Carbon dioxide and consumption reduction through electric vehicles

Authors: Hinrich Helms, Claudia Kämper, Udo Lambrecht

B. Scrosati, J. Garche und W. Tillmetz (ed.): Advances in Battery Technologies for Electric Vehicles. Cambridge 2015 Electric vehicles are embraced as a key technology for sustainable transport because they have quiet engines, zero local emissions, and the potential for using different (also renewable) energy sources in road traffic, which so far could not be integrated. Large shares of the current European electricity supply, however, are still being generated using fossil energy carriers. Therefore, considerable life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are still caused by electricity generation in Europe (EU27 mix), which limits the advantage of electric vehicles over modern vehicles with combustion engines. The full potential for climate protection will thus be tapped only when additional renewable electricity is used. In the long-term perspective, the impact of the increasing power demand from electric vehicles on power generation and the European emissions trading scheme have to be considered also and are discussed in this chapter.