Electric Cars Are Cleaner Even When Powered by Coal

One catch in the Bloomberg study is that it compares the "...average ICE CO2 emissions ... across all six countries." The ICE vehicles compared were traditional gasoline powered models. I am still quite skeptical that anything powered by coal is cleaner, let alone has lower CO2 emissions. Coal ash is even MORE radioactive than nuclear power plant waste. The fly ash from a coal plant puts 100 times more radiation into the environment than a nuclear plant of equivalent power. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

 

Source: https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner

New data from the US EPA on power plant greenhouse gas emissions are in, and electric vehicles (EV) in the US are even cleaner than they were before. The climate change emissions created by driving on electricity depend on where you live, but on average, an EV driving on electricity in the U.S. today is equivalent to a conventional gasoline car that gets 80 MPG, up from 73 MPG in our 2017 update.
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Bob Wilson

 

Glad to see the news is finally getting out about how EVs really are "cleaner" than gasmobiles, even where grid power is mostly powered by coal. It's long past time for the EV-haters' "long tailpipe" myth to be resoundingly debunked!

Here is my favorite authoritative article on the subject:

From the Union of Concerned Scientists: "Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave (2015)"

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Why? EVs are about 3.5x as efficient at using energy as gasmobiles. Plus, burning gasoline has two stages of CO2 emissions: First the emissions from the refinery turning crude oil into gasoline, and second burning it in the car. EVs don't really need to be that much more efficient than gasmobiles to have lower well-to-wheel emissions!

Furthermore, most EV charging is done at night, using mostly base load power plants, which would be run day and night even if there were no EVs to charge, because base load power plants are more efficient when run at a steady rate day and night. So, the amount of electricity actually used to charge EVs is not really a true reflection of the amount of CO2 emissions from power plants which are used to charge them. It's actually better than the numbers indicate.

Another way that EVs are actually cleaner (and produce less CO2) on average than the numbers indicate, is all the EV owners who have home solar power installations. I've seen it claimed that as many as 30% of BEV owners have such installations. That's probably an older number, and I would guess it's lower now that EV sales are starting to really take off. But still, the actual average is even better than studies indicate, because they ignore how much "cleaner" power is from home solar installations.

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its a shame we still live in the sin f the fathers,before James watts,thomas edison,nikola tesla and Einstein albert,the technology of the world had been stunted for a while until each of those names came up with something new,take for example,if ore magnets could generate electric current,then what sort of currents would electro magnets produce? or generate? i believe no one has an answer to that because everyone is busy trying to stick to a code but we should all remember that the cave men discovered fire and fire had been in use for a very long time before the coming of electricity so what should be the next new energy?or perhaps people are scared of the unknown? people are scared to be challenged to re invent so they rather stick to whats on board,we are supposed to surpass the use of batteries and fossil fuel by now,coal or evs powered by batteries should be a thing of the past.

 

Well said! Long-term, the next new energy tech will likely be small scale direct conversion of nuclear power to electricity. In fact, this has already been demonstrated in the lab:

From ExtremeTech: "This nuclear battery could power your smartphone forever..."

And you're absolutely right about people being scared of a new tech... as shown by the fear-mongering in the full title for the article linked above!

Now more nukes!

 

I'm looking forward to the bio-battery:

• keep it at an optimal temperature range
• feed it a sugar water and air
• out comes power, H{2}0, CO{2}, and a small amount of heat

Bob Wilson