Just a friendly reminder (and I do mean friendly. no one should be angry or jerky about this) that “clean energy” uses dirty energy. Specifically: electric cars use fossil fuels…
In case you are wondering: yes, coal is a fossil fuel…
Some just try to fool the public about this but others acknowledge the dirty fuel use in clean energy but claim that vehicles reduce carbon dioxide emissions cuz they use less fossil fuel than burning gas in a vehicle engine to make it go, but… the data isn’t conclusive that that is true:
The Greenpeace / Transport & Environment report’s research states that while PHEV manufacturers cite official test results showing CO2 emissions averaging 44g per km, they actually emit more like 117g per km in real use, which is much closer to the value for petrol and diesel cars of 164-7g per km. This is because the true emissions of a PHEV depend on how you drive it. If you don’t plug it in, a PHEV behaves like a conventional hybrid, except with about 200kg more batteries, which are being lugged around for no reason. Also, if you drive a PHEV fast, the fossil-fuel engine will fire up anyway, negating the emissions benefits of battery power.
Based on these findings, Greenpeace is arguing that car manufacturers are simply using PHEVs as an excuse not to stop manufacturing polluting internal combustion engines, and that this vehicle type should be banned alongside pure petrol and diesel in a decade or so as a result. Their arguments are not completely lacking in merit. Lots of people will have purchased a PHEV for the reduced tax due to their low official CO2 emissions, and once they’ve bought the car don’t care about driving it in a way that actually produces this ecological outcome. Both the manufacturers and owners can pretend to adopt green behaviour without actually bothering to do so.