Report 3: Fuel and the environment
Suggested answers
A
student writes an argument on the impact of fuel and battery –
powered cars on the environment. The teacher writes comments.
Rewrite the argument, with improvements.
Assess yourself; make improvements; let a peer assess you.
A battery-powered car is less harmful. Less than what? Harmful to what?
This is because it doesn’t burn any fossil fuels. So what? What is harmful
about fossil fuels?
Instead it uses electricity to power it. Isn’t electricity formed by burning
fossil fuels? If so, what about the argument you gave above?
A battery powered car is less harmful to the environment than a petrol-powered car is. All
petrol-powered cars burn a fossil fuel (petrol), while battery powered cars are powered by
electricity, which might have been generated from means other than fossil fuel burning (e.g.
hydro-electric / solar / wind / geothermal power). Fossil fuel burning releases pollutants, e.g.
SO2 into the air, and these damage the environment, e.g. by poisoning or damaging plants,
animals and humans. Fossil fuel burning also releases CO2 into the air, and this is a
greenhouse gas, which traps earth’s heat radiation into the atmosphere, contributing to global
warming, which could cause harmful consequences such as glacier melting and flooding of
coastal areas, disruption and loss of ecosystems, and alteration in distribution, and extinction,
of some plants and animals. Even if the electricity used to run a battery-powered car is
generated by the burning of fossil-fuels, its much greater energy transfer efficiency (95%)
compared to petrol-powered cars (20%) means that much less fossil fuel burning is required
to propel a battery powered car a certain distance, requiring less release of CO2 and other
pollutants, than for a petrol-powered car.
Teacher feedback:
Provide feedback to the learner, e.g.:
 correct / direct learners to documents where correct information can be
found where learners have given incorrect answers
 ask learners questions which will help them consider relevance and improve
precision; e.g. ‘why?’ ‘so what?’
 instruct learners to complete / retry sections, and then resubmit, the report,
where appropriate
 encourage learners; praise strengths
 comment on the pacing of learners, and direct their further learning
 if necessary tell learners that their problem will be addressed in class