04 May How green are electric vehicles?
Grambach/Graz, 04.05.2022: The products of VANILLA support the GREEN DEAL and contribute to a cleaner environment in combination with sustainable strategies and technologies on the path to minimized Cradle-to-Grave emissions. This is possible, because VANILLA has its focus on sustainable production equipment for electrical drive units of battery electric and fuel cell electric vehicles. But how green are these electric vehicles?
When you drive an electric car, there are almost no emissions of greenhouse gases that are harmful to the climate nor emissions that are harmful to health, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx). In inner cities in particular, this leads to increased air purity and thus to an improvement in the quality of life. Nevertheless, the environmental friendliness of electric cars repeatedly comes in for criticism.
In detail, the CO2 emissions generated during the production of the batteries are criticized. According to studies the production of lithium-ion batteries emits up to 250 kg of CO2 equivalent per kWh of battery capacity. That means, that there is a kind of break even point for being green after a certain mileage. Another aspect is that the CO2 emissions generated during the production of lithium-ion batteries are highly dependent on the respective electricity mix of the manufacturing country. Since this will contain more renewable energies in the future, it can be assumed that the emissions per kWh will be reduced accordingly.
Without a deeper dive into more numbers at this point, there are a couple of calculations that look at the entire life cycle of vehicles, which come to the conclusion, that electric cars are green, if electricity used for production and driving comes from renewable energy. That’s the relevant tipping point.
Based on the German electricity mix, today (2022) electric cars have already a CO2 balance that is about 20% more favorable than conventional passenger cars with combustion engines. The Federal Environment Agency considers a power supply from almost 100 % renewable energy to be realistic by 2050. These developments in the German electricity mix, as well as the optimization of vehicle production and recycling, mean that the carbon footprint of an electric car in 2050 will be around 70% better than that of a comparable gasoline-powered vehicle. Also fuel cell electric vehicles are a green option, as long as the electricity for the production of hydrogen comes from renewable energy.