VDI study: E-cars don’t drive so cleanly
Depending on the electricity mix, CO2 emissions from combustion engines and electric cars are similarly high
Electric cars do not necessarily cause fewer climate-damaging emissions over their lifetime than combustion engines. A VDI study published in December 2023 states that electric vehicles cause around ten tons less greenhouse gases (GHG) – especially CO2 – over their entire life cycle, including production, over a mileage of 200,000 kilometers than comparable gasoline and diesel engines.
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This statement, which has been picked up by many media outlets and is the focus of the accompanying VDI press release, only applies if the climate footprint of electric cars is calculated based on the average German electricity mix.
However, in the long version of the VDI study, which compares cars with seven different drive concepts, GHG emissions are also reported using the marginal electricity approach, which many scientists consider to be more realistic. And there, the climate advantage of electric cars is hardly present anymore, as the magazine auto motor und sport reports – because here the CO2 output of electric cars is growing by around a third.
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Using the marginal electricity approach, an electric car in the VDI study causes around 36 tons of greenhouse gases in its life cycle, but a comparable diesel only causes 33 tons. According to the VDI study, a petrol engine is only slightly higher at 37 tonnes.
Using the marginal electricity approach, the researchers assume that electric cars in Germany act as additional electricity consumers. Since there is practically no solar power available at night, when many of them are being charged, and wind turbines cannot meet the additional demand, the electricity required is largely generated by coal and gas power plants, which emit a lot of pollutants.
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If electric cars didn’t exist, these systems would have to perform significantly less or run less often or not at all – the energy transition would therefore have made further progress.
Prof. Thomas Koch, head of the Institute for Piston Machines at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), describes the exclusive assessment of the CO2 balance of electric cars based on the average value of the electricity generated in Germany as “balance sheet fraud”. “In fact, the average value approach is an accounting fraud, which hundreds of scientists have repeatedly criticized,” said Prof. Koch to auto motor und sport. “If you simply multiply the energy required for electromobility by the average value of the electricity mix, you significantly underestimate the real CO2 emissions.”