Paper on GHG effects as a function of transportation fuel

I wish they had included the average fuel efficient gas vehicle as another data point.
It also would have been nice if they had not made the assumption that all oil was conventional.

Unlike many of these cherry picked papers they did at least give a decent life to BEVs (160,000 miles).

 

In some parts of the world, urban transportation is dominated by 2 (or 3) wheeled vehicles, internal combustion engine about 250 cubic cm. Nothing like a catalytic converter at the back end. These can have a strong effect on urban air quality.

As we are beginning to realize, poor urban air quality can reduce lifespans by years to decade. Even if you never fall off the scooter and crack your head.

 

They didn't really decide that all oil was conventional, they decided US produced oil was conventional (bakkan and eagleford shale were not included). It attributed oil sands pollution to canada where it is produced, and did not consider Canadian deaths or pollution impacts in nigeria or Venezuela. They did include coal mining pollution, but it is doubtfull to me that bevs make that worse, we seem to be mining today to export, and we need better mining rules.

What the study did find was natural gas, wind, solar, geothermal put in a plug-in is better for the environment than gasoline which should come to a suprise to no one. They found that if the electricity came from our old coal power plants that plug-in miles were worse for the environment than gasoline. They did not consider what the mix would be to charge any particular car, but gave numbers for individuals to find out their mix, maybe choose wind or solar, and calculate how much better or worse than gasoline. Only conventional, not fracked natural gas was considered. Good research confirming what most of us already knew, but somehow put together in ways that it seems that it was saying bevs were bad for china. We don't know that, they import a lot of oil (although less than the US) and may consider being dependant on OPEC worse than coal exporters like australia and the US that don't attempt energy blackmail.

 

The article tried to limit the scope of its conclusions, but the real point is this: coal is bad
Cars, schmars. Get rid of coal.

Stop wasting money on cars, and spend it on clean electricity infrastructure and production.

 

So, the war on coal is on, after all, and the 19th century is not to be replayed (bigger this time) in the 21st. I like the sound of that. But how will we increase energy supply to the poorest 2 billion or so? They need it.

Burning "the wrong things" for energy is a health issue. How many millions are having shorter lives from it depends on which studies one might prefer.

The global thing is (seems to me to be) improving everyones' situation without proposing so much damage to Coal, Inc., that they throw down so much money so as to buy the next election cycle.

Thread the needle. Help people first. CO2 can wait, maybe sorta kinda.

 

There is a dying of coal in the US, not a war. If it was a war, old coal platts would be stripped of their grandfathering, and all would need to comply (build scrubbers) with higher regulations or shut down. This will take 50 years in the US to get rid of most of the dirtiest power plants, unless laws change.

Coal is increasing in Japan, China, Inida at an unsustainable rate. The last climate talks resulted in a punt. When emissions peak in those 3 populous nations idk, but clearly they will build more coal before this is over. I hope that coal tech pushes forward so that it is cleaner perhaps with ccs.

Keys to the slow dying of coal in the US, was the slow repeal of pro coal regulations that both stopped natural gas power plants from being built and charged nothing for coal plant pollution. A little over 20 years ago we set a cap and trade on some coal pollution to stop acid rain, and it worked. The cap and trade of coal pollution was small and clear and helped fixed a agreed on problem. The latest congressional cap and trade was long and complicated with major carve outs and giveaways a quite different type of bill that failed.

 

I don't think the study was saying electric cars ran on coal, it was just taking up the "coal case". Lots of good information showing where electric cars are going in, and coal plants are closing at the same time.

To analyse particulate emissions first look at the cap and trade states. These 21 states have caps based on SO2 and NOx, and these make defacto caps on PM from the smoke stack. These are east coast and Midwest. Adding more load to the grid in these states has no influence on PM as it really is capped. Then we can look at the left coast (Washington, Oregon, and California) which has extremely low coal, and woosh, low PM smoke stack in 24 states for additional electrical load.

EPA set a rule in 2005 that all new coal plants needed scrubbers, which made the plants emit less than 2% of the PM as pre 2005 non-scrubbered plants. Cross state pollution rules now are shutting down some of the grandfathered plants. This means that bulk of emissions in the other 26 states is coming from 40+ year old grandfathered coal plants. When the CAA (clean air act) was passed congress thought these would close down rapidly, but they seem to stay around forever. In 21 states the epa can simply lower caps and it will close these plants quicly, and again the left coast does not have a problem, but some of the remaining 26 states could use new rules to say close or scrub these plants in the next decade. I think congress would be amenable to remove grandfathering and removing the new epa rule practically requiring ccs on new coal plants. Unfortunately epa and democratic party seems more intent on reducing ghg from new plants instead of shutting down the heaviest polluting (and high ghg) old ones, and the republican party seems to want to fight any shutdowns or new regulations.

I'm sure the PM emissions is high from mining is high, and these need to be reduced through other epa action. It can use its power under the clean water act to end some of the practices that both reduce mining employment and lead to high PM emissions (strip mining and mountain top removal).

 

Looks like a useful analysis.
But the bigger picture, although I am not up-to-date on EV-advocate Chelsea Sexton's latest thinking, she has in the past recommended not stressing environmental advantages of EV, because they can be hard to prove and maybe not true in some cases. Same is true with ethanol.

 

You can find PM2.5 from most power plants. This is a good spot for understanding the rules.
Particulates and coal - SourceWatch
and what the epa is doing about it.

so if you believe the rule will stand, in 6 years we won't have much of a problem outside of california, and california PM has little to do with coal. Those 59 counties outside of california likely have coal or other industrial polution that can be scrubbed or shut down and replaced with less polluting plants.