Yeah, EVs right now contribute as much carbon as gasoline vehicles right now, but…
As it stands, using electric vehicles like Teslas, Chevy Volts, etc does contribute significantly to the carbon table through the use of fossil fuels to generate the electricity needed to keep them charged. But this logic is somewhat flawed since if you rely exclusively on the consumption portion for each, then you’re missing several parts of the equation that would truly compare apples to apples:
- the pumping and transportation of crude oil to the refineries, then shipping the petrol/gasoline and other components out to distribution centers and eventually gas stations creates a significant amount of carbon pollution. Transport trucks driving long distances across uneven terrain, wearing out roads and highways with heavy capacity vehicles, wearing down tires made with oil byproducts, etc… Electricity doesn’t need to be delivered by truck to arrive at your door.
- you need to also include the costs and pollution created by the refineries in the breakdown of crude oil into the component parts of which gasoline/petrol is just one component of. There is significant waste product generated that also has no purpose and is then needing to be disposed of. One of the most polluted places on the planet is up in Northern Alberta, Canada — mining the Athabaska Tar Sands became an economically feasible project when OPEC+ drove the price of oil per barrel above the US$80 threshold. The profoundly toxic byproducts produced from extracting the crude oil from the bitumen mined will leave this area sterile and uninhabitable for millennia extracting crude oil that by industry standards is low grade for commercial and industrial use. It doesn’t only affect the immediate area, as the Athabaska River drains into the Mackenzie system, which ends at the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic is already in dire straits with climate change moving the tree line further and further north, melting permafrost that releases the stored CO2 from hundreds of millions of years ago back into the environment, and further exacerbating the warming that is melting glaciers and raising ocean levels that will eventually displace some 33% of the world’s population (as of 2023).
- Petrol stations storage tanks degrade, cracking and leaking and leeching gasoline into the ground. This happens at pretty much every gas/petrol station and requires a ridiculous amount of remediation in the form of expensively removing and incinerating the soil to remove any trace of petroleum product from it. Then the site needs to stay vacant for a period of time for the fill to settle enough to support structures.
- Oil leaking from the engines and transmissions of cars and trucks in disrepair is everywhere. Tires beyond end of life accumulate in dumps and oftentimes catch fire and release massive amounts of carbon and other toxic compounds into the atmosphere as well as leech chemical toxins into the ground. The asphalt that you drive on is made of tar, which is a byproduct of oil refinement.
Sure, tires are common for any vehicle, and we will still have asphalt roads since concrete as road construction material is expensive and impractical at the moment, but oil is a pollutant that accounts for a lot more pollution than what the petroleum industry wants you to fully account for. True enough, electricity has big drawbacks in terms of lost power over transmission lines, and today some 70% of electric power is generated through burning of fossil fuels versus 30% from clean sources — but we need to start somewhere and usually demand “fuels” innovation and progress. Additionally, just like how the petroleum industry has found uses for the byproducts of oil refinement, there are continual innovations that are similarly finding uses for nuclear byproducts that aren’t related to the military complex. Batteries being tested right now made from nuclear waste encapsulated in zirconium will last 10000 years and are safe, reducing the pollution generated through disposal of batteries made of nickel/cadmium and lithium-ion. The use of molten-salt thorium (which is not just a significant portion of the nuclear waste from the power plants, but can also be the fuel and is more prevalent in the world than uranium) will reduce the risk of meltdown significantly while providing clean energy on a greater scale more safely than any other power generation system.
Facts about Thorium are found here — https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx — several other writers here on Medium have published articles about Thorium’s potential, even as the actual battery/power source for our EVs that wont need to be changed out for 100 years. Very interesting and uplifting if you take the time to search for them. More thoughts on Thorium reactors and how they are safer overall. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/a-short-primer-on-modern-nuclear-reactor-design/
We can convert our energy sources to solar (which has gone through huge efficiency improvements, and also changes in construction that make it less polluting to manufacture), wind (again, huge improvements making this a far more viable and efficient option than it has been to date), tidal (we are just starting to see designs and implementations that show great promise) and going to thorium for power plants and even personal power generation that would both significantly improve the safety aspects as well as reduce or eliminate the pollution resulting from its’ use.
Dont rag on EVs since this is probably the one commodity right now that will drive the energy revolution we need.