Quote:
SaCoupe73 wrote:
Great to see electric cars.
and by no means am i knocking it.
But the dude who owns it does seem to
be kidding himself a little by
saying it is polution free.
In Australia most of our electricity
is generated by coal, oil and gas.
Electric cars will never be polution free
until the electrical generator source is.
The polution is just being produced away
some where else.
Out of sight . . . out of mind.
There is some value in what you are saying. All the different varieties of "green power" have an ecological footprint of some kind, and for most people if they dont see it its not a problem. Hence the reason diesel engines have been evil for so long over petrol even though they are technically less polluting, but they blow black smoke.
Put in simple terms, in Australia the majority of your base load power comes from non-renewable fossil fuels, and peak is supplied by renewable sources. The very nature of renewable energy souces does not lend itself to base load power except Hydro which is a good example of base load renewable energy, but this is entirly dependant on the situation and is not always the case.
So whilist "green energy" is not complely "green" continuing along our current path of reliance on fossil fuels is not a better option.
Making a valid argument for or against the size of an ecological footprint for a given power generation method is a complex web of facts and figures, some of which are purely qualatative. Re-newable energey is the way forward, and govenments need to pull their fingers out, paticulary the devloped nations, and invest heavily. With enough investment, science can map the way forward. It has every time in the past.
Go the White Zombie I say!
</rant!>
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