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纯电动汽车未必比汽油车更环保

 

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People who own all-electric cars where coal generates the power may think they are helping the environment. But a new study finds their vehicles actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming.

The controversial study raises major questions over the future of “green” cars. When a wire is connected to an electric vehicle at one end and a coal-fired power plant at the other end, the environmental consequences are worse than driving a normal gasoline-powered car. However, driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. 

“It’s hard to beat gasoline for public and environmental health,” researchers claimed. “A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean ... are not better than gasoline.” The key is where the source of the electricity all-electric cars. If it comes from coal, the electric cars produce 3.6 times more soot and smog deaths than gas, because of the pollution made in generating the electricity. They also are significantly worse at heat-trapping carbon dioxide that worsens global warming.

The study examines environmental costs for cars’ entire life cycle, including where power comes from and the environmental effects of building batteries. Still, the idea of helping foster a cleaner technology will be better once it is connected to a cleaner grid.

The study finds all-electric vehicles cause 86 percent more deaths from air pollution than do cars powered by regular gasoline. But if the power supply comes from natural gas, the all-electric car produces half as many air pollution health problems as gas-powered cars do. And if the power comes from wind, water or wave energy, it produces about one-quarter of the air pollution deaths. Hybrids and diesel engines are cleaner than gas, causing fewer air pollution deaths and giving off less heat-trapping gas.

But ethanol isn’t, with 80 percent more air pollution mortality, according to the study. “If we are using ethanol for environmental benefits, for air quality and climate change, we’re going down the wrong path,” claimed researchers. 

 
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