9 ms·

If 100% of cars on the road (globally) were electric, how much would that impact global warming?

by choxi 9y ago

wooly_bully 9y ago
~14% of total emissions are from transportation. If there were somehow 100% adoption of electric cars, including replacement of all existing cars on the road, you'd see a reduction of around that amount. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
- 0xbear 9y ago
  No, you'd likely not see anywhere near the 14% reduction. Electricity has to come from somewhere. In a lot of US states that "somewhere" contains a significant fraction of coal and gas.
  - guimarin 9y ago
    This is true, but centralized power generation is a lot more efficient then creating the power individually at the point of consumption like ICE cars do today. I believe that an ICE motor is something like 30% fuel efficient, Electric something like 80-90% and a combined cycle blah blah gas turbine is more like 60-70%. So no, it won't be the full 14% but it won't be a few points either, probably safe to say 5-10% reduction.
    - 0xbear 9y ago
      That's not safe to say either. I've read that EVs take more energy to manufacture as well.
      - guimarin 9y ago
        A very good heuristic is to compare their total $ costs for purchase and use, and then think about what sorts of externalities that doesn't cover. I've found over and over again that $ cost pretty much equals energy and therefore pollution cost, less the externalities. But the externalities are really super important, and of course, engine efficiencies and where in the cycle the energy is liberated from it's chemical bonds is important.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- kgwgk 9y ago
  "Transportation" includes ships, planes, trains and trucks. Less than half of that 14% corresponds to passenger cars.
- olyjohn 9y ago
  I've gone though this before... If you break this down into passenger vehicles, the percentage gets much smaller. It really blows my mind. We could replace every car on the planet with zero emissions, and still would put a tiny dent into the total percentage of pollution. We're winding up all these battery factories, spending millions on personal vehicle tech like it'll save the world, and the real majority of the problem doesn't seem to get any focus. I just feel like it's sort of a distraction to keep us busy ignoring the real problem. It all feels sort of like a farce to me. But then again, I don't know what kind of new regulations and emissions controls are going into factories, ships, etc. I just feel like there probably isn't any regulation on the real polluters. They'll just keep getting tax breaks, while we'll undoubtedly get taxed for driving an old "polluter" car.
c06n 9y ago
That is completely dependent on the energy mix used to generate the electrical power. In case coal is used the effect on climate probably is worse than what we have now.
- criley2 9y ago
  While it's dependent on the energy to generate, it adds several new possibilities. It's no surprise why Elon wants solar panels, home scale batteries, and electric cars together. Plus, even if a few dozen coal plant powered electric cars aren't superior to hundreds of millions of gasoline engines burning gas (a point I would still challenge), it's easier to regulate a few dozen coal plants than it is to replace hundreds of millions of cars. It's funny, the "coal makes electric cars worse" has become a popular anti-EV line from conservatives, but the reality is that the US is only 30% coal (no longer #1 source overall either)[1], electric cars in the US with our electric mix release far less carbon on average [2], and heck even burning natural gas in a plant is cleaner with less ghg impact than millions of gasoline burning engines [3] [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 [2] https://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php https://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php [3] http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/emissions-and-charging-costs-electric-cars http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/emiss...
  - c06n 9y ago
    You missed my point. Which is: If and only if the energy production for the EVs will be done through renewable sources, this grand plan works. But in Germany (where I live), we are experiencing huge problems with this approach. The main issue: Power production fluctuates wildly throughout the year. But you need to have the capacity for the worst case (sometime in winter), which means an enormous surplus of energy in the summer. We cannot store this energy. And all these issues threaten the stability of the power grid. Shutting down the nuclear power plants hurt us badly regarding the CO2 budget. All of the new renewable energy installations (solar and wind, mainly) have only achieved to offset the loss of the nuclear plants. Other countries will have the same problems. Solutions are not in sight. It will be much, much more expensive that people now realize. Energy prices in Germany have gone up considerably since the early 2000s, precisely because of renewable energy. Don't get me wrong, to save the planet this is what we must do. But currently, it is unclear how to do this in a short time, without lowering the standard of life for everyone.
QAPereo 9y ago
Including commercial vehicles? It would be a truly significant change, but at this point, probably too little too late. Still, it would be a shocking change, and it would also potentially greatly reduce city pollution around world, reduce deaths and illness from related effects. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/car-emissions-and-global-warming#.Wba5uNEpCf0 http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/car-emissions-and-globa...
adrianN 9y ago
The interesting question, at least for now, is how it would impact air quality in cities. Electric cars are not as eco-friendly as you might think, their production is very energy intensive and currently at least electricity comes in large parts from fossil fuels. However, inner city air quality is pretty bad, with particulates and NOx killing thousands every year. Electric cars have the immediate benefit that they move pollution somewhere else.
- sampo 9y ago
  You still get some fine particle emissions from the wear of rubber tires and road surface, and the brake pads. But this might be a small fraction compared to what gas engines emit.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Those particles are much bigger than what the ICE produces, which makes them less dangerous.
  - kozak 9y ago
    This is where EVs also have an advantage because they scrub their brake pads much less.
- kitsunesoba 9y ago
  Power plants are also much more efficient than the thousands of internal combustion engines they'd be replacing. It's still not ideal, but it's better than the current situation, and it's easily improved (to great effect) by replacing coal plants with cleaner sources.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Are they still more efficient if you factor in the whole chain of fuel->wheel rotation? Converting electricity to battery charge, to movement surely shaves off at least 15%.
    - 9y ago
brndnmtthws 9y ago
I suspect it'd be negligible. You still require a lot of energy for creating and disposing of the batteries, manufacturing the vehicles, and of course charging them. Most of that power (for the time being) comes from non-renewables[1]. I don't have data to back it up, but I suspect that the lifetime energy required to build a fully electric car is still greater than that of an efficient ICE car. Furthermore, according to the EPA, 27% of greenhouse gas emissions are for transport[2], however there's no breakdown by things like airplanes vs trains vs cars. IMO, if people really want to 'change the world', we need to shift away from automobiles, consumerism, plastics, and conspicuous consumption. Live close to work, ride a bicycle, stop buying McMansions. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home [2]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- the_evacuator 9y ago
  We have that breakdown in California statistics and 91% of transport is private cars. Trains, planes, trucks, and off-road equipment is tiny.
  - brndnmtthws 9y ago
    Even so, electric cars are still less efficient, so we'd be worse off. There's at least one[1] study (of the batteries for the Ford Focus) which found that they resulted in 39% more CO2 emissions than the ICE version. [1]: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b00830 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b00830
    - the_evacuator 9y ago
      That requires you to assume a certain mix of energy used to manufacture the thing.
      - brndnmtthws 9y ago
        It reflects the current reality. We're not going to replace everything with nuclear power anytime soon.
mtgx 9y ago
It would probably impact city pollution much more than global warming, which means it will also impact healthcare costs (as in reducing them).
the_evacuator 9y ago
I don't know about globally, but in California the carbon emissions from light vehicles are the largest component of the emissions inventory, and the only component that is growing. If entire fleet was electrified and entire grid converted to renewable, that would knock ~25% off emissions.
pascalxus 9y ago
It's a good start. But, pollution can still be caused from brake dust and tire friction with the roads. Fixing the housing problem will yield significant gains, as that would reduce extremely long commutes to much shorter ones where people could walk.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Electric cars barely use conventional brakes. So brake dust would be reduced by at least a factor of 3.
r00fus 9y ago
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 20% of all emissions are tailpipe from cars. Maybe 30% for all vehicles including trains etc. That's a significant percentage. If the oil demand drops, theres probably another 5-10% that could reduce. So we're looking at probably a 30-35% drop in emissions. As an owner of an electric (recently bought), I'm fascinated by how amazingly agile my relatively-inexpensive Ford Focus is. If everyone drove an electric for a day, many would likely decide to go electric purely for performance reasons.
- smitherfield 9y ago
  But you have to account for the fact that much/most of the electricity used by EVs is generated in ways that produce carbon emissions. And even if we specify that it all comes from "zero-emissions" sources there's still an environmental cost that comes with manufacturing, and mining/processing materials, for cars, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels, nuclear and hydropower, etc. Which is not to say it isn't an improvement, just that it oversimplifies things only to look at one side of the balance sheet.
  - danans 9y ago
    > much/most of the electricity used by EVs is generated in ways that produce carbon emissions This is highly dependent on where you live. At the extreme, North Dakota [1] gets 75% of its electricity from coal burning. But in California, the mix is 35% Natural Gas, 25% Renewable, 10% hydro, 10% nuclear [2], so nearly half of the electricity is carbon-neutral. If huge places like California go electric, they will take other places along with them. But even in the unlikely scenario of a primarily coal-based grid in the future, the efficiency increase that comes from the centralization of combustion at the coal plant (as opposed to in the vehicle) still results in lower well-to-wheels CO2 emissions [3]. [1] http://www.ndenergyforum.com/expert-facts/ http://www.ndenergyforum.com/expert-facts/ [2] http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_syst... [3] http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/SectorPages/Portfolio/PDM/PHEV-ExecSum-vol1.pdf http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/SectorPages/P...
- 9y ago
schiffern 9y ago
According to the IPCC, transportation accounts for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions,[1] and according to the EPA it's 27% of US emissions.[2] Obviously road-based transport is only one part of transport, which also includes ships, trains, and planes. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... [2] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas...
jackhack 9y ago
0%, as there is no proof of man-caused global warming. Manufacturing that many electric motors and (presumably) lithium ion batteries would have an enormous impact on the world, though, in terms of mining and refining the rare metals and elements required for these components. But even putting that aside, and assuming that batteries and motors could be produced for the same impact as combustion engines, the impact would still be zero percent for there is no provable scientific evidence that man is causing global warming. None. There are lots of theories, yes, and loads of simulations, stacks of papers written with funding by government grants, lots of charts & graphs (some with well-documented NOAA 'doctored' numbers), plenty of groupthink in the popular press, etc. but science is not a popularity contest. At one point in time it was settled-science that the world was flat. Groupthink does not equal proof. And it should not be actionable. This lack of proof is the state of scientific knowledge at this time.

If 100% of cars on the road (globally) were electric, how much would that impact global warming?

by choxi 9y ago

If 100% of cars on the road (globally) were electric, how much would that impact global warming?

~14% of total emissions are from transportation. If there were somehow 100% adoption of electric cars, including replacement of all existing cars on the road, you'd see a reduction of around that amount. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

0xbear 9y ago
No, you'd likely not see anywhere near the 14% reduction. Electricity has to come from somewhere. In a lot of US states that "somewhere" contains a significant fraction of coal and gas.
- guimarin 9y ago
  This is true, but centralized power generation is a lot more efficient then creating the power individually at the point of consumption like ICE cars do today. I believe that an ICE motor is something like 30% fuel efficient, Electric something like 80-90% and a combined cycle blah blah gas turbine is more like 60-70%. So no, it won't be the full 14% but it won't be a few points either, probably safe to say 5-10% reduction.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    That's not safe to say either. I've read that EVs take more energy to manufacture as well.
    - guimarin 9y ago
      A very good heuristic is to compare their total $ costs for purchase and use, and then think about what sorts of externalities that doesn't cover. I've found over and over again that $ cost pretty much equals energy and therefore pollution cost, less the externalities. But the externalities are really super important, and of course, engine efficiencies and where in the cycle the energy is liberated from it's chemical bonds is important.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
kgwgk 9y ago
"Transportation" includes ships, planes, trains and trucks. Less than half of that 14% corresponds to passenger cars.
olyjohn 9y ago
I've gone though this before... If you break this down into passenger vehicles, the percentage gets much smaller. It really blows my mind. We could replace every car on the planet with zero emissions, and still would put a tiny dent into the total percentage of pollution. We're winding up all these battery factories, spending millions on personal vehicle tech like it'll save the world, and the real majority of the problem doesn't seem to get any focus. I just feel like it's sort of a distraction to keep us busy ignoring the real problem. It all feels sort of like a farce to me. But then again, I don't know what kind of new regulations and emissions controls are going into factories, ships, etc. I just feel like there probably isn't any regulation on the real polluters. They'll just keep getting tax breaks, while we'll undoubtedly get taxed for driving an old "polluter" car.

c06n 9y ago

That is completely dependent on the energy mix used to generate the electrical power. In case coal is used the effect on climate probably is worse than what we have now.

criley2 9y ago
While it's dependent on the energy to generate, it adds several new possibilities. It's no surprise why Elon wants solar panels, home scale batteries, and electric cars together. Plus, even if a few dozen coal plant powered electric cars aren't superior to hundreds of millions of gasoline engines burning gas (a point I would still challenge), it's easier to regulate a few dozen coal plants than it is to replace hundreds of millions of cars. It's funny, the "coal makes electric cars worse" has become a popular anti-EV line from conservatives, but the reality is that the US is only 30% coal (no longer #1 source overall either)[1], electric cars in the US with our electric mix release far less carbon on average [2], and heck even burning natural gas in a plant is cleaner with less ghg impact than millions of gasoline burning engines [3] [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 [2] https://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php https://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php [3] http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/emissions-and-charging-costs-electric-cars http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/emiss...
- c06n 9y ago
  You missed my point. Which is: If and only if the energy production for the EVs will be done through renewable sources, this grand plan works. But in Germany (where I live), we are experiencing huge problems with this approach. The main issue: Power production fluctuates wildly throughout the year. But you need to have the capacity for the worst case (sometime in winter), which means an enormous surplus of energy in the summer. We cannot store this energy. And all these issues threaten the stability of the power grid. Shutting down the nuclear power plants hurt us badly regarding the CO2 budget. All of the new renewable energy installations (solar and wind, mainly) have only achieved to offset the loss of the nuclear plants. Other countries will have the same problems. Solutions are not in sight. It will be much, much more expensive that people now realize. Energy prices in Germany have gone up considerably since the early 2000s, precisely because of renewable energy. Don't get me wrong, to save the planet this is what we must do. But currently, it is unclear how to do this in a short time, without lowering the standard of life for everyone.

QAPereo 9y ago

Including commercial vehicles? It would be a truly significant change, but at this point, probably too little too late. Still, it would be a shocking change, and it would also potentially greatly reduce city pollution around world, reduce deaths and illness from related effects. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/car-emissions-and-global-warming#.Wba5uNEpCf0 http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/car-emissions-and-globa...

adrianN 9y ago

The interesting question, at least for now, is how it would impact air quality in cities. Electric cars are not as eco-friendly as you might think, their production is very energy intensive and currently at least electricity comes in large parts from fossil fuels. However, inner city air quality is pretty bad, with particulates and NOx killing thousands every year. Electric cars have the immediate benefit that they move pollution somewhere else.

sampo 9y ago
You still get some fine particle emissions from the wear of rubber tires and road surface, and the brake pads. But this might be a small fraction compared to what gas engines emit.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Those particles are much bigger than what the ICE produces, which makes them less dangerous.
- kozak 9y ago
  This is where EVs also have an advantage because they scrub their brake pads much less.
kitsunesoba 9y ago
Power plants are also much more efficient than the thousands of internal combustion engines they'd be replacing. It's still not ideal, but it's better than the current situation, and it's easily improved (to great effect) by replacing coal plants with cleaner sources.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Are they still more efficient if you factor in the whole chain of fuel->wheel rotation? Converting electricity to battery charge, to movement surely shaves off at least 15%.
  - 9y ago

brndnmtthws 9y ago

I suspect it'd be negligible. You still require a lot of energy for creating and disposing of the batteries, manufacturing the vehicles, and of course charging them. Most of that power (for the time being) comes from non-renewables[1]. I don't have data to back it up, but I suspect that the lifetime energy required to build a fully electric car is still greater than that of an efficient ICE car. Furthermore, according to the EPA, 27% of greenhouse gas emissions are for transport[2], however there's no breakdown by things like airplanes vs trains vs cars. IMO, if people really want to 'change the world', we need to shift away from automobiles, consumerism, plastics, and conspicuous consumption. Live close to work, ride a bicycle, stop buying McMansions. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home [2]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

the_evacuator 9y ago
We have that breakdown in California statistics and 91% of transport is private cars. Trains, planes, trucks, and off-road equipment is tiny.
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  Even so, electric cars are still less efficient, so we'd be worse off. There's at least one[1] study (of the batteries for the Ford Focus) which found that they resulted in 39% more CO2 emissions than the ICE version. [1]: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b00830 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b00830
  - the_evacuator 9y ago
    That requires you to assume a certain mix of energy used to manufacture the thing.
    - brndnmtthws 9y ago
      It reflects the current reality. We're not going to replace everything with nuclear power anytime soon.

mtgx 9y ago

It would probably impact city pollution much more than global warming, which means it will also impact healthcare costs (as in reducing them).

the_evacuator 9y ago

I don't know about globally, but in California the carbon emissions from light vehicles are the largest component of the emissions inventory, and the only component that is growing. If entire fleet was electrified and entire grid converted to renewable, that would knock ~25% off emissions.

pascalxus 9y ago

It's a good start. But, pollution can still be caused from brake dust and tire friction with the roads. Fixing the housing problem will yield significant gains, as that would reduce extremely long commutes to much shorter ones where people could walk.

Robotbeat 9y ago
Electric cars barely use conventional brakes. So brake dust would be reduced by at least a factor of 3.

r00fus 9y ago

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 20% of all emissions are tailpipe from cars. Maybe 30% for all vehicles including trains etc. That's a significant percentage. If the oil demand drops, theres probably another 5-10% that could reduce. So we're looking at probably a 30-35% drop in emissions. As an owner of an electric (recently bought), I'm fascinated by how amazingly agile my relatively-inexpensive Ford Focus is. If everyone drove an electric for a day, many would likely decide to go electric purely for performance reasons.

smitherfield 9y ago
But you have to account for the fact that much/most of the electricity used by EVs is generated in ways that produce carbon emissions. And even if we specify that it all comes from "zero-emissions" sources there's still an environmental cost that comes with manufacturing, and mining/processing materials, for cars, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels, nuclear and hydropower, etc. Which is not to say it isn't an improvement, just that it oversimplifies things only to look at one side of the balance sheet.
- danans 9y ago
  > much/most of the electricity used by EVs is generated in ways that produce carbon emissions This is highly dependent on where you live. At the extreme, North Dakota [1] gets 75% of its electricity from coal burning. But in California, the mix is 35% Natural Gas, 25% Renewable, 10% hydro, 10% nuclear [2], so nearly half of the electricity is carbon-neutral. If huge places like California go electric, they will take other places along with them. But even in the unlikely scenario of a primarily coal-based grid in the future, the efficiency increase that comes from the centralization of combustion at the coal plant (as opposed to in the vehicle) still results in lower well-to-wheels CO2 emissions [3]. [1] http://www.ndenergyforum.com/expert-facts/ http://www.ndenergyforum.com/expert-facts/ [2] http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_syst... [3] http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/SectorPages/Portfolio/PDM/PHEV-ExecSum-vol1.pdf http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/SectorPages/P...
9y ago

schiffern 9y ago

According to the IPCC, transportation accounts for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions,[1] and according to the EPA it's 27% of US emissions.[2] Obviously road-based transport is only one part of transport, which also includes ships, trains, and planes. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... [2] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas...

jackhack 9y ago

0%, as there is no proof of man-caused global warming. Manufacturing that many electric motors and (presumably) lithium ion batteries would have an enormous impact on the world, though, in terms of mining and refining the rare metals and elements required for these components. But even putting that aside, and assuming that batteries and motors could be produced for the same impact as combustion engines, the impact would still be zero percent for there is no provable scientific evidence that man is causing global warming. None. There are lots of theories, yes, and loads of simulations, stacks of papers written with funding by government grants, lots of charts & graphs (some with well-documented NOAA 'doctored' numbers), plenty of groupthink in the popular press, etc. but science is not a popularity contest. At one point in time it was settled-science that the world was flat. Groupthink does not equal proof. And it should not be actionable. This lack of proof is the state of scientific knowledge at this time.