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Most Comprehensive Study Yet On Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles
An anonymous reader writes: A few articles came out Thursday talking about the recently released report from the National Bureau of Economic Research on the environmental benefits of electric cars. The general consensus is kind of obvious -- that it depends on the ratio of coal vs. clean electrical generation that is used to charge your car. What is interesting is the extent to which it makes a difference, and that when viewed on a regional basis, there are cases where the EV doesn't do so well. And when it comes to policy decisions, it seems the central focus needs to be on the replacement of large-scale coal generation, and the rest will fall in to place. Here is one cover story from Ars Technica. Google others for varying perspectives.
This is not a new study and it's already been thoroughly rebuked. Here are few major flaws:
o Study considers coal plant pollution data from 2010-12. Since then a lot of coal plants were shut down (replaced by cleaner NG plants) or were equipped with filters (per EPA mandate which was recently deemed invalid by the courts but replacement mandate is forthcoming)
o Study 'forgets' to consider pollution from processing and transporting fuel.
o Some who are in the know pointed out that study fumbled the data on how green and dirty electricity is distributed throughout the grid. What study did is similar to gerrymandering where they lumped clean energy to specific areas making other ares less clean as a result.