This is a point that I think many people miss. Just because you are driving an electric car doesn't mean you are not contributing to environmental pollution. When you plug that car in at night, the Belews Creek power plant 10 miles up the road throws more coal in the furnace.
Yes, buuuut the difference in the ultimate sources is important.
While most of our electricity is from non-renewable sources, some percent of it is not, and as
@Ron pointed out in SC even ah uge part is nuclear (we can debate if that is a good environmental source or not)
Meanwhile, 100% of petroleum used as a propulsion is a non-renewable source. So there is still that benefit.
And more importantly - where are the suppliers of each?
100% of our electricity sources originate in the US. And at least comes from your region of the country, so you're employing only local guys. Meanwhile when you buy gas, it may or may not have originated in Mexico, Venezuela, or even the much loved Middle East, so you are also employing those guys.
So there is a difference is domestic security as well.
re: solar, part of the problem is how we use electricity. Although our houses and distribution methods are based on AC, most of the devices we use every day that make life wonderful are based on DC, so they have their own AC/DC converter. But solar is inherently DC, and has to be stored via battery, then to fit the current house usage, converted to AC (there is always an inefficiency loss here), only to be changes right back at the device level.
That's just dumb and a huge waste.
I'm wondering how long it will be before the construction and electronic standards industries gets the point we can just make all-DC houses...
