A few months back, I wrote a blog post describing a road trip I went on with my family to the Scottish Highlands this summer. The aim of the article was not to show the world what a great time we had. That is what Instagram and Facebook are for if I were so inclined. Instead, I was curious to explore the viability of electric cars for more arduous journeys. Is an electric car any good outside its comfort zone of commuting, city runabouts and day trips?
The trip was fantastic, and with the exception of Edinburgh, the whole charging experience was pretty painless. However, this raised a nagging doubt. To what extent do electric cars matter in addressing the climate emergency? Will they make a noticeable dent in greenhouse gas emissions and our journey to Net Zero, or is it simply virtue signalling that allows the relatively well-off the opportunity to feel that that they are doing something good for the planet. Let’s have a look.
In this post, I will examine the impact of electric cars in the UK. This is not only because I am UK-based, but also because the UK Government publishes pretty good datasets to support its policy papers. Whilst obviously there will be differences between countries, I expect some of the findings to hold true for most industrialised nations.
1. Cars Matter. A Lot.
Land transport, including both road and rail, represents the largest single source of emissions in the UK, representing 122 million tonnes of emissions, approximately 28% of all domestic emissions. More emissions are emitted than the entirety of the UK power sector.
Passenger cars, including taxis, emit 74m tonnes of carbon dioxide, a full 60% of the overall road transport emissions. To put this into context, light-duty vehicles and HGVs (i.e. vans) are each responsible for approximately 17% of ground transport emissions. Rail and buses are largely insignificant, being responsible for only emit 3% and 3.4% respectively. There is no getting away from the fact that unless there is a large shift towards public transport, the single biggest gain in decarbonising transport is to get rid of diesel and petrol vehicles.
2. Battery Electric Vehicles are selling like hot cakes. But not fast enough
Car sales have been going through a very tough couple of years. In 2020, they were hit directly by Covid lockdowns, followed by a semiconductor shortage that is having an even bigger effect. However, the picture for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is a lot rosier. In the UK, sales in 2021 are up by 89% over 2020, against a market that is largely flat. This is largely at the expense of diesel cars, whose sales fell by 47%. Similarly, in September, the all-electric Tesla Model 3 became the best-selling car in Europe, the first BEV ever to do so. The SMMT, the UK automotive industry trade body, has forecast BEV sales up to 2035. This is the date at which all new cars should emit no direct emissions. These forecasts show that over this period, BEV sales will increase by an average of 20% every year to 2035.
So does this show that we are on track to achieve the rapid decarbonisation of road transport? The measure that matters is not the number of cars being sold, but the miles travelled by zero-emission vehicles instead of petrol and diesel cars. Consider that the average lifespan of a car is 14 years. This means that there will be a considerable lag in shifting miles travelled to zero-emission vehicles unless there are specific fiscal incentives for BEVs or penalties for polluting cars.
Indeed, the SMMT forecasts are very optimistic. The scenario shown in these charts assumes that there are no supply chain constraints to the production of electric cars, and that charging infrastructure anticipates the demand. Even in this model, by 2035, 14 years time, only 46% of cars on the road will be electric vehicles. So yes, the car industry is rapidly electrifying, but it will take a while to decarbonise road transport.
3. Green electricity will mean that electric cars are the green option
One of the most common criticisms of electric cars is that their full-lifecycle emissions, including manufacturing, is not much more carbon-efficient than the vehicles they are displacing. Whilst this is fair commentary, does it stand up to scrutiny?
A study carried out by the International Council on Clean Transportation (the organisation that investigated VW’s diesel emissions cheating) has shown that lifecycle emissions for electric cars are much lower than their fossil fuel equivalents. Although electric vehicles are more energy-intensive to manufacture, due to chemical processes required to make the batteries, this is quickly offset by the reduction in emissions when the vehicle is in use.
Take for example, a 70kWhr battery, which is the typical size used by a SUV so beloved by families the world over. The production, raw materials and supply chain emissions for its manufacture are between 4 and 5 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is dwarfed by the approximately 150 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions emitted by a typical petrol SUV over its lifetime.
Including the full-lifecycle emissions from raw material extraction through to the carbon emitted by electricity generation, the ICCT estimates that an electric car in Europe will generate approximately 35% of the emissions of an equivalent petrol car. So not genuinely zero emissions, but a significant improvement nevertheless.
These emissions savings are largely thanks to the shift in UK electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewables. The phase-out of coal from the UK energy mix has already seen UK electricity carbon dioxide emissions reduce by 80% since 2008. This is a triumph that I feel hasn’t been celebrated enough. This figure is estimated to be halved further by 2040, by which point over 75% of electricity will be produced from renewable sources, with the balance largely split between gas and nuclear.
4. There will not be enough EV chargers to meet demand
So having established that the shift to electric vehicles will drive a significant reduction in UK greenhouse gas emissions, the key question remaining is how and where will all these be charged. By 2030, there are expected to be about 20 times as many electric cars on the road as there are now. Delta-EE, an energy market research firm, estimates that UK charge points will need to increase from around 220,000 today, most of which are home charging points, to around 4.1 million by 2030, the point at which petrol and diesel cars (excluding plug-in hybrids) will no longer be allowed to be sold.
This represents a year-on-year growth of 40%, which feels very challenging. It is however worth looking at the non-trivial challenges that lie behind the raw numbers. Public charge points can be roughly divided into three main segments: en-route charging, destination charging and on-street parking. En-route, or motorway charging is key to being able to go on long journeys and to banish range anxiety. Today, 80% of UK motorway service stations are tied into long-term contracts with a single provider, meaning that there is virtually no competition in this sector. Motorway charging, which requires high-power charging to allow people to continue with their journeys, also struggles with the multi-million-pound costs of increasing the electricity supply to the site.
Whilst en-route and destination charging are important for day trips and long journeys, for day-to-day usage most people would prefer the convenience and lower cost of charging a car at home. To date, less than an estimated 200,000 homes have installed home chargers (out of a housing stock of approximately 28.5m UK homes). So even if these forecasts are correct, and 3m home chargers are installed over this period, this increase will still represent only 10% of UK dwellings. Also considering that at least 35% of homes don’t have anywhere to install a private charger, there will be a large proportion of electric car drivers relying on on-street or workplace charging, which are both largely non-existent today.
I cannot help but feel that this is the real elephant in the room that will make or break the success of electric cars.
References
- https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Sixth-Carbon-Budget-The-UKs-path-to-Net-Zero.pdf
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/957887/2019_Final_greenhouse_gas_emissions_statistical_release.pdf
- https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/
- https://www.smmt.co.uk/2021/06/smmt-new-car-market-and-parc-outlook-to-2035-by-powertrain/
- https://theicct.org/publications/eu-co2-FS6-jul2021
- https://about.bnef.com/blog/the-lifecycle-emissions-of-electric-vehicles/
- https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/electric-cars-have-much-lower-life-cycle-emissions-new-study-confirms/
I found your article very helpful, thank you so much for your content.
David, author blog https://theauto.uk/
I definitely believe that EVs in general will make a difference to the planet, allowing us to reduce emissions and save money on traditional fuel.