Ignorance is bliss and spin is power.
I have loved reading the register for years but most of the articles on electric cars and climate change seem to be extremely biased to the journalists point of view. Where has the impartiality gone?
Has anyone who read Lewis’s article bothered even to skim read the referenced report?
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es903729a
I just did and it seems Lewis has deliberately manipulated the facts to suit his preferred outcome. For instance in report there are two figures one for the each of the evaluation methods used. The first is the figure of 3.9L/100km that Lewis referenced and the second is a figure of 2.6L/100KM. The first figure only takes in to account the use of minerals and energy, while the second non reported figure also appraises toxicity to humans and ecosystems. Which is fairly relevant if you care about the health of your family.
“GWP, CED and ADP are driven exclusively by the use of minerals and energy, while EI99 H/A also appraises toxicity to humans and ecosystems.”
“Nevertheless, the operation of an ICEV alone causes impacts that are roughly just as high (CED, 92%; GWP, 125%; Figure 2) as the total environmental impacts of E-mobility (100%). A break even analysis shows that an ICEV would need to consume less than 3.9 L/100km to cause lower CED than a BEV or less than 2.6 L/100km to cause a lower EI99 H/A score. Consumptions in this range are achieved by some small and very efficient diesel ICEVs, for example, from Ford and Volkswagen (13, 39).”
So that’s 72.43 MPG just to be as efficiency as a Golf converted to a BEV on the current electricity generation mix or 108.65 MPG to achieve the same levels of efficiency and air pollution as a Golf converted to a BEV on the current electricity generation mix. I for one don’t know of any current or future production pure ICE car that will get close to the figure of 108.65 MPG. I think both figures would be even higher if the report used a car built from scratch to be a BEV (Nissan Leaf) rather than a conversion. Also over time electrical generation will become cleaner and more efficient. The UK has a legal target of 15% renewable energy by 2020.
“Propelling a BEV with electricity from an average hard coal power plant increases the environmental burden by 13.4%. On the other hand, using electricity from an average hydropower plant decreases environmental burden by 40.2%. This results in a decrease for the operation from 41.8% (UCTE mix) to 9.6% when charging the battery with electricity from hydropower plants.”
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/energy_mix/renewable/policy/renew_obs/renew_obs.aspx
“The Renewables Obligation (RO) is the current main mechanism for supporting large scale generation of renewable electricity. Since its introduction in 2002, it has succeeded in more than tripling the level of renewable electricity in the UK from 1.8% to 6.64%1 and is currently worth around £1.42 billion/year in support to the renewable electricity industry.”
“Transport service affects the environment largely by contributing to global air pollution. PM10, SO2, and NOx traffic emissions contribute significantly to environmental problems such as acidification and eutrophication (SO2 and NOx), photochemical air pollution (NOx) or have adverse effects on human health, for example, cell toxicity, damage to genetic material by means of oxidative stress or by triggering allergies (PM10, SO2, and NOx). With respect to the LCI results for the pollutants PM10, SO2, and NOx, transport with a BEV leads to higher environmental burden than transport with an ICEV. However, the emissions caused by the production of the vehicle, in particular the Li-ion battery, are located in industrial areas where the population density is rather small. The releases of emissions from operation are prevalent in urban areas with a high population density. The NOx-emissions from an ICEV that originate prevalent from operation, consequently have a high damage potential to human health.”
Lewis also makes no mention of the concluding statement of the report that Li-ion battery production does not negate the potential benefits of the higher efficiency of BEV compared to an ICEV!
“All the facts taken together, the results of the LCA, the various sensitivity analyses, the modelling applied for EOL, the assumption for the used electricity mix, etc., suggest that E-mobility is environmentally beneficial compared to conventional mobility. The Li-ion battery plays a minor role in the assessment of the environmental burden of E-Mobility. Thus, a Li-ion battery in an BEV does not lead to an overcompensation of the potential benefits of the higher efficiency of BEV compared to an ICEV.”
I will be trading in my 226g/km (CO2) spewing steam age based tech Audi TT for a Nissan Leaf come March next year and I for one hope it will make future BEV’s cheaper. No one will need more than 637Kb of memory for a personal computer and ICE cars will still be around in 30 years.
