Electric cars worse than petrol predecessor?

Recent advancement in car technology has seen the rise of electric cars. Manufacturers market them as the future of automobile industry and the answer to lowering the high levels of carbon emissions currently being produced by their fossil fuel predecessor.

With an increasingly climate-conscious society, many consumers now actively seek to purchase electric cars in a bid to help ease their carbon footprint; however, a recent report reveals that this new technology may not be as green as initially thought.

The report in question analyzed the life cycle of car emissions. These car emissions are traced right from the mining of the materials for the production of batteries to the materials used for the production of fuels and the generation of electricity, up to the gas that comes out from the exhaust of the car.

If all of these factors are considered, an entirely different picture will emerge.

Electric cars found to not be as eco-friendly as once thought

To wit, a battery powered electric vehicle that requires constant recharging of electricity generated by coal-fired power plants, is likely to cause over three times as many deaths from pollution as a standard car run by petrol.

The same thing goes with a hybrid car, powered by a combination of electric motor and petrol engine which is forced to use electricity generated from conventional power plants. It is equally, if not much more hazardous than a conventional car run by petrol.

The controversial study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was co-authored by Christopher Tessum, Jason Hill and Julian Marshall, all of the University of Minnesota.

The three examined how levels of fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone would change if each of 11 ways of running a car were to be accountable for 10 per cent of the vehicle-miles projected to be driven in 2020 in the United States.

Ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter are two of the most dangerous components of air pollution. These two are the cause of death of more than 100,000 people in the United States.

Electric cars utilizing fossil fuel found to be most hazardous

The three were not surprised to find that green electric cars whose batteries were topped up from solar, wind or hydroelectric sources came out the cleanest. These cars caused a mere 231 putative deaths in one year, over the massive 878 deaths attributed to petrol cars.

Electric vehicles recharged by power sourced from natural gas fired stations came out less lethal as well with only 439 deaths. However, if those same electric vehicles were recharged by coal or other fossil fuel sources, which is what most commonly happens, they would cause more than 3,000 deaths – based on the model used by the three researchers. In addition, bio-fuels caused more health problems than petrol.

Electric cars using clean energy still industry front runner

Overall, the research reveals that electric cars are really cleaner that the conventional I.C.E.s (internal combustion engines) but only if the power used to charge them is also clean.

Therefore the degree of cleanness of electric cars will depend not so much on their lower or zero-emissions, but on how clean their recharge sources are. But as long as their charging stations are using electricity supplied by power plants using fossil fuels, they are not much different than petrol cars in terms of causing environmental pollution.

 

AmericanSolarQuotes.com
This article was originally published by Eddy Buckley on AmericanSolarQuotes.com

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