Campaigning with electric cars.

Sorry, meant the Times, not Time

Originally posted by mozzy Originally posted by johnr It is pretty funny listening to someone with an electric car tell you how green they are because all their electricity comes from renewables. In their mind the grid has a special cable to their house with only green energy flowing. Obviously when the wind is not blowing in their part of the country there is another wind turbine creating their energy 500 miles way with no transmission losses. Do they really believe that? Or is the point that electric cars have the potential to be fuelled by more environmentally sensitive  sources , whereas, combustion will always run on oil. Some days this will be 50% renewable, sometime 5%. On average it is 30%, and that's 30% better than a combustion engine. In the future it could be 100%. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/renewable-energy-electricity-new-record-uk-wind-solar-a7972266.html

This individual believed that as he was on a tariff that only bought green energy then sold it to customers that the electricity he received was in fact green. He could not see that a company buying electricity from wind farms or nuclear stations etc. in bulk and ensuring that they sold only as much as they bought to customers through monthly bills was not a guarantee that his electricity was in fact green. My suspicion is that he received green energy mixed with a lot of non green energies with the ratio depending upon his location and local weather conditions. But yes his car created no emissions either at electricity source or in use.

I'm just waiting for the great Battery Disposal Scandal of 2050, when the government realise there is no good way of disposing of millions of batteries containing acids and alkalines.
If you really want to be green don't buy an electric car - travel less, take public transport where possible and hire a car for the few times you actually *need* one.

Originally posted by mozzy So, actually, what he was saying had far more credibility than you first let on?  The actual electrons he received may have come from any source, but by buying from a 'green' supplier he will have ensured that the amount of electricity he used was met by renewable supply to the grid.

It is a meaningless gimmick and should be treated as such. Particularly given all consumers are contributing in green energy subsidies for the electricity he has bought at slightly inflated prices. Similar to Bono dodging taxes and then tapping us up for his next charitable cause.

Externalities ... If you don't 'pay' for the full broad impact of generating electicity from a particular means then 'your' generation method may well look cheap.  Fact is much of the argument is about these occasionally (and conveniently) ignored costs, how large they really are and who should end up paying for them. 

Because someone (or all of us) will ultimately be paying the full 'ignored' costs.   If you then deny that these costs really exist, are not considerable and don't need to be faced in full then you are using the same sort of logic that tobacco companies used for decades as they questioned the impact on health of tobacco...against all expert opinion and evidence at the time .... as well they would.