This has probably been posted already but I couldn't find it...so just in case it hasn't here it is. The best and worst states to charge an electric vehicle - The Washington Post
So unless I have solar panels on my home it looks like a regular ol' hybrid is the best way to go for us folks living in Nebraska. That sucks though because our electricity is so cheap, though I know the two go hand in hand.
Yep, pretty good article. Keep in mind the study is based on the energy grid mix from '2009'. The national averages have improved quite a bit since then, although I am not sure about Nebraska's grid. If your sole priority is carbon emmissions the hybrid may be a better choice. If national security, fiscal health, or just a superior driving experience is a higher priority, electric is a pretty good choice as long as your range needs are met.
fyi... The impact of *dirty* electricity source on BEV and PHEV have been reviewed before in Scientific American Will Your Plug-In Car Actually Be Coal-Powered? And Other July Stories: Scientific American Podcast Where You Live Determines How Climate Friendly Electric Vehicles Are: Scientific American Where You Live Determines How Climate Friendly Electric Vehicles Are: Scientific American In Maryland, we have deregulated electricity so I'm buying my electricity from a wind power consolidator Clean Current (cleancurrent.com) . While my contract is for 100% wind turbine electricity - the regional electrica company PEPCO charges about .33 kwh to deliver 1 kwh of electricity from Clean Current. PEPCO uses a combination of coal, natural gas, landfill incinerator power, and nuclear power to generate their electricity.
It should stay inexpensive with renewable wind Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman: Harnessing Nebraska's Wind I don't know if you can choose wind from your utility, but Nebraska has the potential to add wind much more quickly than this. Most of the wind has been added since 2009, but it still will only be 10% in 2020. I am not sure that solar makes financial sense in Nebraska, but adding more wind, and switching some coal power to natural gas definitely does. There are other reasons than ghg to go phev or bev. Oil is the most scarce energy resource, and it is getting more expensive. It is cool technology. Your prius is a good vehicle, and has low tailpipe emissions. As your grid gets cleaner and gas gets more expensive think about plug-ins though.
What Washington Post totally misses is that it's NOT all about the carbon/coal: 1) Natural gas / wind / solar / coal / nuke - are U.S. made fuels, and THAT beats 50% oil imports by an infinate ratio. 2) Useing the above fuels means not having to support some part of our trillion dollar industrial military complex (so we can force our will on import countries) - which strangles our economy with an insurmountable national debt. So wake up Washington Post - and quit thinking you're a bunch of geniuses by contrasting elect/coal's dirt. There's more to it than narrow thinking like that. .
Wow, thanks a ton for finding that! I am pretty confident our next vehicle (still 3-5 years away since we just bought this in April) will be plug-in. I'm a numbers guy so I put the chances at... 10% gas, 20% hybrid, 50% plug-in hybrid, 20% EV. We will undoubtedly need a little bigger vehicle within 5 years since we are starting a family soon. So hopefully by then the V will have a plug-in option or even a hybrid Sienna.
I think if articles try to cover every factor in the benefits of EVs they end up not doing a good job on any of them. The article focuses on the CO2 budget and does a pretty good job of it in my opinion.
That might be too localized and vary even within cities depending upon your 'plan' with your utility. Heck, in my case it varies by plug! If I plug into my "charge-wise" outlet, my cost is about 4.6c/kwh but I can only charge 11pm-7am. If I plug into the house outlet it doubles to around 9c. All in all though, it costs me about 53c to go as far as I could on a gallon of gas in a Prius ($3.75 currently). If you paid 30c/kwh then you would be paying the same amount as gasoline.
The biggest problem I find with these articles is they follow a couple of memes that get people to think incorrectly about energy GHG is the big evil polutant, we don't need to worry about the other things coming out of our tailpipes. Electricity comes from coal. Coal is much worse than gas. If we electrify the fleet we will burn more coal. The union of concerned scientists kept those first two, but attacked the last one a little. It said in most of the country we don't burn all that much coal. In 45% of the country. we produce less ghg with a plug in than a prius liftback. They also added in some of the rest you can add solar. What did they leave out? In most of the country where ghg are higher, you can choose solar or wind. The other big item is unhealthy tailpipe emissions are much worse in the short to medium term than ghg. Leave out those two points and you have many more people convinced they should pick a non-hybrid ice car instead of a phev or bev, because its good for the environment. Now the prius is really good at tail pipe emissions, but that gets lost in translation. The other big ticket items are part of hills complaints. There is a lack of diversity of fuel when it comes to transportation. Oil is the scarcest fuel, and a large percentage is imported. This leads to economic hardship in ballance of trade. The large amount of imported fuel also leads to price spikes and the excuse for war, or at least rationalization for a large military that can fight a war for oil. If you want to reduce ghg, transitioning to plugins while cleaning the grid it is the best way. Its a false choice to say the grid is dirty, stay on oil. Now to Nebraska - Its not a bad pollution state, there simply are not enough people to polute as much as others. In 2010 according to eia electricity was 64% coal 30% nuclear 3.6% hydro 1% natural gas 1.3% renewables - mainly wind By 2o2o much more wind and natural gas, much less coal. Most coal is used by investor owned utilities, and berkshire hathaway owns the most stock in the coal power plants. Unless there are environmental problems, I doubt they will remove coal quikly
