Just How Environmentally Friendly Are Electric Cars?
Sales in electric vehicles are skyrocketing, with 2017 set to be the first year when over a million are on our roads. However, are they really as environmentally-friendly as we are led to believe?
Well, the emissions argument is a complex one. Many environmental campaigners argue that in areas where electricity is mainly generated by burning fossil fuels, then driving an electric car is “as dirty as an SUV” [1]. On the flipside, in areas where a lot of energy is produced from renewables, such as in California, electric cars are a far greener option. What must also be taken into account is the carbon footprint generated in the production of gasoline (as well as the impact of burning it in car engines) – the mining or drilling for the raw materials has well-known devastating effects on both the local areas being harvested, as well as the global atmospheric CO2 levels.
Currently, only around 16% of US energy comes from renewables, with a further 20% from nuclear [2]. However, in a talk given to Stanford students on July 14th, JB Straubel (CTO and co-founder of Tesla) discussed the long-term goals of the car manufacturer surrounding sustainability. Straubel indicated that one such goal for Tesla would be that individual owners could charge the car up at their home, ideally from energy taken from solar panels on their roof, rather than at the public charging stations connected to the grid, which would make the process far more environmentally-friendly, which would certainly be a big step forward in overcoming these issues. [The idea of installing solar panels on the roofs of Teslas was dismissed by Straubel, for the reasons that it would actually have an adverse effect due to worsened aerodynamics and increased weight, as well as the tendency of drivers to park their cars in the shade making it somewhat redundant!]
Unfortunately, the environmental problems are not merely limited to emissions. Electric cars, and sports models in particular (such as the Tesla Model 3), have to be light to ensure they have a practical range and don’t use unnecessary amounts of energy. To make these cars so light, rare metals such as lithium (in the battery) are used. Lithium, which is also used in solar panels, is light and conductive – hence it’s the ideal option. However, the mining of lithium, similar to the mining of fossil fuels, has a serious adverse effect on the surrounding environment and ecosystems, as well as a large carbon footprint.
These rare metals are finite – they will run out. Although we have plentiful supplies of them, they are not a permanent solution. One way to get around this is to encourage their recycling, similar to how we recycle our everyday batteries. Only, these aren’t everyday batteries. The battery in an electric car can way over half a ton [3], and there are very few companies in the developed word capable of recycling rare metals from a battery of that size. Of course, as the number of electric cars on our roads increases further, we can expect to start seeing more investment in these sorts of business areas as they grow, but there is definitely work to be done here.
Despite the issues with electric cars outlined above, it is hard to dispute that their increasing popularity is a big step forward. For example, in Europe, electric vehicles “offer a 10-24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles” [4] and this is going to rise further and further. On top of this, Tesla has recently been awarded an “Environmental Leadership” award from Global Green USA [5], indicating that things really are moving in the right direction.
References:
[1]: Will Oremus, “How Green Is a Tesla, Really?”, Slate, available at http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/09/how_green_is_a_tesla_electric_cars_environmental_impact_depends_on_where.html
[2]: Chad Berndt, “Energy expert explains why Tesla and the electric car industry is here to stay”, Teslarati, available at http://www.teslarati.com/energy-expert-says-tesla-electric-vehicle-industry-here-stay/
[3]: Lizzie Wade, “Tesla’s electric cars aren’t as green as you might think”, Wired, available at https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/
[4]: Troy R. Hawkins, Bhawna Singh, Guillaume Majeau-Bettez & Anders Hammer Strømman, “Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles”, Yale University, 2012.
[5]: “Tesla Motors Receives ‘Environmental Leadership’ Award from Global Green USA”, available at https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-motors-receives-environmental-leadership-award-global-green-usa
Image 1: http://www.ev-volumes.com
Image 2: [2]
8 comments on “Just How Environmentally Friendly Are Electric Cars?”
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Chris, great post! I’ve had this argument many times with people that we need to examine the complete life cycle of products. One has to factor in the mining of Lithium, and the energy used to do so, as you noted above. Now in general is that the lesser of two evils that a combustion engine? It depends. I think it offsets one problem (pollutants from a CI engine) for another, mining and transporting Lithium. What I’m encouraged about is that we are taking steps to change the way we look at transportation and energy. It’s an iterative process. I’ve had many people ask me why I don’t put solar panels on the roof of the data centers I design. Mainly it’s because at the scale of the energy use it would be more efficient to do it at the utility scale. Again, great post and well written!
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I agree with most of what you have to say Chris, there will most likely be an increase on the funds used to invest in electric and environment friendly cars. The plans are also already in place for Tesla models to be sustainable by doubling the amount of charging stations in USA and Europe to 10000 units in 2017. These stations can charge a Tesla to 80% after about 30 minutes and will greatly improve the usability of Tesla cars.
The steps taken will significantly help Tesla users however, is it actually efficient in helping the environment? The stations needs energy to recharge the car and most of them are not obtained in an environment friendly way. With more and more stations placed, could it actually lead to the use of more energy and in turn , potentially lead to the need of more production.
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Hey Chris,
Nice post. I have had similar concerns about Lithium batteries as well. A 2012 European Union study titled “Science for Environment Policy” concludes that the production of Lithium Ion batteries uses a large amount of energy, using approximately 1.6 Kg of Oil for a 1 Kg battery. The mining of Lithium uses a large amounts of water and the mining process sometimes contaminates water bodies as well. So there is no doubt that these batteries have serious environmental impacts.
However, I feel that comparatively speaking Lithium batteries are better than combustion engines because you at least have the option of using clean energy in your car. The energy can also come from a coal plant but at the least you have an option to use green energy in your car. With combustion engines you are stuck with using gasoline.
Talal
MS&E 238A
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Hi Chris–thanks for the interesting post! Another aspect I think that’s not considered sufficiently is that although the ideal future involves having solar paneled roofs that allow drivers to charge their cars at home, this is incredibly far from the status quo. Currently, according to Alex Epstein’s August 21st, 2013 in Forbes Magazine titled “With the Tesla Model S, Elon Musk Has Created a Nice Fossil Fuel Car”, 67% of all electricity produced comes from fossil fuels. Until we can drive that percentage to a much, much lower number, the Model S will arguably be worse than many highly efficient gasoline-powered vehicles. In the process of converting the coal/fossil fuels to electricity and then again in the transmission, there are bound to be inefficiencies ingrained in the process. Having said that, I think Elon Musk is taking the right first steps to develop a solar ecosystem that would allow people to procure all of their solar-related products through the same family of companies.
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Hey Chris! Thanks for this great post, I completely agree with you about the fact that with the innovations and researches of the past decade, we see that the challenge does not reside anymore in the emissions of the cars themselves when being driven, but on raw material that are used and their possible scalability to millions of drivers around the world, quickly and while maintaining a green cycle of production. The mining or drilling for the raw materials is the central challenge, and you are right, lithium poses a real scalability problem to be able to manufacture cars for drivers from all around the world. I just wrote last week a blog post about hydrogen fuel cars, this technology is not trendy at the moment and was surpassed by the electric option, but it is interesting to see what are the strong points of it compared to electricity in terms of sustainability: https://mse238blog.stanford.edu/2017/07/alexmrt/can-hydrogen-powered-cars-be-a-better-option-than-electric-cars-in-the-future/
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Hello Chris, you brought up a fantastic point concerning whether electric vehicles are indeed reducing pollution and energy usage in the larger picture. Your post did a wonderful job emphasizing that a vehicle’s eco-friendliness is not necessarily determined solely by its fuel source. Lithium-ion batteries are currently indeed a hassle due to the pollutive nature of mining this metal as well as the difficulty of recycling them. A professor of mine once gave insight on his opinion of lithium-ion batteries concurring with the previous point as well as raising concern about additional waste and pollution in the recycling process. He also pointed out that regulations in lithium mining is somewhat lax due to its lack of prevalence as an environmental concern historically. While Tesla is undoubtedly attempting to create a sustainable system to accommodate for global environmental concerns– and the lithum-ion battery electric car is agreed upon by most as a positive step forward– skepticism in the way you have presented is definitely necessary.
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Thanks for your sharing. It is always necessary to take the whole production procedure into consideration when evaluate if a specific product is environmentally friendly or not. Besides the pollution in producing and disposal process, using electricity doesn’t imply that the vehicle is environmentally friendly. On the one hand, considering the relatively small percentage of renewable energy used in generating electricity, a great amount of electricity used to charge the car are still generated by fossil fuels. On the other hand, the conversion rate of engine is still questioned and the energy loss in transporting process also make the electronic vehicle seems not that efficient in some way. At the same time, for most of marketing material for these companies will only focus on the positive side and ignore the potential negative effect, which can be misleading and not responsible.
MS&E 238A
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Thank you all for your feedback! You raise interesting points. With regard to the discussion surrounding charging stations, at the moment there are quite a few appearing, but we are still not at the stage where it will be feasible for many people to switch to electric (for example, I live tens of miles from my nearest charging station!). So in this respect, we needn’t worry yet about this encouraging excessive consumption, but this is a balance that will need to be struck as the technology progresses.
In reply to the point about most of the electricity coming from fossil fuels – this is largely only true due to Tesla’s strong US presence. In some European nations (particularly nations such as Norway, Iceland and even Scotland), fossil fuels are being relied on less and less, with some nations running on 100% renewables for days. In these areas, electric cars are clearly a better option. However in the US, where fossil fuels are still dominant, the benefits are diluted somewhat.