A pair of psychologists and an economist at the University of Turku, in Finland, have found that because the average electric vehicle (EV) owner is wealthier than the average person, they still have a bigger than average carbon footprint.

Maybe EVs are not a comprehensive climate solution??

  • Sonori@beehaw.org
    6·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Don_alForno@feddit.org
      6·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Sonori@beehaw.org
        4·
        2 months 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.