this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier (phys.org)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Maybe EVs are not a comprehensive climate solution??

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This, the researchers note, is because wealthier people in general have a bigger carbon footprint—they use more electricity, which is most often produced at a coal-burning plant,

Blatantly untrue.

Electricity sector in Finland

Even without that obvious lie: Well, rich people driving ICE cars would have an even bigger footprint. What point is this trying to make?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Technically, it’s not wrong that worldwide the largest method of electricity generation is coal, but it does tend to be far smaller and shrinking in the richer western nations with lots of EV’s people are probably thinking of, even before getting to the whole electricity is on track to be made carbon neutral a lot sooner than gasoline thing.

I’m actually very impressed that Finland managed to avoid the ‘clean LNG’ that North America got sold on, good work.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

This paper takes it's data from a survey in Finland, so I believe it should use the Finnish power mix in it's conclusions or at least compare to it.

Also, even using 100% coal power an EV emits less CO2 than an ICE car over the same distance. It comes down to rich people emitting more CO2 in general, which was known, and I don't see the need for the focus on EVs. Smells like click bait conservatives are gonna abuse in their BS "EVs have higher emissions than ICEs" arguments. OP already made that mistake.

Edit: The article title is click bait. The actual research paper is titled

But can it drive to Lapland? A comparison of electric vehicle owners with the general population for identification of attitudes, concerns and barriers related to electric vehicle adoption in Finland

which makes more sense.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Ya, if the article is using Finish survey data than it’s definitely ridiculous to talk about it being powered by coal, I had assumed that given the article’s presentation they were at least looking at gobal statistics.

Given the the title of the paper they got this from, if they are not getting paid by an oil company somewhere already they really should work on collecting the free money for the work they are already doing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I think the study analyzed the footprint of the person, not the vehicle:

In this new study, the research team investigated whether consumers who purchase and drive such vehicles have a smaller carbon footprint than other consumers

The merits of electric vehicles are irrelevant to their study - and their study is irrelevant to the merits of electric vehicles.

So maybe they're not lying (or maybe they are, if they made a direct claim about the power mix of the Finnish grid), but they're definitely far from barking under the correct tree. They're barking in a different forest, not of transport economy, but of wealth and consumption. :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Quoting myself from another answer:

This paper takes it's data from a survey in Finland, so I believe it should use the Finnish power mix in it's conclusions or at least compare to it.

And while the study seems to make sense, the article is just awful clickbait.