Researchers from the University of Toronto said that widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is not enough to address climate change.
The team ran a detailed analysis of what a large-scale shift to EVs would mean in terms of emissions and their impact. They chose the United States as the test market because it is second to China in terms of passenger vehicle sales. It has high car ownership and a high rate of travel per capita.
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The team built computer models to estimate how many EVs would be needed to keep the global average temperature to less than 2° C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
Based on modeled scenarios, the U.S. would need 350 million EVs on the road by 2050 to meet the target emissions reductions. This means that about 90% of the total vehicles on the road at that time would need to be electric. Even optimistic sales projections suggest that the U.S. fleet will only be at about 50% by 2050.
The models also found issues with consumer preferences in EV deployment and technology barriers. One problem would be the strain cars would put on the country’s electricity infrastructure. The researchers found that a fleet of 350 million EVs would increase annual electricity demand by 1730 TWh, or 41% of current levels. Some of the electricity plants needed would inevitably be run on fossil fuels. A shift to EV adoption could impact the demand curve of electricity and make managing the national electrical grid even more complex. There are also technical challenges with the supply of critical materials for batteries.
The team ultimately concluded that 90% EV adoption is unrealistic. But they did find that a mix of policies designed to shift people out of personal passenger cars to other transportation, along with EV adoption, would be the most effective. This could include a massive investment in public transit and city redesign to encourage pedestrian and bike modes of transportation. They also said that the adoption of telecommuting could also have a positive effect on car emissions.
A paper on this technology was published in Nature Climate Change.
