How Green Is My Plug-In? The carbon impact of the millions of
electric vehicles soon to hit the road will depend on the grids
that supply them Image: Holly Lindem ”Our goal is to remove the
car from the environmental debate,” says Larry Burns, vice
president for R&D and strategic planning at General Motors. His
vision is that one day cars will emit no harmful pollutants from
their tailpipes—or perhaps they’ll have no tailpipes at all. And
if the beleaguered automaker survives that long, GM may be able
to achieve that goal. But no company can ever remove cars from
the environmental equation. Public impressions are fleeting and
malleable, but the laws of physics and chemistry are immutable.
Cars require energy to move, and that energy—even if it’s stored
in a battery pack rather than in fuel sloshing around in a
tank—has to come from somewhere. And therein lies the problem.
Odds are those batteries won’t be recharged with solar or wind
energy. In most places, grid power is for many decades going to
come from th