“They’re gonna burn the coal whether you use the electricity or not”
Actually, probably not. Hydro and nuclear power generate the same output (more or less) 24 hours a day. Peak demand is provided by coal, which can be turned on and off as needed. If enough electric cars come on the grid, coal plants will stay on at night whereas now the shut down. But I was mostly making the point that there is no real zero emissions technology, just differences in the amount and location.
Coal still produces over 50% of the electricity in this country. The plants run 24 hours unless they need to take a boiler out of service for maintenance. It takes a lot of fuel to get the boilers up to operating temps, so ‘shutting them down’ just for off peak makes no sense.
Hydroelectric only makes 10% and Nuclear makes 14%. Natural gas makes 16%. The rest is made by burning something else.
BK, aren’t you leaving out the windmills?
there is no real zero emissions technology
SDWH, I beg to differ. Wind and solar power technology don’t produce any emissions. There are people living on wind and solar power who actually feed their unused electricity back into the grid.
In my home town we’re not required to pass emissions testing. NH varies by county.
In truth, every state will have varying laws depending on the compliance program they’ve gotten blessed by the EPA. Here in NH some counties require emissions and some do not. Even then, it’s only a check of the OBDII system for any stored codes. There’s no actual testing anymore of the output of the exhaust pipe.
I’m with you on the motorcycles. Generators, I’m not so sure. At least on a motor home, they’re often in enclosed spaces that can barely (and sometimes can’t) keep cool enough to avoid overheating the generator. If you add a heatsink like a cat into the mix, genbox temperatures could get even higher, which would cause problems.
Of course they do. The manufacturing process for solar panels is highly toxic. A lot of waste silicon tetrachloride is produced. That’s a fun little compound that’s corrosive, water-reactive, flammable, and can cause serious health effects from short term exposure.
Windmills also have emissions, from manufacturing, and the diesel/gas emissions from the service vehicles (especially when you have to bring the generator down and haul it off for maintenance).
They emit much LESS than other power generation technologies, but there are still environmental effects from solar and wind power.
There was a proposition in our state to test lawnmowers for emissions, There is no end in sight, the latest proposal was to ban non diet soda and fattening snacks in government owned buildings, I guess you can say goodbye to latte’s doughnuts and cheeseburgers at the airports.
Whitey, I left windmills out because right now, windmills produce less than 2% of the total power generated in America. Barely noticable.
Emissions “testing” today, has NOTHING to do with emissions. it’s all about MONEY!! Not enough cars ever fail the “test” to make ANY measurable difference in air quality…
The Volt is a “Motor Vehicle” and it contains an internal combustion engine so it must meet the standards for motor vehicles , (passenger cars) with gasoline engines…
–I misread your comment as “a proposition in our state to test lawmakers for emissions”
Talk about contributing to global warming…
Since the Volt is a low emission, high mileage vehicle, it’s in GM’s interest to HAVE it counted in the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy)tallies, as well as meet the current emissions. The EV1 was originally developed to meet the California Zero Emissions regs (later eased off) and they were prepare to sell everyone of them at a loss.
US manufacturers, and increasingly foreign ones, need to sell a lot of high mileage cars to get that average up, and still be ble to sell trucks and SUVs.
Mercedes owns Smart Cars, and they will rely on that little car to get their CAFE average up.
Forget the cat, just have some performance-based standards (which the generator could meet easily with fuel injection.) Yep it certainly is a cash grab. I remember reading Colorado, they tested out a system where they picked out the 200 dirtiest cars statewide (which was apparently easy, they were leaving big smoke clouds behind them, it didn't require some fine-tuned emissions test), and they paid to repair them. Simple as that. This cost something like a few percent what a California-style emissions test regime cost, and did something like 90-95% of the air cleaning, since almost all the other cars that wouldn't meet emissions were only not meeting them by a few percent. Of course, the Feds forced them to do the California-style system anyway even though the "200 dirtiest" test cleaned the air well past the goals the Feds had set.
As for the Volt -- it's indirect but ultimately the engine turns the wheels, so I would assume it has to meet emissions.