Are Electric Vehicles truly sustainable?
Well, don't get me wrong. I love EV's, own one of them and I'm sure most of us are waiting to get our hands on an EV, to try and get a feel of the quiet and smooth ride, all well and good, but, now, coming to think of it, are we to truly believe that these Electric vehicles are really making any effort... say, to de-pollute our environment, in the long term?
A simple google search to know the basic definition of "Electric Vehicles" brings up thousands of results, obviously, and almost all of them collectively tells us that "EV's are vehicles which are powered with electric power using batteries". These are more or less similar to how our general electronic devices work. We need to connect it to power source, charge it up and use until it lasts and then repeat.
Now, going back to our actual concern on whether to continue believing that this collective interest towards "electric vehicles" is just a short term goal to make ourselves happy thinking that we are doing our part to our nature and that moving everything to "electric" will make it all OK?
Here, our brains would do a simple and logical reasoning and might say - 'Yes, of course, moving everything to electric will solve all of our environment related problems and then there wont be any pollution, and we can all be happy congratulating ourselves, that we have finally did something good for our environment...Yay!'. Well, congratulations, now, lets ask ourselves a small question - Where does this "Electric" in "Electric vehicles" comes from? The very first thing that comes off right to our mind is what our schools taught us - Renewable/Non-Renewable sources. You're not wrong!
Almost two-thirds (63.3%) of global electricity came from fossil fuels (Non-Renewable source). Of the 36.7% from low-carbon sources, renewables accounted for 26.3% and nuclear energy for 10.4% .
Below shows the share of electricity production by different sources for our world.
There are many fossil fuels - Coal, Oil, Natural Gas etc. which are used majorly across the globe. 'Coal' alone generates 36-40% of the world's electricity. This means that the electricity required to charge the batteries in our e-cars, e-bikes is very much contributed by Coal as well.
Globally, everyone are currently trying to understand and looking at shifting to EV's and this is leading to increased adoption of Electric Vehicles, thereby increasing our demand for electricity. Assuming that we move everything to electric in the next 30-50 years, the electricity required to run all cars, trucks, bikes will be massive. For this to happen, we will have to simultaneously increase electricity production, meaning chances of mining fossil fuels will increase to keep up with the demand.
Here, I would like to share an example which has more or less similarities to our case with EV's and for that, we need to travel to the past. Lets go back to the 1900's.
Steam locomotives were the beginning, then we made advances in technology - we got diesel locomotives and then we had electric locomotives. Diesel locomotives were once used widely across the globe, carrying tons of goods and millions of passengers everyday. These diesel locomotives - the name itself suggests which fuel is used to run it. Diesel is one of the fossil fuels, and also a heavily polluting kind of fuel. Unfortunately, these are still used in many countries to reach places where electricity is scarce.
From an economic perspective in those days, diesel trains were far economical than electric locomotives. Diesel trains simply need diesel to run, whereas, for electric locomotives, a continuous electricity is a must - meaning, electric poles and lines had to be laid all along the tracks. It took us a lot of time and effort to transition from diesel to electric. Finally, we have a good infrastructure to support the smooth running of electric locomotives.
Our subways, metros are all electric now, we needed more electricity and this raised our demand for electricity, more demand for electricity required for more fossil fuels, adding to more pollution. It's true that we have made progress on solar and wind technology, but looking at how we are still meeting 40% of our electricity demands from coal and only 8% from wind and solar (here, I'm not considering Hydro-power as this causes great ecological imbalances as we are erasing enormous natural habitat to build a dam), this is where we should be worried about.
Electricity from coal are not at all environment friendly.These coal plants while producing electricity, generates lots of pollution and harmful chemicals such as mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. Living near coal-fired power plants is linked to higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and cancer, and premature death. Most of the time, they are located on the outskirts of our cities, these contribute to toxicity and this toxic air travels to the cities, villages affecting our environment.
Our situation with EV's is more or less similar to our earlier locomotive example. Lets say, everyone were able to transition towards EV's, our demand for electricity would be astronomical and we would need to achieve the capacity to produce that electricity. The International Energy Agency, for example, projects that by 2030, global electricity demand for electric vehicles will increase five- to eleven-fold from levels in 2019. If we are to meet all this electricity demand completely using renewable sources, it will definitely bode well for our future. Instead, if we go back to digging more coal to meet our electricity demands for electric vehicles, it would just be a zero-sum game.
Data Sources: IEA analysis based on country submissions, complemented by ACEA (2020); EAFO (2020c); EV-Volumes (2020); Marklines (2020); OICA (2020); CAAM (2020). Notes: PHEV = plug-in hybrid electric vehicle; BEV = battery electric vehicle. Other includes: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Thailand. Europe includes: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus,5,6 Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom.
To make sure the end to end life of an EV stays sustainable, we will need to make sure that we don't put a dent on our natural resources.
Visit the links below to understand the gravity of Coal Mining to our: