tagged w/ EVs
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Electric vehicles got a powerful boost today as the EPA and U.S. Department of Transportation announced their new rules for fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions standards, but it won’t last forever.
The key phrase is “zero emissions.”
Counting only tailpipe emissions, EVs clock in at zero emissions. That’s great news for automakers, who under the new rules will have to meet a fleetwide average greenhouse gas standard of 250 grams per mile by 2016 (roughly equivalent to 35.5 miles per gallon).
But that’s not the whole story, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explained:
Electric vehicles are frequently advertised as zero emissions, but “we all know that that’s not entirely true, because when you plug in, there’s some emissions from the source." Currently in the U.S., that source is often burning coal, and that means greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA suggested in the new rule that it intends to eventually take power source emissions into account when calculating electric vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions.
It isn't a number that can be easily ignored. According to the EPA’s calculations, for a midsize car, electricity’s upstream emissions are about three times higher than gasoline’s upstream emissions. ...
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100401/electric-vehicles-losing-their-zero-emissions-claim-u-sElectric vehicles got a powerful boost today as the EPA and U.S. Department of... more
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