Some things are steps we need to go through to come to a deeper understanding. Sometimes that understanding is that they don’t offer us easy hope.
Electric vehicles fall into that category although they will have some clear benefits for the electricity grid management.
Beyond electric vehicles lies the realisation that adapting to living more locally travelling far fewer kilometres will have to be a big part of the answer.
Electric cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetime than their petrol equivalents because of the energy used in making their batteries a study commissioned by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership jointly funded by the British Government and the car industry has found.
An electric car would have to drive 130000kms before it started producing a net saving in CO2 emissions. This is more than many of them will drive in their lifetime. A mid-size electric car would produce 23.1 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime compared with 24 tonnes for a similar petrol car.
Emissions from the manufacture of electric cars are at least 50% higher because batteries are made of materials which require more energy to process. Replacement batteries also drive up the total emissions.
The automobile industry should be required to state the full lifecycle emissions of cars rather than the tailpipe emissions to avoid misleading consumers.