Bias Climate Benefit Owned by Capitalism

In this modern era, governments and automakers are promoting electric vehicles as a leading technology to curb oil use and fight for climate change. General Motors said it aims to stop selling gasoline-powered cars and new trucks by 2035 and will switch to battery-powered models. More than one third of the life time Co₂ emissions from an Electric vehicle comes from the energy used to make the car itself. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it’s already been responsible for more than 25.000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions while the amount for making a conventional car just 16.000 pounds of Co_2.

As pointed out by green venture capitalist Vinod Khosta, “Electric cars are coal-powered cars”. Broadly speaking, most electric cars sold today tend to produce significantly less planetary warming emissions than most petrol cars. But a lot depends on how much coal is being burned to charge up those plug-in vehicles. And electric grids still need to get much, much cleaner before electric vehicles are truly emissions free.

If you assume electric vehicles are drawing their power from the average grid in the United States, which typically includes a mix of fossil fuel and renewable power plants, then they’re almost always much greener than conventional cars. Even though electric vehicles are more emissions-intensive to make because of their batteries, their electric motors are more efficient than traditional internal combustion engines that burn fossil fuels.

“Coal tends to be the critical factor,” said Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “If you’ve got electric cars in Pittsburgh that are being plugged in at night and leading nearby coal plants to burn more coal to charge them, then the climate benefits won’t be as great, and you can even get more air pollution.”The good news for electric vehicles is that most countries are now pushing to clean up their electric grids. The water required for producing batteries has meant that manufacturing electric vehicles is about 50 percent of more water intensive than traditional internal combustion engines

In the United States, utilities have retired hundreds of coal plants over the last decade and shifted to a mix of lower-emissions natural gas, wind and solar power. As a result, researcher identified that electric vehicles have generally gotten cleaner too. And they are likely to get cleaner still. “The reason electric vehicles look like an appealing climate solution is that if we can make our grids zero-carbon, then vehicle emissions drop way, way down,” said Jessika Trancik, an associate professor of energy studies at M.I.T. Even though the best hybrids that burn gasoline will always have a baseline of emissions they can’t go below.

As earlier generations of electric vehicles start to reach the end of their lives in preventing a pileup of spent batteries looms as a challenge. Most of today’s electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries which can store more energy in the same space compared to the older and more commonly used lead-acid battery technology. But while 99 percent of lead-acid batteries are recycled in the United states, estimated recycling rates for lithium-ion batteries are about 5 percent.

Experts point out that spent batteries contain valuable metals and other materials that can be recovered and reused. Depending on the process used, recycled battery can also use large amounts of water, or emit air pollutants. “The percentage of lithium batteries being recycled is very low, but with time and innovation, that’s going to increase,” said Radenka Maric, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Tesla as the forefront of electric cars emits about 44 tons of Co₂, in the other hand Audi A7 Quatro reach 49 tons of Co₂ . So throughout the full life of an electric car, it will emit just three to five tons less Co2.The emission produced by electric vehicle is tripled in comparison with gasoline cars. Electric cars barely cut CO2 but produce more air pollution through coal than traditional gasoline cars. But of course electricity from renewables like solar panel and wind creates energy for electric cars without Co2. Won’t the perceived rapid ramp-up of these renewables make future electric cars much cleaner ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIBhUFfyQdA

Sources used during this writing

• Holland, Stephen P., Erin T. Mansur, Nicholas Z. Muller and Andrew J. Yates. 2020.”Decompositions and Policy Consequences of an Extraordinary Decline in Air Pollution from Electricity Generation.”  American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 12(4):244-74.
• Gao and Z. C. Winfield, “Life Cycle Assessment of Environmental and Economic Impacts of Advanced Vehicles,” Energies, vol. 5 (2012), pp. 605–620.
• https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore
• https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/pdf/doi/10.1257/pol.20190390
• https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-recycling-lithium/97/i28
• https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-energy-farms-electric-vehicle-batteries-life-0522