Where Electric Vehicles Cause More Pollution Than Gas Cars | Hacker News Reader

Where Electric Vehicles Cause More Pollution Than Gas Cars

citylab.com

44 pointstomkwok47 comments

This paper reads more like it's designed to foment support around removing electric car subsidies rather than accurately measure their impact. I particularly liked the part where they tried to assign a dollar value to various pollutants. $42/ton for Carbon, in case you were wondering. They totally scienced that shit.

As always with economic research with policy implications, it's good to dig a little and find out where they get their money from, especially when they're coy about it:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Bureau_o...

The map's a bit of a red flag as well. Apparently it's really good to own internal combustion cars where no one lives. Of course, in a big map full of sparsely populated areas, all that green looks really good, rather than mostly useless.

Obligatory XKCD (with an oddly familiar map):

https://xkcd.com/1138/

    it's really good to own internal combustion cars where no one lives

Isn't that right though? Tailpipe emissions are much worse in urban than rural areas because there are more people to breathe them in.

Not to mention that the per mile highway efficiency of gasoline powered cars is much better where there is low traffic density than in stop and go traffic in a congested city.

Right, but be careful with that line of thinking. In terms of cents of economic damage per km driven, yes, gas cars are better driven in the boonies; but watch out! That isn't where most people are driving. Most people are driving around cities. So this map makes it look like electric cars and gas cars are more toe-to-toe than they are.

And really, most of the dirtiest coal power plants are nearing end of life, so if you look at the trending, even in the USA, which has a very dirty energy grid, electric cars are going to be much less pollutant than gas cars everywhere and very soon.

Also note that the car in question, the Ford Focus, is one of the least pollutant gasoline cars out there. Electric cars scale up better than gasoline ones.

The impact on global warming is the same.

>This paper reads more like it's designed to foment support around removing electric car subsidies rather than accurately measure their impact.

Hit the nail on the head.

The choice of question is telling. "Where should electric cars be taxed based on pollution?" implies that it is electric cars that should be taxed, not the pollution itself. But economics by side-effect rarely leads to a good outcome.

For beautiful economic optimality, tax pollution directly at the power plant, the gas pump, and the polluting refinery/mine/whatever. https://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2008/2008_90.pdf

> In some places electrics do so much relative harm that instead of being subsidized, as is currently the case, they should actually be taxed.

So tax the zero-emission electric vehicles for using coal energy in certain areas (over which they have no control), instead of the actual coal companies that produce that dirty energy? That seems quite backwards to me.

Tax the coal companies and force them to either convert to renewable energy production, so then the electric vehicles can be 100% clean, or to force them to shut down (and be replaced by renewable competitors).

Taxing electric vehicles just as much if not more than gas-powered vehicles because they use coal energy right now is complete nonsense. At least electric vehicles try to solve one half of the problem. Taxing them like that would put the breaks on both sides of the reform. Let's solve both problems in parallel instead of putting the breaks on both (not forcing coal companies to die/convert faster and also continuing to use gas-powered cars).

Indeed. If people want a carbon tax, then implement a carbon tax in the right place. Either at point of burning or point of extraction/import.

Point of emitting. Point of extraction/import is both flexible, and hydro (and plain) carbons have multiple usages.

Though extraction also emits a lot of GHGs via flaring and so on, which should be costed properly.

Apparently the biggest solar power installation in the world is used to generate steam which is then used to increase the efficiency of oil extraction. In previous eras the most obvious source of energy for that purpose would be the oil you are extracting.

Isn't it possible in the us to choose by oneself from which power company one obtains the electricity? In europe you can for example choose to support companies which only use renewable energies.

No most places have a single electric company that you can purchase from. They're highly regulated but you only have one source available.

Varies by location. There are plenty of deregulated markets and plenty of still-monopoly markets.

For the gas cars, did they also take account of the emmissions/polution from the oil rigs/refineries/gas stations etc? For the coal plants, did they take account of extraction of the coal? Because if we're bringing infrastructure into the equation, where do we draw the line?

I note that in the UK, its very easy for consumers to specify that their house be supplied with renewable energy. Looks like it doesn't work that way in the US.

It does in some places. In St. Louis it was as easy as checking a box on your bill one time, and then for a slight additional cost your house was supplied by renewable energy indefinitely. I don't have that option now in NC.

You mean you were suckered into paying a higher rate for the benefit of the energy trading market.

I'm confused. Are you suggesting the provider didn't actually generate renewable energy? Or are you saying that it's not the exact same electrons (which I think we both realize doesn't matter)?

I had the same question. Looks like they just compared electricity generation pollution to combustion engine pollution. Very apples and oranges.

It says in the article that they did not:

> The study’s biggest caveat, acknowledged by the researchers, is that they don’t consider a full “lifecycle” analysis of emissions—so things like making the car, drilling for oil, or transporting coal aren’t included in the environmental costs.

Iceland is driven by hydro and geothermal. You see a Nissan Leaf at almost every traffic light. While both hydro and geothermal are NOT 100% eco-neutral, they are far better than burning dinos. When my electricity bill comes thou, I get informed that several percent of my electricity is nuclear powered (there are no nuclear power plants in Iceland). It's due to my utility selling credits so some polluter can have a little cleaner conscience. I hate that. So does everyone else in Iceland. The UK might be buying the credits, I don't really know who buys them.

Amount of electric car is irrelevant at this point. They market share is less than 0.1% in most areas, so systematic calculations of current state are not that useful.

The current EV subsidies are mostly to recoup some initial R&D cost and overcome decades of advancements in gas cars. Moreover, gas cars enjoy strong network effect as well as efficiency of scale.

The question is, what would be the total damages once they reach 5% market share. There is strong belief that they have potential to be 10x better than current cars on many dimensions.

With electric cars drawing power from a grid you reap the benefit of centralisation. It's easier to upgrade a gas fired power station to increase efficiency/reduce pollutants than it is to upgrade every vehicle on the road.

You also have a better spread of options using the grid, e.g. renewables. Essentially with electric vehicles you are just moving the place where the power generation happens, but with countless benefits.

Also, power stations tend to have large stacks that try and direct the pollution into the atmopshere where it can disperse over a wide area. In comparison fossil fuel vehicles tend to have small exhaust pipes that can lead to high levels of localised exposure to toxic/carcinogenic substances.

It's easier to upgrade a gas fired power station to increase efficiency/reduce pollutants than it is to upgrade every vehicle on the road.

In practice, I'm not sure that's true at all. For small incremental changes you may be right, but I suspect there's a limit as to how far you can take the existing generating system. The time and bureaucracy involved in building a NEW generating station is immense. I don't have figures handy, but I suspect that from conception to actual production, it takes more than couple of car replacement lifecycles.

So in that timespan, the large majority of cars will have aged themselves into replacement anyway.

From the article:

> Another criticism is that EVs aren’t about the present, they’re about the future. Assuming electricity grids will get cleaner, moving away from gasoline cars is the only way to approach a zero-carbon transportation sector (not to mention avoiding the political costs of oil dependence). Holland counters that rising fuel-efficiency standards are making gas cars a lot cleaner, too.

Did the author flunk basic physics? There isn't that much room for improvement on a internal combustion engine. And "a lot cleaner" is still greater than zero emissions (and, given the efficiency, _by far_).

Seriously. Were not for the lack of cheap energy storage devices, we would not be having this discussion at all. Cars would have been electric from the beginning (they actually were) and would be still like that.

As far as I know, electric cars failed then because of the same problems we have now- power storage. As bad as LiPos are, what they had was even worse. It didn't help that gas engines had a lot of improvement possibilities then, and we've only really recently been able to reach that same level of improvement in electrical motors.

Gas engines are a dying beast, the only thing they're better at is the sound.

Why are you referring to the author in this manner when he is simply describing Holland's counter? It's right there in your quote. Do you mean to say that Holland flunk basic physics?

Compared to the 1970s and earlier, internal combustion engines are strikingly efficient. You're probably right that we've harvested all the low-hanging fruit, and further progress will be slow and slight.

But there's still a LOT of room for efficiency improvement by changing the other side of the equation. If we're generating power with nearly as much efficiency as possible, we can still go a long way in USING that power smarter.

Which is my long-winded way of saying that if everyone switched from driving big-ass SUVs to driving light compact cars, we'd still achieve a huge boost in miles traveled per pollutant emitted.

You want low-hanging fruit, consider container ships. Can be up to 1/3 of global air pollution, from about 6000 vehicles. Because they use the dirtiest sulfer-laden diesel etc. They would be the biggest bang for the buck:

Wikipedia: "Of total global air emissions, shipping accounts for 18 to 30 percent of the nitrogen oxide and 9 percent of the sulphur oxides"

sails!

The problem is that it is politically impossible to implement the only solution that would take them to zero emissions. It is a solution that uses existing, proven, decades-old technology, but thanks to extremely powerful anti-science lobby groups we can't use it. Think about that for a minute: just how powerful does a lobby group have to be to prevent us implementing a solution to 1/3 of global air polution?

Everyone reading this, if they think for a few minutes, will be able to figure out what the technology is (because it's marine propulsion, and how do we make that zero-emission?) and who the political groups are who oppose it, so I'm not going to actually specify them because I think the point will have more impact if people work it out for themselves. The sad thing is that half of the people who do figure it out will have an immediate reaction of, "Well of course we can't do that!", thereby dismissing a practical, safe solution to 1/3 of global air pollution based on the nothing but politics, because what does the well-being of the planet matter when implementing a workable solution means changing your political stance on anything? That's something only those looney pro-science people do, right?

Those are short lived pollutants that do harm only if emitted in populated areas.

Yes, they are very dangerous in the middle of a city, and that's why urban vehicles almost don't emit them, making ships more representative.

Wha? They enter the atmosphere and circulate around the globe for years. Just because you don't see the grey clouds blowing in off the ocean, doesn't mean there's no problem.

Data is hard to find!

The best I could find gives nitrogen-dioxyde a half life of about 30 hours at the atmosphere, and sulfur-dioxyde about 5 hours.

I'd expect it to vary widely with local humidity (something the oceans have a lot), and I'd also expect the corresponding acids to fall down at the first rain (another thing the oceans have a lot), although the acids are already reasonably non-toxic.

Also, I'd expect those gases to not disperse in upper atmosphere, because of their molecular weight. But it thrown with any speed (like in a volcano eruption), they'd have the very low humidity, very low pressure that increases their life to a maximum.

Anyway, all that expectation is from theory. References are hard to find.

Confused; then why do we object to cars emitting these gasses?

> But in the Midwest and Northeast, where the electricity grid tends to rely on coal power plants, the damage from emissions ranged back up toward five cents a mile.

I'm very skeptical of this claim. NYC and Upstate NY are known to have some of the cleanest electricity grids in the U.S. See chart on page 2 of this EPA report, for example.

http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/egridzips/eGRID_9th...

I would be suspicious of this too, since I believe a lot of New England gets its power from Hydro-Québec (from their HVDC lines) and nuclear sources. Even normalized per capita, Vermont should have one of the lowest carbon footprints, which makes me suspicious of some of their sampling methods, though I haven't read the paper.

You can get a really quick overview of your state's energy profile on the Energy Information Administration website.[0] As you mentioned, the smaller states mostly use nuclear and renewable sources. The clear outlier is Massachusetts, which is about 60% natural gas.

[0]http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=VT#tabs-4

I'm also suspicious of the scale of the map. Shouldn't they stretch the states with more cars and pinch the ones with less?

Even if this were true, the electric grid has hope: solar, wind & nuke can grow while coal & even someday gas fade.

Gasoline has no hope.

Not entirely true. Synfuels, including direct analogs of petrol and diesel, can be created from electricity and seawater. The fuel is carbon neutral, though somewhat more expensive than present fuels. US Naval Research Lab estimates are about $6/gallon.

You retain energy density and storage stability of liquid hydrocarbons.

The US DOE provides a nice interactive tool for comparing emissions between electric and gas-powered vehicles. The DOE data show that, in all US states, an electric car has lower CO2 emissions compared to a gas-powered car with average US MPG.

You can enter your zip code and it will graph the CO2 equivalent: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php

Gas powered cars with average US MPG produce 14815 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year.

Ohio produces 70% of its power from coal. Entering 44101 for Cleveland, you get 9074 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year, 39% less than gas-powered car.

Entering 94103 you can see that electric cars in San Francisco produce 4152 pounds of CO2 equivalent, 72% less than a gas-powered car.

A big part of the determination of CO2 emissions is the MPG of gas powered vehicles. In a few states, a hybrid electric has lower emissions than an all electric car because hybrids have a much higher MPG. This is explained nicely here: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions

The average fuel consumption for gas-powered vehicles in the US is around 24 MPG: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

This ignores the amount of electricity needed to take crude and generate gasoline as well as the rest of the gasoline supply chain. We may as well start making our way towards electric. If we have clean cars then making the rest of the system clean isn't a chicken or egg problem

The author of this article posted a follow-up a few days later, and more or less acknowledged that he should have done a bit more vetting of this "research" before going to press. The follow-up worth the read: http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/07/4-key-problems-with-m...

This economist article had a nice summary on this topic, 2014 (not about the same report, however). http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2163671.... The culprit is coal.

This just means that people should switch to cleaner cars (like the Ford Focus). The study completely ignores all gas-powered cars that don't have a close electric equivalent.

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