The Worrying Unintended Consequences of Decarbonisation

There is a real need for urgent action on climate change, but in some cases, I do wonder whether the desire for a quick fix is just hiding the problems elsewhere and storing up future problems.?

Electric vehicles are a case in point. There is a general consensus that cutting emissions is better than not cutting emissions, but shifting emissions from your vehicle to a chimney somewhere else doesn’t solve the problem. Charging an EV with electrons made from burning gas, or even worse coal isn’t particularly green. Over the past week, only 38.4% of UK electricity was generated from renewable sources meaning that 6 out of 10 EVs were nuclear or fossil fuel powered.

And that’s before we consider the environmental impact.?

Bloomberg reports on “weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered passenger vehicles.” The cars were "likely deserted after the ride-hailing companies that owned them failed, or because they were about to become obsolete as automakers rolled out EV after EV with better features and longer driving ranges." Hyperbole perhaps but it does highlight the dangers of getting subsidies and incentives wrong. While this may be the consequence in China it doesn’t appear to be the same in Norway where policies to encourage EV adoption have been very successful. Having vast amounts of hydropower helps the environmental argument too.?

While there are many happy EV owners, especially ones with home charging and predictable use, there is a growing concern in the commercial vehicle sector that the current zero-emission vehicles on offer aren’t really fit for purpose. While these may be replaced by hydrogen from 25/26 onwards or better battery technologies from 2030 onwards, buying a new fleet of vehicles that may be obsolete well within their lifetimes doesn’t have fleet managers jumping for joy. Manufacturers producing battery-powered HGVs are hearing via their dealerships that many purchasers would rather wait and see than make the shift to electric.?

Even worse, it raises the spectre of current policies forcing operators to buy new trucks that they don’t really want. The prospect of generating huge Chinese-style piles of useless unrecyclable electronic junk that has consumed vast amounts of energy, and natural resources in its manufacture is horrifying.?

As reported by Kathryn Porter in the Daily Telegraph, via the International Energy Agency, “electric cars require 173 kilogrammes more minerals per vehicle than a conventional car, including more than double the amount of copper, a constrained mineral, demand for which is soaring due to its use in electrical infrastructure such as windfarms and power lines. Electric cars also require almost nine kilos of lithium, 40 kilos of nickel, 12 kilos of cobalt, and half a kilo of rare earth minerals, while conventional cars use none of these.”?

For the size of batteries required for HGVs you can add a zero to those numbers whereas fuel cell electric vehicles can use only 10% of the battery capacity required for pure electric powertrains.?

The most recyclable engine is of course the internal combustion engine, with everything apart from the seals being recoverable and reusable. So if we really want to make an impact, then perhaps trucks should be using internal combustion engines running on gas, biogas as an interim step to lower emissions, albeit with some carbon trading greenwashing, and then shifting to green hydrogen as it becomes more available.?

To get the energy transition right we do need to use all the technologies at our disposal and keep developing new ones. But at the same time, we do need to take a more pragmatic longer-term view of the environmental impact of our actions, because the current game of emissions whack-a-mole may do more harm than good.