Are Electric Vehicles Really “Green?” — Another Viewpoint

I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Pesin of the local power utility up here in Northwestern Washington State: Seattle City Light, at the launch of my client EV4’s new product, the “Energy Transfer Merchant.”  I thought this conversation was a good opportunity to straighten out an issue that’s been bugging me: are electric vehicles really green?  In the final analysis, are they charged largely with coal?  Even here in the Pacific Northwest, with their abundance of clean (hydroelectric) power, won’t electric vehicles mean less clean power that can be sold  to places whose electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels?

Here’s what Pesin told me:

We’re under mandate to have 15% of our electricity coming from renewables – not hydro, but solar and wind — by 2020.  We’ll meet that goal, and we’d like to go beyond it.  But without electric vehicles – or other ways of taking significant amounts of energy off the grid at opportune moments, e.g., wind energy at night, it simply can’t be done.  EVs make it possible for us to deploy renewable energy.

Fairly clear, I think.