Greetings,
For this weeks article we
thought that we would draw your attention to ELECTRIC
CARS! You may have heard both car companies and various forms of
environmental governments swinging around terms such as ‘we promise that we are
investing in green technology’, and these promises will be filled with key
words such as ‘higher efficiency, lower emissions, reduce our carbon footprint,
environmentally friendly, eco friendly, renewable energy.’ It feels as though
the amount of stress put on us to turn to more eco friendly products increase
each day. To clear this up we are not belittling switching of that light you
don’t need on, or turning of the heating and putting on an extra layer because
those efforts help A LOT!, and we do everything
we can TO SAVE NATURE AND THE POLAR BEARS, but
electric cars being the answer to reducing our emissions… needless to say we
are a bit sceptical, so we decided to do some investigating on just how environmentally
friendly these cars actually are. Enjoy!
When electric cars are
not environmentally friendly:
Whether a car is environmentally friendly or
not comes down to 2 major concerns:
1. How the electric vehicle
and particularly the batteries are manufactured.
2. How the electricity,
which powers them, is generated.
Based on these concerns it was
found that in some circumstances electric cars have a greater impact on global
warming than conventional cars. A study conducted in Sweden investigated the
production and operation of an electric car driven for 150,000 km through a
life cycle analysis. They then compared this to the production and operation of
conventional cars. When reading through the study, one of the take home
findings was that the energy intensive manufacturing of electric cars meant
that some of them make almost double the impact on
global warming as conventional cars. This was down to the amount of raw
materials and energy needed to build the lithium ion batteries.
Hang on a minute there, the
challenges on how environmentally friendly these vehicles are when they have
hit the road, is still dependent on how the electricity used to charge the
battery is generated within the country.
Well our fellow Biobunchers!!
Firstly it is important that you are aware of the fact that electricity
generated from the burning of coal creates the MOST POLLUTION out of all the
other fossil fuels!! And it just so happens that China depends on coal for not
a bit but ALL of its energy needs, this
drastically reduces the environmental advantage of electric cars driven in
China. The life cycle analysis of electric cars driven in China showed that, they are polluting the
atmosphere far more than a conventional car! (just
to remind you, this is the exact opposite of what it is meant to do L #sad WHY CHINA WHY??) Anyway… unlike China, Norway seems to be sporting the
idea of electric cars, and this is all because most of their power is generated
by hydroelectricity. Meaning that their life cycle analysis showed that
electric cars driven in their country quickly out performed conventional cars
in terms of their environmental impact!
Now, according to Majeau Betlee
when the European average generation mix is met, and the your environmental car
has been driven for 150,000 km there is a possible 25% improvement on the
release of emissions. Sadly the UK does not abide by the European average
generation mix . Our energy mix is more coal and natural gas based, so the
benefits would be around 10% better over it’s life cycle than a car that has an
internal combustion engine. Just to give you an idea on the numbers behind our
energy mix: gas (45%), coal (28%) nuclear (17%) and renewable sources (6.6%)
compared to the 70% of renewable sources of energy used by other EU countries
such as Austria.
All in all, the energy used by
the country and their energy mix ultimately decides whether an electric car can
be classified as an environmental car. The UK must lower their dependency on
non-renewable sources of energy and increase their renewable mix if we are to
ever meet our target for the year 2050.
So… electric cars are not
environmental?
Well it is safe to say that under the current
energy mix exhibited by the UK and mainly China, that green cars are not
massively beneficial to our environment. However, there is still hope, by 2020
it is thought that the UK will be increasing the amount of electricity
generated by nuclear power stations to 11%, that and the government are placing
considerable interest and investment in clean sources of energy.
Now, when one is talking
about the environmental impact of conventional combustion engines they talk
about that cars tail pipe emission. Surprisingly, when the tail pipe emissions
of an electric car are compared to a conventional car, the value is a very
surprising big fat. ZERO. Yep you read that right, this means that an electric
car emits 100% less through its tail pipe than an internal combustion engine
(we here at BioBunch believe that is a pretty big advantage.) It is important
to note that the manufacturing process behind the environmental car may not be
the best at present,
however if there was more
of a demand the process would become progressively more efficient.
It does not end there, of the energy you put into
an electric car around 80-90% is converted to useful power at the wheels,
compared to a minor 20-30% conversion rate in an conventional car.
CALLING TO ALL LONDONERS!!
Have you ever walked through London and thought ‘Is it just me or do we live in
an area of really poor air quality’… well to be honest your not far off it, and
it isn’t just you. It was found that London is in breach of EU standards on
dangerous particles, which are responsible for 4,300 deaths a year! Yeah...
that doesn’t sound all too great, but guess what, if more people drove electric
cars than the quality of air has a chance to improve all by itself. Interesting
how nature has a knack for healing itself without the intervention of humans.
And here are a few advantages of electric cars
also:
·
Better gas mileage.
·
Less dependency on
foreign oils.
·
Reduced exhaust
emissions.
·
Saves drivers money.
All in all, we hope to leave you
Biobunchers with more knowledge on this advancing piece of technology and the
part that electric cars play in both decreasing emissions and reducing climate
change. Remember we focused on electric cars in general and not on other cars
like hybrids, hydrogen fuel cars and so on. We believe that the effectiveness
of environmental cars is based on the countries individual energy mix, however
we also take note of the fact that improving a countries transport and
decreasing their dependency on buying individual cars has a place in reducing
carbon emissions also.
As always guys we are really
interested in what you have to say! Do you think that environmental cars have a
place in reducing global emissions? Maybe you can think of a solution that
hasn’t been mentioned in our article this week? Make sure to leave a comment
and keep a look out for more articles!!
And Big Cat Week 
