Featured Electric Car Pollution Study

It would really need a breakdown showing degrees of damage to surface waters, subterranean, atmospheric, etc to give better understanding
.

 

Maybe I'm just stupid but why is the damage per ton of NOx?

It seems to me the damage to the environment is a fixed value on the amount of NOx emissions locally to the area.

That graph removes volume of emissions and replaced it with a sliding dollar value on an unknown QTY. Damage from NOx is non linear and it's damage potential is strongly correlated with the levels of other emissions which may or may not be present.
(NOx by itself is not a pollutant but it reacts synergistically with Voc, water, particulate and other pollutants to lead to smog, and as we reduce sulphur in fuel the potential of NOx to create classic smog is further reduced)

I suppose the graph must indirectly be a measure of how much pollution is being emitted in each area, more pollution on an exponential curve means more damage per unit of pollution but those type of graphs just confuse me with questions of what the baseline data is and isn't .

Ah well

 

Did you notice that the AEA paper (http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20150897) addresses EPA caps on page 3726?

The Appendices are available at https://assets.aeaweb.org/assets/production/files/2756.pdf if you are interested in pursuing further.

 

It's my understanding (could be wrong) that damage from specific emissions vary based on criteria such as population density, chemistry of the local air shed, etc. Typically, a ton of an emitted pollutant in an urban air shed is more damaging than a ton of that same emitted pollutant in a rural air shed.

NOx is somewhat more complicated because it titrates (destroys) ground-level ozone in certain atmospheric chemistry condition which are typically found in urban cores. This explains why NOx is less damaging in some largely urban counties than in some largely rural/remote counties, according to the AP2 map.

The map on the left side of the AP2 model developer's (Muller) web page is damage from SO2. The damage from SO2 is somewhat more uniform because it causes significant environmental damage from causing acid rain (in addition to damage to public health).

More information on model development can be found here

 

ACEEE/greenercars uses the CARB or EPA designations to determine how "clean" a car is. So when they say things like:

- "A Leaf EV is no cleaner than a Prius" or
- "Tesla Model S is equal to a Cruze Diesel in cleanliness,"

they are basing those conclusions on official CARB/EPA ratings (PZEV, ZEV, SULEV, etc) and estimated electricity-generation pollution. Those designations limit the maximum amount of NOx, HC, CO, and soot a car may emit.

MPG or MPGe scores determine CO output

 

About 2/3rds of California grid is generated in the state. Of the remaining 3rd, 1/3rd of that comes from cleanish power in the northwest and 2/3rds comes from the less cleanish but getting better southwest.

Coal only represents about 6% of the state's long-term contracted generation as shown in the table below and relatively little of its peak power "spot market" "unspecified" purchases.



My original source link for this table is now dead. It's a document published by the state. I know it can be found again by googling some of the quoted text but I'm too lazy right now.

From discussion in the document containing the table:

And...

 

I think to be scrupulously fair, we should include for the human walker or bicyclist the food required to supply the energy for the propulsion per mile , and the energy required to produce that many calories of food. When I last did that calculation for riding a bicycle, the efficiency of the typical body as a propulsion for a bicycle was not that great compared to an electric motor, and the energy required to produce the required food calories for me was surprisingly high. As wjtracy said, the fossil fuels are somewhat easily extractable whereas the process of growing food by modern, mechanized agriculture apparently requires a lot of energy per calorie of food.

 

Here you go fellow Jeff

Total Electricity System Power