This may apply in USA, China, India and other places where CPPs are used to generate the majority of the e-energy used.

Would not apply in our area where the power grid is fed 100% with Hydro + Wind.

You should add the pollution of producing this very polluted battery full of toxic material and the disposal of the battery that can caught fire anytime as it degrade by itself.

At first this was told by a lot of persons but the high Financial circles didn't want to changes their fraudulent planning and are imposing the ruin of battery electric cars but bevs are rejected by all consumers, LOL.

gor,

Read the post. The problem is COAL, not batteries. In 2015 Natural Gas produced more electricity than Coal. Coal is on the way out. It is the dirtiest fuel known - Sulfur, Mercury, and other heavy metals from burning Coal pollute the air, ground, and water. I grew up in Coal country, Alabama. Our home was heated by this dreadful carcinogen, I still have nightmares about that terrible Coal bin in the basement.
Coal companies are going bankrupt, we need to help their employees. My first job was at Southern Company Services, a power company that at one time owned Coal mines. My first assignment was to optimize the allocation of Coal to Power Plants. Recently, Southern Company bought AGL a gas company, even they know the future is not Coal.

Electrified trains/locomotives with 2 to 4 1000KW FCs instead of diesel generators and/or very costly overhead power cables could reduce GHG and pollution.

Clean H2 required could be supplied and stored different ways.

A few such locomotives could become powerful back ups for the grid. at low interconnections cost.

The soonest the world can do without CPPs and ICEVs the better. FCs may very be part of the solution.

"battery electric vehicles with large battery capacity can produce two to three times as much air emissions damage as gasoline hybrid electric vehicles, depending on charge timing."

They were comparing a 10 mile Prius and a 35 mile Volt as the HEV's vs. a 200 mile Model S as the large battery BEV.

The article could just as easily have said that since most people know if the are going to drive 200 miles the next day and that since most people go less than 35 per day, large BEV's present an excellent opportunity to offer large BEV owners the opportunity to contribute a buffer of say 35 miles or what every they drove that day or even several days of driving miles to the grid to allow a transition from coal to solar and wind. The timing of the charge being determined by the utility. I believe they are already doing that in California.

The questions regarding grid capacity must be asked and answered for whole fleet conversion to EVs to happen sooner rather than later. The central question I bring up here is which EV tech creates the most incentives to drive less? Reducing emissions, reducing traffic and its hazards and waste through energy conservation? Which EV tech offers the most incentives to walk, bicycle and use mass transit? Which EV tech promotes rooftop and small scale photovoltiac energy production? Which EV tech promotes local economies that can eventually disempower corporate control over our lives? The answer seems to be Plug-in Hybrid PHEVs, rather than BEVs and FCEVs.

Many Hydro power plants are built/equipped with over capacity to meet peak demands and are throttled back to save water during off peak periods.

Much the same can be done with wind power plants. Output can be reduced to match lower demand or stored during off peak periods. Storing excess e-energy is better unless one has to reduce production for maintenance etc.

A recent combined cycle gas-turbine-steam-turbine power plant is likely the highest efficiency power plant that burns natural gas, even more than many fuel cell combinations. It could be even lower carbon release if it were built in New York City and pumped the heat into the city steam pipe heat system which did not fail even when all the lights went out during the storms of recent years. That steam could have even been used to operate steam eductor pumps that require no electricity to prevent some flooding in cellars and tunnels. The waste of natural gas at some oil wells make it one of the most damaging of fuels in regards to green house gas releases. Nothing that the US can do will substantially reduce green house gas release in the world.

But eliminating coal fired power plants is far more expensive than just requiring every new and some old buildings to install natural gas micro-turbine co-generation systems for all of their power because such systems pay for themselves in a few years.

Coal can be burned without any sulphur or other particle released into the air.

It is the people who buy electricity who cause the pollution. If they did not buy there would be no pollution. If the people would study and understand nuclear energy they would demand nuclear power which releases no CO2 and prevents much more CO2 from being released because iron and steel and copper and aluminum etc. even hydrogen could be produced with almost no carbon release. Ships could use sodium powered fuel cells with nuclear, hydro, wind or solar produced liquid sodium.

The Russians have proposed a nuclear reactor powered railway locomotive recently; as small reactors of the proposed type have little residual (not like Fukushima) heat problem after the reactor shut down, such a unit would be less dangerous than a tank car full of propane or chlorine.

Actually it is less a problem than some people believe to partially fuel a locomotive with 95 percent natural gas and five percent diesel. In an emergency, a locomotive with low fuel could spray propane gas from a tank car with a hosepipe into the air intake to reduce diesel use substantially. A similar trick could be used to keep some modern automobiles idling to provide a shelter with no gasoline fuel available in a storm; natural gas could be used.

A US railroad is investigating the use of Liquid natural gas in locomotives when it should just be using it. ..HG..

The installed turbines were yes not micro-turbines but they also did not save all of the heat for use for heating buildings and houses or for air-conditioning. They still were some of the most efficient combined cycle machines which are more economic and efficient than some fuel cells.

You forgot that some coal has much uranium in it and it is used by the Chinese for nuclear fuel. Also sulphur is a much needed fertilizer for farmland. It is properly proposed by some that coal should be burned at the mine and the ash that is not useful can go back into the mine. It was not even proposed that the future coal burning was the same as it is now with ash collections from the flues.

If coal burning were stopped now, millions if not billions of people around the world would lose their jobs, starve and die and so would their children. Except for France The train systems of Europe and India and China is almost entirely fueled by coal. While the burning of coal has its health effects, the population in general increases because of the vast benefits of fossil fuels. As a net result of fossil fuel use, more and more humans live on the earth even if many die.

Many die in automobile crashes and of lung diseases from the emissions of automobiles. The US has not forbid the use of automobiles or fossil fuels in them.

Duke was a major promoter of nuclear power but was stopped by the false fears promoted by people who are driven by opinions instead of knowledge and do not even know that they themselves and all living things are radioactive wastes that expose others to gamma rays as they do themselves to even more gamma rays when they eat certified organic foods or just any vegetable foods.

Nuclear reactors produce energy with no direct release of CO2 and any CO2 used in construction of them and preparation of their fuels is quickly compensated for by the use of the energy as a substitute for fossil fuels or fossil fuel produced energy in many processes including transportation.

A pound of uranium can produce heat equivalent to three million pounds of coal and produces less than a pound of radio-active isotopes and even these are not true wastes. There is enough uranium in the ocean for billions of years of energy at the current use rate for all energy supplied now by all means, and there is the uranium on land too and three times as much or more thorium. Much uranium is discarded in the process of producing nuclear fuels and is stored. If used in known efficient reactor types, it could produce all the energy needed in the US for the rest of the century without mining another pound. To this could be added the "waste" fuel rods stored from use in US reactors, which themselves could provide enough electricity for all of the US for fifty years if merely repackaged and used in newly built heavy water reactors. Some of the discarded uranium from making these fuel rods might have to be mixed in to slow the reaction if used in existing designs. This process is being tested in the Chinese heavy water reactors.

The prior was written knowing that a Nuclear locomotive was proposed in the US at the University of Utah in the 1950s with much publicity.

The United States has enough isotope 238 to produce about 7000 watts of steam continuously. This could be converted into about a horsepower in a steam locomotive. There were two fireless steam locomotives operating in Switzerland a few years ago. The isotope 238 is likely in oxide form and short steel pipes could each be filled with about 200 grams for 100 watts of continuous heat per pipe. Almost no nuclear radiation escapes the pipes; perhaps even less internal nuclear radiation than escapes each human every day. The pipes could be inserted into the water tank of one of these locomotives, and every day or so depending on the insulation, The locomotive could move a few feet or even a mile.

Used in a specially made, known technology, free piston Stirling engine, the isotope could produce as much as 2500 watts of electricity. A TESLA owner would have to drive slowly at times but would not run out of fuel in his life. This power is enough for 40 miles per hour or more on a level road. ..HG..