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EVs are lowering Bay Area's carbon footprint
- davtbaum 3y ago> Between 2018 and 2022, 57 of the sensors in the Berkeley Environmental Air Quality and CO2 Network (BEACO2N) recorded a small but steady decrease in CO2 emissions Convenient date range considering the global pandemic and WFH shift …
- baryphonic 3y agoI have been surprised that environmental activists haven't protested return-to-office policies for the incident increase in pollution. Seems like there is very little data backing up RTO other than commercial real estate sunk costs, and loads of costs like lost time commuting, energy used to commute, emissions due to traffic, etc.
- dalyons 3y agoDo executive feelings count as data
- solarpunk 3y agoWasn't this one of the reasons behind the Amazon walkouts
- Gibbon1 3y agoAt first I was for cars with higher MPG. Then I was for more mass transit. Finally I realized it'd be cheaper to move work closer to where we built houses for the peons to live instead of close to where the boss lives. Nothing closer than a home office.
- tehjoker 3y agothe lack of resistance to RTO from many political perspectives has been stunning tbh
- sahila 3y agoWfh sure seems like a negative in terms of measured economic activity - less gas buying, fewer coffee and lunch purchases and happy hours, and or course depressed commerical real estate, all leading to lower tax in take. Happy to see the political upside.
- tehjoker 3y agothe upside is its better for workers and the climate lol it also reduces the spread of COVID-19, which is an ongoing pandemic.
- floren 3y agoI know of one huge international pharma company with a site in South SF that is reducing conference attendance with the stated purpose of reducing emissions, while simultaneously requiring all employees to be on-site 3 days a week regardless of job function (yes, lab workers have to be in the lab for their work, but plenty of positions spend most of their time on video calls with other sites in Sweden, Netherlands, England, China, India...)
- jmankhan 3y agothe study accounts for shelter-in-place mandates during COVID: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642
- Rebelgecko 3y agoThe paper[1] goes into this in more depth. COVID was definitely a factor, but not the only one. For example if you look at the YOY comparisons, both halves of 2021 hadlower emissions YOY than 2020. The H1 decrease you can blame on the COVID lockdowns that lasted until May. But by July 2020 everyone who was going to WFH was WFH, and by July 2021 many people who were WFH in 2020 were commuting again. [1]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642
- skeeter2020 3y agoICE cars are also more efficient and less poluting, which could also account for some of the decline.
- hettygreen 3y agoDon't ruin it for me! I only read the headline and was feeling justified purchasing 3000 pounds of globally mined steel, aluminum, rubber, plastic, graphite, copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt.
- mepiethree 3y agoYou can feel good. the carbon debt from manufacturing is amortized over the life of the car. As long as the car is driven more than 19,000 miles, EVs are better. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/business/electric-vehicles-carbon-footprint-batteries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/business/electric-vehicle...
- hamandcheese 3y agoAnecdotally, but in SF I am noticing more and more non-Tesla EVs every day. A lot of Hyundai and Polestar. And of course there are so many Teslas that I wouldn't be able to tell if they are gaining market share - that's been true for a while now. Part of me is hopefully there's a quieter future ahead, but I suspect motorcycle drivers will be the last holdouts and they make most of the noise anyway.
- photonbeam 3y agoIf the $7500 tax credit applied to motorcycles, I’d buy a Zero SRS in a heartbeat
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoI am also excited for less cars specifically modified to sound like loud farts driving around all night!
- floren 3y agoIt's kinda beautiful that my Volkswagen electric SUV with the baby seat in the back can out-accelerate most any farty angry-headlights car. It'll never look as good as my old Studebaker, but by god it'll outrun all but the hottest of rods that car to rev their engine at a stoplight.
- winrid 3y agoThe ID4's 0-60 is 7.something seconds. An early 2000s VW GTI ($3000?) with a mild tune is faster.
- gnicholas 3y agoPerhaps, but when you're driving an ID4 and riding on a high horse, you get an extra boost.
- floren 3y agoAll I know is that I hear a hell a lot of noise behind me. Maybe the point is to make it sound like you're working really hard but not actually go fast, I've kinda checked out of car culture.
- webwielder2 3y agoHas the same kind of study been done in, say, Norway?
- magicalhippo 3y agoOslo, Norway's capital city, has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. So they're keeping track of these things[1]. From that page: The statistics shows that the direct GHG emissions from road traffic have been reduced by over 15 percent compared to 2009. The change is mostly due to an increased adoption of biofuels, increased share of electric vehicles and a renewed car fleet. About 38% of the cars currently driving in Oslo[2] are fully electric (with an additional 6% hybrids). [1]: https://www.oslo.kommune.no/politics-and-administration/statistics/environment-status/climate-and-energy-statistics/ https://www.oslo.kommune.no/politics-and-administration/stat... [2]: https://www.klimaoslo.no/klimabarometeret/veitrafikk/personbil/ https://www.klimaoslo.no/klimabarometeret/veitrafikk/personb...
- droopyEyelids 3y agoThe measurement became the target. Hope we have brake and tire dust particle measurements soon.
- georgeburdell 3y agoWould those not be covered by PM2.5? PM2.5 has also decreased in the Bay Area (removing the effects of the massive fires of the past decade). Particles from physical wear are many orders of magnitude larger than molecules.
- malfist 3y agoGood news, EV and hybrids can do regenerative breaking that don't use friction to slow down. You can go a really long time and not touch the real breaks beside the 5mph to stopped
- dainiusse 3y agoYet they wear tires at least 20% faster which also pollutes
- georgeburdell 3y agoYes, but they weigh more, so tire wear increases, non-linearly from my understanding.
- jpgvm 3y agoThe weight is all battery. It will come down, it already had in Asian nations where long range doesn't have the same marketing affect as it does in the USA. Americans thinking they need 1000 mile batteries and literal tank like chassis puts their cars at a massive efficiency disadvantage.
- lostlogin 3y agoI hope so too. I haven’t touched the brake pedal in months. Tyres would be interesting too monitor.
- inamberclad 3y agoI remember 10 years ago the smog was quite rough on summer days. It's still there, but it seems less grim these days
- tasty_freeze 3y agoI was in the south bay from 1985-2003, and the air quality seemed decent. But every time when I biked up Mt Hamilton and looked down into the valley, it was like looking into a bowl of thin soup. Talking about it with a friend who grew up there (he was born about 1960) he said the air quality used to be absolutely atrocious. Although it is easy to lose hope about so many things heading the wrong direction, air quality is something which has improved substantially, and of course it would be great for it to improve even more.
- throwiforgtnlzy 3y agoAround 1981-1985, smog was quite bad in the SF Bay Area. It was a horrible brown-yellow. I don't think most people appreciate how far away it is to reach Mt. Hamilton or how precarious the road up it is. Took a couple of gfs on drives up there. I used to bike up Hicks Road near Mt. Umunhum. Other good vantage points: the top of The Dish route behind Stanford and the observation deck of the de Young Museum.
- steelframe 3y agoAnd what was the carbon footprint increase in the areas where the batteries were manufactured?
- ImaCake 3y agoThis is a shallow and ignorant opinion. Carbon footprint compared to what? Public transport, or more likely, an ICE car? 2 minutes critical thought is enough to consider this question as null.
- DavidKarlas 3y agoYe, because fossil fuel extraction and refining for lifetime of car is all roses and sunshine.
- gorgoiler 3y agoI believe this is a question worth asking — and answering. Page 13 of this report from pro-climate MIT science advocacy group The Union of Concerned Scientists is of interest: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl... It claims the manufacturing CO2 footprint for an EV would almost be identical to the footprint for a similar ICE vehicle except for the battery which does indeed increase the EV’s footprint by 15%. However they also claim that the total CO2 footprint for a 135,000 mile lifespan is still just under 50% less for an EV. This is of course due to the operational CO2 cost being much less for an EV when compared with an internal combustion engine. I don’t know how many ICE vehicles are scrapped before their time due to an EV purchase but the CO2 overhead of switching to a brand new vehicle will be recouped within a few tens of thousands of miles.
- merek 3y agoThe lower EV total CO2 footprint is based on current grid CO2 emissions (page 13): > We use U.S. average electricity grid emissions to estimate manufacturing emissions, while the average electricity grid emissions intensity during vehicle operation are based on a sales-weighted average of where EVs are being sold today. If the grid is supplied by a growing proportion of renewables + lower CO2 sources over time, the lifetime CO2 footprint of EVs should decline further.
- matt3210 3y agoI can tell because Teslas have high pointing headlights that blind me
- m463 3y agoMany newer cars have projector style lights and our eyes suffer. The headlights are almost a point light source and hard on the eyes. I think the new DOT adaptive lighting standards should help if manufacturers move over. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-driving-beam-headlights-new-vehicles-improving-safety-drivers https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-dr...
- skeeter2020 3y agoI didn't see where it correlates any decline with EVs versus less driving - was that somewhere in the article, or a given? I could think a lots of reasons (including a very big one) for lower auto emissions over the past 10+ years.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- KevinMS 3y agoDoesn't the power generated count as part of your carbon footprint?