Erik Lavoie

Can elec­tric ve­hi­cles (EVs) pro­vide cli­mate ben­e­fits in a coun­try that re­lies en­tire­ly on fos­sil fu­els for elec­tric­i­ty? A Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion sug­gests that, de­spite the chal­lenges, EVs can still of­fer mod­est cli­mate ben­e­fits in T&T.

Dri­ving an EV 15,000 kilo­me­tres an­nu­al­ly can lead to an es­ti­mat­ed 31 per­cent re­duc­tion in to­tal green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions (see graph). The com­par­i­son is based on a gaso­line-pow­ered car with a fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy of 25 miles per gal­lon (MPG), equiv­a­lent to 10.5 kilo­me­tres per litre (km/l).

GHGs like car­bon diox­ide (CO2) and methane (CH4) trap heat in the Earth’s at­mos­phere, lead­ing to glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change. CO2, main­ly pro­duced by burn­ing fos­sil fu­els, is the largest GHG due to its large vol­ume and long-last­ing pres­ence in the at­mos­phere, while CH4 is a much stronger green­house gas with a lim­it­ed lifes­pan. Both con­tribute to ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, melt­ing arc­tic ice and more ex­treme weath­er events.

Al­though the 31 per cent re­duc­tion in emis­sions as­so­ci­at­ed with EV use in T&T is low­er than in coun­tries with high­er pen­e­tra­tions of re­new­able en­er­gy, it still rep­re­sents a de­cent im­prove­ment. Ben­e­fits are ex­pect­ed to vary wide­ly, po­ten­tial­ly ex­ceed­ing 50 per cent in some cas­es. In oth­er cas­es, EVs may cause more emis­sions than tra­di­tion­al cars. The sig­nif­i­cant vari­abil­i­ty in pre­dict­ed ben­e­fits are main­ly due to dif­fer­ences in the fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy of the gaso­line-pow­ered car be­ing re­placed, time and lo­ca­tion of EV charg­ing and methane emis­sions from nat­ur­al gas flar­ing and pipeline in­fra­struc­ture.

While EV adop­tion in T&T can of­fer mod­er­ate cli­mate ben­e­fits, eco­nom­ic is­sues may arise with their adop­tion. In­creased de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty could de­plete nat­ur­al gas re­serves faster, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to high­er gas prices. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, low­er-in­come in­di­vid­u­als, who dri­ve less fu­el-ef­fi­cient cars, may not af­ford EVs with­out gov­ern­ment in­cen­tives and de­creas­ing EV prices.

High­er ini­tial emis­sions for EV man­u­fac­tur­ing

EVs ini­tial­ly have a high­er green­house gas emis­sion foot­print com­pared to gaso­line-pow­ered cars. Re­search by the Fu­els In­sti­tute in the U.S. found that man­u­fac­tur­ing an EV is more than twice as car­bon-in­ten­sive as pro­duc­ing a gaso­line-pow­ered car, with 11 met­ric tonnes of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent for EVs com­pared to 5 met­ric tonnes for gaso­line cars. A sig­nif­i­cant part of this dif­fer­ence is due to the pro­duc­tion of EV bat­ter­ies, which of­ten takes place in large­ly coal-pow­ered Chi­na, ac­cord­ing to the MIT Cli­mate Por­tal. Elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from coal is among the high­est in car­bon emis­sions per kilo­watt-hour (kWh).

Giv­en the high­er emis­sions from man­u­fac­tur­ing, an EV that is not used or is bare­ly used over its life­time will like­ly con­tribute more to cli­mate change than a tra­di­tion­al gaso­line-pow­ered car.

Ben­e­fits of EVs re­alised through dri­ving

The re­al ben­e­fits of EVs are re­alised through avoid­ing the use of gaso­line as a fu­el. The sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in emis­sions per kilo­me­tre be­tween EVs and gas-pow­ered cars al­lows EVs to not on­ly make up for their ini­tial man­u­fac­tur­ing emis­sions deficit but al­so to pro­vide sub­stan­tial emis­sions sav­ings com­pared to gas-pow­ered cars.

In T&T, dri­ving a 25 MPG (10.6 km/l) gaso­line-pow­ered car emits an es­ti­mat­ed 265 grams of CO2-equiv­a­lent per kilo­me­tre (gCO2eq/km). This is es­ti­mat­ed to be 90 per cent high­er than the emis­sions from dri­ving an EV for the same dis­tance, with an es­ti­mat­ed 140 gCO2eq/km. These per­cent­ages vary with the fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy of gaso­line cars: emis­sions are 137 per cent high­er for 20 MPG (8.5 km/l) cars and 58 per cent high­er for 35 MPG (14.9 km/l) cars. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ben­e­fits in­crease with high­er an­nu­al mileage. For ex­am­ple, dri­ving 20,000 kilo­me­tres per year in an EV pro­vides an es­ti­mat­ed 10 per cent more emis­sions sav­ings com­pared to dri­ving 10,000 kilo­me­tres per year.

This da­ta in­di­cates that to max­imise car­bon foot­print re­duc­tion, EV own­ers should use their cars fre­quent­ly and ide­al­ly re­place a low­er fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy ve­hi­cle. With 100 per cent charg­ing from home so­lar, emis­sions re­duc­tions from an EV com­pared to a 25 MPG (10.6 km/l) gaso­line-pow­ered car could be as high as 75 per cent.

Un­cer­tain­ty in ex­tent of ben­e­fits

The cli­mate ben­e­fits of EV us­age rel­a­tive to gaso­line-pow­ered cars can vary wide­ly, po­ten­tial­ly ex­ceed­ing 50 per cent in some cas­es, while in­clud­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of slight neg­a­tive im­pacts in oth­er sce­nar­ios. For in­stance, gaso­line-pow­ered cars with fu­el ef­fi­cien­cies high­er than 35 miles per gal­lon can be more cli­mate-friend­ly than an EV in T&T. An EV dri­ven less than 5,000 kilo­me­tres a year may re­sult in high­er emis­sions com­pared to a gaso­line-pow­ered car, while some­one dri­ving more than 30,000 kilo­me­tres a year will achieve the great­est emis­sions re­duc­tions.

The ben­e­fits of EVs in T&T can vary based on time and lo­ca­tion. Dif­fer­ent times and lo­ca­tions of EV charg­ing mean dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tors in T&T in­creas­ing elec­tric­i­ty out­put to charge an EV. Not all pow­er plants in T&T have the same fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy, lead­ing to vary­ing rates of nat­ur­al gas use for the same amount of elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion. For ex­am­ple, a kilo­watt-hour of elec­tric­i­ty con­sumed in To­ba­go from T&TEC’s Cove Pow­er Plant may pro­duce up to 40 per cent less emis­sions than the same amount gen­er­at­ed by the Pow­er­Gen plant in Pe­nal, Trinidad.

The most sig­nif­i­cant source of un­cer­tain­ty could orig­i­nate from methane emis­sions. Methane makes up about 80 to 90 per cent of nat­ur­al gas and is a very strong green­house gas, con­tribut­ing to glob­al warm­ing 28 times more per unit than car­bon diox­ide over a 100-year pe­ri­od, ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC). Al­though nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants emit very lit­tle methane, leaks from nat­ur­al gas pipelines and flar­ing can sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to methane emis­sions. This is es­pe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for EVs in T&T since its elec­tric­i­ty comes from nat­ur­al gas plants which utilise the nat­ur­al gas pipelines.

Ac­cord­ing to the U.S. De­part­ment of En­er­gy (DoE), the av­er­age amount of nat­ur­al gas lost as methane emis­sions due to flar­ing and trans­porta­tion is 1.4 per cent of pro­duc­tion, a fig­ure used in this ar­ti­cle’s cal­cu­la­tions. A methane leak­age rate of 8 per cent or high­er would negate most cli­mate ben­e­fits of EVs in T&T, mak­ing gaso­line-pow­ered cars more cli­mate-friend­ly.

At the 1.4 per­cent rate, methane leak­age ac­counts for 13 per cent of per kWh emis­sions dur­ing an EV’s op­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), T&T’s gas pipeline op­er­a­tor, shared in­for­ma­tion in its 2022 Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Re­port sug­gest­ing that the NGC is re­spon­si­ble for just 0.5 per cent of per kWh emis­sions, which is 26 times less than the US DoE’s av­er­age es­ti­mate. If the NGC’s as­sess­ments of methane emis­sions are com­plete and cor­rect, EVs could pro­vide up to an ad­di­tion­al 5 per cent re­duc­tion in emis­sions be­yond what is shown in the graph.

EVs and eco­nom­ic con­cerns

While EVs are ex­pect­ed to of­fer mod­er­ate ben­e­fits for the cli­mate in T&T even with the us­age of nat­ur­al gas for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, there are im­por­tant eco­nom­ic is­sues to con­sid­er with their adop­tion.

Vir­tu­al­ly all of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elec­tric­i­ty is pro­duced us­ing nat­ur­al gas. As more peo­ple switch to EVs, the de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty will rise, speed­ing up the de­ple­tion of T&T’s nat­ur­al gas re­serves. The NGC may be forced to raise the price of gas as re­serves run clos­er to de­ple­tion. This is more like­ly to hap­pen if the Drag­on gas project with Venezuela does not go as planned.

There are al­so con­cerns of eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties in EV own­er­ship. Peo­ple with low­er in­comes of­ten dri­ve the least fu­el-ef­fi­cient cars, which con­tribute most to cli­mate change. These cars are less like­ly to be re­placed by EVs due to their price tag. Gov­ern­ment in­cen­tives and the falling prices of EVs over time can help ad­dress this is­sue.

As a re­sult, eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions will like­ly dic­tate the time­line for wide­spread EV adop­tion. How­ev­er, oth­er de­vel­op­ments may help ac­cel­er­ate the process. For in­stance, EV up­take will like­ly in­crease if T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty grid moves to­ward de­car­bon­i­sa­tion. All of these fac­tors can help EVs es­tab­lish a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence in the ve­hi­cle mar­ket, bring­ing along cli­mate and health ben­e­fits for all.