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- Chad Mumm
Of all the videos I've ever been involved in, this is the weirdest. Of course it's also the most-viewed in YouTube now http://t.co/bx60OMoI
- Terrence O'Brien
Images like this are perhaps a bit too telling. http://t.co/yaVPeb6X
- Chad Mumm
Spelling Bee winning words… set to music: http://t.co/arLuWfUZ!
- Tim Stevens
New @EngadgetDistro, in which @bheater profiles the wild ride of Thomas Dolby http://t.co/0XjjEclJ







Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
(Unverified)Jan 18th 2008 1:59PM
Electric cars fueled by standard coal fired power plants would reduce CO2 and other pollutants by 2/3!
How can this be? A coal fired power plant converts 58% of fossil fuel to electricity. A gasoline engine converts 19% to mechanical energy. 58%/19% = 3.05 OR 3 times the actual extracted energy for the same fossil fuel content.
AND at a cost of less than 50 cents per gallon energy equivalent electric cars could cut fuel bills by 83% (50 cents per gallon equivalent vs Gasoline at $3 per gallon).
I wonder how the emissions to generate 6.2 Kilowatt hours from a standard, non-sequestering coal fired power plant would compare with burning 1 gallon of gasoline? 6.2 Kwh is the actual mechanical energy produced by 1 gallon of gasoline in a modern internal combustion engine (at 19% efficiency). For every gallon of gasoline burned, approximately 22 pounds of CO2 are created. Assuming the local grid is 100% coal-fired (which only half of it is); roughly 5 lbs of coal would be consumed to create that 5kWh. Depending on the grade and carbon content of the coal, one kilowatt hour creates approximately 1.4 pounds of CO2. This comes to 8.7 lbs for the same energy but supplied by a “dirty” coal fired power plant vs 22 lbs from Gasoline. I suspect the other pollutants would likely be in similar ratio or less.
Right now we can't burn coal in our cars. Convert to electric cars and all energy sources level. In effect we could burn Coal, Nuclear, Hydro, photovoltaic, wind, tidal current, methane, Biomass, and even gasoline (if we were so stupid to do so) once electricity is the primary fuel.