Imagine reducing your commuting costs up to 90%. At the same time, you’re helping lower carbon emissions by 27% and cutting oil imports in half.
And none of this involves riding a bike or taking mass transit. You’d be driving to work in the privacy of your own car.
Sound too good to be true? Maybe not. The solution involves a massive switch from gasoline powered cars to plug-in hybrids.
According to Dr. Michael Kintner-Meyer with the Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, Washington, some 43% to 73% of the nation’s gas powered cars and light trucks could be replaced with plug-ins.
If that happened, Kintner-Meyer says it could lead to dramatic improvements in carbon emissions and oil consumption. And if we handled it right, we wouldn’t have to build new power plants or transmission lines to keep the plug-ins powered.
Kinter-Meyer says the key to making this work is charging up the plug-ins during overnight hours, when demand for electricity is lowest. Not only would we get those environmental benefits, but the car batteries could be incorporated into the grid and help provide some stability.
News of Kinter-Meyer’s research came to us from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The Council has been studying how the increased demand for electricity from hybrids would impact the power supply in the region.
According to the Council, the demand for power from plug-ins and electric vehicles in the Northwest is expected to reach 25 megawatts by 2020. That added demand will increase power plant emissions by 1 million tons . But factoring how much less pollution we’d be getting from automobiles, the Council says the net result would be 6 million fewer tons of carbon gases.
