Electric vehicles/Fossil fuel powered
If you charge an electric car with electricity that was generated by fossil fuels, is it as bad for the environment as driving a gas car?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
For coal power plants:
ecocostsavings.com › average-electric-car-kwh-per-mile
from wikipedia; haven't found original source yet
www.eia.gov › tools › faqs › faq
Nov 4, 2021 · "The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) losses equaled about 5% of ..."
https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems
Citation:
"The average fuel economy for new 2020 model year cars, light trucks and SUVs in the United States was 25.4 miles per US gallon (9.3 L/100 km)."
- Fuel economy in automobiles - Wikipedia
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In other words, there's a very slight increase in overall fuel efficiency, but it's not much.
For natural gas power plants:
Some have the same efficiency as coal power plants (33%). Results would be about the same as above.
Other natural gas power plants (the more advanced "combined-cycle" type) are more efficient: up to 60%:
Simpler/older natural gas plants (no combined cycle) have only an efficiency of 33%, same as [coal_power_plant.efficiency].
Read more: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Natural_gas_power_plant
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In this case (electric car + advanced natural gas power), we do in fact cut our emissions in half. But this doesn't apply to older, simpler natural gas power plants.
A note on precision:
But so far, we still haven't counted the environmental impact of making an electric car, which is significantly more than for a gasoline-powered car.[QUANTIFICATION needed]
- Note: This varies by the type of batteries used.
When that's factored in, there's probably no benefit to having an electric car in the coal-power scenario, and only moderate benefit in the advanced-natural-gas-power scenario.