The Gondola is not green!

The carbon-emissions of the Gondola is 130% of that of the Enhanced Bus Service! “Electric” can be deceiving!

In sections 18.4.3-18.4.6 UDOT reports the expected energy consumption of the preferred alternatives, and here is what they say:

The number of gallons of fuel that is used by personal vehicles is on a busy winter day is 2,800 gallons of fuel (gasoline or diesel) and this is the case in both preferred alternatives.

The gallons of diesel used by busses with the Enhanced Bus Service is 1,620. With the Gondola, the busses are traveling a shorter distance and UDOT estimates the number of gallons of diesel is 405.

The amount of electricity (measured in kilowatt-hours) used to power the Gondola in a day is 40,680 kWh.

UDOT converts the electrical energy used by the gondola into the amount of energy in a gallon of diesel. BUT you cannot use this conversion when comparing environmental impact because where the energy is coming from (electricity vs. diesel/gas fuel) makes a HUGE difference!!!!!

The amount of CO2 emissions from the Enhanced bus service is approximately 100,000 pounds CO2/day! Here’s the math if you care:

The amount of CO2 emissions from the Gondola is equal to the CO2 emissions from burning fuel (cars+busses) plus the electricity to run the gondola, which is approximately 130,000 lbs CO2/day! The electricity percentages are coming from the 64.5% of Utah’s electricity coming from coal and 24% coming from natural gas, the remaining percent of electricity was generously calculated as zero carbon emissions.

In these equations I used numbers from sections 18.4.3-18.4.6 of the LCC EIS. Gallons of fuel used by busses and cars for each scenario were reported and kWh for the gondola. To calculate CO2 emissions by vehicles I assumed 100% of personal vehicles are diesel, which is generous because carbon emissions from a gallon of diesel is greater than that of gasoline (per gallon of diesel, 22.38 pounds of CO2 are emitted). The CO2 emissions from producing a kilowatt-hour is 2.2 lbs from coal and 0.91 lbs from natural gas. You can use the Environmental Protection Agency’s calculator to get similar numbers.

A note: in the EIS the gallons of fuel per day to run the Enhanced Bus Service is reported to be 4,420 while the Gondola is reported to be 4,412. Simply comparing these numbers, it would be far-fetched to call the Gondola “environmentally friendly”. But, once again converting electricity to gallons of fuel is a convenient guise which suggests the Gondola is not as environmentally impactful as it would be in reality.