Electric Vehicles: What’s in your tank?

With the steady demand for electric vehicles by consumers and businesses

alike there’s no doubt that going green has finally become more than just a catch phrase in our country. And while no one would argue that electric vehicles emit less greenhouse gases than conventional vehicles, it does raise the question of how we will be generating the electricity to power them.

Case in point, approximately 45 percent of electricity generated in the US

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is powered by coal, 23 percent by natural gas, 20 percent by nuclear, 7 percent by hydro, 2 percent by wind, and 0 percent (well- really 0.3) by solar. In order to gain the environmental benefits of this new technology we’ll need more clean energy sources – and soon. Otherwise we run the risk of doing more harm than good when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions.

To help put this in perspective here are some “back of the envelope” emission/ fuel source calculations from a friend of ours at the EIA:

The average passenger vehicle consumes about 600 gallons of gasoline per

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year (assuming about 25 MPG, and about 20,000 miles per year).

If the car runs on gasoline, the emissions are about 11,000 pounds of CO2 per vehicle per year.
If the car runs on electricity and the electricity were supplied by coal plants, you are looking at about 45,261 pounds of CO2 emissions per vehicle per year.

That’s right. A single electric car powered by coal would essentially create four times the amount of CO2 emissions than a regular gas guzzling vehicle. And despite all the “clean energy” bragging by natural gas proponents – it would emit twice as much carbon as regular ol’ gasoline.

If the car runs on electricity and the electricity is supplied by nuclear plants, you are looking at about 739 pounds CO2 emissions per vehicle per year. And that’s being very conservative. With typical ISL mining, and if the uranium enrichment uses less energy-intensive centrifuges powered by nuclear energy, then the nuclear life cycle CO2 emissions are virtually non-existent.

Unless we start adding more clean energy sources, like nuclear, to our base load supply we’re better off pulling up to the pump when it comes to environmental stewardship.