How many Cars are equivelant to the emissions given off from an Oil Burning Power Station?
Answer:
Lots, but why would you want to know? Why not ask how many cars are equivalent to one transatlantic journey by sea or air. Ships and aircraft create tonnes and nobody ever mentions ships in the controls. The emissions from a volcano dwarf everything though.
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme for UK sites covered by the scheme emitted 251.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) in 2006, an increase of 8.8MtCO2, or 3.6%, from 2005. The power station element of this total was 172MtCO2. As you know car emissions are given in grammes per kilometer so if you work it out for the UK as a whole motor vehicles produce a small amount. I would estimate that all Uk transport would produce less than 40MtCO2.
It primarily depends on how large the power plant is, and how much power it's generating. My best estimate is more or less on a gallon per gallon equivalent, however, oil burning power plants are generally cleaner than the equivalent in cars, since they have better pollution controls, and are monitored and checked fairly often.
Coal fired plants are actually much more common, at least in the U.S.
You could look around in the U.S. Department of Energy website, and I'm sure that info is in there somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually list now much oil each plant uses.
Brad
per kilowatt of useable power produced a fossil fueled car is far more polluting, especially street level particulates:
1) refining the fuel for cars takes a lot of energy,
2) transport & filling; powerstations are usually near terminals, the only UK mainland oil fired generator was at Fawley near Southhampton.
3) laws of thermodynamics; the bigger the better efficiency
4) power stations are constantly monitored & maintained for optimum efficiency & emmisions.
5) exaust filters can meet higher standards on big fixed plant
6) cars rarely run at optimum load & temperature, and require complicated (inefficeinet) transmission system
7) v. little heat recovery on a car; generator can be Combined heat & power (CHP)
which is why, well to wheel, even if the electric comes from fossil fuel, an electric car is far better for the environment, plus energy recovery slowing down (regeneration), no consumption when stopped, and it is a much more pleasent driving experience
eg www.teslamotors.com built by Lotus UK 0-60 4 secs, only 8 moving parts in the transmission 250 mile range
I find this rather interesting.
We put out 30,000,000,000 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere every year.
To put that in perspective, that's 38 molecules of CO2 for every 100,000 molecules of air. It would take 5 years to change that 38 molecules to 39 molecules at the above rate.
Interesting, huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/global_warm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/global_warm...
An External Combustion car, a steam car gives off less pollutants than an Internal Combustion car. The oil burning power station is a huge steam engine running a generator. The car could use pollution controls too, reducing it further.
If you are upset over IC pollution from cars, picture all those cars suddenly changed to electric power and added to the existing demand. How many new stations would have to be built to power them. Want them in your backyard?
Then imagine all those cars changed to steam-electric hybrids. Low pollution, less dependence on oil, able to use electric power from the grid, but able to travel without it. And as an added benefit the car could be used as an emergency generator if the electric power grid failed.
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