CO2 Emissions
OK Heres the rundown.
Total US CO2 annual emissions: 6 billion metric tons
Electric Generation: 2 billion tons
Commercial Transport: 1.7 billion tons
Reidential Use: 1 billion tons
Commercial Use: 1 billion tons
Residental Autos: 0 .3 billion tons
These data raise two problems:
1. If everyone in U.S. changed to drive a Volt, the 0.3 billion tons might just be shifted into the electricity generation category and result in no net drop in CO2 output.
2. Even if the Volt did cut net CO2 emissions, it would have no overall effect on total U.S. CO2 output, becasue of the small contributin of residential auto use.
This means we must convince GM and the other automakers to use this tehcnology in commercial vehicles, and we must switch to alternative energy generation sources. I like wind-powered electrolysis to generate hydrogen best.
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5 Responses to “CO2 Emissions”
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January 19th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
“1. If everyone in U.S. changed to drive a Volt, the 0.3 billion tons might just be shifted into the electricity generation category and result in no net drop in CO2 output.”
Excuse me ? Electricity is not all coal burning. I live in Ontario and af far as I know, most of our electricity comes from nuclear and hydro with only some coal. So, yes, the energy demand will be shifted to electricity, but it’s much cleaner than gas burning.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
another comment.
in Ontario, (some data from I picked up, a bit old though - from 1999) the green house gas production by vehicles is 27%. that’s a good chunk. if Volt promisses to cut it, say, in half, that’d be a huge deal. Somebody needs to do math on all of it, but i think it’s worth it totally.
not to mention that it’s easy enough to run outdoor power cords at offices, so people with longer commute can recharge, plus all advances in electicity generation will be automatically spread to automotive industry, etc. and there seems to be no fundamental reason trucks and tractors can’t eventually be the same way, it just takes time to develop the technology.
anyway, hope Volt works out, so more can be build on that technology. it all needs to start going into masses, otherwise nothing will happen
January 19th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
“I like wind-powered electrolysis to generate hydrogen best.”
Nah, electrolysis isn’t all that efficient, and hydrogen-based vehicles really only convert the energy from the hydrogen back to electricity anyway. We can just bypass the whole hydrogen thing and use electricity as the currency for exchanging energy.
The energy from a wind-powered station is (essentially) instantly available to charge an electric vehicle. Hydrogen, on the other hand, must be extracted, delivered and stored using a complicated infrastructure that isn’t going to be established anytime soon.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Wrong! Let’s see, let’s list all the alternatives available:
1 - Pebble bed nuclear reactor technology.
2 - Solar powered charging stations (where feasible).
3 - Wind powered charging stations (where feasible).
4 - Wave powered charging stations (where feasible).
5 - Geothermal power stations (where feasible).
By using each technology with existing solutions and where possible, together the need for more power PLUS the reduction of overall pollution can be achieved. The issue at hand is corporate greed is preventing us from moving forward into the 21st century. The other preventative is the overall attitude towards green energy (thanks to corporate slandering and political bad mouthing) the general population is ignorant of the true benefits and gains we as a race can achieve with going green.
By installing solar panels onto homes and creating a re-charging infra-structure that is green reliant and independent from the grid we can overcome the problems WE have created.
Yes global warming is a natural occurrence but only a blind fool would believe that we have not had a massive and negative influence. It’s time to move into the 21st century and stop with the old way of thinking. So long as we continue to limit ourselves we will continue to make the same stupid mistakes.
January 28th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Why such a negative premise without doing any research? The data is really out there, any EAA (Electric Auto Association) can give you the info that shows how much LESS energy an electric car uses, compared to a gasoline car and this automatically results in lower emissions, besides the fact that electricity is already produced from green sources and that the emissions control at a power plant is usually in better shape than on many cars.
Note that your data on CO2 production is in contrast with other data I found on the Internet, so please check your source.
(US car CO2 emissions are 20% of US energy related emissions, according to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1808314,00.html