Do you have sources for these numbers? What I have seen is that electric cars, even when run from the lousy Coal fired power plants here in Colorado, are still no worse than your average ICE car for CO2 and CO and particulates and NOx, and if run from a more modern power plant or a different fuel mix as some other states have, will be better.
On the issue of photovoltaics... that's interesting. During the day, the peaker plants are running natural gas, so that's probably what fuel is often avoided, not coal. Still better than not having PV on the system at all, but not totally avoiding coal emissions like we'd like. If a large wind mix was included, it could be better, as that tends to peak at night -- usually when there is low load, but if we had a large component of EV charging, we could make better use of that night peaking resource. Z On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Francene McClintock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > One of the worst BLACK IDEAS PAINTED GREEN is the proposition of all > electric cars or plug-in hybrids. The proponents talk about how we could > use little or no oil if we just plugged our cars in at night and charged > their batteries at home. If you don't drive too far, the gasoline engine > in the hybrid might never be needed during the day, and think about how > clean the air would be. But the electricity doesn't appear by magic. It'd > made from dirty coal or nuclear power for the most part. So when you > charge batteries with grid electricity, the toxins are moved from the > tailpipe to the power plant. What's worse is that nighttime charging > makes a market for otherwise unmarketable, expensive, nighttime coal or > nuclear power. The only exception to this otherwise awful scenario is > when you generate your own power cleanly from alcohol and use it to > charge your electric or alcohol-powered hybrid car batteries and heat > your home at the same time. Solar electric panels are useless for > charging your car at night, and even if you put solar electricity into > the grid during the day, it wouldn't change the fact that nighttime > plug-ins woud make a market for dirty power after dark. David Blume > Alcohol Can Be a Gas Fueling An Ethanol Revolution for the 21st century > > > -- > Want an e-mail address like mine? > Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com! > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: /pipermail/attachments/20080426/73b47b94/attachment.html > > > _______________________________________________ > Biofuel mailing list > Biofuel@sustainablelists.org > http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): > http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ > _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
