German auto giant Volkswagen just announced plans to produce 50 million electric cars in the coming years. The news comes as more and more evidence suggests that across the globe, consumers are embracing electric vehicles.
Already, 1 million EVs have sold in the United States. One estimate concludes that U.S. roads will carry over 18 million EVs by 2030.
The future, it seems, has arrived. While EVs were once a quaint curiosity, they're now a viable mass-market product -- and could drive down global carbon emissions. Or so the thinking goes.
The problem is, though, that EVs have plenty of dirty secrets. Mass adoption would not do nearly as much as good as the public thinks, because these vehicles pose many unique environmental threats.
Take the batteries running these vehicles. The nickel and graphite that goes into them comes primarily from mines in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and the Philippines. This process produces huge volumes of noxious chemicals, including sulphur dioxide, which has been linked to severe public health problems in nearby populations, including genetic deformities and fatal lung conditions.
Harvesting these engine components also generates substantial carbon emissions. A study published in the journal PLOS One calculated the global warming impact of over sixty frequently mined metals and ranked them by severity. Nickel was in the top ten.
So, yes, while an electric car's engine may burn clean, the process that produced that engine is anything but.
Also consider where the electricity that powers these vehicles comes from. Many power plants still run on coal, one of the most carbon-intensive fuels in the world. For electric cars that get their power from such sources, the electricity required to travel a thousand miles equates to about 290 pounds of burned coal, releasing about 310 kilograms of CO2.
That figure is only about 40 kilograms less than emissions released from a regular, gas-guzzling vehicle.
The sad truth about electric vehicles is that they do not substantially cut emissions. They simply switch the source, moving it from the car engine to the production plant.
That's rendered the net benefits of these vehicles negligible, at best. According to the Manhattan Institute, electric vehicles will account for just one half of one percent of total domestic energy emissions reductions over the next four decades. That's a rounding error.
If Americans are serious about reducing carbon emissions, they need to look past the hype. There is a real opportunity to dramatically decrease energy-related carbon emissions, but it's not in the car -- it's in the power plant.
Over the last decade or so, domestic gas production has rapidly expanded. Developers have invented powerful new drilling technologies like fracking to drive domestic gas production to unprecedented heights.
Natural gas is a cheap substitute for coal in electricity production. It also burns much cleaner, producing about half the emissions.
Power plants have already started to switch over. And the United States is now world leader in emissions reductions.
Electric vehicles are a classic case of hype outpacing reality.
There may be good reasons to find ways to capture carbon and commoditize it outside the policy proscriptions being offered up by global warming hysterics. And it's reasonable to be engaged in a search for cheaper ways to produce the energy that powers our vehicles and heats and cools our homes. Policymakers should be looking for ways to accelerate this transformation.
Peter Roff is a Senior Fellow at Frontiers of Freedom. This piece originally ran in the Orange County Register.
