>>11243139>You know most electricity is created by-Not to appeal to my own authority, but I'm paid pretty well for data collection, and analysis in the power industry. Thinking about this stuff has been my day job for the last five years.
>Some of which stuff is worse to burn than natural gas60% of my power comes from nuclear, hydro, wind and solar. The rest is mostly natural gas with roughly 4% being split between coal, oil, and trash burning. The last coal and oil plants in my region will shut down at the end of their life and no new ones will be built. The margins on oil and coal are just too thin. On a national coal has a much bigger share, but gas overtook coal in 2016 and wind generation has been shooting up.
>lossesOffset entirely in the case of a heat pump by the greater than 100% efficacy.
>That’s why hybrids are worse than regular vehiclesA typical sedan ICE is 25-38% efficient at turning gasoline into mechanical power depending on how you run it, and a combined cycle gas plant is 61% efficient continuous with FAR better emission controls. Even with grid losses you're still in the black if your power is 100% gas. Now that's not the case, and your power is likely close to 30% coal, but another 30% is likely from a mix of zero emission sources which handily offsets that. The only reason to avoid EVs is price/range.
>until renewables become a much bigger sourceThere's the magic. Grid sources are getting better all the time while the engine in your car and the burner in your water heater remain the same. Coal is unprofitable with generation dropping like a rock, and solar/wind is now cheap enough to roll out to around 20% of supply basically everywhere. This will happen over the next decade.
