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
(calculation loading)
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
(calculation loading)
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.
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.