Minnesota

It's a very reasonable question: electric cars themselves have no tailpipe emissions, but what about the power plants used to recharge them? After more than a dozen studies and five-plus years of plug-in car sales, we know the answer. In North America, an electric car charged on even the dirtiest, most coal-intensive electric grid in the nation has wells-to-wheels carbon emissions no higher than that of a very fuel-efficient car. DON'T MISS: Are Electric Cars Really Bad For The Planet? Simple Math Says No (Feb 2012) In the best of cases, electric cars charged on very clean grids have such low...

Let's be real: How many of you out there have ever driven a single mile on E85 ethanol fuel? Very, very, very few of you, most likely. The fuel composed of 85 percent ethanol blended with 15 percent gasoline is available only in a handful of Midwestern states. Yet a bill now under consideration by a panel in the U.S. Senate would mandate that 90 percent of vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2016 be capable of running on E85, or what are known colloquially as "flex-fuel" cars. The measure was introduced in January by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), and is cosponsored by three other farm-state senators...