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Comment by wooly_bully | Hacker News Reader

~14% of total emissions are from transportation. If there were somehow 100% adoption of electric cars, including replacement of all existing cars on the road, you'd see a reduction of around that amount.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

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I've gone though this before... If you break this down into passenger vehicles, the percentage gets much smaller.

It really blows my mind. We could replace every car on the planet with zero emissions, and still would put a tiny dent into the total percentage of pollution. We're winding up all these battery factories, spending millions on personal vehicle tech like it'll save the world, and the real majority of the problem doesn't seem to get any focus.

I just feel like it's sort of a distraction to keep us busy ignoring the real problem. It all feels sort of like a farce to me. But then again, I don't know what kind of new regulations and emissions controls are going into factories, ships, etc. I just feel like there probably isn't any regulation on the real polluters. They'll just keep getting tax breaks, while we'll undoubtedly get taxed for driving an old "polluter" car.

No, you'd likely not see anywhere near the 14% reduction. Electricity has to come from somewhere. In a lot of US states that "somewhere" contains a significant fraction of coal and gas.

This is true, but centralized power generation is a lot more efficient then creating the power individually at the point of consumption like ICE cars do today. I believe that an ICE motor is something like 30% fuel efficient, Electric something like 80-90% and a combined cycle blah blah gas turbine is more like 60-70%. So no, it won't be the full 14% but it won't be a few points either, probably safe to say 5-10% reduction.

That's not safe to say either. I've read that EVs take more energy to manufacture as well.

A very good heuristic is to compare their total $ costs for purchase and use, and then think about what sorts of externalities that doesn't cover. I've found over and over again that $ cost pretty much equals energy and therefore pollution cost, less the externalities. But the externalities are really super important, and of course, engine efficiencies and where in the cycle the energy is liberated from it's chemical bonds is important.

"Transportation" includes ships, planes, trains and trucks. Less than half of that 14% corresponds to passenger cars.

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