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RE: Climate Change: A "Catastrophic" Flaw In The Discourse
Great post - well researched
The one concern I have is ... currently, most countries infrastructure is fossil fuel based power generation. Until the Solar powered shingles/wind/solar farms dramatically improve this situation, electric cars actually create more pollution per horsepower (insert whatever unit of power you prefer) than gasoline cars do.
It's a chicken and egg issue.
Hmm, I don't know about that. I'm fairly certain that at least Tesla Motor's carbon footprint per horsepower is smaller than any other gasoline automaker, but if not that would certainly be a problem. Nuclear fission seems like an ideal candidate for maximizing energy output per unit greenhouse gas generation. Something needs to change. Exactly what is outside the scope of this post.
Using a Tesla S as my example, it requires 85 KW to charge for 265 miles of use.
If the Power plant is coal, it generates 0.69 lbs of CO2 per mile.
If the Power plant is natural gas, it generates 0.39 lbs of CO2 per mile.
If the Power plant is Oil, it generates 0.55 lbs of CO2 per mile.
Using a gas tank of 16 gallons with an average MPG of 35.5, a normal gas car produces 0.55 lbs of CO2 per mile.
We just need to get our power plants onto Nuclear or Renewables!
I used the lbs of CO2 per substance from here:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11
I used the Tesla values from here:
https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/how-much-does-it-cost-fully-charge-model-s-85
And my CO2 for Gas Engines from here
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11
Agreed