AUTOMOTIVE INSIGHT: California CO2 Not Good for Northeast
June 17th, 2008 at 12:43pm
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Uh-oh, did the states in the Northeast screw up when they decided to adopt California’s CO2 regulations?
The Northeastern states have decided to adopt California’s stringent standards for automotive CO2 emissions. Now, a key way that California wants to see these standards met is by getting automakers to build plug-in hybrid vehicles.
But it turns out that in the Northeast, most electrical power is generated by burning coal or oil. That’s not the case in California, which uses a lot of natural gas or buys its coal-fired electricity from next-door Nevada.
The point is, if California begins using a bunch of plug-in hybrids its carbon footprint will go down. But if the Northeast states start using a bunch of plug-ins, their CO2 footprint is likely to get worse. And I’m not sure those states considered that when they adopted California’s standard.