This New Study Debunks One of the Biggest Criticisms of Electric Vehicles
Even if you include the emissions from the battery and charging it with dirty energy, an EV has a smaller footprint than a gas-powered car
By Adele Peters
In the past, some studies claimed that electric vehicles (EVs) weren’t actually better for the environment: The energy used to make the battery plus the emissions from making electricity could make the total footprint worse than a gas-powered car. Or so the argument went. A detailed new report shows that isn’t true. No matter where an EV is used, even if it charges on an electric grid that uses coal power, it has a smaller carbon footprint than a fossil fuel-powered car.
One factor is that it’s less polluting to make batteries than previously thought. “Earlier studies, done several years ago, were using what we now understand is outdated data on battery production emissions,” says Stephanie Searle, a program director at the International Council on Clean Transportation, the organization that published the report. “At that time, there were not many vehicle batteries being produced, and we didn’t have real data as to the emissions from their production. So people had to estimate it, just basically guessing what those emissions…
