Electrify Everything. But then What?

Are electric vehicles the silver bullet we were looking for?

Tesla Model 3: Unsplash

In 2012, when Tesla first unveiled its flagship vehicle, the Model S, it was met with excitement and skepticism. Proponents in favour of electric vehicles (EVs) were excited to see a car that could finally serve as a viable alternative to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles; on the other hand, skeptics were quick to dismiss the car as a gimmick and vanity project for a niche slice of the automobile market. 

Fast forward 11 years to 2023, and EVs have become a common sight on our roads. 2022 was a record-breaking year for EVs: more than 10 million EVs were sold globally, a 53% increase from the previous year. In Norway, EV sales accounted for more than 80% of all vehicles sold, whereas nearly six million EVs were sold in China alone. Given these figures, there is absolutely no doubt that EVs are here to stay. Every car brand that you can think of now has at least one EV in its lineup, and some brands such as Volvo, General Motors, Mercedes Benz, and Ford have pledged to completely phase out internal combustion engines by 2030 or 2040.

Just to give an idea of how much of a potential emissions impact this will have, let's take one of the best-selling vehicles, the Ford F Series pickup truck (expected to be fully electrified by 2040), which is sold every 49 seconds around the world.

In 2022, the F Series sold around 790 thousand units, making it the third most-sold vehicle in the world. Now let's take the average distance an average American drives, which was roughly 22 thousand kilometres in 2022, according to the US Department of Transportation. The F Series truck emits on average 3.72kg of CO2 per 10km driven.

If we crunch the numbers, that is about 8,200kg of CO2 emitted per F Series truck per year. Multiply this figure by 790 thousand and you get a total of roughly 6.5 million metric tons of CO2 emitted by the F Series trucks alone. 

(22,000 km) x (3.72kgCO2 per 10km) x (790,000 units) = 6.5 million tons CO2

(Size comparison of the Ford F-150 and the Peugeot 208, best selling car in Europe in 2022)

For context, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 4 million metric tons is the yearly emissions total for about 420,000 homes in the US. Also, these calculations only factor in 790,000 trucks, but there are 282 million vehicles registered in the US alone. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that in 2021, vehicle-based emissions reached 1.48 billion tons of CO2, accounting for 82% of the entire US transportation sector. In 2021 the global transportation sector emitted more than seven billion tons of CO2, with passenger cars and trucks accounting for 62% of that. These numbers are truly mind-boggling. 

Given the amount of emissions produced by vehicles, it is no surprise that governments around the world have taken significant steps to reduce vehicle-based emissions. 

During COP26 in 2021, 35 governments around the world pledged to ban the sales of internal combustion engines by 2040. While the US didn’t initially make any pledges, the Biden-Harris government announced on April 12th the strictest-ever vehicle emission standards, which are expected to come into effect by 2027. The EPA estimates that from 2027 to 2055, the new standards should curb 7.3 billion tons of CO2 emissions while incentivizing consumers to buy or switch to EVs. Given that the US transportation sector is the largest in the world, this new legislation should significantly decrease transportation emissions, in particular from personal and commercial vehicles. This means that, for once, we have tangible and reasonable goals to curb vehicle emissions through tougher standards and industry disruption. Right?

Well… while it is true that EVs are significantly better for the environment than internal combustion vehicles, the proliferation of EVs has exacerbated other environmental issues that are not mentioned in the glitzy advertisements from automakers. 

There are two main environmental challenges related to EVs’ effectiveness in lowering global emissions, which I will categorize based on the traditional two-step wisdom on tackling climate change: 1. electrify everything, and then 2. decarbonize your electricity supply.

On the first rule of electrifying everything, there are some big challenges related to the batteries that power EVs.

Data from: Alves et. al, 2018

As shown in the figure above, lithium-ion battery cathodes are made from various minerals including lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese (anodes are predominantly made from graphite). Last week’s Decarb Digest explained how these minerals are only found in specific areas of the world, and often involve carbon-intensive supply chains and unethical labour conditions. It is estimated that global mining and processing is responsible for 4-7% of all GHG emissions, and unless we change the energy sources used to power these processes, those emissions will increase in the coming years. 

It is estimated that emissions from cobalt mining alone will increase from 1.6 million tons in 2021 to more than three million tons by 2030. It is particularly difficult to reduce cobalt mining emissions due to carbon-intensive refining challenges and the general lack of necessary infrastructure and regulations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where most of the world’s cobalt supply is found. 

On the other hand, it is expected that by 2030, the proportion of lithium used for batteries will increase from roughly 30% in 2015 to 95%. With increasing demand, lithium production has accelerated across the world, particularly in lithium-rich Australia. Due to the type of rock from which Lithium is extracted in Australia, this mining is three times more carbon-intensive than Lithium mining processes in Chile.

The second key challenge relates to cleaning our electricity supplies. China, the largest EV market in the world, produces two-thirds of their electricity through coal-fired power plants. Given current trends, it is expected that global EV adoption could result in a 300-fold increase in global electricity demand by 2040 compared to 2016 levels, with a significant proportion of that coming from China. Russia’s war in Ukraine has also crunched energy supplies, forcing countries to resume coal and oil power plants. 

The effectiveness of EVs in reducing emissions will largely be tied to how quickly governments can shift to low- and zero-carbon electricity sources. If everyone buys an EV, but we charge that EV with electricity generated from coal, we won’t hit our emission reduction goals. I digress.

After all that, let’s recap the key points related to EVs and their effectiveness in tackling climate change:

• EVs have an important role to play in lowering global emissions

• EVs should not be seen as a silver bullet for solving the transportation sector’s emissions problem

• EV batteries need electricity, and that electricity will need to come from decarbonized sources

To conclude, I’ll offer an unconventional thought on our relationship with the transportation sector.

It may be the case that the best way to reduce vehicle emissions is by fundamentally altering our relationship with vehicles. If cities were designed to be more pedestrian-friendly, there wouldn’t be as large a need for personal vehicles. Similarly, the shift to hybrid working arrangements coming out of the pandemic has shown that we might not all need to spend hours in traffic waiting to get to and from the office.

Lower global emissions in the transportation sector is a tough problem to solve. It will require creative, multi-disciplinary thinkers, just as much as it will require auto industry disruptors.