THE ENVIRONMENT

ARE ELECTRIC VEHICLES EVERY BIT AS GREEN AS THEY SEEM?

EV’S HIDDEN FOOTPRINT IS STILL ABOUT TWICE AS LIGHT AS GAS VEHICLES OVER THE LONG HAUL.

EV SKEPTICS commonly bring up two key areas where plug-in cars don’t quite live up to their squeaky clean reputation. One, most of them aren’t truly emission-free, because they are charged from an electric grid powered in part by fossil fuel. Two, the production of an electric car has a bigger environmental impact than the production of an internal combustion vehicle.

Here’s the thing: both of those statements are true—but it’s pretty complex.

A 2019 MIT study found that the production of an EV does in fact generate higher emissions than the manufacturing of a conventional internal combustion automobile. Both mining for battery materials and the production of those batteries—often in fossil-fuel-powered Chinese factories—create a large if relatively covert carbon footprint. But even considering that factor, EVS are much greener over their life cycle. The same study found that even powered by the current U.S. electric grid, and including the production of both battery and vehicle, EVS produce 55 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of internal combustion cars over their life span. That figure will improve over time as renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar create a larger piece of our energy pie. In 2021, renewable sources made up 22.5 percent of the total energy we use in the U.S.; by 2030, that figure could range from 30 to 50 percent, by some estimates. So EVS are not only green, but they’re getting greener.

“Electricity will continue to be cleaned up,” says Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change (and an author of the above study). “But the additional emissions related to electric car production, including mining of materials, batteries, tires and various other components, will be much harder to eliminate.”

So while EVS are certainly greener than internal combustion cars, trouble spots in the production process are coming into focus, including the dirty practice of mining for cobalt, a material necessary for building many of the lithium ion batteries used to power EVS. Currently, 60 percent of the material is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Aside from child labor and workplace safety issues, there are also environmental concerns. Little research exists on the ecological impact of large industrial cobalt mines there.

Tesla has switched to cobalt-free batteries.

Other manufacturers will likely follow.