econlife - Where to Find an Electric Vehicle’s Emissions by Elaine Schwartz

What if every car on the road is electric? Wyoming would need 17 percent more electricity. while for Maine, it’s a whopping extra 55 percent.

Because each state has a different grid mix, your zip code matters when you buy an EV.

The Grid Mix

Each state has a different grid mix that determines the emission expense of an EV. One state’s primary electricity source could be natural gas or hydro-power. Another’s could be coal or nuclear plants.

This is the summary:

But let’s take a closer look. (Unless otherwise indicated, all graphs are from the U.S. Department of Energy/Alternative Fuels Data Center):

Washington state gets 63 percent of its power from hydro-related sources:

Quite different, New Jersey depends on natural gas and then nuclear power. Combined, they provide almost 95 percent of New Jersey’s electricity:

Meanwhile Kentucky gets almost three quarters of its electricity from coal powered plants. Combine that with natural gas and hydro sources and you are almost at 100 percent:

Again different, California depends on natural gas but hydro and solar are up there too:

And finally, Texas power comes from natural gas but here we have to add coal and wind too:

Our Bottom Line: Emissions

Whether zooming in on the country, a state, or your garage, the closer we look, the more we see about how much an electric vehicle helps the environment.

A mathematician once told us that the length of the British coast is infinite. Yes, when you see it from a distance, it appears to be an unbroken measurable line. However, the closer you look, the more you see. There are small inlets that have tinier indents. They go on forever, getting smaller and smaller.

Do enjoy this brief zoom that starts large and winds up with a dendrite area:

Our emissions data reveal the same phenomenon.

To determine the actual emissions benefit of an EV, we need to look upstream at the well-to-wheels factor and compare it to direct (tailpipe) emissions of internal combustion machines. Well-to-wheels refers to the electric grid mix. It takes us to fuel production, processing, and distribution.

Next, we should even be thinking about when you charge your car. Midnight, when demand tapers, is much better than the early evening because your power plant has peak capacity that we should try to utilize. In addition, we can check if your state has installed charging stations. Policy planners could even consider the way EVs store electricity when fully charged.

So, where are we? To find the emissions created by your EV, we need to know your zip code.

My sources and more: My subscription to the Fact of the Week from the DOE came in handy yesterday. It took me to each state’s grid mix that, like me, you could find it tough to stop looking at. From there, The Washington Post discussed at grid optimization. Then, to take an interesting leap, I recommend this Yale Daily News Benoit Mandelbrot obituary on fractal math. (Please note that my Mandelbrot discussion was in a previous econlife post.)

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz’s work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.

econlife - Lighting Up Our Lives by Elaine Schwartz

Artificial light was once too costly to use. And now, it is so cheap that we barely notice it.

One reason is our illumination infrastructure. But first let’s start with some history.

Costly Light

In one of his farm journals, Thomas Jefferson documented the importance of light.

You can see below how the length of the workday varied with the seasons. During July, more daylight meant they could increase their spinning:

We depended on natural light because artificial illumination was too expensive. The president of Harvard noted in a 1743 diary entry that it took his household two days to make 78 pounds of tallow candles. Six months later he wrote, “Candles all gone.” Similarly, George Washington calculated that it cost him £8 a year (more than $1,000 today) to burn a spermaceti candle for five hours a night.

Cheaper Light

Like candles, nineteenth century sperm oil, gas, and kerosene lamps were expensive. In 1800, a typical middle class urban household spent approximately 4% of its income on the oil, lamps, matches and candles that illuminated their lives.

Today we spend much less for so much more. A Yale scholar estimated that we use less than 1% of our income for approximately 100 times as much artificial illumination. It is mind boggling to think that the labor that had created close to one hour of quality light several centuries ago now can illuminate us for 52 years.

You can see (below) the lighting price plunge at the beginning of the 20th century:

Our Bottom Line: An Illumination Infrastructure

Rather than a revolution that directly boosted the GDP, the illumination that spread across our country became a nationwide network. Similar to our financial and transportation infrastructures, our illumination infrastructure sustains our economy.

The Washington Post mapped the infrastructure that provides the power for our lighting:

And these are the 160,000 miles of high-voltage electric transmission lines:

Amazing to think that it all started with a tallow candle.

Sources and resources: This article conveys where the U.S. began while this one is about our current infrastructure. If you want more detail on illumination history and wage inflation, this Nordhaus paper is a classic (and summarized somewhat here). Then switching to the light side, this Tim Harford podcast is wonderful. Please note that I paraphrase several sentences from Tim Harford in this post.

After publication, this post was slightly edited.

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz's work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.