Battery electric vehicles and climate change
What follows here is an examination of each rule in the context of BEVs, with evidence from a combination of primary and secondary sources as support. To conclude, this analysis will illustrate the applicability of these five rules in assessing further technology solutions for climate change.
Rule 1: New technologymust offer a path tomaterial impact in the battle against climate change
If we are to pursue the costs and complexities of driving new technologies in our quest to address climate change, we need to know that the return on such efforts will be high. Whilst every effort to reduce our carbon footprint counts, failing, through misdirected investment, government focus, or consumer attention to make the most of the potential benefits, could have catastrophic effects. Such broad-brush assertions are perhaps obvious; it is as important to know where and how to focus new technologies to gain most benefit, as we seek to substitute existing approaches, and potentially drive variances in geographic adoption. Today, transportation accounts for just under 15% of greenhouse gas emissions, fourth on overall sector impact after power generation, agriculture, and industry. More than 70% of transportation emissions come from road-side travel, dwarfing the consequences of both aviation and shipping. Half of that impact comes from passenger cars, with trucking and heavy-duty vehicles accounting for the remainder, as shown in exhibit 1.1 (data source: Edenhofer, Pichs-Madruga, & Sokona for IPCC, 2015). Reducing emissions in all passenger cars by two thirds – which BEVs can help car manufacturers to achieve by 2030 – means a reduction of overall CO 2 emissions by 3% – 4% becomes possible. Set against the necessary goal of a 45-50% reduction in emissions over that same time-frame in order to limit global temperature increases ( ‘ Countriesmust triple climate emission cut targets to limit global heating to 2C ’ , 2019), BEVs offer a very meaningful weapon.
Of course, it isn’t quite so simple.
First, BEVs require electricity to charge. If that energy is produced by fossil-fuel power generators, then they are simply substituting tailpipe emissions for those spewed in power plants. It’s clear therefore that electric vehicles need to be disproportionately deployed in geographies where clean energy consumption is a possibility. With economies depending on the imports and exports of energy, identifying which countries have high relative consumption of clean energy poses a challenge, particularly as any forecast for the future depends on evolution of energy costs, and the demands that developing economies place for often rapidly increasing needs (Ritchie & Roser, 2017). As a result, the pursuit of electric vehicles has to be combined with a universal quest to replace fossil-fuelled energy production with renewable energy sources. As countries de-carbonize electricity generation to meet their climate targets, driving emissions will fall for existing BEVs and manufacturing emissions will fall for new BEVs. But many countries already offer an energy productionmix that makes the shift to BEV net beneficial in emissions: in the UK in 2019, the lifetime emissions per kilometre of driving a Nissan Leaf EV is about three times lower than for the average conventional car, even before accounting for the falling carbon intensity of electricity generation during the car’s lifetime ( ‘ Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change ’ , 2020, p.4)
Furthermore, not all ICE vehicles are ‘born’ with the same potential to damage our environment. Substituting low emission small cars, driven by low-mileage school-run owners, will have less environmental benefit than replacing high emission large cars, driven by high-mileage commuters. As
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