Do electric cars pollute less than gas powered cars when you take into consideration the pollution caused by creating their respective fuels(electricity,gas)? Making enough electricity-at least for now-means creating pollution.. We’d be using a lot more electricity if we all switched to electric cars. Would that pollute less than gas powered cars do now? If so, how much of decrease would it be in pollution? It makes sense that it would pollute less but as I understand it much of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. Is that correct? To recap this was actually four questions. If you answer all four of them, you will get 10 points. This is not a simple yes or no question.
Do electric cars pollute less than gas powered cars when you take into consideration…?
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I can’t answer all four questions, infact I think that you’ll struggle to find someone who can. I presume you’re in the US because you said cars run on ‘gas’ so I’m not sure about the main fuel for producing electricity in the US but in europe most electricity is produced by nuclear power. Nuclear has its advantages and disadvantages but thats an even longer problem. Nuclear power does have the advantage over fossile fuels in that it doesn’t produce green house gases. I have to say that I’m not a fan of fission nuclear power. I believe that fusion will be the break through to solve the energy problem. So if we ran cars on electricity AND we could use fusion thats the way forward. You have a point that if the electricity is produced using fossile fuels then no its not better. In Brazil they have been running cars on ethanol produced from sugar cane for years. However the electric motor is much more effecient that the combustion engine
An EV recharged from the existing US grid electricity emits about 115 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven (6.5 oz(CO2)/mi), whereas a conventional US-market gasoline powered car emits 250 g(CO2)/km (14 oz(CO2)/mi) (most from its tailpipe, some from the production and distribution of gasoline).
However heres a question for you does CO2 = pollution?…
1. Depends, if you get the electricity from a green company that uses only solar, wind or wave to produce it then you will not be adding to the pollution.
2. Again it depends whether you use commercial or biomass.
3. If you used either of the above then the biggest source of pollution would come from actually producing the vehicle, not the running of it.
The whole idea behind electric cars is to charge them at night. Coal plants can take over 24 hours to heat up enough to produce electricity so they are run full speed 24/7. At night when there is a vastly reduced need for electricity they just waste the heat produced. It could be turned into electricity at no extra cost to them and actually be a great profit to them since people would be paying for it to charge their vehicles.
Burning coal at a power plant is a little more efficient than an internal combustion engine burning gasoline, but the gain is lost in power transmission so it’s about equal. But since electric vehicles are two to three times as efficient as gas vehicles on the same amount of power the electric wins.
The best bonus is we have plenty of coal and don’t have to buy oil from the terrorist supporting countries. If it comes from wind turbines or hydroelectric it’s even better.
First the short answers:
"Do electric cars pollute less than gas powered cars when you take into consideration the pollution caused by creating their respective fuels(electricity,gas)? YES
"Would that [making more electricity and using electric cars] pollute less than gas powered cars do now?" YES
"If so, how much of decrease would it be in pollution?" I would refer you to the analysis at this site
see "Sorry, Critics – Electric cars really are Greener:" http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/shift-sorry-cri.php where conservative analysis suggests: switching all cars in the US to electric, assuming all electricity was from coal fired power plants and not taking fuel transportation or refineries into consideration will save 1.8 trillion pounds of CO2 each year just from what is burned in cars ess what would be burned in power plants .
"Is that correct?" [ that "much of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels"] Yes, you can find a pie chart here for the US: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states Typically burning natural gas is not considered as significant as burning Coal and it usually is the percentage of Coal burning that is mentioned not "fossil fuels."
Bonus: "Making enough electricity-at least for now-means creating pollution.. We’d be using a lot more electricity if we all switched to electric cars." is a false presumption. This is not necessarily so individually and may not be so nationally to the extent supposed. Just how much electricity would be required for 100% electric cars compared to our existing total usage? I once worked this out: "US electrical usage in 2008 was 3,872,598,000 MWH (5) If we assume the electric vehicle is used equally for 6 days x 52 weeks total power requirement would be about 3192 MWH. So 1% of our present fleet, if it were electric would require about an additional .0000824% of our present power consumption."1 And so if 100% of our vehicles were electric we would require .00824% more electricity. That is less than one hundredth of a percent difference. Fossil fuel burning for electricity may be harmful for the environment but it is or never will be "because of electric cars."
When you factor in unused off peak capacity that presently requires some fuel but produces no needed electricity the actual pollution would be less.2