EVs Are Fool’s Gold
The recent drop in sales of Electric Vehicles in the United States and Europe is an opportunity to pause and consider two long-term questions. How much of a solution EVs can be to the rapidly escalating global climate crisis? And can electric vehicles enhance urban mobility and consequently improve access to employment opportunities, health care, and education for all? This blog tries answer to answer the first question.
While it is true that EVs do not emit CO2 while being driven, EVs are not emission-free. To start, the sources of energy generation that feed the electric grid that charges the EVs must be considered when the environmental benefits of EVs are highlighted. In the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, about 60% of electricity is generated from burning fossil fuels, with one-fifth coming from coal and another 40% from natural gas. According to the International Energy Agency, more than half of the electricity generated in Asia comes from burning coal. The grid in the European Union is comparatively cleaner, with 25% of electricity generated by nuclear energy, with coal producing 14% of electricity, and natural gas 25%.
Beyond fossil fuel-reliant grids, the manufacturing of EV batteries is energy-intensive. As the scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have shown, manufacturing new EVs produces 80% more emissions than building a comparable gas-powered car. The result is that depending on the electricity source used to charge EVs, it can take up to thirteen years of average driving for an EV to reach carbon parity with a comparable gasoline-powered car.
EVs also require a wider range of minerals for their motors and batteries compared to conventional cars. Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, or graphite must be mined in far-flung regions of the world where environmental regulations either do not exist or are not enforced. The extraction of minerals produces large amounts of planet-heating greenhouse gases that must also be added to EVs’ overall environmental footprint. And, if EVs are to replace gasoline cars, the demand for minerals and their extractive pollutants is only to continue to increase in the next two decades. As a study by climateandcommunity.org and the University of California Davis in 2023 documented, the US’s transition to EVs alone requires three times as much lithium by 2050 as is currently produced for the entire global market.
But even if these obstacles are somehow overcome in time to avoid a climate breakdown, the fact remains that EVs are cars and trucks. Beyond charging stations, EVs will require, as with gasoline cars, building, expanding, maintaining, and replacing roads. As an MIT study has shown, the present annual GHG emissions of all construction materials used in the U.S. pavement network are 12 to 13 megatons which is equivalent to the emissions of a gasoline-powered passenger car driving 30 billion miles in a year. Furthermore, EVs will not slow down urban sprawl and suburbanization and their constant need for more roads and paved parking spaces.