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Comment by strommen | Hacker News Reader

It's noteworthy that 90% of energy used in the Netherlands is fossil fuels[1] (as of 2013, anyway). This means electric cars will emit GHGs comparable to a 40-50mpg gasoline-powered car. Hopefully they do some major work to clean up their grid electricity.

Electric cars are a necessary step to reducing GHG emissions, but without a clean grid they are pretty pointless.

[1] https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/netherlands2014SUM.pdf

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The Dutch cabinet has already decided to close 8 coal plants - there will only be 3 remaining [1]. Having said that - the power supply gap will now be fed from imports - and critics are claiming that those imports are more carbon intensive. A report has been commissioned...

[1] http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/04/11/dutch-cabinet-to-close-two-...

German utilities have been complaining for years that excess german solar capacity is forcing them to run their dynamos below capacity, i.e. inefficiently. If the german plants gain that efficiency back by supplying dutch demand, sounds okay to me.

Tough to get more carbon-intensive than coal! Seriously, from a GHG perspective anything is better. So good for them.

Remember, green looks far better for building new power plants vs. replacing existing power plants. 2025 is still a long way away, and those electric cars will still be electric in 2035 as would any gas cars bought.

PS: Their greenhouse gas emissions where down -5.2% from 2004-2009. So, with new demand the mix could change fairly rapidly.

Although those fossil fueled plants tend to still be more efficient than car engines. You might only save about 1/3 of the normal emissions in the worst case, but that's still some improvement, and it automatically improves further as the grid moves to more environmentally friendly production.

I haven't read the linked report, but I'm guessing that's mostly industrial usage? From anecdotal evidence of the people I know (which is also biased), most consumer electricity is 'green' (wind, solar, and sometimes biomass). In general this is not more expensive than 'grey', so many people opt for it.

Here you go, Sankey diagram for the Netherlands (for 2013):

http://www.iea.org/sankey/#?c=Netherlands&s=Final consumption

0.5 MTOE geo/solar/tide/wind/bio/waste energy going to residential use

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