UC Berkeley study confirms that yes, EVs do what they promise to do
A new study from UC Berkeley confirms what EV fans already know: EV adoption does, in fact, make the air cleaner. Perhaps even more importantly, the study offers some quantifiable, granular data about how much electric vehicles are impacting emission rates in the here and now, not in the foreseeable future.
Not that these numbers will blow you away, mind you, but still, it’s good news.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that between 2018 and 2022, CO2 emission from all sources (industries, homes, traffic) across the San Francisco Bay Area dropped around 1.8% per year – a difference the researchers attribute to widespread EV adoption in the area. For vehicle emission rates, those numbers dropped 2.6% annually. EVs made up nearly 40% of new auto registrations in San Jose and 34% in San Francisco last year.
“We show from atmospheric measurements that adoption of electric vehicles is working, that it’s having the intended effect on CO2 emissions,” said Ronald Cohen, a University of California Berkeley chemistry professor and senior author of the study. The study was published this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Researchers were able to track that data via a network of sensors around the Bay Area that monitor both CO2 and five critical air pollutants: carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides (NO and NO2), ozone, and particulates (PM 2.5).
According to the research, by comparing the air pollution and CO2 data, the sensors help determine the emission source. The sensors are also unique in that they track CO2, which is not a pollutant regulated by the Clean Air Act and not picked up by Environmental Protection Agency sensors – the EPA of course does track CO2 but not as an air pollutant.
To get to their results, the researchers divided the emissions captured by the sensors into three categories: industry, such as refineries, which churn out a steady stream of emissions; seasonable varying emissions, like home heating and cooling; and traffic. After isolating the traffic emissions, researchers were able to link a dip traffic emissions to the rise in EVs, hybrids, and vehicles with better fuel efficiency.
While the sensors have been in place for more than a decade, it’s taken time to analyze the findings – and one could argue a while for EVs to reach a critical mass to trigger a difference. Looking at the data, the researchers also saw a drop in emissions during the pandemic.
The network of 50 sensors, set up in 2012 by Cohen, make up what’s called the Berkeley Environmental Air Quality & CO2 Network (BEACO2N), a system that has already been adopted by Providence, Rhode Island, and Glasgow, Scotland, to track their city air pollution. Around 70% of global CO2 emissions come from cities, yet few urban areas have granular data about where those emissions originate.
Another study last year, published by Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, found similar results looking at emissions in California. That study tracked real-world pollution levels, electric car penetration, and emergency room visits across California between 2013 and 2019, and controlled against overall improvements in California air quality during the study period.
Electrek’s Take
Of course, any optimism is tempered by the reality that, to meet California and Bay Area carbon reduction goals, the yearly decrease needs to be much greater – twice what it is now. California has a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2045, and Cohen says that we need emissions to drop 3.7% per year to reach that. Still, the onus isn’t only on traffic emissions. Home and industry emissions need to drop too, and making that happen requires policies.
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Elon Musk went on an all-day Tesla self-driving propaganda spree ahead of the company’s earnings, which are expected to be rough.
It’s well known these days that Musk doesn’t often comment on Tesla as he is busy with his government work, buying elections, and running several private companies.
Some Tesla shareholders argue that the CEO is neglecting the public company, which saw its stock tumble this year.
That wasn’t the case today.
Musk went on a tweeting spree about Tesla, specifically about Tesla’s self-driving effort.
Here are some of the highlights:
Tesla posted that “one day” its vehicles will drive themselves from the factory to new customers and Musk couldn’t stop himself and had to say that it will happen “this year”:
Like most of Musk’s self-driving comments, this one is hard to take seriously since he said the exact same thing in 2018 and claimed it would happen in 2019.
The tweet he was responding to has been deleted by the author, but it asked when Tesla vehicles would drive themselves to customers:
Spoiler alert: regulators are not the bottleneck here.
Musk then claimed that “Tesla self-driving will be far safer than human driving”:
The problem here is that Musk has claimed on many occasions that Tesla’s FSD is already safer than humans, like in 2023: “Supervised FSD is vastly safer than human driving.”
There’s no data that supports that. Tesla refuses to share any data regarding its self-driving program and instead, the company shares a very misleading quarterly “safety report.”
Considering Tesla’s FSD requires supervision from a driver at all times, the driver’s supervision and attention help reduce accidents that the self-driving system wouldn’t necessarily prevent.
Musk also shared positive experiences of a few Tesla owners, including a Tesla engineer and Joe Rogan:
As we often highlight, Tesla’s FSD can be impressive to use, but the problem is when you compare it to its promise, which is in the name: full self-driving.
Under its current form, FSD is still a level 2 advanced driver assist system, and not self-driving, but Musk said that it would become truly “unsupervised” self-driving every year for the last 8 years.
Therefore, it’s not what Musk has been promising buyers for years and as for when it is coming, he has been consistently wrong and has asked owners to rely on anecdotal experiences as Tesla refuses to release any data.
We previously reported that Musk has twice positively referred to a crowdsourced Tesla FSD dataset that shows Tesla’s FSD v13 on HW4 is achieving fewer than 500 miles between critical disengagements.
Tesla has previously stated that FSD must achieve 700,000 miles between critical disengagements to be safer than humans.
The spree of Tesla FSD tweets comes as Tesla is preparing to report its Q1 2025 earnings next week, which should be difficult after the automaker reported its lowest delivery results in three years.
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Texas is No. 1 in the US for wind and solar capacity, but the Texas Senate just passed a bill that aims to kneecap clean energy with an industry-killing review process. Will the Texas House pass it, too?
The Texas Senate today passed SB 819, which creates new restrictions on the development of wind and solar energy under the guise of “protecting” wildlife. The restrictions don’t apply to any other forms of energy.
Texas uses an extraordinary amount of power, and renewables play a big part in supplying that power. The Texas Tribune reported in March that “ERCOT [the Texas grid] predicts that Texas’ energy demand will nearly double by 2030, with power supply projected to fall short of peak demand in a worst-case scenario beginning in summer 2026.” That’s because of extreme weather, population growth, and crypto-mining facilities.
As of February, Texas increased its energy supply by 35% over the last four years, and 92% of that supply came from solar, wind, and battery storage.
Solar is the largest source of energy generating capacity that has been added to the Texas grid. That’s because it’s cost-effective and it can be deployed quickly. So if new solar projects are kneecapped, power demand will outstrip supply in the Lone Star State.
Daniel Giese, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)’s Texas director of state affairs, stated after the Senate’s vote, “With energy demand rising fast, Texas needs every megawatt it can generate to keep the lights on and our economy strong. We cannot afford to turn away from the pro-energy and pro-business policies that made the Lone Star State the energy capital, but that’s exactly what SB 819 does. We urge the Texas House to reject this bill.”
Less clean energy would also jack up electricity bills for Texans, and rural areas would lose billions in landowner revenue and tax payments. Every time a wind farm or solar farm is installed on rural land, it brings a lot of money to the community that surrounds it. A January report estimated that existing and planned solar, wind, and battery storage projects will contribute $20 billion in local tax revenue and $29.5 billion in landowner payments.
What’s especially baffling about this bill is that it flies in the face of a core Texas value – keeping the government out of private property decisions – yet it does precisely the opposite.
Environment Texas executive director Luke Metzger issued the following response: ‘By making it much more difficult to build wind and solar energy in Texas, this bill threatens to increase pollution, increase blackouts and increase our electric bills.
“Under the guise of helping land and wildlife, SB 819 would create a discriminatory and capricious permitting standard that could grind renewable energy development to a halt.
“We urge the House of Representatives to reject this bill and instead support policies that promote a cleaner, more sustainable energy future for all Texans.”
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I find this bill ludicrously masochistic. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and please keep it civil.
Read more: A vast 600 MW Texas solar farm just hit a major milestone [update]
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