These days of confinement by the coronavirus we are seeing how global pollution is reducing at an enormous rate. Pollution berets have disappeared from big cities like Paris or Madrid. As we see, direct emissions from vehicles are the main causes of this pollution, and a new study sheds more light on how little an electric car pollutes compared to a gasoline car depending on the way in which the country has electricity.
An argument used against electric cars is that they “also pollute ” because part of the electricity they consume is generated using fossil fuels. Luckily, in many European countries, a significant part is obtained from renewable energies , where for example France thanks to nuclear energy pollutes very little, as well as Norway or Switzerland thanks to waterfalls. In Spain, the wind and the sun are the kings of renewable energy generating around half of the energy demanded these days.
Thanks to this, pollution is not only concentrated on the outskirts of cities, where there is more nature that can absorb CO2 , but there is a significant part of electricity that comes from non-polluting sources, such as nuclear, wind or solar. Around the world, around 25% of emissions are generated by cars and home heaters, and the electric car would help reduce them.
Coal: the enemy of the electric car to generate electricity
This is why researchers at the universities of Exeter, Nijmegen and Cambridge have found something other studies have done in the past: that even if fossil fuels were used to generate electricity, it was less polluting than direct emissions from natural gas or Fossil fuel cars in 53 of the 59 regions of the world, which represent 95% of the planet. Only in some countries like Poland, which are highly dependent on coal, more CO2 is emitted generating electricity for electric cars than using a combustion car.
Therefore, the study makes it clear that giving way to electric cars. The study establishes three models depending on whether or not pollution requirements are met according to the laws that force the use of more renewable energy. Whatever the scenario, in all cases in Spain it is better to use an electric car. Furthermore, they add that even though in the future the electrification of cars will go faster than the decarbonisation of the electricity sector, there will continue to be a reduction in emissions worldwide.
Nuclear, wind, solar or hydraulic: the best for the electric car
A study by Bloomberg in 2016 already showed that it was much greener to use electricity than fossil fuels, where China was the country where they would emit the most than they analyzed due to the large amount of coal burned in the country, while in France it was of which least thanks to nuclear power plants.
Therefore, these types of studies show that we must take the step towards electric vehicles as soon as possible, since thanks to them we will be able to reduce pollution throughout the planet.
Source> Nature
