It appears I was wrong: I thought transmission line loss was on the order of 10%;
it appears to be 5%. That is nationwide; if you live a mile from the plant it's very low, and if you live in the sticks it could be high.
Per Overkill, a coal power plant runs around 35% while natural gas up to 50%.
Looks like we are around
11% renewable energy?
CO2 per BTU
I get 0.053 grams CO2 per BTU for natural gas, and 0.095 for coal.
1Whr = 3.4BTU. You need 3.4 BTU's to get 1Whr.
So every Whr made using natural gas at 50% efficiency is 0.36 grams of CO2. Every Whr made by coal at 35% efficiency is 0.92 grams of CO2.
A gallon of gasoline is 8,887 grams of CO2.
So if a car needs 300Whr/mile it needs 316Whr back at the plant. If that was made with 100% renewable then life would be peachy. 100% natural gas would be 114 grams of CO2 per mile. 100% coal would be 291 grams per mile. If 11% of our needs are met with renewables, half of the remaining with natural gas and the other half with coal, then I come up with 181 grams of CO2 per mile.
A 40mpg gasoline powered car is 222 grams per mile. 50mpg is 178 grams per mile.
Ramp up renewables and/or add nukes and it could be cleaner. Otherwise just buying a small high mpg car might be good enough? Not sure if anyone is doing calculations on the energy expended to build a new power plant, maybe that washes out of the calculation... maybe?
Edit: Astro, most of this post isn't aimed at you, only the first bit, where I point out what transmission line loss is currently. The rest is me doing envelope calculations about whether or not it's actually cleaner.