Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All

New submitter countach44 writes "From an article in IEEE's Spectrum magazine: 'Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars begins to look more and more like shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another. We wouldn't expect doctors to endorse such a thing. Should environmentally minded people really revere electric cars?' The author discusses the controversy and social issues behind electric car research and demonstrates what many of us have been thinking: are electric cars really more environmentally friendly than those based on internal combustion engines?" Reader Jah-Wren Ryel takes issue with one of the sources, and offers a criticism from Fast Company.

Comments

Re:Depends on the energy source duh!

[angel'o'sphere]

Once built a nuclear power plant produces no carbon emissions and can do so for a good portion of a century if properly maintained. It produces enormous amounts of electricity in that time, which more than offsets the carbon emissions from its construction. Only if you believe mining of the uranium ore, purifying and enriching it and producing fuel rods and transporting them and cleaning up the waste and transporting/refining/recycling and storing it does not use any energy ...

The only electric power source that produce less carbon per kilowatt hour produced is hydroelectric. Every other form of electricity either produces more carbon or exists only in the imagination. That is nonsense. What about solar and wind and geothermal (well geothermal is mainly used for heating not for electric power generation)?