Despite there being 7 billion of us, we seem to struggle with paying attention to more than one problem at a time.
Compared to those two, though, coal power plants are dirty as hell, and I’d take equivalent amount of car emissions to generate the same power over coal any day.
"One of its biggest shortcomings is that it only works at a fairly high temperature. When you start your car cold, the catalytic converter does almost nothing to reduce the pollution in your exhaust." [1]
And when it's cold the car usually starts at someone home around where other people live and that's where the pollution ends up.
For diesel engines that operate at lower temperatures this is even worse.
Particulate pollution from highways and major roads is definitely a real issue and there have been studies done showing a lot of health problems result from living 250-500m or closer to such a road.
But if we’re talking about a modern emissions-compliant gas/petrol ICE vs a coal power plant I’m not sure how that shakes out. Coal power emissions are estimated to have massive health effects that affect millions as well.
(Of course, best solution is electric car powered by nat gas, nuclear, or renewables which don’t emit particulates at all...)
Not that I want to argue in favour of coal plants; we still need to get rid of them just for the CO2. Same goes for ICEs.
Not to mention that coal plants and gas power plants can be changed to burn biomass or do gasification of biomass. That allows us to avoid fossil fuels entirely. You cannot easily run an internal combustion engine on biomass.
Sure you can produce ethanol or biodiesel from plants, but that is not as attractive as gasifying wood pellet. In particular because the latter does not compete with agricultural land.
It’s not that clear-cut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_energy_efficiency:
”Taking the conversion factor of 2.58 in France into account (see Embodied energy#Electricity), we would find an efficiency of about 0.5/2.58 or 19 %, which corresponds to the order of magnitude of the balance of the combustion vehicles, according to the diagram of the Department of energy (where the efficiency of combustion vehicles is less than 20%). By the way, according to the French energy agency (ADEME), the primary energy consumption of electric vehicles and combustion-powered ones would be approximately equivalent”
I think that even ignores the higher weight of electric cars. Because of that, I think it’s better for the world to buy a small ICE than to buy a Tesla (for the local environment, things are different)
But (I suspect) it's still better to burn gasoline than coal.
I live in a densely populated country. Even a relatively minor accident at a nuclear facility would trigger a huge evacuation (I've seen the disaster control plans), causing major economic harm. Also my country does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly. Nuclear does not look like the sane option here.
Can you cite any sources for that or explain it a bit more?
Aside from particulate matter in exhaust, regenerative braking doesn't produce dust like friction braking does, thus I'd expect electric cars to produce much less dust than ICE vehicles.
That said, the contribution is tiny - on the order of 2.5% of total roadside PM10.
https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/atmosphere/atmosphere-10-0...
I don’t think you realize how little there is to deal with. It could easily be exported to a competent country.
It’s shocking how people are willing to effectively endorse burning fossil fuels for base load to destroy the environment over the next 50 years because of something that might be a problem in a few thousand years.
This is utter nonsense. Electric vehicles have no direct emissions, including no direct emissions of fine dust. You are confusing this with emissions during production. My point is about emissions at the location of a car's use.
> The CO2 and NOx combustion engines produces are not that dangerous to our health.
If this was true, there would have been no diesel scandal at all. However, car exhaust is indeed very dangerous to your health, especially if you live next to heavy traffic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_eff...
> Soot, mainly produced by heavy diesel engines, is also a dangerous form of polution, but most trucks should have filters for those by now.
They should, but reality is different
- https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/abgasskandal-manipuliert...
- https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2017/wp29/WP.2...
QUOTE
Traffic related particles can be distinguished into: exhaust traffic related particles, which are emitted as a result of incomplete fuel combustion and lubricant volatilization during the combustion procedure, and nonexhaust traffic related particles, which are either generated from non-exhaust traffic related sources such as brake, tyre, clutch and road surface wear or already exist in the environment as deposited material and become resuspended due to traffic induced turbulence.
It is estimated that exhaust and non-exhaust sources contribute almost equally to total traffic-related PM10 emissions. However, as exhaust emissions control become stricter, relative contributions of non-exhaust sources to traffic related emissions will increasingly become more significant.
END QUOTE
Source: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JR...
So if this "estimate" (i.e. conjecture) is on point, EV produce less than half of the emissions of an ICE car currently (EV have 0 exhaust emissions) and will continue to produce much less even when ICE are somewhat improved (and manufacturers stop defrauding customers). Let's not forget that EV also brake less than ICE cars.
Have you ever changed a tire on Tesla because it was worn down? Where do you think the rubber in the old tire went when it was worn down? Emitted into the environment, that’s where.
The study my comment links to notes that only 0.1-10% (depending on conditions) of tire wear meets that criteria, the rest are all more coarse particles.
So you’d agree with doing them in parallel?
Do you think car manufacturers should wait to make electric cars until all power plants have a timeline to convert? Or that power plants should wait until all car manufacturers are switching? Or that they should both act without waiting for the other?
A typical EV in Germany has a carbon footprint of a vehicle burning anywhere in the range of 2-5l/100km(including manufacturing).
EVs in Germany are consistently less carbon intensive than ICE cars - especially in the city.