If every car in the world were a full electic car, would the pollution into the air be greater or lesser?

Question

I understand we use coal to burn for electricity, but if we did more coal burning and completely wiped out gasoline emissions, would that be better? The oil companies would still have a business, just not in cars.

Answer 1

We already know how to recycle the most toxic vehicle batteries - made of lead and sulfuric acid. Most other battery technologies are far less toxic, and the recycle rate will be well over 99% because of the tremendous weight of the pack, and the hundreds of dollars of "core" residual value of the metals.

IF (big if) you powered electric cars on 100% coal, then emissions would be much better than gasoline cars. The biggest pollutant, CO2, would be lower by 2/3. There'd be more SO2, but less NOX and virtually no CO or HC.
http://sherryboschert.com/Downloads/Emissions%5B9%5D.pdf
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Samples/policy/voytishlong.html

But you WOULDN'T run electric cars on coal power for several reasons.

Most electrics will charge at night, when most stuff is turned off, so it would add to "base load" (24x7 energy consumption). Nothing says base load like nuclear power. Nukes are horribly expensive to build, but once they're built, they're dirt cheap to run. So they are run 24x7 at full power. What do they do at 3AM? Charge electric cars!

Wind is another big winner in base load.

Wind has a giant advantage: it can be built quickly. If you commit to build a nuke plant today, you'd be very lucky if it was online by the year 2020. Coal plants are quicker, but not by much. Wind, natural gas, and solar can go up much quicker. California actually got some natural gas plants built in time to help with the power crunch.

Wind/solar projects can be small, so they're easier to finance. For instance you can build a solar array on your roof, add the cost to your mortgage, and for many people, the savings off your power bill will more than pay the extra mortgage, i.e. it's "cash flow positive" from day one. Once the mortgage is paid off, it's free power!

Solar is useless for charging an electric car at night (obviously) but you can use your solar panels to sell the power back to the electric company during peak hours (at peak prices, wheeee!) and at night buy back power to charge your car.

The oil companies are not fools, they are diversifying into alternative power.
http://www.shell.com/solar/
http://www.shell.com/wind/
http://www.chevronenergy.com/renewable_energy/

Answer 2

It depends on how the electricity is generated. Using all coal-fired plants would cause greater air pollution; natural-gas plants generate roughly the same amount of pollution per 1000 electric cars as would the gasoline emissions from those 1000 cars. Nuclear power plants generate no emissions, so moving to an all-electric transportation model fueled by nuclear plants would result in cleaner air.

However, the waste problem of hundreds of millions of solid-cell batteries would more than negate the clean-air savings.

The only technology that's feasible at the moment is fuel cells -- cases that are about the size of batteries that are refillable with hydrogen (nature's most plentiful and cheap-to-produce gas) and which give off water vapor as their only by-product.

Electric cars are pollution-neutral when compared to internal combustion engines. Fuel-cell technology is pollution-reducing.

Answer 3

oil is a lot more efficient than coal and less polluting when burned as a result. using coal to produce the electricity to power cars would end up polluting more than oil becuase the ineficiency means a lot more coal would need to be burned than oil to produce the same amount of work.

unless you are using renewable sources (solar, wind, tidal) to generate the electricity you won't effectively reduce pollution. problem is the industries and government are funding teh current efficiency winner without much regard for the future.
but that will change as oil discovery, pumping and transpoting becomes more expensive over time.

oil companies are discovering less oil each year and should be researching and investing in renewable sources of electrical generation rather than trying to discredit them or come up wiht new 'green' logos and ad campaigns intended to keep the public in the dark about the future of fossil fuel pricing and availability.

don't forget, however, that oil is used for a lot more than just transportation. it is in the manufacturing processes for nearly everything in our economy, agriculture, and medicine. this means the companies are still making big profits and have no reason to spend money on the development of any other sources yet. government also heavily subidizes the oil industry in the form of low corporate tax brackets and help wiht research & development and transportation infrastructure.

want efficiency and long-term transportation savings? the best bet today is buying a hybrid vehicle and supporting the development of renewable energy production and eficiency in order to lower the cost faster.

...sorry 'bout my spelling, but the check is dragging.

Answer 4

The cleanest fossil fuel is natural gas, next cleanest is oil and the dirtiest is coal. Natural gas is mostly methane, which has 4 hydrogen atoms for every carbon atom. Oil has about equal numbers of carbon and hydrogen atoms, and coal is almost pure carbon, which means it makes more carbon dioxide than any other fuel when burned.

Also, coal has impurities like sulfur, mercury, and radioactive materials, that get into the air when it burns. So burning more coal would be bad, not good.

Answer 5

There are other sources for electricity than coal. If the oil companies used those (wind, water, solar), and everyone had an electric car, we definitely would have less pollution.

Answer 6

The process to build those electric cars is far worse than what the gas cars put out.

Answer 7

The problem comes 10 years later when we have to figure out how to get rid of the cadmium and mercury from the dead batteries

Answer 8

since we use more of thermal energy which produces lots of carbon di oxide biu if we use clean energy top make electricity then it's fine