CHarlie Garlow — Feb 27 2008 01:56 PM

Will NRDC write a letter to the editor of USA Today clarifying/responding to the misinformation? And how can you say that there is a "dirty way" of charging up on dirty coal, when you admit that current Clean Air Act rules prevent new coal plants from increasing the NOx and SOx in our country? Are you thinking Particulate matter or mercury? If so, look at the requirements to reduce PM in PM non-attainment areas and the current [lousy] rules and the near term future rules, we hope, that will both reduce mercury. So, new coal plants, meeting increasing demand will not result in national increases in these pollutants, when the national requirements are for less.

John Walke — Feb 27 2008 11:25 PM

Charlie -- NRDC did submit a letter to the editor of USA Today this afternoon.

The NRDC-EPRI report took into account constraints on power sector emissions imposed by current regulations, between now and 2030. This included the EPA's "Clean Air Interstate Rule" (CAIR) with its caps on NOx and SO2 emissions from power plants in the eastern U.S. to which you allude. Total emissions of VOCs, NOx and SO2 from the electric sector and trasnportation sector decreased due to plug-ins; ozone levels decreased for most regions but increased in some local areas. That final point is the one that the USA Today article unduly emphasized.

But that result under CAIR should not be surprising. A cap-and-trade system for NOx and SO2 in the east will guarantee regional reductions, but still allows for pockets of increased emissions, especially with the increased generation needed to meet plug-in charging loads. And recognize that all of this was based upon worst-case modelling and assumptions clearly spelled out in the report -- but not mentioned in the article.

So your final sentence is correct -- "coal plants, meeting increasing demand will not result in national increases in these pollutants, when the national requirements are for less" -- but it does not address the limited and LOCAL ozone problem identified in the report. Since we're all rightly focused on solutions, however, that problem is a manageable one demanding further clean-up of electric power plants, reducing their emissions of NOx, SO2, particulate matter, air toxics and greenhouse gases.

The work you do at EPA is tremendously important to achieving those goals.

David Brunson — Feb 28 2008 12:26 PM

I was also disappointed to read the USA Today article on February 26 by James Healey entitled, “Plug-in cars could increase air pollution”. The take home message to millions of readers from that title and article seems to be that plug-in hybrid or electric cars will be no better than what we already have. If that’s the case, let’s all just keep doing what we already do. I’m suspect that’s exactly the message oil companies, automakers, and our foreign oil suppliers want us to have. Why would any one of them ever want people to use less oil at $102 per barrel? The author seems to have done a good job furthering their interests by not presenting the many sides of this issue.

This article ignores volumes of other research that says just the opposite of what Mr. Healey reports. For decades now, study after study comes to essentially the same conclusion. Plug-in hybrid and electric cars win against every other alternative as our best approach to reducing overall pollution and, just as important, trimming our endless appetite for foreign oil.

There is a different and real world take home message. My electricity comes from coal. Three years ago I bought and restored an American made electric car. Since then I have driven it to work almost every day. I go to the grocery store, the mall, the post office, the movie store, and run kids around. It is certainly a viable around town alternative. When I started plugging in my car I also changed my home lighting to compact florescent bulbs just to see what would happen. Three years of records show my electric bill is the same as it was before and often less. I don’t see any real world increase in energy use or pollution because conservation must be part of every energy solution. What I do see is less of my money going to people and places that may not always care about my country or my interests. That’s a much bigger issue for all of us the article completely ignores.

Unfortunately, no car will ever be the perfect solution for our seemingly endless political and energy problems. However, the plug-in hybrid or electric car comes closer to addressing more of these problems than any other automotive alternative we seem to have come up with. I wish the article had objectively considered these messages as well.

Doug Korthof — Feb 29 2008 10:51 AM

Luke should be more careful with what he says. Allowing your words to be "twisted", as you claim they were not your intent, does a lot of harm and provides cover to the coal interests.

But this is not the first time that NRDC helped kill the Electric car; in 2003, they abandoned EVs for, presumably, fuel cells.

Even after crushing most of the EVs, there are STILL MORE EVS ON THE ROAD THAN FUEL CELLS, more than 5 times as many.

And there are INFINITELY more EVs in the hands of ordinary purchasers, because 330 (the number of RAV4-EV on the road) divided by ZERO is infinite.

So where are the fuel cell cars you promised, huh??

Luke's so-called "failure" or "misinterpretation" seems too convenient. Just another slur against all-electric oil-free cars.

PS, the electric to run my Toyota RAV4-EV comes from our rooftop solar system; we make more electric credits for peak production than we use for overnight off-peak charging.

Doug Korthof — Feb 29 2008 11:24 AM

What's most deceptive about Luke's "argument" that "running an EV increases coal pollution" is that he IGNORES the fact that the biggest industrial user of electric and natural gas in California is the oil extraction and refining industry.

So how can electric be "clean" when used to refine oil (or mine coal) yet always "dirty" when used to charge up an all-electric EV? Ironically, an EV1 goes about as far on the electric used to refine a barrel of oil (8%) as the REST of the barrel takes an IC car at our fleet average of 20 mpg. But Luke ignores this.

NRDC's self-serving "argument" also ignores the fact that there ARE no plug-in cars for sale. Why raise the alarum, when there is no problem? Plug-in cars don't exist, so what's the issue??

We don't say everyone should drive an EV, just that there should be ONE for sale on the free market. You can place an order for a Tesla for delivery 2 years later, or you can place an order for a conversion with ACPropulsion.com, or you can manually convert a gas-guzzler to electric.

But you can't go down and buy a plug-in car, there are NONE offered by the members of the Auto Alliance, Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, etc.

There are only empty promises about what they will do, some day in the future -- now, they are 'waiting' for Lithium batteries, while in 2003 they were 'waiting' for fuel cells.

We don't need research, we need PRODUCTION! We know that EVs are possible, that's why they crushed most of them!

GM sold control of the only batteries proven to last more than 100,000 miles, the NiMH, to Chevron -- which then colluded with Toyota to cease production, and now, we can't even buy replacement batteries. GM and Toyota want the EV to go away, and would like to see them all gone. NRDC was no help back in 2003, and no help now, it seems.

Our Toyota RAV4-EV were last sold in Nov., 2002, and that's all we have. There were the last 330, which Toyota sold instead of crushing. There are no more EVs.

NRDC was then NO HELP, and it's NO HELP now, just raising false issues and dis-information.

Claimed "mistakes" only help the coal interests and Oil-Auto companies in their effort to kill the Electric car, electric locomotives, and oil-free transport in general.

What side is NRDC on, anyway? Do you prefer oil, oil wars, oil pollution, oil refineries, oil spills, and the hydrogen-hype? And fear oil-free technologies, such as our solar rooftop systems and the all-electric plug-in cars we drive every day?

Felix Kramer — Mar 4 2008 04:57 PM

Luke -- I'm very grateful for your work in modelling the future in the EPRI-NRDC study, and for your last comments, saying, "we should start putting them [PHEVs] on the road today. In parallel, we should clean up the grid."

These are however quite different than the posting above, which I take is NRDC's official position:
"you can use plug-ins in the right way or the wrong way. Charging plug-ins with dirty coal power is the wrong way."

Saying that is exactly what enabled USA Today to write the story and the headline it did. It's clear to anyone who looks at future trends that the grid will be much cleaner even by the time a significant number of PHEVs are on the road -- so why give critics (and automakers) a free pass to say, "wait."

See our comments at the CalCars-News Archive, http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html

-- Felix Kramer, Founder, CalCars.org

LT Schultz — Mar 5 2008 02:20 PM

I believe Doug Korthoff is completely off the mark about about electricity and natural gas use in California.

Electrical generation accounts for 50% of all natural gas use in the state. Industrial use accounts for 19%, less than total residential use, 22%.

Similarly, industry, including mining, uses less than 19% of all the state's electricity (residential use is 31%, commercial 37%).

To put this into perspective, 6.5% of California's electricity is used just to pump and treat, not oil, but water. Indeed, California's Department of Water Resources, which controls the state water project (pumping water from the Sacramento Delta, over mountains, all the way to San Diego where avocado growers turn the desert into a sunny version of Seattle) is the state's single largest consumer, using something like 2.5% of all the electricity consumed in the state.