Leo DiCaprio: Before the Flood Documentary

[Fuzz]

I was curious about electric cars and their CO2 emmisions from generation, so did a little looking. It obviously depends on where you are but what caught my eye was this graph, from here:


http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions


I found you can calculate your emmisions for your petrol car using this formula:

• Premium petrol - L/100 km x 23.414 = CO2 grams/km
• Regular petrol - L/100 km x 22.847 = CO2 grams/km

http://rightcar.govt.nz/co2-ratings.html

So for a car getting 8L/100km emissions are 183g CO2/km.

What surprised me is that for half the countries listed, you are actually better off driving a gas car than electric. Canada would depend entirely where you live, becuase I think our graph number is greatly distorted for Alberta by the hydro resources east and west of us. I'm sure Alberta's number would be over 200.

Anyway, maybe I'm missing something big here becuase it doesn't seam to make much sense given our current energy mix to go electric. I thought it was guaranteed to have lower CO2 emmisions, but I guess it depends where you live. Am I missing something?

[Clarkey]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Do you think it was advantageous for the British economy to embrace the Steam Engine, or would they have been better off sticking with the horse and buggy?



"This internet thing is just a fad."

You are advocating for switching the steam engine for the horse and buggy.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I was curious about electric cars and their CO2 emmisions from generation, so did a little looking. It obviously depends on where you are but what caught my eye was this graph, from here:


http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions


I found you can calculate your emmisions for your petrol car using this formula:

• Premium petrol - L/100 km x 23.414 = CO2 grams/km
• Regular petrol - L/100 km x 22.847 = CO2 grams/km

http://rightcar.govt.nz/co2-ratings.html

So for a car getting 8L/100km emissions are 183g CO2/km.

What surprised me is that for half the countries listed, you are actually better off driving a gas car than electric. Canada would depend entirely where you live, becuase I think our graph number is greatly distorted for Alberta by the hydro resources east and west of us. I'm sure Alberta's number would be over 200.

Anyway, maybe I'm missing something big here becuase it doesn't seam to make much sense given our current energy mix to go electric. I thought it was guaranteed to have lower CO2 emmisions, but I guess it depends where you live. Am I missing something?

Nope not missing anything. Areas of the world that primarily use coal fired boilers to feed steam turbines are going to pollute a considerably more than other methods. Coal is filthy all around as if you have ever worked or visited a coal fired plant you would find that the entire facility is contaminated by fine coal dust. Touch anything that looks clean and you will have black on your hands.

[Fuzz]

Ah, I did just notice something on that graph. The numbers include vehicle manufacturing, and electricity distribution. To make an apples to apples comparison we'd need the manufacturing CO2 emissions and probably add in the emissions from oil extraction, refining and distribution. But I'm way to lazy to hunt for that right now.