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Speaking of worst polluting power plants in the world - where I'm from(Poland), the largest power plant in the country(Bełchatów Power Plant) burns lignite for power - and I can't believe the emissions per kWh from that plant are estimated at slightly above 1kg of CO2 per kWh!!!!!

Seeing as Tesla Model 3 uses around 150Wh per kilometer travelled, if you exclusively charged it using electricity from that power plant, it would be worse than many diesel or petrol vehicles on the road currently. And that's a stupidly efficient EV, there are many which everage 300-400Wh per km travelled, you'd need to buy a petrol Range Rover to even compete in terms of CO2/km emissions with that.

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There's only enough lignite around Bełchatów to last until the rest of this decade - given that it's generally uneconomical to transport the fuel over large distances, that will be the end of it.

Overall lignite use in Poland has been decreasing for years now:

https://wysokienapiecie.pl/34610-szczyt-zuzycia-wegla-na-swi...

> there are many which everage 300-400Wh per km travelled,

You'd be hard pressed to get such figures from an EV. The worst offender that's still a passenger car consumes 368Wh/km at highway speeds(120km/h) in cold weather (-10°C), but its economy is unusually bad. My pet theory is that it's mining BTC in the background, because those figures are outrageous.

https://ev-database.org/car/1271/Audi-e-tron-S-55-quattro

>it's generally uneconomical to transport the fuel over large distances, that will be the end of it.

"Uneconomical" is an understatement, it's almost impossible. Bełchatów burns ~1 ton of coal per second. This means that if it were supplied by train, it would need 1 coal wagon per minute, 24/7.

Why when counting CO2 emissions for petrol cars people only count what comes out of exhaust pipe and not whole petrol industry? Because for electric cars you counted almost complete process for petrol you missed a lot.

I am completely with you. IMHO, it is because of easy numbers. Here's CO2 per km and here's Wh per km.

Also people (pushed by oil lobby??) not only forget whole pipeline (pun intended) of petrol industry, but are very concerned that couple hundred kg of batteries is worse than tens of thousands of liters of petrol burned over lifetime of a vehicle.

That's a very fair point - obviously, I was just going with official quoted CO2/km figures for comparison sake, to basically show that certain power plants are so astronomically bad, that even the most efficient EV powered by them ends up being worse than the (quoted) CO2/km figures for petrol/diesel cars. That's not a an attack on electric cars, nor a defense of ICEs - just an attack in the idioicy of burning lignite for power.

I often drive between Chęstochowa and Łódź in winter. I have no direct proof that it's from this exact plant, but the smell and smog is horrendous there.

What amazes me the most is how far it goes. From my anecdotal experience the smell goes 50-100km in radius depending on the weather.

If weather is "right" you can smell burning coal out of Katowice, though maybe smell comes from residential buildings as well, I am not sure. Maybe a local could provide better info.

Given you talk about winter, I rather think this smell is from burning coal (...and other questionable materials) in residential buildings for heating.

Could be, though burning coal for heating in this century looks a bit bizarre. But I guess you could not beat how economical it is.

I know, it's absolutely baffling to me, but I know loads of people in Poland who still have coal fired boilers for heating. When asked about this, they say that there is no natural gas pipeline anywhere near them(and local council isn't interested in putting one in), and not everyone has space for an LNG tank in their garden(or even a garden) and heating with electricy would literally make them bankrupt very quickly. So....coal is the only option that everyone can afford.

Coal dust is still very cheap, also old stoves have a wide opening, so trash can and is burned along with it.

Poor insulation is a problem as well.

> [...] emissions per kWh from that plant are estimated at slightly above 1kg of CO2 per kWh!!!!!

Wow, I knew it's bad, but I didn't realise quite how bad. Wikipedia quotes it at around 1.75kg / kWh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Stat...

I have no point of reference to compare this to, so I looked up the average figures for the US. For anyone who wants to know, the EIA gives 0.92 lb (.42 kg) per kWh.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

It's moving the source of the issue elsewhere, just like with moving manufacturing to China.

EV’s are a net reduction in normal usage patterns.

First extradition, manufacturing, and transporting gasoline releases significant CO2. Most power plants are actually very efficient due with many in the 60% efficiency range, because unlike ICE they don’t idle or need to be portable. On top of that a large fraction of EV electricity is coming from ultra low CO2 sources.

> On top of that a large fraction of EV electricity is coming from clean sources.

I'd need a source on that one.

Worldwide, about a quarter of our electricity comes from renewables.

https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy

That's nice, but:

"Coal generates nearly 40% of the world's electricity, close to its highest share in decades. And there are now 80 countries using coal power, up from 66 in 2000."

https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants

Coal is 36% of global grid electricity production and falling from a peak of 41% in 2013, excluding home PV installations. Current industry projection is 22% of global grid electricity will come from coal in 2040 based on new power plant construction vs existing power plants decommissioned due to age. But even that is pessimistic as EV’s represent new demand so it’s the ratio of new plants being constructed that’s important.

All of which is largely irrelevant as average coal power plants powering EV’s still favors EV’s over gasoline powering average ICE’s. At the refinery alone almost 3lb’s of CO2 is produced per gallon of gas, distribution from refineries to gas stations again releases CO2 etc etc.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/are-electric-vehicles...

and

https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/as-predicted-electric-...

> Given where EVs have sold to date, their emissions—based on 2019 power plant emissions data—are equivalent to a gasoline car that gets 93 miles per gallon (mpg), which is dramatically better than even the most efficient gasoline hybrid. Last year, when we conducted the same analysis based on 2018 power plant data, EV emissions were equivalent to an 88-mpg gasoline car, so the “climate pollution gap” between gasoline and electric vehicles is continuing to widen.

Well, "renewable energy in California" was at 52.7% in 2017, and California's 40mil people seem to own EVs at a world-high per-capita rate from my anecdata, therefore the most dense populous flock of EVs in the world is using ~52.7% renewables as their power source

Norway accounted for half of EVs sold in Europe at one point, and is 100% renewable.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-...

They’re also popular in the Netherlands, but looks like renewables is a much smaller share there unfortunately (~15% it seems)

Should be easy to check countries with highest share of EVs and their electricity sources on Wikipedia

But renewables are growing everywhere and these EVs hopefully have a decade or two lifetime ahead of them

> Norway accounted for half of EVs sold in Europe at one point, and is 100% renewable.

Depends on how one looks at it I think.

AFAIK the green-ness of the Norwegian hydro power is sold in the form of "green certificates" to Germans who get to live happy innocent lives.

Meanwhile all we Norwegians know that we mostly use hydro power so we don't care about the certificates.

Summary: I think the green-ness of Norwegian hydro power is sold twice.

Happy to be corrected.

Actually the green-ness is produced along with the renewable energy and then sold to non renewable energy producers who then charge the consumers.

Yes, but since the actual renewable energy is also sold, and that energy certainly is renewable, isn't its greenness also -- first, and arguably "mainly" -- being sold to the buyers of that actual energy? I mean, they're certainly paying for something, and since the energy they're paying for is green, they must be paying for both energy and greenness... Right?

So then selling the greenness again, in the form of these weird "certificates", must mean they're selling the greenness twice.

When I was young, shit like that used to be called fraud.

Only 63.3% of global electricity came from fossil fuels. That means 36.7% are from ultra low CO2 sources.

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