ALISSA’S ECO-ADVICE
Eco-investigator and New Jersey native, Alissa MacMillan, seeks to find answers to your everyday questions about tough decisions we all face, when acting in the best interests for the environment. A freelance writer and philosophy lecturer, Alissa is a former features reporter for the New York Daily News and has been living in County Limerick for nearly eight years. Your queries on all matters environmental, are welcome. This week, she focuses on
Q: I need to replace my car but I’m wondering about the current thinking on what’s best for the environment. Is electric really that much better? And is it better to buy new or used when it’s petrol or diesel?
A: Your very good questions, alas, do not have simple answers because the transportation needs of individuals, families and businesses vary so much. But, there are some points on which engineers agree, which may help us wade through the options.
A first thing to note, according to Dr. Barry McMullin, Professor of Engineering at DCU and Chair of the Engineers Ireland Energy, Environment and Climate Action division, is that transportation is a major environmental factor, representing about a third of the country’s energy use. Because transport primarily uses fossil fuels – dominated by petrol and diesel in cars and trucks - it’s a big part of our emissions.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable amount of energy usage for transport,” McMullin says, so our travelling isn’t the problem. The trick is to get more energy from electricity to supply those needs. Ireland gets a high proportion of energy from wind and other zero-emission sources – approaching 40% annually – but only a negligible amount currently goes into transport. But, “the end game for car transport is definitely going to be fully electric,” McMullin says, a “complicated, evolving picture,” and a system-wide challenge to make the transition.
At the moment, buying electric still seems quite expensive, and it is, but only in the short term. “Affordability is complicated,” McMullin adds. Electric cars “are more expensive to buy but the lifetime cost is cheaper, they are cheaper to fuel and cheaper to maintain.” If you have the financial flexibility to look over four to six years, he says, “it probably won’t cost you more at all.” And, the technical, functional requirements are there: for the newest models, unless you regularly drive over 400 kilometres a day, you can plug in your car at home in the evening.
McMullin also notes that, while five years ago there was no second-hand market in electric car, that’s no longer the case. There are a range of capabilities with second-hand vehicles, and you can still get a grant for the charger installation, according to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.
If you’re not ready to go fully electric, go used, says McMullin.
“For people of my generation, there was an expectation that you bought a new car at regular intervals, that you headed to the showroom and traded up,” but this is an outdated view. The life cycle of a car is about 20 years, so if you buy a new petrol, diesel or hybrid car, you are adding more emissions for that period, its lifetime is burning fuel, instead of the 5-10 years left on a used car. In that time, the country should be converting to electric.
“We don’t want to put a new car on the road that still has a petrol or diesel engine in it,” McMullin says, including hybrids, because when it comes to the environment, “we can’t afford it.” And because there is no car manufacturing industry in Ireland, “we have no national interest in a faster fleet replacement,” he adds; there is no benefit to the economy in going new.
McMullin also sees a role for Ireland in becoming a leader in “retrofitting”, or converting old petrol and diesel cars into electric, with the hope that the government considers extending subsidies to kickstart that transition.
Until then, basic wisdom holds: if you can carpool, do it – “you don’t need an engineering degree to see that a car is hugely inefficient in energy use,” and that combining two, three, or four people in the car cuts the weight by, literally, tons. When you can reduce travel, walk or take the train or bus, and cycling is becoming a more viable option in some places, McMullin being a huge fan of e-bikes – “you needn’t arrive to work sweaty!”
In short, the first choice is fully electric, be it new or used, and a used petrol or diesel would be the next best thing. Advice, McMullin says, “for people who in good faith don’t want to damage their children’s future and are just trying to make the best decisions.””.