Environmental Benefits of an Electric Car
The environmental benefits of an electric car are many, helping to reduce pollution and to help change the energy economy.
For the individual consumer, the electric car affords an opportunity to decrease one’s carbon footprint significantly.
Efficiency
The generation of most electricity in the United States is from fossil sources and nearly half of that is coal, according to the US Department of Energy. Coal is more carbon-intensive than oil, resulting in a correspondingly large carbon footprint. The overall average efficiency of power derived from US power plants (which is 33 percent efficient) and applied to electric vehicles (which has a transmission loss of 9.5 percent) is 30 percent. 70 percent to 80 percent efficiency for the electric vehicles results in only around 20 percent efficiency when recharged from electrical sources derived from fossil fuels. That figure is comparable to the efficiency of an internal combustion engine. The efficiency of a gasoline engine is about 16 percent and 20 percent for a diesel engine.
However, if solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear energy as well as carbon capture for fossil fuel-powered plants were to become prevalent as alternate sources of electricity, battery-powered vehicles could produce less CO2, potentially zero. On the consumer end, the electric car can drastically reduce an individual’s carbon footprint, providing a great deal of environmental benefit. This, combined with economic benefits, make electric cars very attractive to ecologically minded consumers.
Costs
The actual result in terms of emissions depends on different refining and transportation costs in fueling a car. For example, using fossil-based grid electricity substantially negates the in-vehicle efficiency advantages of electric cars. This is because the major potential benefit of electric cars is to allow diverse renewable electricity sources to fuel cars.
An additional benefit to using electric cars is the fact that they are strangely silent – they do not produce nearly as much noise as combustion-powered vehicles, save for the noise of tires and wind displacement at higher speeds. Thus, their noise pollution is far lower than any other type of vehicle, according to electric cars nonprofit organizations.
