𝑯𝑶𝑾 𝑪𝑳𝑬𝑨𝑵 𝑨𝑹𝑬 𝑬𝑳𝑬𝑪𝑻𝑹𝑰𝑪 𝑽𝑬𝑯𝑰𝑪𝑳𝑬𝑺?

-Tanushi Dhawan
It’s hard to deny the dimension of what we are fighting today from the rise in sea levels to the
occurrence of extreme events such as droughts or intensive heat waves. Scientists found out
that Greenhouse Gases (GHG) like carbon dioxide or methane are the main cause of climate
change that are leaving the planet more exposed.
As vehicles make up 72% of the 𝐶𝑂2 emissions, the market of electric vehicles has been
growing and seems to be a good solution to fight climate change. Broadly speaking, driving
the average new gasoline car will produce four to seven times more emissions than the
average electric vehicle.
Having chemically stored energy, electric vehicles release it electrochemically without any
kind of combustion. Does this really mean that there is no fuel being burned and therefore
no air pollution while driving? So, is this a clear win for the electric movement?
Not necessarily. Or better said, not always. For instance, if we replace all of the vehicle fleets
with EVs, we would need about twice the annual global production of cobalt, three-quarters
of the world’s production of lithium carbonate, and more than half the world’s production of
copper.
Yet, if one looks under the hood of clean energy battery-driven EVs, the dirt found would
surprise most. EVs rely on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries to run. The process of making
those batteries from mining raw materials like cobalt and lithium to production is one of the
biggest sources of carbon emissions today, experts said. So, when a new EV appears in the
showroom, it has already caused 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The equivalent
amount for manufacturing a conventional car is 14,000 pounds.
Moreover, the water required for producing batteries has meant that manufacturing electric
vehicles is about 50 percent more water-intensive than traditional internal combustion
engines.
But that's not the end of CO2 emissions, because while it's true that electric vehicle doesn’t
run on gasoline, they do run on electricity which is often produced by another fossil fuel, coal.
Emissions from coal production will generate a great amount of air pollution.
Moreover, the process in which lithium-ion batteries are recycled is not at the point it needs
to be to deal with a growing number of spent batteries from electric vehicles.
To conclude, the clean and green image of electric vehicles stands in stark contrast to its
reality.