,
6 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
Electric vehicles are an important tool in decarbonizing transportation. However, despite the lack of tailpipes they are still far from zero-emissions. I dig into the details of the climate benefits and impacts of electric vehicles at Carbon Brief: carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-… 1/6 
The high-level takeaway: in virtually all cases EVs are better than a similarly-sized typical conventional vehicle. But they are not necessarily better than the most efficient hybrid or diesel vehicles in countries where lots of coal is used for electricity generation. 2/6
Batteries also matter a lot; there is enormous uncertainty in the academic literature on the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from battery production. Here are 17 different studies we looked at, for example: 3/6
How batteries are produced (and how clean the electricity used to produce them is) also matters. There is good reason to think that batteries produced in Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada are much lower emissions than those produced in China, for example. 4/6
Additional complexities: emissions from electricity generation vary a lot within countries, and the marginal emissions (what additional energy is used to charge new vehicle load) often matters more than average emissions. This US analysis tried to account for all factors: 5/6
However, EVs purchased today will become substantially lower-emitting during their lifetimes if countries take actions to decarbonize electricity generation in-line with what would be needed to meet Paris Agreement targets. Just looking at current emissions is misleading 6/6
