Will there not be just as much of a carbon footprint from mining materials to make batteries for all the new electric cars?
And all the precious metals that go into making electronics to make that car operate?
Plus the power generation associated with charging everyone’s vehicle.
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Even with the extra energy in creating the car, and even with a dirty grid (electricity from fossil fuels) the electric cars still have a smaller foot-print.
However, electric cars won’t save us. To have a realistic chance to stay below 2°C of global warming we’re going to need to reduce our total global energy consumption by around 50% (70% of the energy use in 2010, as listed in the diagram below) unless you believe in fantasy carbon capture tech being deployed in the next 30 years on a planetary scale.
Efficiency gains won’t cut our energy use by 50%, even if we didn’t add any more energy requirements (which we will). The only way we’ll manage to cut our energy use in half is to completely eliminate some uses. The one that seems most likely is private transport. We will need to build much much better public transport networks and reduce the number of vehicles on the road to the barest minimum.
Transport currently uses around 25% of total energy and cutting that is essential. If you want to save the planet don’t buy an electric car, take the bus instead.
Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724×1024.png
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