Do electric vehicles produce fewer carbon emissions in total – or do their greenhouse-heavy production requirements dull the sheen of their green credentials?
It’s well-known that electric vehicles are cleaner and greener to run than those powered by fossil fuels. But does this logic still ring true when factoring in total lifecycle emissions?
This approach encompasses the complete range of emissions created to produce, run and then dispose of a vehicle and is a far more accurate way to assess its true environmental impact.
It also acknowledges a key challenge for electric vehicles currently: manufacturing an EV is significantly more carbon-intensive than building a traditional petrol or diesel vehicle.
Do electric vehicles produce fewer carbon emissions in total – or do their greenhouse-heavy production requirements dull the sheen of their green credentials? create crunches the numbers to paint the full picture.
Emissions during production
Despite their green credentials, electric vehicles produce around twice as many greenhouse gases during their manufacture as a typical combustion car. Primarily, this is down to the energy-intensive process of extracting, refining and transporting the raw materials required to build an EV’s battery.
In fact, manufacturing an EV’s lithium-ion battery accounts for between 40-60 per cent of its total production emissions, or roughly about the same as producing all the other materials required to make the car combined.
Many factors can influence how emissions-heavy a battery’s construction is, including its design and chemical make-up, but by far the biggest influence is where it is made.
Around 70 per cent of the world’s EV batteries are produced in China, which has a greater reliance on fossil fuels and produces more emissions as a result. Batteries produced in Europe, meanwhile, are made using a higher share of renewable energy and thus produce less carbon.
Sweden is the poster-child for green battery production, with batteries manufactured there generating 45 kg of carbon dioxide per kWh of capacity compared with 108 kg of carbon dioxide per kWh in China.
To compare how emissions-intensive an EV is to produce for the Australian market versus a typical petrol car, we’ve used data from the Electric Vehicle Council’s (EVC) lifecycle calculator.
As Australia gets most of its EV batteries from China, we’ve used that country’s emissions for the manufacturing source. The comparison data is based on an average medium SUV, which is one of Australia’s highest-selling segments and includes popular models like the Tesla Model Y and Toyota RAV4.
Carbon emissions emitted during use
If electric vehicles have a larger carbon footprint before they even turn a wheel, then the advantage swings back dramatically once you hit the road.
Most of a car’s lifetime emissions come from the power it requires to drive, and this is where electric vehicles cash in. Unlike petrol vehicles, which burn fuel to power their engines and release emissions in the process, EVs produce no tailpipe emissions.
Electric powertrains are also far more efficient at turning their stored energy into momentum. Where a petrol-powered car converts between 12-30 per cent of its energy into power, due to heavy heat and drivetrain losses, an EV utilises around 80 per cent of its power at the wheels. That means less energy, and fewer emissions, to travel the same distance.
The biggest influence on an EV’s driving emissions is the source of the electricity used to power its large battery. A car recharged off a grid using lots of fossil fuels will produce more emissions than one dispensing electricity produced by renewables. The cleaner the energy source, the lower the emissions.
Even the ‘dirtiest’ electric car, however, will produce far fewer emissions to drive than a petrol-powered vehicle. Over a typical car’s lifespan in Australia (189,000 km total, or 12,600 km per year according to the Bureau of Statistics) a mid-sized electric SUV charged on the national grid – which uses a combination of fossil fuels and renewables – will produce around 10.5 t of carbon according to the EVC’s emissions calculator.
An equivalent petrol-powered SUV will emit almost 46 t.
Where you live in Australia can have a huge influence on the emissions your EV produces. An EV charged in Western Australia, for example, isn’t as green as one charged in Tasmania, which has the highest mix of renewables in the country.
A car charged using rooftop solar, which is available on three million homes in Australia, produces even fewer emissions over its lifetime.
So, while an electric car might start with a higher emissions tally, after three years of ownership, or around 38,000 km of driving, an EV clearly becomes the cleaner option.
This “payback” time for EVs will only shrink as energy production shifts towards renewables and advances in manufacturing and mining sees a reduction in emissions created during battery production.
Estimates by McKinsey suggest ambitious battery producers “have the ability to reduce the carbon footprint of battery production by up to 75 per cent in the next five to seven years”.
Carbon emissions emitted during end-of-life
Winner: EVs
Another area ripe with potential to improve the carbon footprint of EVs is end-of-life reuse and recycling. Large lithium-ion batteries can store energy long after a car ceases being driven, giving them a predicted ‘second life’ of another 10 years for second-use applications before being recycled.
Battery recycling for electric vehicles is still developing and it won’t be until the mid-to-late 2030s that its true impact begins to be realised. As such, the Electric Vehicle Council has taken a conservative approach when assessing ‘end-of-life emissions’ in its calculator.
Explore more innovative ways of reducing carbon emissions at Engineers Australia’s Climate Smart Engineering 2024 conference in November.
How recent is the data used for the Chinese manufacturing carbon intensity? Has it taken into account China’s recent surge in renewable generation capacity over the last 2 years?
How much cost has been factored into the tailings component of the EV equation? The dogged focus on carbon dioxide emissions at the exclusion of all else does not show the full picture of environmental impact. Tailings can be an ongoing pollution problem for decades to come.
ICE recycling pathways are well established. We still have a way to go with EV recycling, particulary with tailings from the refining processes.
Thanks for an interesting read! I would like to share some feedback on this report.
I think this report gives “cars” (fossil fuel powered) a “Big Free Pass” by not considering the source of the fuel and the carbon emissions in its production. Can you revise this report to also factor the source of fuel into the “Carbon emissions emitted during use”? That is all the carbon emissions generated to simply deliver the fuel to the car, counting all the carbon generated to locate the oil field, drill the oil, pipe it to a refinery, refine the oil into fuels, further refinement into usable fuel for a car and then shipping the oil across the world to Singapore and from there Australia. Trucking the fuel from a fuel depot in Australia directly to a Fuel Station (let’s assume it’s direct to keep things simple) and then from the fuel pump into the car. That’s a considerable amount of carbon emissions during use just to have the privilege to drive your car for 500 to 700kms, before having to refuel yet again with a one-time use substance – because we only burn our fuel once.
And then there’s changing the engine oil every 5k to 10k and where that comes from, all the carbon emissions required to obtain engine oil into a form that is easily purchased and used as a consumable.
That’s a lot more “Carbon emissions emitted during use” for our one-time use, fossil fuel powered cars.
Another point to consider is that charging an EV from home solar is far more prevalent than represented amongst EV owners. Because it’s free and produced right there, at your home. When was the last time anyone in Australia filled up their fossil fuel powered car from home, with fuel that they produced there?
Thanks for listening
Inclusion of a hybrid in the analysis would be interesting. Especially one where the battery is sized to cater for 95% of trips without using the combustion engine.
What about South Australia?
Why is SA not shown on the table of “Fuel lifecycle of EVs by state” ? SA has the most or 2nd highest amount of renewables in the grid (after Tas). Could a comparitive emissions figure for SA be provided/ shown?
A good analysis and presentation. However, it ignores the hybrid vehicle option. I drive a large sedan hybrid around Sydney and get typically 4.8 litres per 100 km running performance, which is half historical performance with the same sized vehicle that had a pure 4 cylinder petrol engine, and only 35% of historical performance with the same sized vehicle that had a pure 6 cylinder petrol engine. I estimate that an SUV with a petrol engine will have fuel consumption performance similar or worse than the 6 cylinder sedan.
Taking a look at your “Payback” graph, the payback point would move out to around 250,000 or 300,000km when comparing EV to hybrid. A hybrid just uses an ordinary lead-acid battery to store electric energy, so production footprint 3the same as a petrol vehicle.
Your report should include the hybrid vehicle case. I think hybrid is a much more sensible option for Australia’s long distances of travel problem (with little infrastructure in outback areas).
The Hybrid uses either a lithium ion battery or a nickel metal hydride battery to store the electricity. Not a lead acid accumulator.
Thanks for an interesting article
As I live in SA can I presume my “Fuel lifecycle of EVs by state” is zero 🙂
Thanks for the article, but does the data of EVs consider the degradation of the batteries? Similarly, does this included maintenance of EVs and Petrol cars?
Could you please label the bar graphs better? There’s no labels for the different colours.
Great report though, thanks!
It is not clear from this article whether the emissions figures for ICE vehicles take into account the amount of energy required to refine and transport petrol and diesel, or whether it is based only on tailpipe emissions.
What has not been considered in this story is the number of times the EV battery will require replacement over the “typical car’s lifespan”. This does not change the final outcome however it is something that should definitely be considered and published.
At last an article which addresses the question that previously has been ignored by EV manufacturers.
Lifespan has been taken as 15years for both vehicles, however my understanding is that the EV battery life is not more than 10 years, therefore the total carbon cost should be increased by 7.47t for the second EV battery. That brings the EV total to 32.87t which narrows the gap considerably.
Hello,
The average age of passenger cars in Australia is 9.8 years – not 15 years.
I don’t see this changing in the future.
Perhaps you should redo the analysis with this data!
The CO2 goes from 46 T to 30 T 2/3 of the article amount.
Regards
Alex
Average age is not average lifetime.
As a very rough measure, average age is around half the lifetime (ignoring the difference between mean and median)
“A car charged using rooftop solar, which is available on three million homes in Australia, produces even fewer emissions over its lifetime.”
This assumes rooftop solar panels take no carbon to make and have infinite life. How often is your car at home and plugged into home solar during the day? Isn’t it at work in the car park most days? And any solar power you put into your car battery comes out of power into heating, hot water, air conditioning, lights, white goods etc. that then use grid power. False economy to see rooftop solar as free energy.
This is an EV feel good article that does not address the true cost of EV, only the apparent wallet cost.
That’s what I thought too, but if you hover over the charts it shows detail on each part.
If you are going to talk about Total Carbon cost and then say using home soalr panles is “Free” – doesn’t the carbon to make the home solar panel need to included?
Seems to cherry pick what carbon will be included for both electric and liquid fuel vehicles.
The article reads like an executive summary more than a report. As with many replies above, I feel that the article seems to exclude some other aspects of manufacture and lifespan of vehicles and seems to include selected data on carbon usage. The graphs provided are also sourced from the Electric Vehicle Council, which of course would skew data to favour EVs.
Would it be possible for EA to publish a full copy of the study with detailed calculations? A sensitivity analysis would also be useful to provide greater understanding of the range of impacts, helping to clarify broad statements such as “where a petrol-powered car converts between 12-30 per cent of its energy into power, due to heavy heat and drivetrain losses, an EV utilises around 80 per cent of its power at the wheels”
What about CO2 footprint having to process expired EV batteries? I learnt that to process these batteries are very resource intensive and some parts may even emit poinsoneous gas where they need to be stored in sealed in containers similar as isotops.