How electricity for electric cars is produced

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced in 2008 that he wants Britain to be at the forefront of a green car revolution and that by 2020 all new cars sold in Britain could be hybrids or electrics.  His statements proved to have substance in April 2009 when transport secretary Geoff Hoon said the British government would make £250 million available for consumer incentives to bring electric cars to market in the UK.

However, the clear push toward electric cars has raised the debate about how environmentally friendly they are. The vehicles themselves produce no emissions – but the electricity they use for power is often sourced from non-renewable energy. So how is the electricity used to power electric cars produced and how green is it?

Quick links:

• Where do we get our electricity from?
• So is the current generation of electric cars clean?
• What role can renewable energy play?

Where do we get our electricity from?

It’s clear that as conventional cars pump harmful emissions into the atmosphere, something has to change. So a potential solution is electric cars which produce zero emissions. However, critics believe that electric cars do not solve the problem of vehicle emissions – they merely displace it.

That is because most of our electricity currently comes from the burning of fossil fuels and other non-renewable sources – around 75 per cent of the electricity from the National Grid in 2009 comes from fossil fuels alone according to Professor Stanley Fieldman. When transmission losses too are taken into account, some industry experts, such as Professor Fieldman, suggest that before the electricity even reaches the proposed charging points it will have emitted nearly twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as the equivalent amount of diesel.

Critics also believe that more information is required as to how the higher demand for electricity would be managed and how a national network of charging points could be established.

So is the current generation of electric cars clean?

Clearly running cars on electricity has its merits, but only if the vehicle’s energy is sourced in a green and carbon free manner.

At the moment the overwhelming majority of the energy on the National Grid comes from fossil fuels though hopefully this situation will improve with the Government having signed up to EU targets in early 2008, agreeing to source 15 per cent of all energy from renewables by 2020. There are several green energy companies in the UK that get all of their energy from renewable sources. Good Energy for example, gets 100 per cent of its energy from the sun, wind, water and biomass.

However, in order to reach its 2020 target it is estimated that around 32GW of wind power will be needed – that’s the equivalent of around 30 new conventional coal or nuclear power stations. Furthermore electricity demands are currently rising by an average of 0.5 per cent a year – something that will need to stabilise if the UK is to meets its 2020 target. 

So at the moment it is a debatable point as to whether electric cars really provide a greener alternative.

The situation is similar in the United States where the US Department of Energy claims that most electricity generation is from fossil sources and half is from coal alone. With overall average efficiency from US power plants to use at 30 per cent, the efficiency of electric cars is estimated at only 20 per cent when charged from fossil fuels. This is comparable to the efficiency of an internal combustion engine with a typical petrol engine’s efficiency at about 16 per cent compared to 20 per cent for a diesel engine.

There are also additional issues to be addressed if electric cars are to become more mainstream including the recharging infrastructure. However, according to the Department of Transport, widespread adoption of electric vehicles capable of a 50km range or more would cut road transport emissions in half.

What role can renewable energy play?

Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth state that electric cars can only be as green as the electricity they run on and there is a need for investment in the renewable energy industry.

However, since the onset of the credit crunch the renewable energy industry has struggled. Offshore wind projects have been scrapped due to the slump in oil and carbon prices meaning they are no longer economic while Independent Consulting reports that the cost of capital has increased for the biggest companies by two per cent over the six months leading to March 2009. In the months leading up to the 2009 Budget, five of Britain’s largest wind projects had been abandoned or put on hold, while BP axed 620 jobs from its solar energy division because it became so uneconomic.

Nevertheless, the Government believes strongly in the role of renewable energy going forward. It has already outlined that by 2015, 39,600 new jobs will be created in ‘geothermal energy’, along with 74,900 in ‘alternative fuels’, 25,300 in solar energy and another 69,300 in erecting wind turbines.

It’s clear that as more renewable energy sources are used the debate about the environmental credentials of electric cars will start to disappear. The use of solar, wind and biomass power will see electric cars produce less CO2 over their lifetime because it is impractical to reduce the emissions at the tailpipe of a diesel or biofuel car. Electric cars meanwhile have the potential to be run on 100 per cent renewable energy although this in itself may be a long way into the future.

Paul Lucas, 2009