Electric Cars are not cleaner?

[rickaren]

Electric cars don’t deserve halo yet: study

Posted Tuesday, Oct 20, 2009, 3:57 pm in Employee News

Electric cars will not be dramatically cleaner than autos powered by fossil fuels until they rely less on electricity produced from conventional coal-fired power plants, scientists said on Monday, Reuters reported.

“For electric vehicles to become a major green alternative, the power fuel mix has to move away from coal, or cleaner coal technologies have to be developed,” said Jared Cohon, the chair of a National Research Council.

About half of U.S. power is generated by burning coal, which emits many times more of traditional pollutants, such as particulates and smog components, than natural gas, and about twice as much of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the story said. Nuclear and renewable power would have to generate a larger portion of U.S. power for electric cars to become much greener compared to gasoline-powered cars, said Cohan in an interview with Reuters.

Advances in coal burning, like capturing carbon at power plants for permanent burial underground, could also help electric cars become a cleaner alternative to vehicles powered by fossil fuels, he told the news service. Pollution from energy sources did $120 billion worth of damage to human health, agriculture and recreation in 2005, said a report sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the story said. (Reuters)