When you use pure electric cars, does the CO2 emission problem just move somewhere else?
I need this for my chemistry powerpoint.
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yes it does.
but it’s far smaller.
industrial power plants are far more efficient at extracting energy from coal, or oil, or natural gas, than our cars or trucks are.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/atv.shtml
"Only about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful accessories, such as air conditioning."
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&ved=0CCsQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.umweltbundesamt.at%2Ffileadmin%2Fsite%2Fumweltthemen%2Findustrie%2FIPPC_Konferenz%2Fdonnerstag_kraftwerke%2F6-_Van_Aart.ppt&ei=jqUMS5HOAoeUtQOT2JyCDg&usg=AFQjCNEIlAc3mh69QWNzC61cCdwW9SHRRg
in power plants, 30% is common, sometimes increasing to 40% and even 50%.
yes it does.
but it’s far smaller.
industrial power plants are far more efficient at extracting energy from coal, or oil, or natural gas, than our cars or trucks are.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/atv.shtml
"Only about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful accessories, such as air conditioning."
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&ved=0CCsQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.umweltbundesamt.at%2Ffileadmin%2Fsite%2Fumweltthemen%2Findustrie%2FIPPC_Konferenz%2Fdonnerstag_kraftwerke%2F6-_Van_Aart.ppt&ei=jqUMS5HOAoeUtQOT2JyCDg&usg=AFQjCNEIlAc3mh69QWNzC61cCdwW9SHRRg
in power plants, 30% is common, sometimes increasing to 40% and even 50%.
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You have to manufacture the cars and all their parts. If many people convert it could make the problem worse.
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You have to do a life cycle assessment of both petroleum vehicles and electric vehicles. You need to look at the construction of the vehicle itself as well as the electric components (the mining and use of the chemicals in the batteries themselves are a huge concern!). Of course, this also depends if the cars are being constructed as new or older petroleum based cars are being converted. Also, the source of the electricity has the potential to shift the problem around, which is where green energy solutions come into play
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Since over half of the electricy in the US is generated from coal, you are buring coal instead of gasoline.
Gasoline powered cars ar not just vehicles, they generate their own power. To go all electric, in the US 3000 billion miles are driven per year. Electric cars get about 1 mile per .5 kilowatt hours. That means you need 1500 billion additional killowatt hours of power generating capacity, more than double of what is currently generated.
Double the capacity is only if you could get everyone to only charge there batteries at specifice times.
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yes and no yes because then you r just using power from a power plant and most plant r coal or gas so them burning that just means that that its going to them rather out the back of your car unless you get your power from wind or solar then its not polluting at all
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It moves to someplace where it can be addressed centrally. An improvement to the power plant or a conversion to clean energy at the power plant effectively improves the emission issue of all the electric vehicles. It’s much easier to have an efficient power plant than to have millions of efficient gasoline engines.
However the same can be said of gasoline if we just change the way we make gasoline. Gasoline isn’t bad because of the noxious fumes that it emits though they are quite inconvenient but gasoline is bad because it’s refined from fossil reserves of crude oil hence liberating carbon and hydrogen that had otherwise been sequestered from our environment for millions of years. This means that it represents a net change in our atmosphere and hence it’s effects are cumulative.
Instead of refining from fossil reserves, we can synthesize gasoline from what’s called "syngas" or "synthesis gas" which is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases. As Sandia Labs discovered when researching better ways to produce hydrogen from water, it’s just as easy to produce syngas and hence any liquid hydrocarbon fuel directly from CO2 and H2O. If this CO2 and H2O was from our environment then the use of the synthetic fuel would be carbon neutral and would not result in a net change in our environment. Also, syngas used to be called, town gas, coal gas, and wood gas because it can be produced by a process called gasification/pyrolysis of pretty much anything that burns including trash and dried sewage. If the syngas is produced from such biomass and the charcoal byproduct is used as biochar, the effect is to render the synthetic fuel carbon negative effectively reducing the net amount of carbon in our atmosphere. Basically, not only can our existing vehicles achieve the same goals as electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles but they can also undo some of the damage they have done if we just changed how we make the fuel.
Also note that gasification and steam reformation of natural gas is how we currently produce hydrogen gas. Gasification and the subsequent synthesis of selected hydrocarbons is how we "upgrade" the heavy bitumen in the tar sands and oil shale into high value products and the synthetic diesel produced by gasification of natural gas is how we dilute our high sulfur diesel to meet the new ultra low sulfur diesel fuel requirements. This isn’t new technology, it’s been proven on commercial scales, it’s just currently more expensive then opening a tap of crude and letting it separate in a large heated tank.
Personally, I would like to have an electric car or maybe a CNG hybrid because of the low maintenance, the low operating costs (5 cents a mile versus the 14 cents a mile typical of gasoline vehicles) and the convenience of filling up overnight while parked in the garage. But I think that with nearly a billion vehicles already on the road, the environment would be better served by changing how we make gasoline then by manufacturing and marketing new vehicles. Of course, corporate profit is probably better served by electric and fuel cell vehicles with marketing to take advantage of greenwashing the public.
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http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/sunshine.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007427.html
Categorically and absolutely NO, instead you are making the process more efficient. Why? Don’t we have to consider how the electricity is produced?
1 > Yes, but when we compare two people we don’t compare one person’s head to the feet of another (… or some other part unless they are being particularly stupid.) ICE vehicles pollute in their operation. Electric vehicles do not. This is an equivalent comparison. If you are going to ask about the production of the "fuel" you have to do so for both and this becomes a new standard of measure.
When it comes to getting the power to the point where it can be used in the vehicle we should wake up to the realization that gasoline does not simply appear under our pillows at night or magically appear at gas stations for our sanitized use. The production of electricity is only rightfully compared to the production of gasoline and not to the operation of a gasoline vehicle. To do otherwise is absurd.
Two photographs: http://www.nunukphotos.com/Pollution-photos/Air-pollution-from-oil-refinery AND http://www.nunukphotos.com/Industry-photos/Coal-power-station You judge the difference.
The proposed Hyperion refinery would more than double the CO2 output for the entire state of South Dakota: http://southdakota.sierraclub.org/livingriver/oilrefinery.htm Oil refining is a very messy business and there are oil refineries that have "dead zones" around them simply because of all the pollution that they produce.
2 > To say that electric cars make power plants pollute is like saying regenerative braking is bad because it puts a drag on the vehicle. This very idea is a red herring that seeks to confuse the issue. This idea would suggest we avoid electric vehicles because some power plants pollute. No problem is resolved this way. They would still exist. No new plants would be built due to electric vehicles.
Plants are built due to peak demand and electric vehicles would use off peak power that is now wasted. 80% of our present fleet could be powered using off peak electricity. Electric vehicles are unlikely to reach this percentage anytime in the near future. This is the correct standard, to measure and see, if you are off loading pollution to another source. When the power demand does not change because you are using formerly unused power you make electrical production more efficient, not more polluting.
+> But coal is less than 50% of our electrical production. To see the range of power sources available for electric vehicles look for an outline here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AqEm7kYMySwLEuaKcyc3lXzty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20091122184634AAHBdyj&show=7#profile-info-mJ3mXQLaaa
When we look at the entire power chain from ground to vehicle, electric is nowhere close to oil in the pollution it causes to air, water, and Earth. If you factor in the simple fact that oil is a foreign product and electricity is produced with domestic products you will inescapably be drawn to the pollution caused by overseas military operations. (Unless you wish to believe that our military has nothing to do with protecting oil supplies.)
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Electricity is sometimes produced from a fossil fuel. In the US about 49% is from Coal and this percentage is going down as renewable production like wind is built. When it is produced by hydro or solar installations the only pollution is from equipment and not in the daily operation. Ethanol uses farm equipment that uses petrochemicals and fuel. The process that John W promotes is desperately trying to be even equal to the low efficiency of photosynthesis(around 1 to 5%) This inefficiency is a measure of the pollution released in the production of these fuels. An article with interesting comments can be found on this at: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23996/
http://www.mapcruzin.com/news/rtk022002a.htm
accidents are also a pollluting part of operations: http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/01113/kansas-oil-spill-epa.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Blast-at-refinery-causes-price-rise/2005/03/24/1111525296090.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/national/26plant.html?ex=1269493200&en=7d78f8e27aaa3b51&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=8566212
Yes. That is why my Ford Focus is designated a "Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle". The CO2 it puts into the atmosphere is the same or less than a gas fired power plant would making the electricity for an electric car of the same size and weight.
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