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Heavy traffic on the M25 in southern England. Photograph: Maureen
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Heavy traffic on the M25 in southern England. Photograph: Maureen
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EV mythbustersBusiness



DO ELECTRIC CARS REALLY PRODUCE FEWER CARBON EMISSIONS THAN PETROL OR DIESEL
VEHICLES?

In part five of our series exploring myths surrounding EVs, we assess the
greenwashing claims

 * Are EVs too costly to tempt drivers?
 * Is it right to have range anxiety?
 * Do EVs pose a greater fire risk?



Jasper Jolly
@jjpjolly
Sat 23 Dec 2023 05.00 EST
 * 
 * 
 * 



There is a spectre haunting electric cars: the question of greenwashing. What
if, for all the green hopes attached to zero-emissions cars, the truth is that
they fail to achieve their main goal of cutting world-heating carbon emissions?

Our EV mythbusters series has looked at some of the most persistent criticisms
of electric cars, ranging from car fires to battery mining, range anxiety to
cost concerns. This article asks: do electric cars really produce fewer carbon
emissions than petrol or diesel?




THE CLAIM

In the US, the Florida senator Rick Scott said there was “ample evidence to
suggest that EVs are not as clean as people are being led to believe and folks
deserve to know the truth”. He and other Republican colleagues introduced the
(suggestively named) “Directing Independent Research To Yield Carbon Assessment
Regarding Electric Vehicles (DIRT Y CAR EV) Act”, which tried to call for
analysis of the carbon footprint of vehicles.

A recent article in the UK’s Daily Mail reported that “the environmental benefit
of electric cars may never be felt” because many electric vehicles “will never
hit their mileage target as owners upgrade to newer models, leaving swathes of
used electric cars sitting unwanted on garage forecourts”.

But it is not only the rightwing press. In June, the Guardian published an
article by the actor Rowan Atkinson in which he said he felt “duped” by EVs’
carbon claims and that the reality was “very different”, citing Volvo research
suggesting greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are
almost 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.

“It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s
fight against the climate crisis,” Atkinson wrote.


graphic


THE SCIENCE



Any assessment of carbon emissions associated with a product needs to look at
its whole life cycle, from manufacture to scrapping (and, hopefully, recycling).
Many claims about electric cars’ supposedly worse environmental toll focus on
manufacturing and ignore the actual use of the cars.

The grain of truth in the criticism is that EVs do indeed take significantly
more energy to manufacture. Battery production requires large amounts of
electricity to heat ovens to bake electrode materials, and to charge and
discharge the battery to prepare it for use. While electricity can be produced
with zero emissions, most countries still burn carbon-heavy fossil fuels to turn
generators. Analysis by the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, cited by
the US Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that manufacturing battery cars
produces about 60% more carbon emissions than their fossil fuel cousins.

That means that electric cars start with a big carbon disadvantage, sometimes
described as a “carbon debt”. However, Eoin Devane, a senior analyst for surface
transport at the Climate Change Committee, the UK government’s climate science
adviser, said: “If you look at the data, that ‘carbon debt’ is paid off within
about two years of driving the vehicle.”


Electric vehicles do take significantly more energy to manufacture. Photograph:
Matthias Rietschel/Reuters

The vast majority of fossil fuel cars’ carbon footprint comes in use, when
exhaust pipes constantly spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Transport &
Environment (T&E), a campaign group, calculates that a new petrol car will
produce about 27 tonnes if driven for 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles), and 49
tonnes over 200,000km.



Electric cars, by contrast, use less energy and can charge from zero-carbon
sources. Just how much greener electric cars can be in operation depends on how
much renewable electricity is used in local grids. Transport & Environment has a
handy online calculator that allows you to play with the grid, choosing between
different countries’ energy mixes and whether the battery was made in
carbon-heavy China or greener Sweden. Where the lines cross indicates how many
miles are needed for a battery car to win on carbon emissions.

Lucien Mathieu, T&E’s cars director, said that even if you choose a worst-case
scenario – vehicles made and driven with electricity largely from coal – the
electric car will win out after about 70,000km (about six years of driving).
“The more you drive an electric car, the better it gets,” he said.

The picture for electric cars will improve as power from the wind and the sun
replace gas and oil, reducing carbon emissions from generating electricity.
Colin Walker, the head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit
thinktank, said: “Even if you have a really dirty grid, EVs are still better for
the environment. That will keep going as the grid gets cleaner and cleaner.”

We also need to take into account the future of the technologies. Auke Hoekstra,
an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, said
emissions from fossil fuel cars cannot fall much further, meaning they are not a
viable technology for a zero-emissions world. Yet battery development is still
in relative infancy, and is likely to tip the balance further in favour of
electric cars.

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Batteries are “a good endgame solution” for the transition to net zero, Hoekstra
said. “The gasoline engine is basically going nowhere.”


ANY CAVEATS?

Batteries are not the only way to get cars to net zero. You can fill them with
“e-fuels” – petrol made with carbon from the air, hydrogen from water, and green
electricity. That technology works and will probably be used to power classic
cars long into the future. Other people advocate using the hydrogen in fuel
cells to run a motor.


Batteries are not the only way to get cars to net zero. Photograph:
RyanJLane/Getty Images/iStockphoto

However, in either case the energy efficiency is drastically lower than using
that electricity directly, and the fuel is likely to be needed for planes, which
are much harder to decarbonise.

And there was an important point in Atkinson’s Guardian article: replacing an
old, little-used car with a brand new electric car may not make sense because of
the “carbon debt”.

“If the vehicle is not being regularly used there is certainly a case to wait
until the point you’re going to replace it anyway,” said the CCC’s Devane.
However, he and others cautioned that any calculation of relative carbon savings
for individuals would be complicated. And, Hoekstra added, “not having an
electric car is better for the environment” if you can rely on public transport
instead.


THE VERDICT

The scientific consensus is overwhelming: on any realistic like-for-like
comparison a battery car will be cleaner than its petrol or diesel equivalent.
Burning fossil fuels to make and drive electric cars will still cause emissions,
but at a lower level than inefficient fossil fuel engines.

That is true of today’s grid (in richer economies, at least) but in tomorrow’s
grid the benefits will grow as long as countries continue to shift away from
coal and gas to generate electricity. Putting batteries in cars so far appears
to be the only practical way to shift the tens of millions of light vehicles
sold every year towards net zero emissions.

Explore more on these topics
 * Business
 * EV mythbusters
 * Greenhouse gas emissions
 * Automotive industry
 * Automotive emissions
 * Motoring
 * Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars
 * Renewable energy
 * features

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

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 * ARE ELECTRIC CARS TOO EXPENSIVE TO TEMPT MOTORISTS AWAY FROM PETROL AND
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   16 Dec 2023


 * IS IT RIGHT TO BE WORRIED ABOUT GETTING STRANDED IN AN ELECTRIC CAR?
   
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