Extra emissions are the dirty little secret of electric cars

If you listen to the media, a green automotive future has arrived. We need a reality check.

Newly built ID.3 electric cars parked at the Volkswagen factory in Zwickau, Germany. The carmaker is revving up production of the ID.3 at the plant. Picture: Getty Images

If you listen to the media, a green automotive future has arrived and a tsunami of electric cars is out­selling petrol and diesel around the world, transforming the planet and solving climate change.

We need a reality check. Battery-powered electric vehicles are fairly popular in urban China and California, as well as a few countries that heavily subsidise their drivers. But globally, fewer than 0.3 per cent of all cars are pure electric, and across Europe, BMW says, customers don’t want them.

Unsurprisingly given the price tag, electric cars are often playthings for rich people. One US study shows the richest quarter of people receive almost all the public money spent on electric car subsidies. Moreover, electric cars in the US are driven fewer kilometres on average each year than conventional vehicles: 11,200km compared with 16,400km for petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

Combine this with the fact 90 per cent of households that buy an electric car also have a conventional car that is driven farther, and a clear picture emerges: most electric vehicles are a second car used for shorter trips such as shopping and small errands — and for virtue signalling.

But aren’t electric cars better for the environment? Barely. While no CO2 emissions come directly from driving electric vehicles, they are powered by elec­tricity produced largely from fossil fuels in many parts of the world. More energy is also used to manufacture electric vehicles — and, in particular, their batteries — and this energy is usually reliant on fossil fuel.

Indeed, a new study from the International Energy Agency shows that an electric car with a 400km range and charged with electricity produced at the global average will have to be driven 60,000km just to pay off its higher CO2 emissions in production. That means a new electric car driven the average 11,200km each year will have paid off its carbon debt only after five years. The IEA hopes the world can reach 130 million electric cars in 10 years — a breathtaking ask given we have spent decades reaching just over five million. Even if we could do that, emissions would be reduced by only 0.4 per cent of global emissions. In the words of IEA director Fatih Birol, “If you think you can save the climate with electric cars, you’re completely wrong.”

The IEA finds a hybrid such as the Toyota Prius is as good for the climate as an electric car when measured on lifetime greenhouse gas emissions. A petrol-powered vehicle emits only nine tonnes more across its lifetime. We could have reduced a similar amount through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system in the northeast US, for only $US51 ($77.60).

Yet governments dole out lavish support for electric cars. The IEA estimates that each electric car on the road has cost $US24,000 in subsidies, R&D and extra infrastructure investment. We could have cut almost 500 times the CO2 if we’d spent the money cutting carbon through the RGGI cap-and-trade. Little wonder the Dutch Court of Auditors recently ruled The Netherlands was wasting taxpayer money on subsidies, calling them “an expensive joke”.

And surprisingly, more electric cars often mean more air pollution. In China, which is the world’s leading electric car market, a study reveals that because China’s coal power plants are so dirty, electric cars worsen local air: in Shanghai, pollution from an additional million electric-powered vehicles would kill nearly three times as many people annually as an additional million petrol-powered cars.

Nonetheless, governments increasingly are setting deadlines for when electric cars will take over the world. Norway ambitiously plans to prohibit petrol and diesel cars in 2025.

The Scandinavian nation has the world’s largest electric car market share, but this is propped up with enormous government support. Rules eliminating the costs of registration and sales tax can be worth up to $US70,000 for a single electric car.

Moreover, electric car owners save half, or about $US1000 a year, on congestion charges in Oslo. They also get to drive in bus lanes, which is great for them but leads to increased travel times for public transport users.

Additionally, the Norwegian state is investing heavily in charging infrastructure and grid upscaling, something Goldman Sachs puts at $US6 trillion for the world during the coming decades.

That is why in Norway a staggering 42 per cent of all cars sold last year were pure electric. But a new study for Norway shows how hard ending petrol cars will be and gives the lie to those who seek to transform the vehicle market. It finds that without Norway’s overgenerous subsidies, by 2030, only 9 per cent of all car sales will be purely electric. Even maintaining all the subsidies and dramatically increasing taxes on petrol cars while setting strict emission targets would be unlikely to allow Norway to reach its goals anytime before 2050.

The misconception that electric cars are close to taking over and will solve climate change is dangerous because it directs our attention away from the technological breakthroughs in green energy generation needed to reduce rising temperatures — and away from innovations needed to cut air pollution.

Electric cars are fun to drive and will likely be part of our future transportation solutions. But they will not be a major part of the solution to climate change or air pollution. Today, electric cars are simply expensive gadgets heavily subsidised for the wealthy to feel good while doing very little for the planet.

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School.