alt Hacker NewsThe top graph makes it seem much more dramatic than it is.
Maritime shipping is very efficient, and consists of a very small fraction of overall petroleum usage.
Road transportation uses about 20x as much fuel as ocean shipping, planes use about 2x as much, and trains about the same amount.
The typical rule of thumb is that about 40% of the energy in a barrel of petroleum is lost before it goes into your gas tank. And the two big factors are the energy required to do the refining and delivering the fuel from the refinery to the gas station. Shipping the crude from the oil field to the refinery is a factor, but a small one in comparison.
This 40% is the main reason why driving an EV emits less carbon than driving an equivalently sized gas vehicle even if you're topping up that EV with the dirtiest electricity you can find.
P.S. maritime shipping typically uses very dirty fuel. We'll probably notice the reduction in sulfur pollution more than the reduction in CO2.
P.P.S 3% of a very large number is still itself a large number, so it's still worth looking for solutions.
Why is the EV better? Because electricity transmission is more efficient than gas? What about the losses in the electricity transmission and the batteries and the conversion to motive force in the motor? Is it way less than that 40%? And wouldn’t there be more than 0% losses because refinery -> power plant shipping?
I’m pro EV by the way, I just want to understand your point better. Being able to go all the way to transportation using clean energy is an obvious benefit of EVs. The “dirty electricity” angle is less obvious to me.