Thread by @AukeHoekstra

New study underscores what I've been saying for years:
electric vehicles could become almost entirely CO2-FREE by ~2050 if you produce and drive them on renewables and power ahead with recycling.

Electric vehicles are really that much of a leap forward.
ricardo.com/news-and-media…

Direct download link if you became confused: ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/cl…

I especially like it that heavy 40t full electric trucks are finally showing up in official documents after being shunned for many years as 'impossible' for nebulous reasons.

(I think it was more a political compromise: we will push electric cars but leave trucks alone for now.)

Some politics is still there. E.g. as a study paid for by the European Commission they must still use the energy use measurements paid for by the OEMs (WLTP) instead of independent road tests. But you can't have it all I guess.

I think this assessment is interesting but let me unpack these pretty complex pictures for you:

What you see in the 2020 picture is that BEVs score BETTER than ICE on:
global warming (GWP)
energy demand (CED)
ozone creation (POCP)
particulate matter (PMF)
human toxicity (HTP)
water use

But WORSE on abiotic (=dead matter) resource depletion of minerals and metals (ARD_MM).

In 2050 the situation is better still for the BEV on every front with global warming impact negligible and all other impacts strongly reduced. But resource depletion remains the biggest problem.

In this study that is particularly clear when we talk about electric trucks and I can see the fuel cell enthusiasts getting traction from this study. So let me say a few words about depletion of minerals and metals (ARD_MM).

First: fossil fuel depletion is not taken into account. So a fossil truck burns 30x the weight of the battery of an electric truck over its lifetime in 2020 (assuming a 800 km range battery). And that is before recycling!

Second: I wonder if resource depletion caused by renewable energy production was taken into account. This usually puts fuel cell vehicles at a slight disadvantage. (They use smaller batteries but need more wind and solar because half the energy is wasted in the H2 conversion).

Third: this is NOT about biodiversity loss which is more closely related to land use change (LUC and ILUC in the picture) and eco-toxicity potential (ETP).

This is about running out of metals like copper in the long run.

So I'm really happy the European Union will warn it's member for over reliance on resources from e.g. China this week and will push for direct contracts and mining/processing in the EU with more focus on independence and sustainability.
ft.com/content/8f1533…

I will also be saying this in the 6 and 8 o'clock news on Dutch television today (unless something disrupts the news cycle).

And I can't repeat it enough: the electric drivetrain can solve global warming and reliance on fossil fuels but we MUST now focus on sustainable mining.

After locating and running the mines as sustainably as possible, the first logical next step is to aim for more recycling. Which means: incorporating recycling into the design of e.g. the vehicle battery so it can be disassembled into reusable resources at the end of its life.

But it doesn't stop there. Electric vehicles can solve climate change but if we aim for a world with billions of SUVs we will still ruin our natural habitat and make living on this planet much harder. We will also make our cities much less healthy and fun.

So we should also aim for *smaller* vehicles like bikes.

And we should *share* vehicles. Either through public transit or through shared autonomous electric vehicles (SAEVs).

But this study proves it again: the switch to electric drivetrains is not in question anymore.
/end