7 ms·

Where Electric Vehicles Cause More Pollution Than Gas Cars

44 points by tomkwok 11y ago

higherpurpose 11y ago
> In some places electrics do so much relative harm that instead of being subsidized, as is currently the case, they should actually be taxed. So tax the zero-emission electric vehicles for using coal energy in certain areas (over which they have no control), instead of the actual coal companies that produce that dirty energy? That seems quite backwards to me. Tax the coal companies and force them to either convert to renewable energy production, so then the electric vehicles can be 100% clean, or to force them to shut down (and be replaced by renewable competitors). Taxing electric vehicles just as much if not more than gas-powered vehicles because they use coal energy right now is complete nonsense. At least electric vehicles try to solve one half of the problem. Taxing them like that would put the breaks on both sides of the reform. Let's solve both problems in parallel instead of putting the breaks on both (not forcing coal companies to die/convert faster and also continuing to use gas-powered cars).
- pjc50 11y ago
  Indeed. If people want a carbon tax, then implement a carbon tax in the right place. Either at point of burning or point of extraction/import.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Point of emitting. Point of extraction/import is both flexible, and hydro (and plain) carbons have multiple usages.
    - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
      Though extraction also emits a lot of GHGs via flaring and so on, which should be costed properly. Apparently the biggest solar power installation in the world is used to generate steam which is then used to increase the efficiency of oil extraction. In previous eras the most obvious source of energy for that purpose would be the oil you are extracting.
- hybridtupel 11y ago
  Isn't it possible in the us to choose by oneself from which power company one obtains the electricity? In europe you can for example choose to support companies which only use renewable energies.
  - rtkwe 11y ago
    No most places have a single electric company that you can purchase from. They're highly regulated but you only have one source available.
  - jccooper 11y ago
    Varies by location. There are plenty of deregulated markets and plenty of still-monopoly markets.
codeulike 11y ago
For the gas cars, did they also take account of the emmissions/polution from the oil rigs/refineries/gas stations etc? For the coal plants, did they take account of extraction of the coal? Because if we're bringing infrastructure into the equation, where do we draw the line? I note that in the UK, its very easy for consumers to specify that their house be supplied with renewable energy. Looks like it doesn't work that way in the US.
- dwiel 11y ago
  It does in some places. In St. Louis it was as easy as checking a box on your bill one time, and then for a slight additional cost your house was supplied by renewable energy indefinitely. I don't have that option now in NC.
  - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
    You mean you were suckered into paying a higher rate for the benefit of the energy trading market.
    - schiffern 11y ago
      I'm confused. Are you suggesting the provider didn't actually generate renewable energy? Or are you saying that it's not the exact same electrons (which I think we both realize doesn't matter)?
- drabiega 11y ago
  I had the same question. Looks like they just compared electricity generation pollution to combustion engine pollution. Very apples and oranges.
  - heydenberk 11y ago
    It says in the article that they did not: > The study’s biggest caveat, acknowledged by the researchers, is that they don’t consider a full “lifecycle” analysis of emissions—so things like making the car, drilling for oil, or transporting coal aren’t included in the environmental costs.
crdoconnor 11y ago
This paper reads more like it's designed to foment support around removing electric car subsidies rather than accurately measure their impact. I particularly liked the part where they tried to assign a dollar value to various pollutants. $42/ton for Carbon, in case you were wondering. They totally scienced that shit. As always with economic research with policy implications, it's good to dig a little and find out where they get their money from, especially when they're coy about it: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Bureau_o...
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  The map's a bit of a red flag as well. Apparently it's really good to own internal combustion cars where no one lives. Of course, in a big map full of sparsely populated areas, all that green looks really good, rather than mostly useless. Obligatory XKCD (with an oddly familiar map): https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
  - cbr 11y ago
    it's really good to own internal combustion cars where no one lives Isn't that right though? Tailpipe emissions are much worse in urban than rural areas because there are more people to breathe them in.
    - goodcanadian 11y ago
      Not to mention that the per mile highway efficiency of gasoline powered cars is much better where there is low traffic density than in stop and go traffic in a congested city.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3pt14159 11y ago
      Right, but be careful with that line of thinking. In terms of cents of economic damage per km driven, yes, gas cars are better driven in the boonies; but watch out! That isn't where most people are driving. Most people are driving around cities. So this map makes it look like electric cars and gas cars are more toe-to-toe than they are. And really, most of the dirtiest coal power plants are nearing end of life, so if you look at the trending, even in the USA, which has a very dirty energy grid, electric cars are going to be much less pollutant than gas cars everywhere and very soon. Also note that the car in question, the Ford Focus, is one of the least pollutant gasoline cars out there. Electric cars scale up better than gasoline ones.
jakozaur 11y ago
Amount of electric car is irrelevant at this point. They market share is less than 0.1% in most areas, so systematic calculations of current state are not that useful. The current EV subsidies are mostly to recoup some initial R&D cost and overcome decades of advancements in gas cars. Moreover, gas cars enjoy strong network effect as well as efficiency of scale. The question is, what would be the total damages once they reach 5% market share. There is strong belief that they have potential to be 10x better than current cars on many dimensions.
adonovan 11y ago
> But in the Midwest and Northeast, where the electricity grid tends to rely on coal power plants, the damage from emissions ranged back up toward five cents a mile. I'm very skeptical of this claim. NYC and Upstate NY are known to have some of the cleanest electricity grids in the U.S. See chart on page 2 of this EPA report, for example. http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/egridzips/eGRID_9th_edition_V1-0_year_2010_Summary_Tables.pdf http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/egridzips/eGRID_9th...
- rchowe 11y ago
  I would be suspicious of this too, since I believe a lot of New England gets its power from Hydro-Québec (from their HVDC lines) and nuclear sources. Even normalized per capita, Vermont should have one of the lowest carbon footprints, which makes me suspicious of some of their sampling methods, though I haven't read the paper.
  - dublinben 11y ago
    You can get a really quick overview of your state's energy profile on the Energy Information Administration website.[0] As you mentioned, the smaller states mostly use nuclear and renewable sources. The clear outlier is Massachusetts, which is about 60% natural gas. [0]http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=VT#tabs-4 http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=VT#tabs-4
- Beltiras 11y ago
  I'm also suspicious of the scale of the map. Shouldn't they stretch the states with more cars and pinch the ones with less?
cagenut 11y ago
Even if this were true, the electric grid has hope: solar, wind & nuke can grow while coal & even someday gas fade. Gasoline has no hope.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Not entirely true. Synfuels, including direct analogs of petrol and diesel, can be created from electricity and seawater. The fuel is carbon neutral, though somewhat more expensive than present fuels. US Naval Research Lab estimates are about $6/gallon. You retain energy density and storage stability of liquid hydrocarbons.
jblok 11y ago
With electric cars drawing power from a grid you reap the benefit of centralisation. It's easier to upgrade a gas fired power station to increase efficiency/reduce pollutants than it is to upgrade every vehicle on the road. You also have a better spread of options using the grid, e.g. renewables. Essentially with electric vehicles you are just moving the place where the power generation happens, but with countless benefits.
- 7952 11y ago
  Also, power stations tend to have large stacks that try and direct the pollution into the atmopshere where it can disperse over a wide area. In comparison fossil fuel vehicles tend to have small exhaust pipes that can lead to high levels of localised exposure to toxic/carcinogenic substances.
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  It's easier to upgrade a gas fired power station to increase efficiency/reduce pollutants than it is to upgrade every vehicle on the road. In practice, I'm not sure that's true at all. For small incremental changes you may be right, but I suspect there's a limit as to how far you can take the existing generating system. The time and bureaucracy involved in building a NEW generating station is immense. I don't have figures handy, but I suspect that from conception to actual production, it takes more than couple of car replacement lifecycles. So in that timespan, the large majority of cars will have aged themselves into replacement anyway.
dmritard96 11y ago
This ignores the amount of electricity needed to take crude and generate gasoline as well as the rest of the gasoline supply chain. We may as well start making our way towards electric. If we have clean cars then making the rest of the system clean isn't a chicken or egg problem
outworlder 11y ago
From the article: > Another criticism is that EVs aren’t about the present, they’re about the future. Assuming electricity grids will get cleaner, moving away from gasoline cars is the only way to approach a zero-carbon transportation sector (not to mention avoiding the political costs of oil dependence). Holland counters that rising fuel-efficiency standards are making gas cars a lot cleaner, too. Did the author flunk basic physics? There isn't that much room for improvement on a internal combustion engine. And "a lot cleaner" is still greater than zero emissions (and, given the efficiency, _by far_). Seriously. Were not for the lack of cheap energy storage devices, we would not be having this discussion at all. Cars would have been electric from the beginning (they actually were) and would be still like that.
- Vexs 11y ago
  As far as I know, electric cars failed then because of the same problems we have now- power storage. As bad as LiPos are, what they had was even worse. It didn't help that gas engines had a lot of improvement possibilities then, and we've only really recently been able to reach that same level of improvement in electrical motors. Gas engines are a dying beast, the only thing they're better at is the sound.
- talmand 11y ago
  Why are you referring to the author in this manner when he is simply describing Holland's counter? It's right there in your quote. Do you mean to say that Holland flunk basic physics?
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  Compared to the 1970s and earlier, internal combustion engines are strikingly efficient. You're probably right that we've harvested all the low-hanging fruit, and further progress will be slow and slight. But there's still a LOT of room for efficiency improvement by changing the other side of the equation. If we're generating power with nearly as much efficiency as possible, we can still go a long way in USING that power smarter. Which is my long-winded way of saying that if everyone switched from driving big-ass SUVs to driving light compact cars, we'd still achieve a huge boost in miles traveled per pollutant emitted.
sp332 11y ago
This just means that people should switch to cleaner cars (like the Ford Focus). The study completely ignores all gas-powered cars that don't have a close electric equivalent.
sksk 11y ago
This economist article had a nice summary on this topic, 2014 (not about the same report, however). http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21636715-why-electric-car-may-be-much-dirtier-petrol-one-cleaner-what http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2163671.... The culprit is coal.
sullivanmatt 11y ago
The author of this article posted a follow-up a few days later, and more or less acknowledged that he should have done a bit more vetting of this "research" before going to press. The follow-up worth the read: http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/07/4-key-problems-with-measuring-ev-pollution-vs-gas-cars/398093/ http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/07/4-key-problems-with-m...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
simulate 11y ago
The US DOE provides a nice interactive tool for comparing emissions between electric and gas-powered vehicles. The DOE data show that, in all US states, an electric car has lower CO2 emissions compared to a gas-powered car with average US MPG. You can enter your zip code and it will graph the CO2 equivalent: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php Gas powered cars with average US MPG produce 14815 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year. Ohio produces 70% of its power from coal. Entering 44101 for Cleveland, you get 9074 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year, 39% less than gas-powered car. Entering 94103 you can see that electric cars in San Francisco produce 4152 pounds of CO2 equivalent, 72% less than a gas-powered car. A big part of the determination of CO2 emissions is the MPG of gas powered vehicles. In a few states, a hybrid electric has lower emissions than an all electric car because hybrids have a much higher MPG. This is explained nicely here: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions The average fuel consumption for gas-powered vehicles in the US is around 24 MPG: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

44 points by tomkwok 11y ago

> In some places electrics do so much relative harm that instead of being subsidized, as is currently the case, they should actually be taxed. So tax the zero-emission electric vehicles for using coal energy in certain areas (over which they have no control), instead of the actual coal companies that produce that dirty energy? That seems quite backwards to me. Tax the coal companies and force them to either convert to renewable energy production, so then the electric vehicles can be 100% clean, or to force them to shut down (and be replaced by renewable competitors). Taxing electric vehicles just as much if not more than gas-powered vehicles because they use coal energy right now is complete nonsense. At least electric vehicles try to solve one half of the problem. Taxing them like that would put the breaks on both sides of the reform. Let's solve both problems in parallel instead of putting the breaks on both (not forcing coal companies to die/convert faster and also continuing to use gas-powered cars).

pjc50 11y ago
Indeed. If people want a carbon tax, then implement a carbon tax in the right place. Either at point of burning or point of extraction/import.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Point of emitting. Point of extraction/import is both flexible, and hydro (and plain) carbons have multiple usages.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Though extraction also emits a lot of GHGs via flaring and so on, which should be costed properly. Apparently the biggest solar power installation in the world is used to generate steam which is then used to increase the efficiency of oil extraction. In previous eras the most obvious source of energy for that purpose would be the oil you are extracting.
hybridtupel 11y ago
Isn't it possible in the us to choose by oneself from which power company one obtains the electricity? In europe you can for example choose to support companies which only use renewable energies.
- rtkwe 11y ago
  No most places have a single electric company that you can purchase from. They're highly regulated but you only have one source available.
- jccooper 11y ago
  Varies by location. There are plenty of deregulated markets and plenty of still-monopoly markets.

codeulike 11y ago

For the gas cars, did they also take account of the emmissions/polution from the oil rigs/refineries/gas stations etc? For the coal plants, did they take account of extraction of the coal? Because if we're bringing infrastructure into the equation, where do we draw the line? I note that in the UK, its very easy for consumers to specify that their house be supplied with renewable energy. Looks like it doesn't work that way in the US.

dwiel 11y ago
It does in some places. In St. Louis it was as easy as checking a box on your bill one time, and then for a slight additional cost your house was supplied by renewable energy indefinitely. I don't have that option now in NC.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  You mean you were suckered into paying a higher rate for the benefit of the energy trading market.
  - schiffern 11y ago
    I'm confused. Are you suggesting the provider didn't actually generate renewable energy? Or are you saying that it's not the exact same electrons (which I think we both realize doesn't matter)?
drabiega 11y ago
I had the same question. Looks like they just compared electricity generation pollution to combustion engine pollution. Very apples and oranges.
- heydenberk 11y ago
  It says in the article that they did not: > The study’s biggest caveat, acknowledged by the researchers, is that they don’t consider a full “lifecycle” analysis of emissions—so things like making the car, drilling for oil, or transporting coal aren’t included in the environmental costs.

crdoconnor 11y ago

This paper reads more like it's designed to foment support around removing electric car subsidies rather than accurately measure their impact. I particularly liked the part where they tried to assign a dollar value to various pollutants. $42/ton for Carbon, in case you were wondering. They totally scienced that shit. As always with economic research with policy implications, it's good to dig a little and find out where they get their money from, especially when they're coy about it: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Bureau_o...

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
The map's a bit of a red flag as well. Apparently it's really good to own internal combustion cars where no one lives. Of course, in a big map full of sparsely populated areas, all that green looks really good, rather than mostly useless. Obligatory XKCD (with an oddly familiar map): https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
- cbr 11y ago
  it's really good to own internal combustion cars where no one lives Isn't that right though? Tailpipe emissions are much worse in urban than rural areas because there are more people to breathe them in.
  - goodcanadian 11y ago
    Not to mention that the per mile highway efficiency of gasoline powered cars is much better where there is low traffic density than in stop and go traffic in a congested city.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3pt14159 11y ago
    Right, but be careful with that line of thinking. In terms of cents of economic damage per km driven, yes, gas cars are better driven in the boonies; but watch out! That isn't where most people are driving. Most people are driving around cities. So this map makes it look like electric cars and gas cars are more toe-to-toe than they are. And really, most of the dirtiest coal power plants are nearing end of life, so if you look at the trending, even in the USA, which has a very dirty energy grid, electric cars are going to be much less pollutant than gas cars everywhere and very soon. Also note that the car in question, the Ford Focus, is one of the least pollutant gasoline cars out there. Electric cars scale up better than gasoline ones.

jakozaur 11y ago

Amount of electric car is irrelevant at this point. They market share is less than 0.1% in most areas, so systematic calculations of current state are not that useful. The current EV subsidies are mostly to recoup some initial R&D cost and overcome decades of advancements in gas cars. Moreover, gas cars enjoy strong network effect as well as efficiency of scale. The question is, what would be the total damages once they reach 5% market share. There is strong belief that they have potential to be 10x better than current cars on many dimensions.

adonovan 11y ago

> But in the Midwest and Northeast, where the electricity grid tends to rely on coal power plants, the damage from emissions ranged back up toward five cents a mile. I'm very skeptical of this claim. NYC and Upstate NY are known to have some of the cleanest electricity grids in the U.S. See chart on page 2 of this EPA report, for example. http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/egridzips/eGRID_9th_edition_V1-0_year_2010_Summary_Tables.pdf http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/egridzips/eGRID_9th...

rchowe 11y ago
I would be suspicious of this too, since I believe a lot of New England gets its power from Hydro-Québec (from their HVDC lines) and nuclear sources. Even normalized per capita, Vermont should have one of the lowest carbon footprints, which makes me suspicious of some of their sampling methods, though I haven't read the paper.
- dublinben 11y ago
  You can get a really quick overview of your state's energy profile on the Energy Information Administration website.[0] As you mentioned, the smaller states mostly use nuclear and renewable sources. The clear outlier is Massachusetts, which is about 60% natural gas. [0]http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=VT#tabs-4 http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=VT#tabs-4
Beltiras 11y ago
I'm also suspicious of the scale of the map. Shouldn't they stretch the states with more cars and pinch the ones with less?

cagenut 11y ago

Even if this were true, the electric grid has hope: solar, wind & nuke can grow while coal & even someday gas fade. Gasoline has no hope.

dredmorbius 11y ago
Not entirely true. Synfuels, including direct analogs of petrol and diesel, can be created from electricity and seawater. The fuel is carbon neutral, though somewhat more expensive than present fuels. US Naval Research Lab estimates are about $6/gallon. You retain energy density and storage stability of liquid hydrocarbons.

jblok 11y ago

With electric cars drawing power from a grid you reap the benefit of centralisation. It's easier to upgrade a gas fired power station to increase efficiency/reduce pollutants than it is to upgrade every vehicle on the road. You also have a better spread of options using the grid, e.g. renewables. Essentially with electric vehicles you are just moving the place where the power generation happens, but with countless benefits.

7952 11y ago
Also, power stations tend to have large stacks that try and direct the pollution into the atmopshere where it can disperse over a wide area. In comparison fossil fuel vehicles tend to have small exhaust pipes that can lead to high levels of localised exposure to toxic/carcinogenic substances.
CWuestefeld 11y ago
It's easier to upgrade a gas fired power station to increase efficiency/reduce pollutants than it is to upgrade every vehicle on the road. In practice, I'm not sure that's true at all. For small incremental changes you may be right, but I suspect there's a limit as to how far you can take the existing generating system. The time and bureaucracy involved in building a NEW generating station is immense. I don't have figures handy, but I suspect that from conception to actual production, it takes more than couple of car replacement lifecycles. So in that timespan, the large majority of cars will have aged themselves into replacement anyway.

dmritard96 11y ago

This ignores the amount of electricity needed to take crude and generate gasoline as well as the rest of the gasoline supply chain. We may as well start making our way towards electric. If we have clean cars then making the rest of the system clean isn't a chicken or egg problem

outworlder 11y ago

From the article: > Another criticism is that EVs aren’t about the present, they’re about the future. Assuming electricity grids will get cleaner, moving away from gasoline cars is the only way to approach a zero-carbon transportation sector (not to mention avoiding the political costs of oil dependence). Holland counters that rising fuel-efficiency standards are making gas cars a lot cleaner, too. Did the author flunk basic physics? There isn't that much room for improvement on a internal combustion engine. And "a lot cleaner" is still greater than zero emissions (and, given the efficiency, _by far_). Seriously. Were not for the lack of cheap energy storage devices, we would not be having this discussion at all. Cars would have been electric from the beginning (they actually were) and would be still like that.

Vexs 11y ago
As far as I know, electric cars failed then because of the same problems we have now- power storage. As bad as LiPos are, what they had was even worse. It didn't help that gas engines had a lot of improvement possibilities then, and we've only really recently been able to reach that same level of improvement in electrical motors. Gas engines are a dying beast, the only thing they're better at is the sound.
talmand 11y ago
Why are you referring to the author in this manner when he is simply describing Holland's counter? It's right there in your quote. Do you mean to say that Holland flunk basic physics?
CWuestefeld 11y ago
Compared to the 1970s and earlier, internal combustion engines are strikingly efficient. You're probably right that we've harvested all the low-hanging fruit, and further progress will be slow and slight. But there's still a LOT of room for efficiency improvement by changing the other side of the equation. If we're generating power with nearly as much efficiency as possible, we can still go a long way in USING that power smarter. Which is my long-winded way of saying that if everyone switched from driving big-ass SUVs to driving light compact cars, we'd still achieve a huge boost in miles traveled per pollutant emitted.

sp332 11y ago

This just means that people should switch to cleaner cars (like the Ford Focus). The study completely ignores all gas-powered cars that don't have a close electric equivalent.

sksk 11y ago

This economist article had a nice summary on this topic, 2014 (not about the same report, however). http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21636715-why-electric-car-may-be-much-dirtier-petrol-one-cleaner-what http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2163671.... The culprit is coal.

sullivanmatt 11y ago

The author of this article posted a follow-up a few days later, and more or less acknowledged that he should have done a bit more vetting of this "research" before going to press. The follow-up worth the read: http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/07/4-key-problems-with-measuring-ev-pollution-vs-gas-cars/398093/ http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/07/4-key-problems-with-m...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

simulate 11y ago

The US DOE provides a nice interactive tool for comparing emissions between electric and gas-powered vehicles. The DOE data show that, in all US states, an electric car has lower CO2 emissions compared to a gas-powered car with average US MPG. You can enter your zip code and it will graph the CO2 equivalent: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php Gas powered cars with average US MPG produce 14815 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year. Ohio produces 70% of its power from coal. Entering 44101 for Cleveland, you get 9074 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year, 39% less than gas-powered car. Entering 94103 you can see that electric cars in San Francisco produce 4152 pounds of CO2 equivalent, 72% less than a gas-powered car. A big part of the determination of CO2 emissions is the MPG of gas powered vehicles. In a few states, a hybrid electric has lower emissions than an all electric car because hybrids have a much higher MPG. This is explained nicely here: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions The average fuel consumption for gas-powered vehicles in the US is around 24 MPG: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...