"Green cars Have a Dirty Little Secret"....WSJ

[Themoo]

Has anyone read the article about electric cars in the Wall Street Journal. The message was that the production of "green cars" produces significantly more emissions than a convention car. ( 30,000 lbs of carbon-dioxide versus 14,000 lbs for a car utilizing gasoline.) which means that a green car already has the equivalent of 80,000 miles of travel based on emissions. The article was related to electric cars, BUT hybrid cars with lithium batteries add to the emissions caused by their production. If you think you are causing less pollution, you are not taking into account the manufacturing of the vehicle; it might be a wash at best! We can only hope for more innovation in the future so emissions related to production of green vehicles decrease.

[wab]

YEP pretty old news

We've been calling the Prius a brown car for a couple of yrs.

 

wab

[valkraider]

At the risk of feeding the troll:

 

I see your one study and raise you a few more studies which say the opposite.

 

First, since you didn't link to the article - here it is:

 

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472

 

Now - for differing studies and articles:

 

http://m.good.is/posts/so-are-electric-cars-better-batteries-and-all/

 

http://www.treehugger.com/cars/life-cycle-analysis-of-electric-car-shows-battery-has-only-minor-impact.html

 

http://www.treehugger.com/cars/life-cycle-analysis-compares-footprint-of-gas-and-electric-passenger-cars.html

 

http://m.inhabitat.com/inhabitat/#!/entry/life-cycle-assessment-proves-electric-vehicles-are-a-cleaner-choice,509c30d3d7fc7b567050a9d9

 

(A couple of those links reference a single study but come at it with different angles)

 

So, here is actually an article which references the same study as the WSJ article mentioned by the original post:

 

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/green-driving/news-and-notes/are-electric-vehicles-bad-for-the-environment/article4618416/

 

There are some good insights in there.

 

For example, the manufacture of advanced batteries is improving every day and in comparison to the automobile is really a young industry. So the impact of battery production stands to continually get more efficient as the industry matures while the internal combustion industry has had 100 years of maturation.

 

Or for example the fact that our electrical grid is getting cleaner and more efficient every year. Internal combustion burns petroleum every mile no matter what, but every incremental improvement to our electrical grid instantly makes every single electric car cleaner and more efficient.

 

Or the fact that batteries can be used long after they are no longer in the car, and work is just beginning to make use of old EV batteries which can't power a car but could still be used to store wind or solar energy, or as a business or home UPS, or for emergency systems.

 

Or the fact that battery recycling is getting more and more efficient and cleaner every day?

 

Or the fact that no one in the petroleum industry likes to admit that simply refining a gallon of gasoline consumes the same amount of electricity as driving an electric car 12 to 15 miles?

 

Now consider the fact that electricity is produced domestically, regionally, and locally. That is a big difference too.

 

So no one has a true 100% handle on the numbers exactly. We could toss figures back and forth all day. But comparing a mature 100 year old industry to a young brand new industry is tough. There is a lot of room for growth and improvement in battery tech, and not everyone agrees on the hard numbers anyway.

 

So yeah - that should be enough to kick off some debate. :)

[Themoo]

Thanks for the information. After reading the wsj article, I had to think of other reasons to buy a C Max.... Quiet ride, smaller vehicle, would not have to crawl into the drivers seat, heavier small car, nice ride, better steering.

When I visited the Kansas City Car Show last week, I knew more about the C Max than the sales people that were there. Not always easy to get the big picture about a new model.

[RachelnLa]

The Internet can provide whatever you are looking for.

[C-MaxJaxon]

There's no denying that manufacturing all the thousands of parts that go into an automobile and shipping it on a diesel powered truck or train from the assembly plant to your local dealer produces substantial emissions. It's going to be more environmentally friendly to buy a fuel efficient used vehicle whether hybrid, plugin or not.

[Themoo]

I guess the point of the article was that the emissions generated to produce a green car was substantially higher compared to a car running on gasoline. Also, it would take a long time to show any benefit to the over all emissions related to the life of the car. There are other features about the car to like. I just wish that the green cars would not cause as much carbon dioxide in order to be manufactured compared to the standard car.

Edited March 12, 2013 by Themoo

[valkraider]

But those numbers are debatable. Not everyone who has studied it agree. I found at least three studies which dispute the one the original poster is talking about.

 

That's my point.

 

The studies will say whatever you want them to...

[C-MaxSea]

Thanks for setting the record straighter, Valk, much appreciated!  Nick

[valkraider]

I'm not giving EVs a free pass.

 

Just saying that one study does not a fact make.

 

;)

 

Everything we produce has serious impacts, and we should absolutely understand them.

 

But overly politicizing the issue with titles like "green cars dirty little secret" helps nothing. It's sensationalist journalism designed to sell to a population contingent who is already on the defensive about the perceived threats to their way of life.

 

Change can be scary to some.

 

Yes, battery production does use raw materials. So does gasoline production.

 

The actual numbers are harder to nail down.

[Tdefny]

We will never get to the "perfect" solution unless we start somewhere. EVs have a lot of room for growth, but it is nice to be able to participate in the process and reap some of the other benefits along the way. My Max drives better than any car I have ever owned and I expect lifetime maintenance costs to be low, as they have been so far on my Prius.

[Themoo]

Well said.......I agree. It is the way many innovations begin.

[Max Power]

It will require far less CO2 and create less pollution to recycle these batteries than it take make a new one.  You only have to dig it out of the ground once.  

 

There is nothing recyclable about gasoline.

 

Our entire energy future is dependent on storage, not production.  The sun, tides, and winds produces more than enough energy. We can collect it, but we still stink at storing it. And yes, I know we need to find less disruptive ways to collect it.  Current windmills designs aren't all that great for various reasons.

 

I view buying a hybrid at this point as one way to invest in new battery technology.

[valkraider]

The long tail is unknown yet because the cars are so new.

 

But if after a Leaf battery has driven 150,000 miles it is taken out and then used for another 10 years as a way to store solar or wind power or used as an UPS unit for a small business, then we reduce that carbon footprint even more.

 

A battery with 60% of its original capacity is not too good for a car but still holds a lot of juice.

 

Consider the relatively small Energi battery. It is 7.6Kw. It could still hold 5Kw after its life in a car. That's like an hour or two of the average American household...

 

We could put banks of old EV batteries in the bases of windmills to absorb excess production and then provide the juice in times of reduced production, reducing the fluctuations of wind power.

 

We could take 10 old Energi batteries and make a bank roughly the size of a freezer that could store solar electricity from all day and use it all night allowing houses to operate completely off grid...

 

Lots of possibilities....

[valkraider]

Plug-in Cars .com has a good article about the controversy over the numbers

[PWBarrett]

Lots of good comments linked to that article.

[darrelld]

http://www.electricdrive.org/index.php?ht=d/ReleaseDetails/i/35537/pid/27134

Checking a Skeptic’s Fuzzy Math

Bjorn Lomborg’s recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret,” argues that the environmental benefits of grid-connected vehicles do not justify federal investment.  The author is mistaken on both the benefits to the environment and the benefits to the taxpayer. 

  

A substantial body of scholarship has already demonstrated the greenhouse gas benefits of grid connected vehicles.  Studies such as those by EPRI/NRDC and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have found that, even with a coal-dominated grid, the greenhouse gas benefits of grid-connected vehicle exceed those of conventional vehicles.  The UCS studied the total emissions reductions of electric drive in every region of the country.  They concluded that no matter where in the U.S. an EV is charged and operated, electric drive vehicles have fewer total well-to-wheel emissions than the average gasoline-powered vehicle sold today.  Even when charging an EV in regions with the dirtiest grid, it would still produce fewer emissions than the average new compact gasoline-powered vehicle.

 

[valkraider]

To be fair and honest, both my link and the one darrelld just posted are both to sites who cater to an EV audience.

 

They both cite and link to their sources. While they are clearly biased and defensive - their math and their points stand on their own.

 

The WSJ article could have been written asking important questions about how we can get cleaner and more efficient, and where we should be focusing our energy in. Instead the WSJ article framed it in a way which was clearly not interested in progress - but rather intended more as link-bait for both outraged EV enthusiasts and anti-EV readers.

 

Here is the truth: Electricity and its storage+transmission is getting cleaner and more renewable, at a rapid pace. The ability to utilize it for transportation is advancing incredibly fast.

 

Petroleum is getting harder, more expensive, and more environmentally risky to find while the petroleum and internal combustion technology is certainly improving but it's also very mature so is improving at a much lower rate than grid powered vehicles.

 

Interestingly, this weekend while wandering in Portland I found a garage which was on the register of historic places.

 

It was originally "Rose City Electric Automobile Garage". It is one of the two first car dealerships built in Portland. It sold and serviced electric vehicles back in 1910. It was built at its location because two DC powered streetcar lines intersected there and the garage had ample John power DC electricity.

 

We abandoned electric vehicles shortly thereafter. Along with streetcars. (There is a theory of conspiracy between Goodyear, Standard Oil, and General Motors).

 

Imagine where we would be if we had 100 years of refining and developing the electric vehicle instead of the petroleum powered vehicles...

[MikeB]

Something else to remember: WSJ has the same owners as Fox News. So if it's possible to find an anti-EV and pro-Oil analysis, those are the people who are going to find it (or fabricate it).

[zhackwyatt]

Something else to remember: WSJ has the same owners as Fox News. So if it's possible to find an anti-EV and pro-Oil analysis, those are the people who are going to find it (or fabricate it).

Do you have any facts to back that up?

 

I could make accusations that the people who disagree with the WSJ's claims are fabricating things for their intent as well.

[valkraider]

There is nothing to back up.

 

The bias of News Corp. is well established.

 

The point is that just as PlugInCars.com is biased in support of EVs, things produced by News Corp. are likely to be biased against EVs.

 

It's a normal part of society and human nature. We should make every effort to look at more than one source to help get to the truth hidden beneath the bias.

 

It does no one any good to stubbornly cling to politics. Instead lets rise above it and just be honest with eachother!

[zhackwyatt]

There is nothing to back up.

 

The bias of News Corp. is well established.

 

The point is that just as PlugInCars.com is biased in support of EVs, things produced by News Corp. are likely to be biased against EVs.

 

It's a normal part of society and human nature. We should make every effort to look at more than one source to help get to the truth hidden beneath the bias.

 

It does no one any good to stubbornly cling to politics. Instead lets rise above it and just be honest with eachother!

I don't disagree with any of that.  The bias of other media outlets is also well established.  And accusations that anything from News corp can't be trusted (which is the way I read the original statement, which I may have been wrong in) to me isn't fair at all.  Instead of saying, hey look, News corp is responsible for this so don't trust it, to me is not fair.  If it was, hey look, I found dissenting information, here it is then thats a totally different thing.   Every place you get news from you have to have an independent fact check now days.

[valkraider]

I think that was the point trying to be made. Hard to sense emotion in text.

 

Everywhere has a bias (myself included). If Rupert Murdoch wants to spin stuff - it's his money.

 

I would like people to know, however, that they do spin stuff. Just because FOX said it doesn't make it anymore reliable than if Huffington Post said it.

 

Generally we should always consider the source.

 

I only trust Jon Stewart. ;)