1.3 million electric cars around the world in 2015 (1) produced as much greenhouse gases (GHG) than if they were powered by gas or diesel.
Politicians and car manufacturers praise electric cars as a solution to fight climate change, although carbon footprint of those cars is not better than thermic cars (see previous post). Manufacturing batteries and producing electricity have a huge impact on the carbon footprint of electric cars (2).
Over half of electric cars in the world are in the US and in China. Two countries where electricity is mainly generated from coal (respectively 40% and 80%). So electric cars produce there more carbon than their thermic equivalents. In 2015, electric cars produced there 250 000 tons of CO2e more than if they had been powered by gas or diesel (3). In Norway, France or Sweden, electric cars interest is due to non fossil fuel electricity generation (nuclear or hydropower). In Japan and Netherlands, this is the number of electric vehicles that reduces GHG emissions (respectively 130 000 and 90 000 in 2015), even though electricity generation is not really climate friendly.
All over the world in 2015, electric cars produced as much GHG emisions as if if they were thermic. And that, with a massive support from of public funds. This will be the topic of next post to come...
Footnotes and references
These calculations are rough sizes and can not be taken as strict reality since so many factors would need to be considerate. Averages and hypothesis are rather favorable toward electric cars.
(1) International Energy Agency: https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/Global_EV_Outlook_2016.pdf
(2) In calculations, cars and batteries manufacture is amortized on life-length and not allocated to the year of sale.
(3) Gas/diesel as well as battery/plug-in hybrid shares were taken into account for calculations.
