Featured Report: the phase-out of gas and adoption of electric vehicles!

I think one could make the argument that Tesla already has a pretty stellar charging infrastructure and will be even much better a year from now.
And don't forget a very large percentage of Americans can charge at home.

 

You do realize the air and water is cleaner in texas than california. Texas also has taken more steps to effectively manage air and water pollution. Remember that movie erin brokovich? Yep California doesn't do a tolerable job cleaning up existing pollution. California's water crisis is dangerous, just like Flint's. Will the state clean it up once and for all? - LA Times Texas is not good on water pollution, and the houston floods with the chemical fire, will make it worse. Still its not as bad as california. That's a pretty low bar. Perhaps only michigan and oklahoma are worse.


I give my states TCEQ an F for fighting environmental groups and often the EPA in favor of industry. One of the best things that happened for Houston's air was having the universities actually help figure out scientifically where the pollution was coming from, and reducing the worst sources. Imagine if the small agency was actually doing a good job ;-) I give CARB in the last 2 decades an F also. Instead of really fighting pollution as they did at the start with catalytic converter and electronic ignition, they seem tied up in green house gas politics. One of the big sources of pollution in the houston area was the BP texas city refinery, which thankfully was bought by marathon who are running it in a way that doesn't kill people or have major accidents that leak high levels of pollution. California Leads the nation in air pollution by a large measure, and EPA thinks it will probably be the only state soon in non-attainment. California has 7 of the the top 10 in air pollution MSAs and IIRC has 3 out of the top 3. Now will replacing all the light cars and trucks with bevs and fuel cell vehicles clean up a lot more pollution than simply mandating new cars have to pollute as low as the gen III prius or be fined? No of course not, but they want to regulate the car industry, not clean up pollution. Would building more ccgt plants with scrubbers and shutting down old natural gas thermal plants and reduce higher polluting imports reduce more ghg than the current plan? Of course it would, but that would also allow electricity prices to fall, and wind to better integrate, which might cause more electrical demand, which means less power to the regulators.

Most states do better than california and texas with EPA regulation and their implementation. California regularly gets waivers to pollute more than the epa requires.

 

China at the front?...................Guess where everyone will be buying the batteries...............

 

Only because China is doing more to support the industry than anyone else.

 

Very different geography. How many mountain ranges of considerable height does Texas have trapping any pollution to hover over populated areas?

 

i'm no expert, but things sound pretty awful in houston, according to tochatihu.

 

12 years ago Houston and dallas were getting as bad california. In 2016 california had the worst 4 of 4 and 7 of the worst 8 MSA in terms of ozone, and 7 of the worst 7 in terms of particulate pollution. Air pollution in Houston is bad, but it fell to 11 in terms of ozone and 16 in terms of particulate pollution. Local efforts with the university community overriding federal and state regulators made the difference. I'm not sure if it will keep improving with the rapid population growth and hurricane rebuilding, but I'm hopeful.

Houston is a pollution mess right now. A chemical plant that I think should have had the emergency generator higher, leaked and burned its storage tanks. All sorts of things washed out into the waters of houston, Beaumont, and Port Arthur in that horrendous hurricane. Many places got over 50" of rain in a short period of time, there is just no way a water system is prepared for that. 45 water treatment plants on the gulf coast had to shut down. Most are up and providing clean drinking water today. Rebuilding will probably take a decade there was so much damage.

Well texas does have mountains, but no we didn't pack a huge population into a place with stagnant air. I don't think my state does a good job environmentally, but I did live and work in california and was quite disapointed that the state could not pull off a big pollution reduction effort to stop being number one given all the money and resources the state took for the effort. I think the objective for california should be the 48th in worst air quality instead of 50 as they have been. I object to thinking CARB is anymore the gold standard for anything, as a great standard would take local conditions into account, and improve faster. There are a great number of things that they could be doing that they aren't. They definitely have made new cars lower polluting and more expensive, but have many high polluting older cars on the road. Agricultural pollution is very high, and power plant pollution is much higher than it should be because importing power and keeping older less efficient plants running is a priority.

 

2018 might be the year that a BEV's total cost of ownership will match that of an equivalent traditional car.

 

i don't know what other state has or will take the lead over cali and carb. all the progressive states are following, not leading.
texas doesn't even do emissions inspections, do they?

 

Calm my friends. Comparing state environmental practices doesn't really make a lot of sense. For example, the NorthWest forest fires, how to we compare them to a plains state?

I've been to Houston many times over the years and remember eyes burning in the 1980s that over time became not a problem. Being from Oklahoma, I know what a hydrogen sulfide, sour-well blowout means. Heck, I've even visited:

You may think this is pretty but he IR heat is intense!

What I'm suggesting is we don't need to cast aspersions on the efforts of states we don't live in. I live in Alabama and there are creek we can't eat the fish we catch because of the coal flu mercury. Some of that mercury comes from Mississippi.

I agree that Houston 'sucks less' after experiencing the downstream air from their refineries. Regardless of their current conditions, they are not totally clueless. We reserve that for Mississippi. <GRINS>

As for California, it is hard to criticize them when smoke from NorthWest forest fires blows across their border. Then there is a pretty important agricultural sector and the legacy oil refineries. So let's kinda take a step back and see the big picture.

Bob Wilson

 

Couldn't have said it better.

 

While not focused on cars specifically, I believe Rebecca Otto’s proposed energy plan for Minnesota would.
Rebecca Otto&#8217;s Clean Energy Plan for Minnesota &#8211; Greg Laden&#039;s Blog
Now, California isn’t standing still, and a larger percentage of improvement doesn’t necessarily mean we will have a bigger impact. California is huge, so even a 50% improvement in MN wouldn’t overcome a 10% improvement in CA.

 

is minnersoter a carb state?

 

Nope

 

Still recovering from Jesse?