The Electric Car: Environmental Menace

Electric cars emit more carbon dioxide and cause more pollution than conventional cars – and much more than hybrid cars.

Vancouver City Council last week voted unanimously to require developers to build outlets for electric cars into a percentage of new apartments and condominiums. What’s not to like? This: Electric cars emit more carbon dioxide and cause more pollution than conventional cars – and much more than hybrid cars like Toyota’s Prius. A plug-in electric car may not emit any carbon dioxide from the tailpipe. But the electricity has to come from somewhere, and typically grid electricity is generated by burning coal. Because gasoline is a much more energy-rich fuel than coal, a low-mileage gasoline car is much better for the environment. You can see the stark contrast in Toyota’s two versions of the Prius, the older hybrid model and the newer plug-in. The hybrid goes 40 miles or better on a gallon of gasoline. Burning a gallon of gasoline yields 20 pounds of carbon dioxide – or about two miles per pound of carbon dioxide emission. By contrast, according to Toyota’s own numbers, the plug-in version of the Prius gets only one mile per pound. (Specifically: the plug-in Prius goes 2.5 miles on a kilowatt-hour of electricity. Burning coal to generate a kilowatt-hour emits 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide.) Which means that when I plug it in, my 40-50 mpg Prius becomes half as efficient and turns into a 20 mpg SUV. (The story with GM’s upcoming Volt plug-in car is no different.) Some will argue that electricity does not have to come from coal. True. But today’s highest environmental priority should be to get rid of coal electricity. Every new electric car is going to make this challenging goal that much more difficult to achieve. Is the conclusion any different if I have a personal windmill or a solar array on my roof? Not really, because then I should be using my clean electricity to displace coal, not to reduce my guilt when I charge an electric car. The reality is that coal is the cheapest fuel in the face of a tightening electricity supply. It is sobering to know that despite all the hoopla about clean energy, the increase in US coal electricity in 2007 was more than 200 times the increase in solar photovoltaic! It is going to be difficult to get rid of this dirty fuel that supplies half of our electricity. We need electricity for high efficiency uses such as in mass transit where rapid acceleration is essential. On the other hand, as Toyota itself has shown, cars can run very efficiently on gasoline and should stay on it. Perhaps the strongest argument against electric cars is an economic one. By using coal as an energy source, electric cars will decrease price pressure on gasoline, leading in turn to less conservation and increased consumption. In simple words, electric cars will free up gasoline for Hummers (even if those guzzlers are in China). On top of emissions from burning every drop of gasoline that we can dig up, there will be emissions from coal used in the transportation sector. Electric cars thus insidiously fulfill a fervent goal of the coal lobby: converting coal into liquid fuel (synfuel). Environmentalists justifiably oppose these dirty synfuels, yet most do not seem to realize that the electric car gives coal a backdoor entry into transportation. It should be telling that some of the powerful political backers of the electric car are actively hostile to any efforts to reduce global warming. Although they make appropriate noises about clean alternatives, their rationale is that domestic coal is better than imported petroleum and increases in greenhouse emissions are irrelevant. As much as we may hate petroleum, putting coal in the gas tank is a step in the wrong direction. Efficient electric cars may make sense after we manage to clean up the electric grid, but we must not put this electric cart before the horse.