Conventional or electric car? The debate is over

 ICE is better than EV.

File this under The Big Oil Conspiracy. There are still a few proponents of conventional cars who argue that EVs emit more CO2 than conventional cars when you take into consideration the emissions generated at the power station to produce the electricity. What they fail to mention however is that oil refineries are one of the word's largest users of electricity. 


Petroleum refining is the number one consumer of energy in California's manufacturing sector, responsible for 15% of total consumption (and 28% of total natural gas). Here in the UK petroleum refining accounts for 11% of electricity consumption - a huge proportion. That's right, the liquid fuel in your car requires so much electricity to produce it (that is, before it even gets into your car and starts polluting) that an electric car can travel just as far on the electricity that the refineries use to produce one gallon of liquid fuel. 

US Energy Information Association

A 2010 Environmental Science And Technology article by Greg Karras entitled 'Combustion Emissions from Refining Lower Quality Oil: What is the Global Warming Potential?' stated that preliminary estimates from fuel cycle analyses suggest that a switch to heavy oil and tar sands could increase the greenhouse gas emission intensity of petroleum energy by as much as 17% to 40%, with oil extraction and processing rather than tailpipe emissions accounting for the increment. 


Here's another thought:  early in the 20th Century, 100 barrels of oil could be extracted at the energy cost of about one barrel of oil. Today, one barrel of oil invested gets us only about three barrels of oil. 


Game over.