Are electric vehicles clean?
By: Harrison Rubin
With the increase in awareness of humanity’s carbon footprint, every major car manufacturer has been developing an electric vehicle. It is the general understanding that electric vehicles are much cleaner since they do not emit nearly as many greenhouse gases as combustion-based vehicles. However, will these cars really be better for the environment?
While the car itself does not produce much greenhouse gas, the production of electric car batteries and electric energy to fuel these cars can be extremely environmentally unfriendly. The reason for this is that many lithium-ion car batteries are produced in countries that do not primarily use renewable forms of energy to power these factories. China, Thailand, Germany, and Poland are all global producers of batteries, and the energy that is used to power these factories primarily comes from non-renewable sources such as coal. As these batteries become heavier and more powerful, it is estimated that their production will emit up to roughly 75 percent more CO2 than the production of combustion-based vehicles. So when taking into account battery production, an electric vehicle produced in Germany could take more than 10 years before it would produce less CO2 than a standard combustion vehicle.
At the same time, many electrical grids, both in these countries and around the world, are still generated by non-renewable energy sources. So, while the energy itself might be clean, the process to generate it is dirty. This can lead to no significant reduction in the carbon footprint.
While there have been clear guidelines and emissions standards for cars after their production, regulators have not developed policies targeting the emissions footprints for components of the electric vehicle. According to Transport & Environment, switching from non-renewable forms of energy to renewable energy to create vehicles would reduce emissions by 65 percent. If manufacturers changed to renewable energy sources, electric vehicles would undoubtedly reduce humanity’s carbon footprint.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/the-dirt-on-clean-electric-cars
