Some Concluding Thoughts...

Hey everyone, Happy New Year!

I’m afraid that this is going to be my last post here for a while.

When I started this blog, I didn’t know anything about Electric Vehicles.

Now I know something about them.

I hope you can say the same!

This is the first blog I’ve ever done and it’s been a great experience being able to research my own topics and ideas and then share them here with you! It’s a refreshing change being able to slip into a more conversational tone with you, the reader, instead of having to keep things rather formal for most of the academic work I write.

In the beginning I said that I wanted to work out if electric vehicles are the solution. I’ve realised since that it’s not quite so black and white. It’s actually many different shades of grey (or in this case, green!).

I hope I’ve made it clear that there are some great things about EVs and some demonstrable benefits to their uptake. At the same time however, there are some barriers to their availability and viability for everyone, which may require major changes to overcome.

At a local level, in the environment surrounding the vehicle, they are indisputably better, releasing far fewer emissions, less sound and contributing less pollution.

Thinking more globally, there’s only so much that we can do as individuals. Yes, we can take the step of buying our own EV but it is up to governments to continue to make long overdue changes to the way that we generate our electricity. Until personal green electricity generation, or microgeneration becomes mainstream (be it through wind turbines, solar panels or maybe even small scale hydro!), which may be never; we are reliant on national grids to make our electricity low carbon electricity.

I really hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it and you never know, I’ve really gotten a taste for this- you may see more posts on this and other topics in the future!

“Geography is an earthly subject, but a heavenly science.”

– Edmund Burke

Case Study: Norway

Merry Christmas!  

In my previous post I mentioned a lot of challenges for EVs. That’s not to say that they can’t be overcome, and one country that’s doing extremely well is Norway.

First, some facts and figures:

• 28% of all new cars sold in Norway during the first 7 months of 2016 were BEVs or PHEVs
• In Norway, in 2014, Tesla’s sales of their Model S EV were greater than Ford’s sales of any of their models.
• When the Tesla Model S was launched in Norway in 2013, drivers paid a premium to get them second-hand so they didn’t have to wait!
• In March 2014, Norway’s all time sales record of any car, was broken by an Electric Vehicle
• Norway has the highest number of EVs per capita in the world
• Norway was the first country in the world to have an EV as the most popular car sold

Self explanatory chart from Wikipedia- Nice Going Norway!

There’s even more good news – Norway has some of the lowest carbon electricity in the world with 98% of its electricity production coming from renewable sources. 

Great. Well done Norway!

But how have they achieved all this?

Incentives, incentives, incentives (Oh and a bit of infrastructure too!)

Let’s go through the incentives from start to finish:

To begin with, EV purchases are exempt from sales tax at 25%. You also don’t have to pay the registration tax which is an average of $12,500.

Now that you’ve got your EV, you’re exempt from pretty much all tolls. No paying road tolls or tunnel charges. If you want to take a ferry, you’ll have to pay as a passenger but your EV will travel free (whereas ICEVs have to pay a car carrying charge).

When you’re driving around you can use bus lanes to beat the traffic and when you get to your destination you can park for free. 

This experiment done by a Norwegian automotive journalism group showed that they were able to do a journey that would otherwise take 51 minutes, in 19 minutes using bus lanes in an EV

It’s also possible that you’ll need to charge up your EV whilst you’re parking, and you can do so, for free, at a number of charging points. Speaking of charging points, there are 2,030 of them but of course you may want one at home which would be subsidised.

As you can see, Norway is leading the charge with tax breaks and other ongoing incentives

In fact, the current drive to go electric (sorry for the multiple puns) has been so successful that the authorities have hit their target of 50,000 EVs by 2017 two years early. 

Just a few weeks ago, Norway registered their 10,000^th electric vehicle! The government has now announced that these ‘introductory’ incentives will be re-evaluated and in the future, as more EVs are registered (the aim is 400,000 by 2020) it will be necessary to remove some of the great incentives.

In fact, the current drive to go electric (sorry for the multiple puns) has been so successful that the authorities have hit their target of 50,000 EVs by 2017 two years early. Just a few weeks ago, Norway registered their 10,000^th electric vehicle! 

The government has now announced that these ‘introductory’ incentives will be re-evaluated and in the future, as more EVs are registered (the aim is 400,000 by 2020) it will be necessary to remove some of the great incentives.

This is all great, but where is the money coming from?

You might say that they were hoping that you’d never ask.

Norway is able to provide all these subsidies because it has a lot of income, in fact enough to give it the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world at 880 Billion USD. How come Norway has that much spare cash lying around?

OIL 👀

In fact, until 2006, the fund was known by its much more honest name of The Petroleum Fund of Norway. Today it’s known as the The Government Pension Fund Global but it’s still referred to as ‘The Oil Fund’.

Norway has got really lucky with the amount of fossil fuels its sitting on and is therefore able to extract. It’s Western Europe’s biggest oil producer and the third largest exporter of natural gas in the world.

Those sales give Norway the funds to ‘subsidise its green lifestyle’ as well as build up the oil fund (in fact, there’s been so much oil income that until this year, no withdrawals had been made.

This is the first year that Norway has had to tap into its Sovereign Wealth Fund. Is it sustainable for the future?

You might have noticed, there seem to be a few paradoxes here.

Norway, has earned money exporting fossil fuels and then uses the money to fund domestic fossil free initiatives. Martin Skancke a former government official and expert on the oil fund claimed in this interview that these green energy initiatives were commercially oriented investments and not simple subsidies but that’s not the issue here.

The process that I’ve just described may not sound like a problem but when you think about it, it becomes apparent that it’s not strictly true that all of Norway’s renewable energy is low-carbon.

Let’s think back for a moment… we agreed that shouldn’t consider an EV to be running on zero-carbon fuel if the electricity was produced in a manner that accounts for carbon emissions.  

The thing is, this is kind of the same.

If we consider Norway’s renewable energy projects as the EV, those low-emission power generation projects are only affordable as a result of Norway’s fossil fuel exports and therefore, the burning of fossil fuels.

So in other words, Norway utilises fossil fuel usage in other countries to facilitate clean energy usage at home.

Did somebody say carbon laundering?

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Norway though, there is always the argument that this slightly dubious short term strategy is necessary in order to facilitate a long term move towards green alternatives. 

Some challenges

Unfortunately, although EVs seem like a great solution so far, there are some inherent challenges that must be overcome in order to see their widespread adoption as a method of reducing resource consumption and CO₂ emissions. Some of these challenges apply wherever you are in the world whereas some are less of an issue depending on where you live.

In order to research these challenges, I spoke to dealerships, owners, EV forum users and of course I generally looked around on the internet. I’ve identified four main challenges as follows:

1. Purchasing Cost 
2. Range and Infrastructure
3. Electricity Infrastructure
4. It’s not globally viable at the moment

Let’s deal with them one at a time. 

Purchasing Cost

This one is pretty simple. At the moment, EVs are considered new-tech and like many new-tech products, manufacturers have to spend a lot on Research and Design. When the products go to market, they are often sold at a higher price than an equivalent ICE vehicle in order to recover these costs. Furthermore, the lithium batteries are extremely expensive to produce compared to an internal combustion engine.

This means that for some financially conscious buyers, unless they do enough driving to for the increased efficiency of EVs to reduce their operating cost, EVs maybe financially unviable. 

For example, the BMW i3 that I took for a test drive is available on the second-hand market for about £15,000. However, prices for a BMW 1-series, it’s ICE counterpart, are around £8,000 for a similar condition vehicle.

This becomes a vicious cycle- as there are fewer EVs purchased, the production cost remains high and manufacturers cannot benefit from economies of scale.

It’s not all bad news though, as the technology matures and production costs fall, EVs will become available to those with lower budgets. This will cause production costs to fall even further. 👍

Range and Infrastructure

Range and infrastructure go hand in hand. The range problem is that most electric cars today have a range that is far lower than most petrol cars (around 100 miles for the EV depending on how you drive it compared to 500 for many ICEVs, with the same caveat). 

The difference between an ICE vehicles and an EV though, is that you can stop at any petrol station and refill with a full tank in under 5 minutes. By comparison, with an EV you’d have to find an EV charging point and then wait for a minimum of 20 minutes to get you about 80% charged (those figures are for optimum conditions).

Here’s the thing, IF EV cars become the new norm we’d have a bit of an infrastructure problem as we couldn’t possibly create enough charging stations to accommodate them!

That being said, battery technology is improving all the time and therefore there are dramatic range improvements with every generation of electric vehicle. This should mean that we won’t need as many charging stations as batteries will be able to last the full day till the EVs are plugged in at night.

Electricity Infrastructure

Currently there are huge amounts of infrastructure dedicated to extracting and refining hydrocarbons for transportation needs. If we all started to use EVs overnight, we’d suddenly no longer need most of the petrol and diesel that we refine but would suddenly require a lot more electricity. 

As that demand currently doesn’t exist, there’s no infrastructure in place to generate and distribute this amount of electricity. That shift in generation from hydrocarbons to electricity can’t happen overnight and will need to be planned for and done over a period of time. 

It’s not globally viable at the moment

Once again, it comes down to infrastructure. As I discussed in my previous post, the amount of CO­₂ released from electricity generation for electric vehicles varies from location to location. The thing is, in a place like India, Wilson’s report estimated the amount of Carbon released to work out to 370 CO₂e/ km.

This chart shows the mpg of a petrol vehicle that accounted for the same carbon emissions as an EV powered by grid electricity in each country

 

The thing is, that sort of figure is equivalent to a petrol car that gets about 20 US MPG (24 UK MPG). That’s not actually very good, in fact it’s below average as can be seen on the chart above.

What that means, is that if you lived in any of the red nations in the map below, you’d actually be ‘responsible’ for a lower amount of Carbon emissions if you drove an efficient petrol vehicle than if you drove an electric car. Whilst there may of course be some other benefits such as lower direct pollution in cities, overall carbon emissions would be higher as a result of your choice to buy an EV. 

As the below map of the USA shows, even within a country there can be great variances in how your power is generated, and hence how efficient a petrol vehicle would need to be for its carbon emissions to be equivalent to an electric vehicle.

What that means is that it’s not a viable solution for all people in all places. In order for this to be the case, certain nations would need to overhaul their power generation methods and switch to some low-carbon options. Irrespective of that being a necessity for the viability of EVs, that’s just generally a good idea as it lowers the global CO₂ emissions!

N.B. There is one thing that the aforementioned studies seem to have skipped over. The statements I’ve made assume that you’re sourcing your electricity from the national grid. If you generate your own electricity (using renewable methods such as solar panels on the roof of your home), then it’s a whole different ball game as ‘your’ electricity generation resulted in virtually no carbon emissions (apart from the manufacturing emissions of the solar panels). 

This is something that we should think about for the future- I have a great mental image of a rural outback community in Australia where the electricity is carbon-high being able to be self-sufficient for their own transportation needs instead of relying on road delivered petrol!

Is Electricity a Zero-Carbon Fuel? Are electric cars carbon free? Are they renewable?

So far in this blog I’ve explained how cars account for more than you might think of the globe’s anthropogenic Carbon emissions. I’ve also pointed out that traditional petrol and diesel vehicles make use of a non-renewable resource (oil).

Hopefully by now it’s obvious that if we are to keep driving cars, it would be beneficial to move away from traditional petrol and diesel vehicles with internal combustion engines that emit carbon from the exhaust. 10 years ago, Joe Romm (‘The Web's most influential climate-change blogger’ – Time [talk about setting the bar high!]) advised that ‘Ultimately, we will need to replace gasoline with a zero-carbon fuel’ and I believe that now, more than ever, his words still ring true. 

Whilst it’s true that electric vehicles do not directly, individually, emit any carbon, today I will try to examine whether: 1. Electricity is a zero-carbon fuel and 2. Whether we can say that electric cars carbon-free and use renewable resources.

As far as being a fuel for cars goes, it seems quite simple. Unlike an engined vehicle, there is no carbon by-product of propulsion in an EV so switching to EVs would result in no carbon being emitted by the vehicle. So no direct pollution. To rephrase that, a normal car ‘burning petrol’ releases Carbon Dioxide but an electric car ‘using electricity’ doesn’t. 

Does that mean that it’s a zero carbon fuel though?

The simple answer, is it depends.

Specifically, it depends how you generated that electricity in the first place.

In areas where coal is used to generate electricity, then CO₂ emissions from the generation process are substantially higher than methods such as tidal / wind or solar power. That’s pretty basic and may seem pretty obvious to some. All this is based on the assumption that one charges one’s EV from the national grid supply. So I guess the answer is that electricity can be a zero-carbon fuel (if we forgo the manufacturing and installation carbon emissions of the generator- for example, a wind turbine or solar farm) but it can also be a carbon heavy fuel as explained above. 

Armed with this knowledge, we can realise that when thinking about whether electric cars are carbon free, it really depends on where the electricity comes from. This report by Lindsay Wilson for the research group, Shrink  that Footprint has a great figure that demonstrated this perfectly. 

This chart shows the carbon emissions of an electric vehicle for different countries. For countries that use coal and other fossil fuels for their electricity generation, each electron is responsible for a higher amount of carbon.

We can see that when using available data on power generation from a variety of countries, an imaginary electric car running on electricity generated in India would effectively account for the emission of 370 g CO₂e/ km (based on assumptions of efficiency and manufacturing emissions, explained on page 5 of the report). 

By comparison, the very same vehicle running on electricity generated in Iceland or Paraguay would effectively account for the emission of 70 g CO₂e/ km.

The reason that this figure is not 0 g CO₂e/km is that the research estimates the carbon emitted during the manufacturing process of the vehicle (10.5 t CO₂e) and then divides it by the estimated lifespan of the vehicle (150,000KM) which gives a driving estimate of 70 g CO₂e/ km.

 In other words, 70 g CO₂e/ km is the lowest possible figure and indicates that the process of generating the electricity resulted in zero carbon emitted.

Therefore, whilst the electricity used in EVs can be ‘carbon free electricity’, there’s carbon that is emitted in the manufacturing process which means that EVs themselves cannot be seen as truly ‘carbon free’.

On the note of manufacture, it is true that more carbon is emitted during the manufacturing process of an EV vs an ICE car at 10.5 t CO₂e compared to 8 t CO₂e, of which battery manufacture is the main culprit, accounting for an estimated 4 t CO₂e.

However, over the same lifetime, these manufacturing emissions translate to 53.3 g CO₂e / km for an ICEV. That difference of 17 g CO₂e / km (remember it's 70 g CO₂e / km for an EV) is easily covered by the decreased carbon emissions from EVs, except in certain cases which I will explain in my next post on some of the challenges facing the widespread adoption of EVs as a solution.

So I guess the answer is that electric cars aren't completely carbon free as a result of carbon emitted during their manufacture, HOWEVER, they are 'carbon free-er' than ICEVs. 

Finally, do electric cars use renewable resources? 

Once again, it depends. 

This time it’s pretty simple though. Electric vehicles use electricity. If that electricity was regenerated using a renewable resource such as the sun, wind or wave power, then your EV uses renewable resources. 

On the other hand, if the electricity that you charge your EV with is generated through burning fossil fuels, then no, your electric car is using non-renewable resources. 

Why do people buy EVs?

I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate how EVs are clearly better for the environment and lead to a lower carbon footprint for individuals than ICE vehicles. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasons for people to take the environmentally-positive action of purchasing an EV.

Let’s return to the poll I created a while ago. At the time of writing this post it has received exactly 100 responses and by clicking ‘see results’ we can see that ‘Environmental Reasons’ and ‘The Driving Experience’ are significantly more important for the respondents than financial factors at 38% and 40% respectively. 

survey software

Whilst I did expect that the driving experience would rank highly, I thought that cost would be equally important. This would complement the study by Lane and Potter that identifies these two factors as outranking environmental reasons, as discussed in a prior post. However, I realise that different groups of people will have different motivation.

Given that I shared the poll with members of EV forums (thank you for voting!), it is likely that those who are engaged with their electric vehicles to the point that they are present on electric vehicle forums are likely to be genuinely interested in environmental issues and the driving experience of their vehicles.

Nearly a decade ago, Lane and Potter mentioned that common characteristics of EV adopters include: ‘high educational levels and incomes, are urban dwellers, and are interested in technology’. It seems that this still stands true today. 

From my interactions and personal engagement with EV owners on the various forums that I have visited whilst researching for my blog, they take pride in being early adopters of green technology and are interested in much of the technology and science behind their vehicles and in many cases have opted for more expensive EVs rather than simply focussing on saving as much money as possible.

In order to obtain a different perspective, I visited a local automotive garage that specialises in hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. From speaking to owners and employees, it became clear that many of the customers were private taxi drivers and companies who purchased the vehicles solely for their reduced costs per-mile compared to ICE vehicles and exemption from the London congestion charge.

When I learnt about the value-action gap in adopting ‘green products’ in my second year of university, I was also introduced to the concept of ‘inadvertent environmentalism’ These people who are incentivised by reduced expenditure can be seen as what Russel Hitchings et al. refer to as ‘Inadvertent Environmentalists’. 

For these individuals, it seems that although they are likely to in principle support taking environmentally friendly actions, these environmental values are not enough to instigate the relevant action, in this case, buying an electric car, so a ‘value-action gap’ is created. 

However, Hitchings et al. point out that what is first identified as a value-action gap may also reveal what they describe as an ‘action-value opportunity’. 

In essence, instead of fighting to increase environmental consciousness and reduce the gap, we can instead acknowledge the positive action being taken, and reward it (for example, through providing congestion charge exemptions) and in doing so begin to instil new environmental values. 

Hitchings et al. describe this approach to mitigating the value-action gap as simply a chance to ‘celebrate hitherto unacknowledged environmentalism’! 

So next time you get into your uber-summoned Prius, give the driver a pat on the back for being an [inadvertent] environmentalist!

The ‘Everything Else’ Argument: Incentives and Costs

Let’s talk about money. 

I think I’ve outlined a pretty good case for EVs so far and it seems that a lot of governments and authorities agree with me. For example, in the UK, if you purchase an electric car you get a grant of 35% of the vehicle’s cost up to £4,500. Furthermore, you’ll be exempt from paying the congestion charge in London and can effectively get preferential parking within the city.

When thinking about the cost of car ownership, it’s not just the capital expenditure but also the running costs and other ongoing costs that must be considered. To this end, EVs are an attractive proposition as the price-per-mile tends to be lower than that of ICE vehicles. 

To put it another way, in the main, it costs less to recharge a day’s electric driving than it does refill a day’s petrol or diesel driving. 

Whilst the cost of new batteries is significant, general maintenance on an electric motor is less costly than a traditional engine vehicle as there are fewer moving parts, less heat is generated and fewer fluids (such as oil and coolant) are required for EVs.

So as far as reasons to buy an EV go, it’s clear that there are financial benefits to doing so!

 It should be noted that if EVs ever do become the norm, it’s likely that there will be fewer reward-type incentives as these are generally aimed at early-adopters for whom it is recognised that there is perhaps increased uncertainty and a greater sense of financial risk as buyers are dealing with a new technology and must place faith more faith in the assertions of others than their own experience. 

So if you’re in the market, buy one now before the early-adopter rewards go away!  

The 'Everything Else' Argument: The Driving Experience and my road test

The driving experience of a vehicle may seem somewhat irrelevant when it comes to trying to work out whether electric cars are a suitable way of adapting to tackle the climate crisis. 

However, it is important to remember that in order to see widespread adoption of a new technology it must be recognised that different groups of people are incentivised by different factors. For example, as with conventional cars, consumers do not always simply opt for the most environmentally friendly vehicle but may rank other characteristics such as performance, practicality and aesthetics higher. That is not to say that these users do not value the environment, it is simply that there is a ‘value-action gap’ between their attitude to the environment and their purchasing action. In fact, a study by Cohen and May suggested that although consumers may have a positive attitude towards environmentally friendly products, it will not affect the buying decision in an estimated 40% of people.

A 2007 study by Lane and Potter suggests that ‘the decision-making process for UK private car purchases is predominantly driven by financial and performance considerations’ and goes as far as to say that ‘Environmental issues play little part in the process and are among the least important considerations for new car buyers’. I’m interested to see if EV purchasers also follow this behavioural trend so I have created a poll and shared it on some EV message boards and forums online.

survey software

We’ll return to it later once it’s had some time to garner a response but as it is now clear that the driving experience and performance of vehicles is particularly important to their success. Therefore, when looking at the potential for an EV takeover, it is crucial that we examine them from this standpoint.

Older electric cars like the G-whiz and Nissan leaf are pretty slow compared to their petrol counterparts. Yet today, some of the fastest accelerating cars in the world are electric, in fact, the cars that are generally accepted to be the top three ‘hyper cars’ today all involve hybrid technology.

From this... 

... To this!

Yes, not fully electric but when the Toyota Prius hybrid came out in 1997, I don’t think we would’ve guessed that a few years later the most expensive and fastest cars produced by Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche would all be hybrids!

Elon Musk has done amazing things with Tesla Motors and now pretty much all major manufacturers are starting to move in that direction. In fact, the fastest accelerating SUV today is an electric car- the Tesla Model X P100D with a 0-60mph time of 2.9 seconds! By comparison, the joint-holders of second place, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S and Bentley Bentayga share a time of 4.2 which is massively slower, in car speak. They also require a combined 10.8 litres and 20 cylinders to do so!  Electric vehicles handle pretty well too, with the low centre of gravity that batteries provide.

But there’s only so far that I can go whilst relying on purely secondary sources...

 

So, my dear readers, as part of my due diligence in writing this blog, I have taken it upon myself to do some primary research! Thanks to the very nice people at BMW, I was able to get myself a BMW i3 for the day with a full tank of gas full charge of batteries. This was my first time in an electric car and I was really taken by the silence (you realise just how loud every other car next to you at the lights is!), the acceleration (the man at the showroom told me it would beat pretty much any other BMW between 0-30mph and I believe him!) and the regenerative braking system which meant that I almost never needed to apply the traditional friction brakes. 

No analog gauges on the dashboard? In fact, where is the dashboard? What's with all the screens? Jokes aside, I was really impressed with the futuristic look, feel and driving experience of the i3!

I was so impressed that I had to take some family and friends for a quick spin to show them this novelty and they all also commented on the futuristic and serene experience of driving in near silence. I was reluctant to give it back and when I had to climb back into my 12-year-old Jeep I did wince when I turned on the engine and imagined the carbon and other pollutants rushing from the exhaust. Every time I slowed down I felt a pang of guilt at the sheer inefficiency of its traditional brakes without a regenerative system… in fact it seems like this experience has forced me to be self-reflective to the point that I seem to be taking on the ‘attributes’ or perhaps that should be ‘skills’ of an ‘Eco-driver’, as explained in Jack Barkenbus’ paper, Eco-driving: An overlooked climate change initiative.

The 'Everything Else' Argument: Sound

So we’ve already been over the emissions argument for EVs- they release fewer harmful emissions so they’re better for the environment and our health.

Today I’m going to focus on the first part of what I’ve called the ‘everything else’ argument which is comprised of:

1. Sound
2. The driving experience
3. Incentives and costs
   
   

Let’s start with sound

Have you heard an electric vehicle recently? No you haven’t because they’re pretty much silent at low speeds (at higher speeds there is some noise from the tires but that’s pretty much unavoidable until hovercars become a thing). 

So quiet, in fact, that for safety reasons, they have small speakers on them that actually make an artificial noise so that pedestrians can hear the EV coming. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything that suggests that manufacturers given them a knight-rider-esque silent mode yet!

Not yet unfortunately!

It may not sound like much (excuse the pun!) but sound pollution from road traffic is actually a serious issue for the environment as well as our health. In a study by Shannon et al. it was proven that North American Prairie Dogs that were exposed to road noise were recorded as foraging less and changing their vigilance patterns.

Birds are particularly vulnerable as well, with this 1995 study in the Journal of Applied Ecology stating that ‘(60%) [of the 43 species in the study] showed evidence of reduced density adjacent to roads’. 

Although a study in Nature show that certain species such as the Great Tit, Parus major, are able to adapt to road noise by changing the pitch at which they sing. However, the same study points out that species that are unable to do this could ‘suffer from auditory masking’ which could 'affect breeding opportunities and contribute to a decline in species density and diversity'. Even though Great Tits are able to adapt, this can cause its own set of problems- this reduces song performance and males may be perceived as being of a lower level of attractiveness as a potential mate, explained in great detail by Luther et al., last year. At a scientific scale, this level of adaptation could lead to a change in the speciation between urban and rural individuals if there are increased disparities in their behaviour as detailed in this study in Molecular Ecology. 

I should point out that in my research I did find this article in the Journal of Applied Ecology which suggests that whilst roads do cause a reduced density of birds, this is mainly due to collisions rather than noise. However, this conclusion has a number of caveats including this finding being limited to certain locations and species. However, this paper in the same journal states that when compared to noise load, ‘visibility of cars, direct mortality and pollution are considered unimportant’ for explaining reduced bird densities.

The effects are not just limited to birds and animals either. 

Cohen et al.’s study revealed that increased exposure to road noise at home, impacted the cognitive performance, measured through comprehensive and reading ability, of children. I find this particularly interesting as it suggests that it is not simply that road noise is distracting but that being exposed to road noise actually can have an effect on the brains of children. This joint study by the Institute of Education and South Bank University is specific to London and demonstrates that children in the city’s schools can have their attention, recall and test scores affected by road noise.

It also affects the general population as well. Studies by Stansfeld et al., this one by D Ouis in the Noise and Health journal, Cluydts et al. and this one in a Japanese city by Kawada et al., all reveal the effect that road traffic noise has an effect on insomnia and it doesn’t really come as a surprise; being exposed to the sound of cars makes it harder to sleep.

 I can concur, after moving from a quiet residential road in the suburbs to a room with a window opening onto Gower Street, I found it hard to fall asleep with the clattering engines of buses and black cabs in particular, going past outside.

Putting these studies aside though, I don’t think there’s anyone that would argue that there is anything positive about the noise pollution from engines and a quieter environment would always be welcomed by all! 

That concludes the sound argument, check back soon for a post about the driving experience of EVs (and if I’m lucky a chance to experience an EV first-hand!).

Should We Get Rid of the ICE?

In my last post I suggested that we all stop driving as it’s bad for the environment and our health. But that’s unrealistic. We all need to use a car at some point or another. Driving is a bit of a necessity, in fact, I like driving!

So of course there’s the other option which I purposely avoided mentioning in my previous post. Cars with BATTERIES! Specifically, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) like the new Toyota Prius pure Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) such as the Nissan Leaf and all Teslas and finally Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) that store hydrogen in a tank to create electricity when mixed with air, such as the Toyota Mirai (no you haven’t been in one, there are less than a hundred in the UK at the moment).  

I’m going to avoid talking too much about PHEVs as they are something of a compromise as they still have a traditional engine. Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles are a potential opportunity to be explored in the future but for the time being, I'd like to keep this blog focussed on pure electric vehicles or BEVs although many of the factors that I’m about to mention apply to other EVs as well. 

Now in terms of the arguments for giving up traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) powered vehicles for EVs, there seem to be two main ones.

I’m going to call refer to them as 1. The emissions argument and 2. The ‘everything else’ argument which I’m going to discuss in my next post which will be at some point in the next few days.

First of all, argument number one. Emissions. 

On a basic level, I’ve done an entire blog post (hyperlinked here if you’re not a regular follower) about the negative effects of ICE emissions but the story doesn’t end there.

We should also remember that some of nasty ‘emissions’ from cars are not from the exhaust but from brake pad wear, tires, etc. This article published a couple of years ago by Grigoratos and Martini mentions these ‘nonexhaust emissions’ and this 2012 article by Harrison et al. goes as far as stating that ‘abrasive emissions from brake, road, and tire wear, and the resuspension of materials from the highway surface, which, as a result, make up a similar proportion of the airborne particulate matter (PM) resulting from vehicle use as exhaust emissions’.

The study took place in London and we can combine the results with this study by Boulter et al. that uses a model to estimate PM₁₀ emissions as a result of brake wear in the UK. It becomes apparent that if nonexhaust emissions account for nearly as much PM release as exhaust emissions and brake wear accounts for approximately one third of those nonexhaust emissions, brake usage accounts for, very roughly, a sixth of PM₁₀ emissions from cars.

PM10 emissions from nonexhaust sources make up 'a similar proportion' as those from the exhaust. As the main nonexhaust sources are tyre, brake and road surface wear; we can see from this chart that brake wear is a serious issue when thinking about total PM10 emissions from a car. 

Given what we know about the harmful health effects of particulate matter from my previous post, it’s clear that if we MUST continue using our cars, we should stop braking whilst driving with immediate effect!  

What’s this you say? 

Impractical? 

Well the good news is that EVs can save the day here once again. Not only do they not emit any exhaust emissions, their nonexhaust emissions also aren’t as bad as their traditional ICE counterparts. 

This is because of the regenerative braking system fitted on pretty much every single EV.

This video does a pretty good job of explaining how a regenerative braking system works, but in essence, instead of brake pads clamping onto a brake disc and converting the kinetic energy of the moving car into heat energy and sound energy (SCREEECH!), the spinning axle of the car acts as a generator and the kinetic energy of the rotating axle is used to spin the electric motor and in turn recharge the batteries. 

This results in fewer harmful particulates being released into the environment for us to breathe in. 👍

Let’s return to my original argument on why we need to stop driving. I said there were two main reasons. Firstly, the fact that traditional cars require petrol or diesel which are refined from oil which is a non-renewable resource and secondly, their emissions.

Let’s skip to the second one quickly... electric cars have no exhaust emissions and their nonexhaust emissions are considerably lower than their ICE (internal combustion engine, in case you’ve forgotten) counterparts as a result of technologies such as regenerative braking systems. 

Bearing this information in mind, this means that the global carbon concerns that I raised in the previous post would be somewhat mitigated as EVs don’t directly emit any carbon (but I've come across some stuff that indicates that they may do so indirectly which I will cover in a future post). 

From the point of view of health effects...

I’ve shown that the contents of exhaust emissions can cause serious health effects and since EVs do not give off any exhaust emissions, EVs would certainly be better for our health. Yes, it's true that are other nonexhaust emissions such as tire rubber particles that get given off by EVs also but these amounts are negligible when compared to the other emission sources of exhaust emissions and brake wear.

Therefore, we can clearly see the health benefits of everyone switching to EVs as well.

That concludes the emissions argument… now the other argument on why we should stop driving- using up precious oil. The good news is that as EVs don’t require petrol or diesel but only require electricity, we don’t need to use any oil.

Actually, hang on, oil and other non-renewable resources are sometimes used to generate electricity so that kind of defeats the argument. Damn. That doesn’t help... or can we work around that? More on this in a future post! 

So those are the arguments for giving up cars in general and I’ve shown how EVs can be the answer. Now there’s still one more part of the argument left, the ‘everything else’ argument for why should switch to electric vehicles.

Watch this space!

We must all stop driving immediately!

I think that on a basic level, we all realise that our traditional petrol or diesel powered cars really aren’t that good for the environment. Firstly, they rely on a non-renewable resource (oil) and secondly, they kick out some pretty nasty stuff in the form of emissions (Carbon Dioxide in particular).  

But let’s examine the issue more closely and see quite how much of a problem our vehicles are when it comes to their emissions. According to data released by the Committee on Climate Change surface transport accounts for 23% of total CO₂ emissions. 

Carbon Dioxide emissions by each mode of transport in the UK. As we can see, cars make up the majority of emissions. 

From examining the chart below, we can see that within ‘Surface Transport CO₂ emissions’, cars are responsible for 57% of CO₂ emissions. That’s quite a lot! When we put it back into the context of the country’s total CO₂ emissions it comes to 13%. Even without vans or HGVs, that’s a sizeable chunk of total CO₂ emissions (the blue section of the diagram below).  

With this diagram we can see that cars make up 13% of national Carbon emissions and the majority of surface transport (the coloured section).

 In the US it’s a similar story as this data by the Environmental Protection Agency reveals. Transportation (including aircraft) accounts for 34% and within that light duty vehicles (to all intents and purposes, cars) account for 60%.

Similar charts to the above, for the USA. The chart on the left shows that transportation accounts for 34% and within that, light vehicles make up 60% of that 34% - just over 20% of total national CO2 emissions. 

 If we can all agree that we need to reduce CO₂ emissions (if you disagree then feel free to express yourself in the comments!) then it seems pretty obvious that driving our cars less is one very individual and personal thing we can do so as a society.

 

Now let’s look at it on a more local level. 

Let’s use the example of London as it’s where I’ve grown up and gone to university. If you head over to the excellent London Air page by the Environmental Research Group at King’s College London, it becomes immediately obvious that there are increased pollution levels around roads. 

The darker areas indicate higher levels of pollution. It's immediately apparent that a lot of pollution must come from cars!

From a health point of view, inhaling the Carbon Dioxide emissions from cars isn’t that much of a worry. The real concern here are other gases and particulates such as Nitrogen Dioxide, Ozone and PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ particulates which are known to have an effect on health within London.

This report by the Air Quality Expert Group does a great job of explaining the various health effects and origins of what we can refer to as ‘anthropogenic’ particles (particulate matter from human sources such as vehicles and factories). 

To summarise, the main mobile source of particulate matter is road transport and health effects include respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses as well as general ill health in more vulnerable members of society- those with pre-existing conditions as well as the elderly and children. 

Furthermore, this lengthy report by the Royal College of Physicians also mentions air pollution as playing a factor in obesity, infant mortality, pregnancy troubles, diabetes and cancer.

But we don’t even have to rely on this data and warnings about a rising pollution death toll in London such as this report by City hall that puts it at 9,000! I remember when I moved from a green suburb into the heart of London, I found the pollution so bad that I had to resort to going for runs in the middle of the night when pollution levels seemed to be slightly lower as I simply found it easier to breathe. (Spoiler: I was probably right).

So clearly, what comes out of our cars’ exhausts is nasty stuff! If we stopped driving our cars there would not only be environmental benefits for the planet as a whole but also more localised benefits to our personal health.

When we also consider that we are apparently going to run out of oil (or not, depending on who you believe) it becomes obvious that we must all stop driving immediately. End of blog.

Or maybe not...

I’ve had a change of heart

I know I said that I’m going to be going to be looking at some familiar environmental change topics with a slightly contrarian point of view but after doing some soul searching and receiving some feedback on my blog I’ve decided that I’m going to take a more selective approach and look at one topic in a little bit more detail.

I’ve been hearing for ages how cars are damaging to the environment and that electric vehicles are a possible alternative. I’m actually really interested in electric vehicles but I don’t know much about them!

So for the rest of this blog I’m going to be researching, learning and writing about Electric Vehicles and trying to work out if they’re a viable alternative to traditional vehicles as a way for us to reduce our carbon footprint and make a shift towards renewable resources. 

Check back very soon!

What do Kim Jong-Un, Robert Mugabe and the rest of the world’s national leaders have in common?

They all agree that Climate Change, specifically human induced climate change, is real, and most of them are trying to do something about it.

ENTER THE DONALD!

Yes, Mr Trump, that guy who might become the President of the US, doesn’t believe in climate change. Let’s let that sink in for a moment.

I’m going to try really hard not to personally insult this buffoon gentleman in this post but I think I’m going to find this difficult.

Seriously, if you take a look at this article by the Sierra Club you will see that this puts him at odds with every national leader around today. In the past he was pretty open about this, as a quick glance at his twitter feed will reveal (if you have some free time and are want to be entertained / shocked, read the responses:

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2014

Yes, because if your local weather cools down a bit during Winter then Global Warming MUST be a myth!

Let's continue to destroy the competitiveness of our factories & manufacturing so we can fight mythical global warming. China is so happy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2012

We can't destroy the competitiveness of our factories in order to prepare for nonexistent global warming. China is thrilled with us!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2012

What the hell is going on with GLOBAL WARMING. The planet is freezing, the ice is building and the G.W. scientists are stuck-a total con job

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2013

Please come to one of my Global Environmental Change lectures Mr Trump. You might learn something. Might.

We should be focusing on beautiful, clean air & not on wasteful & very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit! China & others are hurting our air

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2013

He’s also vowed to “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.” That’s the Paris Climate Agreement that pretty much every country in the world has signed. Okay, fine, as this study in Nature (Rogelj et al., 2016) points out, the Paris agreement is not the be all and end all-  essentially it’s a strong step in the right direction but requires existing targets to be strengthened if we are to realistically see the 2 degree limit on global warming.

Back on topic though, The Donald has decided that this Paris Climate Agreement should be unsigned.
In my opinion, this is a huge societal problem for two reasons.

Firstly, given that the USA is the 2^nd largest emitter of CO2 , at about 17%, if the US doesn’t take internationally recognisable measures, all it would take is for China, Russia and India to follow suit and suddenly more than half of the world’s CO2 emissions would come from nations that refused to be part of an international agreement on action against climate change.

As we can see, it's quite important that the US stays on board if we are to tackle the CO2 problem... 

The second problem, is a more human one. There are similar issues of setting an example, except here we are talking about Mr Trump himself. Regardless of whether he is elected president or not in a few weeks time, he is the presidential candidate of the Republican party and as such is something of a legitimate figure. Being a combination of a celebrity and a political figurehead, Trump’s views on climate change DO matter as they can influence a generation of young people, as implied in this paper by Jackson (2005). If you’re a young American growing up in rural America and the person that your family would like to lead their nation, suggests that climate change is a hoax, there’s a strong chance you’re going to believe them and grow up with that opinion. I shouldn't need to explain why that could be so damaging!

The take home message here is that with all the controversies surrounding Donald Trump and the 2016 election, it’s easy to forget this information, which frankly, should be enough to rule him out as a candidate. I think Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University explains it pretty well:

 “If you care about the planet, the choice would seem clear.

If the appropriate catch-phrase for the 1992 election was "It's The Economy Stupid!," then this time around it ought to be "It's the PLANET stupid!".”

Now without wanting to get into a political debate, Mr Trump’s stance on climate change alone would rule him out from getting my vote, if I had the right to vote in America. So if anyone from across the pond is reading this, you know what to do in a few weeks time!