EVs and Climate Change

Electric vehicles are more efficient at converting input energy into mileage, and use cleaner energy as an input, so each mile in an EV has a considerably lower carbon footprint than each mile in a petrol car.

The manufacturing of the electric vehicle itself has a higher carbon footprint than the manufacturing of a fuel car. The battery accounts for this difference, however it is usually offset by lower-carbon mileage before the car has reached 20,000 miles. The more fuel miles are displaced, the bigger the impact, although a mile in an electric car still has a carbon impact bigger than a mile of car travel avoided entirely.

Tools for estimating carbon footprint

To put some hard numbers behind the above claim, and try to quantify the carbon impact of your decisions on whether to acquire a car, which fuel type to choose, and how much to drive, visit the International Energy Agency's Life Cycle Assessment Calculator.

The carbon intensity of the grid

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) publishes data on how green electricity generation is as it varies throughout the day, the week, and the year. There is a general trend towards lower-carbon renewable energy generation. The cleaner the electricity going into your car, the greener your mileage is.

Visit I Am Kate's page to see how green the grid is right now. We hope to include a similar feature on this webpage soon.

One complication with electrification of car transport (as well as rail transport, heating, and heavy industry) is that it means the total grid demand will be higher, meaning that renewable energy doesn't just have to ramp up to meet 2025 electricity demand, but future electricity demand which is displacing fuel demand.

The bigger picture

In 2024, Finnish researchers published a study which found that households with EVs had higher carbon footprints than households with non-EV cars.

How can it simultaneously be true that EVs are greener and that households with EVs have a lower carbon footprint? The key is that driving is not the be-all and end-all. Diet, heating, and aviation are all important factors in a person's carbon footprint, and it just so happens that in this Finnish study, the carbon footprint of other activities offset the carbon savings of EV households.

Note that households without cars comfortably have the lowest carbon footprint.