A new study finds electric cars actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming, and, ethanol isn’t so green, either. According to the study that is published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, if the source of the electricity 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. The study’s co-author says, ‘A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean…are not better than gasoline.’ Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science says, ‘Unfortunately, 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.’ 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. The study looked at the environmental costs for cars’ entire life cycle, including where power comes from and the environmental effects of building batteries.
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