How can electricity be cleaner than gasoline when (in most places) its produced using dirty coal burning power plants?
Because gasoline is so very dirty, requires lots of electricity to make and beacause gasoline cars are far less efficient than electric cars. The science behind this is called “Well to Wheels Emissions Studies” and now over 40 studies (some funded by governments, including the U.S.) state that even on today’s electricity, electric cars are cleaner than gasoline cars. And as we clean up the grid, plug-in cars get even cleaner. (reference) First of all, most people don’t think about how gasoline is made. We use electricity to drill for oil and then to pump it out of the ground and through pipelines to ships. The ships are usually diesel and have further emissions as they bring the oil across oceans to oil refineries. Then the oil refinery uses A LOT of electricity to convert the oil to gasoline. In fact, California’s largest industrial consumer of electricity is oil refineries. We have the gasoline but we’re not done yet. Now we use electricity to pump the gasoline into trucks. Then the
