Easy CO2 Calculation for Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:05:00 GMT
Sometimes you will hear that electric vehicles produce more CO2 than gas vehicles, however, this isn’t true. Let’s look at an easy CO2 calculation to see why.
Burning a gallon of gas creates 20 lbs of CO2. So a car that gets an average of 20 MPG produces 1 lb of CO2 per mile. Ok so far?
Electric cars get an average of 3 miles per kWh and 1 kWh creates an average of 1.3 lbs of CO2. So an electric car produces about 0.4 lbs of CO2 per mile. So electric cars produce only about 40% as much CO2 as gas cars. Easy, right?
Ok, now let’s look at the worst case for electric vehicles. If you have a really efficient hybrid gas car, you might get 50 miles per gallon, which will produce 0.4 lbs of CO2 per mile. And if you have an inefficient electric vehicle that gets 2 miles per kWh and charges up with coal electricity that produces 2 lbs per kWh, the electric vehicle will produce 1 lb of CO2 per mile, or about twice that of the hybrid gas car but still the same as the average car.
So while an inefficient electric car using coal-fired electricity will produce more CO2 than a really efficient hybrid gas car, electric cars on average produce less than half as much CO2 as gas-powered cars. In addition, electric car CO2 emissions will continually get better as more renewable energy is used and coal-fired power plants become cleaner and more efficient. And if you install solar panels on your house to charge your car, your electric vehicle CO2 emissions will drop to nothing. Try to do that with a gas-powered vehicle!
(Reference: EIA CO2 Emissions Report)