Why BEV’s Wont Reduce Global CO2 Emissions This Decade
In a previous post I pointed out that until the yearly sales of personal BEV’s (battery electric vehicles, not plug in hybrid electric vehicles: PHEVs) equal the net additions to the personal vehicle fleet (i.e. the number of new cars sold that are not offset by current cars being removed) the number of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles will continue to rise and therefore personal vehicle CO2 emissions will continue to rise. For China the rate of new additions to the fleet as a share of annual sales may be as high as 75% or even higher, for Europe closer to 45%, and for the US about 15-20%. We also have to take into account that a substantial number of used ICE vehicles are exported to Africa and other poorer nations; although they disappear from the European and US fleets, they continue to be used in other nations. In 2021, BEV market share was 12% in China, 10% in Europe, and about 4% in the US. China is forecast to double next year to 24% (but then may slow down as retail incentives are fully removed at the end of 2022). Europe may grow more slowly as CO2 emission standards do not tighten again until 2025 (if current Euro 7 proposals are passed), and the US has the least supportive incentive environment (especially after the failure of the “Build Back Better” legislation that included incentives for BEVs). It is safe to say that the required market share levels for BEV’s will not be reached until the second half of this decade (i.e. post-2025), at the earliest; i.e. the fleet of ICE vehicles in the three largest vehicle markets will continue to rise into the late 2020’s. At the global level, with the export of used ICE vehicles to other markets, the end of the decade may be a reasonable assumption.
But it gets worse as the production of BEVs, especially the production of batteries, creates more CO2emissions than the production of an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. This means that the BEV starts out with more emissions than the ICE vehicle, with this gap being closed as more miles are driven; with the rate of closure depending on the energy mix of the electricity grid, yearly mileage and the fuel consumption of ICE vehicles sold in a given market. In the gas guzzler big truck and lousy public transport land of the US that could be as low as 1.5 years (although the undercounting of US fugitive methane emissions may be driving the number this low); in small-car, compact cities, good public transport and cleaner grid Europe its 2.5 years, and in small-car, compact cities, great public transport and dirty grid China its 6.2 years (see BloombergNEF article in references below). With the latter having the fastest growth in BEVS and the US the slowest.
We are currently in the rapid take-off stage of EV adoption, with the number of BEVs being produced every year growing rapidly (e.g. 250% in China in the past year); each year starts with a larger BEV production CO2deficit. Once the production of BEVs plateaus, by 2030 or later, the deficit can be worked off. With the fastest growth in BEVs in China, the average years to offset the CO2 deficit will be skewed higher – let’s say 4 years. With that assumption, it may not be until the mid 2030s at the earliest until BEVs actually reduce CO2emissions in the three large car markets as a whole.
But that’s not the final problem! That is the growth of sales in other car markets with very low car ownership – especially Asia and Africa. The vast majority of new cars will be net additional additions to the fleet, with relatively few ICE cars to be retired, and a lot of those nations have relatively “dirty” CO2 spewing electricity production (e.g. India). This will move the point where BEVs become an actual net negative for CO2 reductions back even later.
Now battery production over time may become a lot less energy (especially fossil energy) intensive, and electricity networks will become less CO2 intensive, but that may bring forward the BEV CO2 reduction time by maybe a few years. Overall, it is hard to see any net emissions benefit from BEVs until the 2030s. This tends to confirm that technology by itself will not fix the climate change problem; what we have is an over-consumption problem that requires controlled degrowth. Given the current societal inability to contemplate such an answer, there is the very real possibility of increasing global emissions during the balance of this decade (especially when taking into account a more realistic assessment of fugitive methane emissions from natural gas production, distribution and consumption) combined with an increasing focus on climate geo-engineering as the “only” answer.
References
BloombergNEF (2021) The Lifecycle Emissions of Electric Vehicles. https://about.bnef.com/blog/the-lifecycle-emissions-of-electric-vehicles/