Three Little-Known Climate Change Impacts of Electric Cars
Here’s what happens when we add the effects of structural materials, the Jevons paradox, and the time-value of energy to EV battery and grid emissions.
Electric cars are heavily marketed as “zero-emission” vehicles. While it’s true that they don’t have a tailpipe that emits various gases into the atmosphere, the full story is much more nuanced.
The most obvious additional impact of electric cars comes from emissions produced by generating the electricity they consume. In the most important global car markets in developing Asia, these emissions are very large and likely to remain so for decades.
Next, we have all the emissions involved in producing the large battery needed to give an electric car a decent range. As a rule of thumb, each 12 kWh of battery capacity emits about 1 ton of CO2 before the electric car drives its first mile.
Although still ignored in policy and marketing, these electric car emission sources are at least reasonably well understood in academia and industry. However, they still do not tell the whole story. This article will discuss three more factors that further complicate the climate credentials of electric cars.
