Electric cars really are a greener option than fossil fuel vehicles

Manufacturing rechargeable electric car batteries produces carbon emissions Martin Pickard/Getty Images Electric cars are already greener than their fossil fuel counterparts in almost every part of the world today, according to researchers. They say electric vehicles are “a no-regret choice” even in places where power grids haven’t gone fully green. Some previous comparisons have suggested petrol and diesel cars produce lower net carbon emissions over their lifetime than battery-powered vehicles. Yet these analyses have often compared only two models of car. Instead, Florian Knobloch at Radboud University in the Netherlands and his colleagues looked at the average emissions across many classes of car to get a clearer global picture. The researchers looked at the projected carbon emissions generated on average over a car’s lifetime, including during its production, while it is being driven and when it is destroyed, for all the conventional and electric cars sold in 59 regions across the world in 2015. These represent 95 per cent of the world’s current road traffic. They found that electric vehicles already have lower net carbon emissions in 53 of those 59 regions. Only in areas containing countries that use coal heavily, such as India and Poland, were electric vehicle […]

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