If electric vehicles are the way to go to reduce emissions, wouldn’t charging them use up a lot of power, therefore still being costly and polluting? How does it work?

Question

I know very little about today’s climate actions despite routing for them, so I just want to take an opportunity to better understand them. How some things may just be temporary solutions or revolutionary ones.

I do not want climate change debates, I just want to know if powering electric cars has its trade offs or are really going to help.

In: Engineering

Answer 1

There are many other sources of power than just coal and gas. You’ve also got solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and geothermal. So, switching to electric vehicles might put more demand on coal and gas power for now, but the hope is that government regulation and private companies will force a shift towards renewable and green energy sources. And in the meantime, one electric vehicle charging to 100% does *not* cause a coal plant ten miles down the road to suddenly put out more emissions than it would have otherwise. The point here is that even if emissions *do* go up from coal and gas plants, it will still be a lot less than if we just keep using gas and diesel cars which are *very* polluting.