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Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment

Although battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are climate-friendly alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), an important but often ignored fact is that the climate mitigation benefits of BEVs are usually delayed. The manufacture of BEVs is more carbon-intensive than that of ICEVs, le...

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Autores principales: Ren, Yue, Sun, Xin, Wolfram, Paul, Zhao, Shaoqiong, Tang, Xu, Kang, Yifei, Zhao, Dongchang, Zheng, Xinzhu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10232456/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37258514
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38182-5
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author Ren, Yue
Sun, Xin
Wolfram, Paul
Zhao, Shaoqiong
Tang, Xu
Kang, Yifei
Zhao, Dongchang
Zheng, Xinzhu
author_facet Ren, Yue
Sun, Xin
Wolfram, Paul
Zhao, Shaoqiong
Tang, Xu
Kang, Yifei
Zhao, Dongchang
Zheng, Xinzhu
author_sort Ren, Yue
collection PubMed
description Although battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are climate-friendly alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), an important but often ignored fact is that the climate mitigation benefits of BEVs are usually delayed. The manufacture of BEVs is more carbon-intensive than that of ICEVs, leaving a greenhouse gas (GHG) debt to be paid back in the future use phase. Here we analyze millions of vehicle data from the Chinese market and show that the GHG break-even time (GBET) of China’s BEVs ranges from zero (i.e., the production year) to over 11 years, with an average of 4.5 years. 8% of China’s BEVs produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 cannot pay back their GHG debt within the eight-year battery warranty. We suggest enhancing the share of BEVs reaching the GBET by promoting the effective substitution of BEVs for ICEVs instead of the single-minded pursuit of speeding up the BEV deployment race.
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spelling pubmed-102324562023-06-02 Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment Ren, Yue Sun, Xin Wolfram, Paul Zhao, Shaoqiong Tang, Xu Kang, Yifei Zhao, Dongchang Zheng, Xinzhu Nat Commun Article Although battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are climate-friendly alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), an important but often ignored fact is that the climate mitigation benefits of BEVs are usually delayed. The manufacture of BEVs is more carbon-intensive than that of ICEVs, leaving a greenhouse gas (GHG) debt to be paid back in the future use phase. Here we analyze millions of vehicle data from the Chinese market and show that the GHG break-even time (GBET) of China’s BEVs ranges from zero (i.e., the production year) to over 11 years, with an average of 4.5 years. 8% of China’s BEVs produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 cannot pay back their GHG debt within the eight-year battery warranty. We suggest enhancing the share of BEVs reaching the GBET by promoting the effective substitution of BEVs for ICEVs instead of the single-minded pursuit of speeding up the BEV deployment race. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10232456/ /pubmed/37258514 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38182-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Ren, Yue
Sun, Xin
Wolfram, Paul
Zhao, Shaoqiong
Tang, Xu
Kang, Yifei
Zhao, Dongchang
Zheng, Xinzhu
Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
title Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
title_full Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
title_fullStr Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
title_full_unstemmed Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
title_short Hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
title_sort hidden delays of climate mitigation benefits in the race for electric vehicle deployment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10232456/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37258514
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38182-5
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