The electric car industry is elated with an incoming Biden Administration, because it promises to extend and increase electric car subsidies to fix climate change. Similarly, leaders across the rich world promise lavish carrots along with sticks to outlaw gasoline cars.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order banning the sale of new gas and diesel vehicles in California by 2035, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently announced an even more ambitious deadline of 2030 for his country in order to jump-start the market for electric cars. Unfortunately, electric cars will achieve only tiny emissions savings at a very high price.
Electric cars are certainly fun, but almost everywhere cost more across their lifetime than their gasoline counterparts. That is why large subsidies are needed. And consumers are still anxious because of the short range and long recharging times.
Despite the US handing out up to $10,000 for each electric car, less than 0.5 percent of its cars are battery electric. And almost all the support goes to the rich. Ninety percent of the electric car owners also have a fossil fuel driven car that they drive farther. Indeed, electric vehicles are mostly a “second car” used for shorter trips and virtue signaling.
If you subsidize the electric car enough, people will buy it. Almost 10 percent of all Norway’s passenger cars are now electric because of incredibly generous policies that waive most costs, from taxes to tolls, parking and congestion. Over its lifetime, a $30,000 car might receive benefits worth more than $26,000. But this approach is unsustainable for most nations. Even super-rich Norway is starting to worry, losing more than a billion dollars every year from exempt drivers.
Technological innovation will eventually make electric cars economical even without subsidies, but concerns over range and slow recharging will remain. That is why most scientific prognoses show that electric cars will increase in sales but not take over the world.
A new study shows that by 2030, just 13 percent of new cars will be battery-electric. When countries are suggesting to prohibit fossil fuel cars by then, they would essentially forbid 87 percent of consumers to buy the cars they want. It is difficult to imagine that could be politically viable.
The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2030, if all countries live up to their promises, the world will have 140 million electric cars on the road, about 7 percent of the global vehicle fleet.
Yet, this would not make a significant impact on emissions for two reasons. First, electric cars require large batteries, often produced in China using coal power. Just producing the battery for an electric car can emit almost as much as a quarter of the greenhouse gasses emitted from a gasoline car across its entire lifetime.
Second, the electric car is recharged on electricity that almost everywhere is significantly fossil fuel based.
Together, this means that a long-range electric car will emit more CO2 for its first 60,000km. This is why having a second electric car for short trips could mean higher overall emissions.
Comparing the electric and gasoline car, the International Energy Agency estimates the electric car will save six tons of CO2 over its lifetime, assuming global average electricity emissions. Even if the electric car has short range and its battery is made in Europe mostly using renewable energy, its savings will be at most 10 tons.
When President-elect Biden wants to restore the full electric car tax credit, it means he will essentially pay $7,500 to reduce emissions by at most 10 tons. Yet, he can get US power producers to cut 10 tons for just $60. His spending on electric car subsidies could have cut 125 times more CO2.
Indeed, if the whole world follows through and gets to 140 million electric cars by 2030, the IEA estimates it will reduce emissions by just 190 million tonnes of CO2 — a mere 0.4 percent of global emissions. In the words of Fatih Birol, the head of IEA, “If you think you can save the climate with electric cars, you’re completely wrong.”
We need a reality check. First, politicians should stop writing huge checks just because they believe electric cars are a major climate solution.
Second, there is a much better and simpler solution. The hybrid car, such as the Prius, saves about the same amount of CO2 as an electric car over its lifetime. Moreover, it is competitive to gasoline-driven cars already today, even without subsidies. And crucially, it has none of the electric car downsides, needing no new infrastructure, no range anxiety and quick refill.
Third, climate change doesn’t care about where CO2 comes from. Personal cars are only about 7 percent of global emissions, and electric cars will only help a little. Instead, we should focus on the big emitters of heating and electricity production. If we could drive research and development of green energy in these areas to become cheaper than fossil fuels, this would be a game-changer.Right now, electric car subsidies are something wealthy countries can afford giving rich elites to show virtue. But if we want to fix climate, we need to focus on the big emitters and drive innovation to create better low-CO2 energy from fusion, fission, geothermal, wind, solar and many other possible ways forward. Innovations that will make just one of them cheaper than fossil fuels means not just well-meaning rich people changing a bit, but everyone, including China, India and nations in Africa and Latin America, switching large parts of their energy consumption toward zero emissions.
Bjorn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book is “False Alarm – How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”
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December 01, 2020
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