Counting Grams
Hello dear readers,
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In these times of rising fuel prices and renewed economic uncertainty it might seem a touch insensitive, or woke, to focus on co2 emissions. But since climate change won't put itself on hold as we focus on other topics, I think good information deserves to be shared. I recently came across a superb ICCT report from last year that really helps unclutter the whole discussion on which fuel choice has the lowest co2 footprint. The link is below, here are my biggest take-aways.
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As far as I can tell the report takes all factors into the equation. Emissions during production of the vehicle and battery, evolution of the energy mix, total lifecycle of the cars, biofuels used in combustion engines, real world energy consumption, etc... The results are quite sobering in that there are only two good choices if we want to limit earth warming emissions: battery electric or hydrogen vehicles. With the condition that the hydrogen of these last ones is produced with renewables. It is not a photo finish by the way: while the two winners sit around 50-65 grams per km, the closest competitor, PHEVs, clocks in at 163 grams!
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A big surprise to me is the fact that in the end hydrogen vehicles win the race, even if only by 2 grams per kilometer (50 vs 52). The Achilles heel of hydrogen, the inefficiency of fuel production and the fuel cell, is smaller than that of the battery electric vehicle, the massive emissions needed to produce the battery. If the hydrogen is produced using natural gas you might as well continue driving a petrol hybrid though.
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The study also clearly shows how deeply linked our energy and mobility worlds have to become if we want to halt global warming. The cleaner we can make our energy production, the cleaner the use of our vehicle park becomes. It also highlights where opponents of electrification can play with the numbers. If we were to continue with our 2023 energy mix, that is not install a single extra windmill or solar panel, emissions for fully electric cars would be almost 60% higher over their lifecycle compared to using fully renewable energy.
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The PHEV conundrum that many fleet managers are battling with are also given ample attention in the report. Using WLTP numbers instead of real world consumption statistics for plug-ins crashes their emissions by 50%. It is thus entirely possible to mix and match your assumptions to get to a situation where PHEVs are a better choice than full EVs. A Swedish driver running his plugin as the technology was intended will end up with a better mix than a Polish driver driving a BEV.
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And the report makes abundantly clear that age matters. The shorter the lifecycle of the vehicle, the harder the emissions intensity of battery production plays against BEVs and PHEVs. The more time they get to atone for the backpack of co2 they start their life with, the better their score becomes. Shortening the lifetime from 20 to 15 years adds 22% of emissions to the tally of a BEV while the penalty for a diesel is only 4%.
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Many more nuggets of information can be found here.
Grtz
Pieter
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