Clean cars need clean electricity

Electric vehicles aren’t always as environmentally friendly as people think, argues Vaclav Smil. Much depends on the source of electricity that powers them.

highway

Too much of the discourse about electric vehicles is muddled. Often, there’s no proper historical, physical or environmental context, and even the most basic notion of what constitutes an electric vehicle (EV) gets confused.

Obviously, hybrid vehicles, whose primary power source is an internal combustion engine (ICE), should not be categorised as electric. But, plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), whose main power source is an electric motor and whose batteries are rechargeable from an external supply, should be considered electric cars alongside pure EVs.

Proponents of EVs have persistently ignored these distinctions. Yet these distinctions matter if we are to avoid oversimplifying the environmental arguments behind electric vehicles.

First some context. Although global cumulative sales of EVs and PHEVs surpassed one million units before the end of 2015, that still represented less than 0.1 per cent of the 1.2 billion passenger cars on the road. In 2015, production of EVs and PHEVs added up to only 0.6 per cent of all light-duty vehicle sales, while realistic projections see this share rising to only about 2 per cent by 2020. So a massive scaling up effort is required before electric cars become a major feature of the auto market.

projection global light

Most recent US forecasts have anticipated EV penetration rates of between 5-10 per cent by 2020. Yet given current sales of EVs and PHEVs, even a 3 per cent penetration rate by the end of the decade seems unlikely.

The latest example of exaggerated expectations is Tesla’s promise to produce 500,000 affordable Model 3 EVs in the near future. The company has repeatedly missed its target to deliver just 50,000 of its expensive model S – a car that, by the way, was judged as having a “worse-than-average overall problem rate” by Consumer Reports, America’s most reliable ratings source.

But perhaps the most fundamental misunderstanding regarding EVs is the obfuscating implication of the label ‘electric’. All-electric vehicles do not necessarily deliver the best environmental outcome.

The ultimate goal of shifting from vehicles powered by petrol-fuelled internal combustion engines to those driven by electric motors is to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions and thus make a key contribution to keeping the rise in average tropospheric temperatures at less than 2 degrees Celsius.

source of electricity

This can be achieved by electric vehicles in Norway, where virtually all electricity comes from hydroelectric power, or in Canada, where about 80 per cent of all electricity comes from either hydro power or nuclear. In both cases, vehicles will be powered by sources whose electricity generation does not directly produce greenhouse gasses (GHGs). (Although construction of both hydro and nuclear plants entails the burning of fossil fuels.)

That’s not the case for EVs operating in other parts of the world, however.

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For instance, an EV operating in China’s northern provinces or many Indian states where 90 per cent of all electricity is generated by coal combustion, will produce only 25 per cent less greenhouse gasses than a car with an internal combustion engine. In these regions, switching to an EV will mostly just amount to a transfer of GHG emissions from city streets and roadways to areas with the largest concentrations of coalfired electricity generating plants.

Nor are EVs the most effective GHG-reducing vehicles in many other populous countries, including Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico and Japan. Or, for that matter, in European Union member states like Poland and the Netherlands, or in US states like Missouri, Texas and Florida, where fossil fuels generate some 80 per cent of all electricity.

electric car
LCR fuel

In regions where coal-generated electricity dominates, hybrid vehicles would be the most effective means of GHG reduction. For example, in Missouri, which gets about 90 per cent of its electricity from coal, EVs would reduce GHG emissions by only 27 per cent; hybrids would cut them by 45 per cent.

What’s more, hybrids are already far more abundant than EVs and PHEVs. In 2015 they made up nearly 3 per cent of global car sales and by 2020 that proportion may approach 8 per cent.

As in so many other cases, cheaper and more effective solutions can come from established and less glamourised choices. Today, unless you live in Norway or Quebec, it’s hard to make a compelling case for pure EVs. If you want to reduce transportation GHG emissions, a hybrid might make more sense than an EV.