China has ample coal reserves to produce electricity for its unending blooming economy. An exact 80 percent comes from coal-fired power plants, and new plants are being constructed continuously. Apart from high pollution they are already causing, they add up even more pollution by making electric cars more polluting.
A new study from a team of researchers at the University of Tennessee has revealed that the power generated to fuel electric cars produces much greater emissions of particulate matter (PM) than gasoline-powered cars. As a result, this adversely makes driving an electric car in China a greater public health hazard and an environmental woe than driving a gasoline car.
The team looked at five different types of vehicles in 34 major Chinese cities, focusing on harmful particulate emissions and found that cars that produce no emissions themselves can actually produce more hazardous emissions indirectly than regular cars, dismally.
Time for clean renewable energies revolution? Definitely if electric cars become more widespread, so that the environmental benefits will truly occur, instead of creating and investing big for nothing.