July 28, 2010
Electric Cars Won’t Save Us from Climate Change
The Tesla Roadster's "gas flap" conceals the input for electricity (courtesy of flickr user TheNickster)
GM announced yesterday that their electric car, the Chevy Volt, will cost $41,000. The car can go 40 miles on its battery, after which a gas-powered generator will charge the battery and extend the vehicle’s range another 340 miles. The Volt isn’t the only choice for electric-car enthusiasts: the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car with a range of 100 miles, will go on sale later this year. And the Tesla Roadster can be yours for a mere $101,500. The Smart Fortwo, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Tesla Model S. The list keeps growing.
Electric cars may be part of our future, but anyone who thinks they’re saving the world from climate change by buying one hasn’t quite thought through the purchase. I’ll explain:
Yes, an electric car emits no greenhouse gases. But where does the car’s energy come from? The battery. And the battery’s energy, for now, comes from your home.
Where does your home get its electricity? Unless you buy your energy from an all-renewable source, like a wind or solar farm, your car is still emitting carbon into the atmosphere, albeit indirectly, and contributing to anthropogenic climate change.
You can check where your energy comes from with the EPA’s Power Profiler. Just input your ZIP code, select your power company and a profile is generated comparing your fuel mix with the national average. In my neighborhood, that means I get 45.1 percent of my energy from coal, pretty close to the national average of 49.6 percent. And it’s coal that’s the real worry here. Coal may be cheap and abundant, but it also produces more carbon dioxide than any other carbon-based fuel source.
That’s not to say that electric cars aren’t part of a carbon-free future. But they’re not going to get us there as long as we rely on fossil fuels, in any form, to power them.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
7 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
I am always a FAN of Electric Cars and I support any activities and other concerns when regarding to it.
The author makes the common mistake of assuming because there is pollution in the generation of electricity that the EV is then on par with the pollution from a gas car. Not true! Many studies have looked at the well-to-wheel pollution from both technologies and there is 100% agreement that an EV charged from the national grid (which, btw, is now down to 45% coal) is twice as clean as a Prius. Se: http://www.pluginamerica.org/learn-about-plug-ins/frequently-asked-questions.html#Q2
Of course anyone concerned about pollution from a coal plant shouldn’t be running their house on that dirty energy. Most Americans waste more kilowatt hours in their homes than they would use in an EV. Getting serious about efficiency is what’s needed. You could easily reduce your household’s consumption of kWh and use those to power your car.
Lastly, if you have a good roof for solar, you should consider installing a PV system. I did 8 years ago and bought my EV about the same time. The system cost me about $15K out of pocket and generates virtually all the energy I need for both the house and the car. My electric bill averages about $100 per year. I haven’t been to a gas station since 2002 and I’ve driven over 84,000 miles… all on sunshine!
The EV is going to take over car sales in the coming years. It’ll take some time to get the volumes up, but it’ll happen. The technology is vastly superior to gas burners.
It’s not clear to me whether ze thinks electric cars are less polluting than petrol-powered ones. They are – even (most) coal-fired power plants are cleaner than a gasoline engine. Further, the car can be powered at night when power plants have “excess” capacity. Generally speaking a power plant is most efficient when it’s run at the same power levels all the time rather than having to generate more power at one time and less at another (how true this is varies by power source, btw). So an electric car is better for the environment than a petrol one for two reasons: one, fewer emissions and two, more efficient power plants.
As the author says, though, it’s even better if the plant is powered by something other than fossil fuels. I wonder how ze feels about nuclear?
Sarah’s article if fair but overly simplistic.
First, the world (mostly USA, China, and India) sustain their economies using Coal. While we may reduce CO2 emissions using underground sequestering, it is highly unlikely that mankind will quit using coal in the short term (next 100 years for instance). We will however improve the efficiency of power distribution using future smart-grid control and perhaps using high power DC power transmission through supercooled conduits. We will not, I bet, get off coal for power generation any time soon. So, we should at least try and make the power generation and distribution systems as efficient as possible. As noted in earlier comments, charging up commuter cars at night is one great way to do that.
Second, electric vehicle operating efficiency is typically in excess of 85% (measured in terms of using the power coming from the charging outlet). Modern power utilities deliver electric to homes at about 40% efficiency. So, the effective efficiency of a typical EV is on the order of 34%. This represents an approximate doubling of the operating efficiency of typical gasoline powered commuter vehicles.
Thirdly, as demand for electric based transportation increases, the supply side will (is) fund development of massive solar generating facilities in the southwest. True, there will be considerable pain building new supporting distribution systems, but as oil becomes increasingly scarce, the not-in-my-back-yard folks will become less reluctant (especially if the distribution system is constructed with underground tunnels, as has been proposed).
Lastly, the global warming problem is already in play. Existing levels of CO2 and MH4 will remain in the troposphere for decades even if we quit emitting cold turkey. Arctic ice is melting rapidly, the permafrost is warming (thus releasing methane), and the root cause of this warming (the 100,000 year Milankovitch solar cycle) has not changed. Not my generation, I think, but certainly the next generation will have to perform some geophical modifications that will temporarily cool the earth until the Milankovitch cycles starts down its inevitable slope towards the next ice age. Several really good ideas have been proposed on how to realize the remedy. (See for instance, Super Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner.
I’m soon going to be a proud owner of a new EV and it will be powered by my newly installed residential PV system.
Charles Rightmyer, San Diego, California
The Power Profiler is pretty useless. The info it uses is from 2005…
And it lists only my direct supplier, CL+P CT Light and Power AKA CT Loot and Plunder, but most of my power actually comes from Sterling Planet windpower.
This option and the dozens of others available didn’t exist 5 years ago.
I think that the car manufacturers does not estimate correctly and EV car sales is going to take over gas-car sales in less than 5 years. The problem they will face is inability to supply the demand – and that would be a shame…
Just because there is no exhaust does not, in anyway, mean that electric cars are more “eco-friendly”.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/05/study-green-cars-might-cause-as-much-or-more-pollution-than-gas-cars/
http://blog.wegowise.com/blog2/bid/129808/Your-Car-s-Carbon-Footprint-Hybrid-vs-Gasoline-vs-Electric-Cars
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/auto-blog/electric-vehicles-pollute-more-than-gas-or-diesel