I found the title to be misleading. How clean electric cars are, as the article discusses, is determined by the sources and processes used to generate electricity. It's a national energy infrastructure problem, much bigger than electric cars alone.
This "argument" has been going around since electric vehicles were in production. It's obvious that once electricity generation shifts from fossil fuels to renewables, electric vehicles (and everything else that uses said electricity) will naturally become cleaner. If you buy a car with a regular old engine, you're stuck burning gasoline. Non-story.
I don't quite understand the logic either. Yes, electric cars may be powered by coal, but the coal plants were there anyway. If they kept with combustion engines instead of shifting, they'd have the same coal plants but additionally CO2 emissions from the combustion engines.
The argument would only make sense if electric cars were so inefficient that they caused more CO2 to be burned by power generation than a combustion engine would cause by burning fuel.
Also the point stated by others that electric cars can later reduce "their" emissions should power generation be switched to renewables. In contrast, the emissions of combustion engines are fixed.
Electric cars do increase the demand for electricity. So you need to compare the extra coal burned for power the cars, with the petrol that would be burned in regular cars.
I believe recent research showed that it took 2.5 years of average use for a coal-powered electric car to become more environmentally friendly than a petrol powered car, whereas it would be 1.5 years with a green energy powered electric car.
So the coal matters, but it's still better than petrol, because internal combustion engines are incredibly inefficient.
The article is focused on the "now" part of the equation instead of the future. "Now" quite a lot of places in Europe and US rely on renewable sources for production lowering their "total carbon output".
This might be resolved as things go forward. That said article is kind of clickbait. The actual point is hidden towards the end - "both the manufacturing of the batteries and the operation of the vehicle produce more pollution than they would elsewhere."
That said recycling figures, though they are for steel and not batteries are concerning. Its "renewable" only if it can be reused.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 24.4 ms ] threadThe argument would only make sense if electric cars were so inefficient that they caused more CO2 to be burned by power generation than a combustion engine would cause by burning fuel.
Also the point stated by others that electric cars can later reduce "their" emissions should power generation be switched to renewables. In contrast, the emissions of combustion engines are fixed.
I believe recent research showed that it took 2.5 years of average use for a coal-powered electric car to become more environmentally friendly than a petrol powered car, whereas it would be 1.5 years with a green energy powered electric car.
So the coal matters, but it's still better than petrol, because internal combustion engines are incredibly inefficient.
This might be resolved as things go forward. That said article is kind of clickbait. The actual point is hidden towards the end - "both the manufacturing of the batteries and the operation of the vehicle produce more pollution than they would elsewhere."
That said recycling figures, though they are for steel and not batteries are concerning. Its "renewable" only if it can be reused.