EV Incentives Can Cause Higher Emissions, Study Finds

Kea Wilson reports on a new study that calls out U.S. electric vehicle incentives for contributing to higher carbon emissions. As the article states, “the wealthy people who are among the only ones able to take advantage of EV tax credits don’t drive their green cars enough to make up for the heavy emissions impact of manufacturing them in the first place,” causing current incentive programs to do more harm than good.

In a new paper published in Nature Sustainability, researchers modeled the lifetime emissions impact of the electric vehicles that more and more Americans are buying, thanks in part to federal and state tax credits.

More specifically, though, the researchers explored two often-overlooked factors that can have a seismic effect on how green an EV actually is: 1) whether it becomes a primary household vehicle, rather than a complement to a gas-powered one, and 2) how far it’s actually driven over its lifetime.

Today’s incentive programs, the study’s lead paper Dr. Ashley Nunes argues, subsidize the purchase—but not the use—of electric vehicles. “If you went out today and bought an EV, you’d still get to keep that subsidy, even if your EV sat in the garage for the better part of five years and you drove your [car with an internal combustion engine] every day instead. That’s not a good use of government capital.” Meanwhile, “Some automakers estimate that building an EV generates about 70 percent more emissions than comparable gas-powered cars, thanks to the carbon-intensive battery manufacturing process, though it more than makes up for it once it once the vehicle has clocked a certain number of zero-emitting miles.” Based on the model developed by Nunes, the average EV would make up those emissions with between 28,069 and 68,160 miles driven in its lifetime. 

“Nunes says his research points to a need for major reforms, including restructuring incentive programs to make them available to second-hand buyers, switching to a federal tax rebate rather than a credit to open the program to lower-income Americans, and in some cases, strategically increasing charging capacity to encourage drivers to take the e-car rather than the clunker.” Nunes also calls for more investment in public transit and other means of getting people to drive less—whether in a gas-powered or electric car.