Not hard. The iSeries is an unmitigated clusterfsck. I still feel like electric is just pushing the pollution somewhere else, but I am glad to see the tech advance. I continue to have doubts that the model 3 will be the electric peoples car however.
In a way it is, but that's the point. Even with fossil fuels, centralized energy production is much more efficient than every car having its own combustion engine, and then electricity is also flexible enough to enable you to switch to green/renewable sources without change for the car and its supporting infrastructure. In a way, electricity is energy abstracted away from the means of its production.
It's really hard to say which is the lesser of two evils.
I admit I'm not sure how centralized coal burning compares in emission efficiency to internal combustion engines in cars.
And then I remembered that the cheapest form of power generation is using coal, which is extremely abundant.
How much of that infrastructure was built in the post WW2 period so is nearing replacement anyway?
At the very least, it allows for the possibility of changing the power generation under the cars, which current engines don't allow.
Natural gas is incredibly cheap. And it's also fairly common to convert coal power plants to natural gas, so you don't need to shut down the plant. And a lot of coal plants are already plenty old enough to shut down.
To summarize here: Just 30.5% of US utility scale electricity for the last 12 months (rolling) have come from coal. This is down from over 50% in the early 2000s. 33.5% is natural gas. 34.9% is emissions-free (nuclear or renewables... but it increases to about 35.3% if you include non-utility-scale solar). So now the plurality of power is emissions free, with most of the rest being (relatively) clean-burning natural gas.
This is a HUGE difference in a short amount of time, and the story keeps changing. The old story that most electricity is coal (about 51% of electricity was coal in 2003) is now definitely obsolete. But people keep recycling the same talking points.
I like to occasionally check up on this table, which is where most of my data comes from: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...
[1] http://wolfstreet.com/2016/06/13/why-us-coal-production-coll...
[2] https://qz.com/871907/2016-was-the-year-solar-panels-finally...
[3] http://midwestenergynews.com/2016/04/20/minnesota-study-chal...
My main point was that a centralized environment comes with its own downsides, the main one being inertia.
Natural gas, which is leaked heavily during fracking [2], is an order of magnitude more harmful than CO2 in the short term [3]. But it breaks down far faster in the atmosphere [4] and is comparatively better than coal when it's burned [5]. Thankfully, fossil fuels are losing to cleaner technologies [6].
Cheap renewables, like solar, allow EV owners to opt-out of centralized power generation and charge their cars with clean power [7]. One could argue that this is the entire business model of Tesla [8].
[1] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/re...
[2] https://thinkprogress.org/methane-leaks-erase-climate-benefi...
[3] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...
[4] https://www.quora.com/What-happens-to-methane-once-it-is-rel...
[5] http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fue...
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...
[7] https://www.wired.com/2011/11/evs-go-off-grid/
[8] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/tesla-solar-city-elon-musk/
Electric cars are a little bit cleaner, even in Kentucky which runs on 84% coal power. Everywhere else, they are significantly cleaner.
Oddly, hybrids turn out to be cleaner than BEVs in Kentucky that may point to light trucks skewing the gasoline vehicle numbers.
There's a lot of "thinking with your feelings" going on about this for a topic with so much hard data easily available.
[1] https://octopus.energy/where-does-octopus-energy-get-their-e...
in most cases, turns out electricity is generated in a way that's much more carbon efficient than using gasoline. Electricity from natural gas, for example, has a much better carbon footprint compared to oil. petroleum parity is really the worst case.
With that out of the way, even just pushing the pollution and noise somewhere else is a big deal, especially in cities. It doesn't matter for global warming, but for quality of life it's much better if fuel burning is happening away from people.
Also, a lot of those fossil fuels are now natural gas, which is much less polluting than gasoline. Also, centralizing power generation means it will be much easier to regulate moving forward (power companies are already heavily regulated, so they are accustom to dealing with federal and state initiatives to reduce pollution, cost, etc...)
Though economics isn't my forte.
Ah, the good old "long tailpipe" fallacy occurs again to someone.
I'll link it this time:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-plot-to-kill-th...
Currently I'm starting to think the issue is with the DPF (diesel particulate filter) system which is responsible for pulling the soot out of the exhaust. The extra soot is the result of reburning the exhaust in a 2nd combustion to try to keep the emissions down. There's then another process (DPF regeneration) that pumps extra diesel into the engine during the exhaust stroke to try to burn the carbon particles out of the DPF to keep it clean.
Stopping to think about the horrors of the filthy process that goes on inside all of these vehicles is eye opening, to say the least. I know electric vehicles aren't without an environmental cost — but if there's anything that can be done to move the pollution away from urban environments that seems like a pretty positive thing to me.
I suspect in 50 years time people are going to look back on the burning of fossil fuels with shock.