Environment

3906 readers

1 users here now

Environmental and ecological discussion, particularly of things like weather and other natural phenomena (especially if they're not breaking news).

See also our Nature and Gardening community for discussion centered around things like hiking, animals in their natural habitat, and gardening (urban or rural).

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

EVs are lowering Bay Area's carbon footprint (news.berkeley.edu)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

these of course come with their own tradeoffs, but you take what you can get

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Most car pollution is via use, not production. EVs are cleaner, much cleaner - regardless of grid production.

To be precise, more than 85% of a gas-powered vehicle's lifetime emissions come from using the car, not from building the car. That's according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratory. And that means the new EV, despite its manufacturing costs, will be cleaner over time. - Source

It makes sense if you think about it, what's more likely to be more efficient (and hence cleaner), burning fossil fuels in a large facility, or in a bunch of your tiny engines? As we shift to a cleaner grid, that inefficiency gets larger.

Obviously, if we can shift to more public transit, we can get even cleaner, but any replacement is helping.