[mattashii]

> Otherwise our electric cars will be running on coal.

With modern coal plants, that isn't _too_ bad actually. Modern coal plants reach 46% efficiency[0], compared to the 30-35% for modern passenger cars (older cars = less efficient). This is a 30-50% [1] efficiency gain, while also emitting 30-45% more CO2 for the same amount of energy released (gasoline vs bituminous coal and anthracite, for diesel it's 25-40%).

So, depending on the coal burned, the efficiency of the car that is replaced, and the coal plant making the electricity, you could quite reasonably have a lower carbon footprint by driving a car 100% on coal-powered electricity instead of gasoline or diesel.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_power_station#Thermal_... [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

[jacobr1]

Also consider industrial carbon capture. It would be costly, but it seems it would easier to capture carbon emissions at the primary coal burning sites than with distributed burners. We still should be looking at non-coal, renewable options and I'm glad we are, but we still have a lot of milage with "cleaner" fossil-fuel based approaches. This IPCC Report[0] suggests 80%+ CO2 sequestration rates extrapolated from known technologies (built on smaller scales).

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100210022620/http://www1.ipcc....