mix.

I'm all for greening of the garbage trucks but Mayor Elicker and the alders who claims to care about the environment also support the airport. In case your wondering there are 17 arrivals and 14 departures out of Tweed today. Elicker stop gaslighting us!

The amount of waste we produce is more harmful than the truck collecting it.

Follow the money.........

Kevin, you miss the point. Even in the evening the energy generated by wind is already committed to another use. Using it to charge EVs only means you need another source, fossil fuels, to replace it. The same is likely true of nuclear. Should there actually be excess capacity at Millstone, it should already be on line to educe the use of fossil fuels.