Comments on: New Study Finds That Electric Cars in China Using Fossil Fuels Have a Higher Carbon Footprint Than Gasoline Gars

By: electric38

electric38 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:33:07 +0000

China’s solar industry will be building hundreds of thousands of consumer owned solar rooftops to alleviate the problem. They will be riding around using the free energy of natural sunshine many years ahead of most other countries. Germany also is building a solar infrastructure (much of it consumer owned) for the superior engineered electric vehicles. Do a simple search on this fact. Both countries have put tens of thousands to work installing these systems.
The oil/dirty energy money of the US monopolies will continue to buy politicians and media to bog down our ability to achieve similar goals.

By: electric38

electric38 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:22:52 +0000

This is exactly why China has moved forward with aggressive feed in tariff laws and a nationwide consumer owned solar rooftop program (5-15 GW increase). Hundreds of thousands of them will be traveling, using the free energy of natural sunshine, to charge batteries, while the American oil monopoly dollars continue to call our political shots. Jobs? Yes the Chinese solar installation workforce will be very busy for years to come.

Their 5 year plan makes our 15-20 year energy plans look pretty ugly. The status quo does not want to change their wealth structure.

By: WBrooke

WBrooke — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:06:29 +0000

Even if the electric cars derive power ultimately from coal, it is far easier to deal with emissions from a single source (power plant) rather than the emissions from the thousands of vehicle engines. And the power plant always operates at it’s peak efficiency point, whereas vehicle engines are always varying their operating point and rarely operate at their peak efficiency. Coal is terrible for all sorts of reasons, but electric cars automatically incorporate cleaner sources of electricity as they are added to the grid, where a fossil fueled car will only run on that specific fuel. Natural gas is super cheap right now, so we will probably see gas-fired power plants being added to the grid. Natural gas is not an environmental panacea either, but it is far cleaner than coal and will automatically be incorporated into powering electric vehicles.

By: shiakas

shiakas — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:27:09 +0000

Oh the ignorance! The only way the study’s claim could be true would be if petrol appeared by magic in the gas tank of our cars.
The cost of pumping, processing and transporting petrol is calculated at about 300-500 mg/km. That is just one of the facts being ignored.
Do you thing the only harmful exhaust gas is CO2? Try: Nitrogen dioxide, Sulphur dioxide, Benzene, Formaldehyde, Polycyclic hydrocarbons and Lead.
Most important though, with electric cars the pollution site of motoring is shifted to power generation which is constantly having is environmental impact reduced.

By: PA32R

PA32R — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:13:12 +0000

@Portlandjen:

I agree, but it’s also true in the U.S. in many locales. And some of them are surprising. I did some calculations for the power mix in my home city of Anaheim, CA and determined that the Nissan Leaf would cause far more CO2 emissions, let alone particulate emissions, than my hybrid. If you’re interested, my blog post with the calculations is at: http://hamiltonianfunction.blogspot.com/2011/09/co2-and-nissan-leaf.html

By: eduardo.avendano

eduardo.avendano — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:00:29 +0000

At the size of fleet now circulating in China, there is no need to install additional capacity to power EVs. So the pollution in the form of particulate matter accounted for in this study would still be there with or without EVs. The focus should be shifted away from EVs themselves into power generation. Doing it otherwise is misleading and is an argument playing in favour of oil companies that insist in underplaying the role of EVs towards more sustainable mobility solutions.

By: Portlandjen

Portlandjen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:17:31 +0000

The title should be “New Study Finds That Electric Cars IN CHINA Can Pollute More Than Their Gasoline Counterparts.”