Core77

It's kind of amazing that a lot of our society's infrastructure is predicated on us not being synchronized. For example, there's that college prank where everyone flushes a dorm toilet at the exact same moment, causing water pipes to burst; and an amusing urban legend goes that if everyone in China jumped off a chair at the same moment, it would knock the Earth out of orbit.

Sadly, this if-all-of-us-do-it-at-the-same-time-something-breaks thing may be true of electric cars, at least in Germany. A recent study done by the German branch of the World Wildlife Federation found that if one million Germans in 2020 all plugged in their electric cars to recharge after getting home from work, the resultant power drain would require massive amounts of coal to offset, which would in turn offset any carbon savings.

Today, the German plants that deliver marginal electricity are fueled by coal. That is the main problem, according to the study. The research adds that to produce the same amount of energy, coal emits more carbon dioxide than even gasoline.

"The irony is that you don't need a lot more electricity for electric cars," [vehicle expert Viviane] Raddatz, said. "But the problem is that if they cause these peaks, we would have to have power plants that would be ready to start (as) the massive charging starts."

This apparently would not hold true in the United States, where, amazingly, there are more forms of greener electricity generation in the works.

Read all about it here.

via cnet