Consequences of the Renewable Energy Transition on Transport
Whenever I go to the cinema these days I am appalled by the subject of commercials before the showing of the feature film: large battery electric or hybrid vehicles, mostly SUVs. These commercials tap into human fears and desires, they project the sensation of freedom and unlimited joy by owning and driving such a large vehicle. The message seems to be: by purchasing this vehicle you will save the planet with a clean conscious; quite the opposite is the case. Since electric vehicles require significant resources for their production, replacing the global vehicle fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) with battery electric vehicles (BEV) will be quite a challenge if not impossible, the subject of this story.
My findings in Mineral Resource Usage for the Renewable Energy Transition were that a transition of the fossil fuel powered energy infrastructure should be possible within 25 years, from an annual primary energy consumption of 164,000 TWh, consisting of 40,100 TWh in gas, 54,560 TWh in oil and 45,560 TWh in coal, to a system powered by renewable energy with a 3x overbuild, large grids, energy storage and demand response. The crux now is that about 25–30% of the current energy consumption is related to transport, mostly powered by fossil fuels. If the global energy system transitions to renewable sources, then it follows that all 1.5 billion ICEVs have to be replaced by BEVs, too. So how would that pan out?
Suppose the replacement of ICEVs to BEVs happened in parallel to the energy system transitions; after all they are coupled and both are supposed to be happening simultaneously. 1.5 billion ICEVs replaced over 25 years means replacing 60 million vehicles per year. Given the annual production of cars in 2023 of 93 million, that is not too far off. However, just to get an idea of the order of magnitude, what would be the materials needed to manufacture all of those as BEVs:
- copper: at 53.2kg/BEV results in 3.2Mt/annum which is about 14.5% of the 22Mt world production in 2023;
- lithium: at 6.9kg/BEV results in 0.414Mt/annum which is about 2.3 times the 0.18Mt world production in 2023;
- nickel: at 39.9kg/BEV results in 2.4Mt/annum which is about 66.5% of the 3.6Mt world production in 2023;
- manganese: at 24.5kg/BEV results in 1.47Mt/annum which is about 7.4% times of the 20Mt world production in 2023;
- cobalt: at 13.3kg/BEV results in 0.8Mt/annum which is about 3.5 times of the 0.23Mt world production in 2023;
- graphite: at 66.3kg/BEV results in 3.98Mt/annum which is about 2.5 times of the 1.6Mt world production in 2023;
Looking at these numbers, the production of that many vehicles per year as BEVs does seem to be a bit of a stretch but not impossible; as in case of lithium, cobalt and graphite, production has to be 2–3 times more than the current world production for all use cases. Some of the material in the IECVs can be recovered and recycled, e.g. 1/3 of the copper and 1/2 of the manganese. But a large portion of the materials have to be freshly mined with devastating consequences for the biosphere our civilisation is built upon. Therefore, personal mobility ought to be addressed through alternative, simpler means:
- human-centric urban planning to avoid need for transport and prevent urban sprawl but allow walking and cycling,
- all forms of shared transport, trams, trains, buses and to a certain shared taxis (automated or not),
- smaller cars¹ and by all means, no SUVs please!
In summary, the number of cars has to be reduced significantly as a result of the reduction of travelled miles; I would say a reduction by a factor of 10 is due which has to happen in conjunction with a renewable energy transition. Simply replacing the ICEVs with BEVs is not a solution at all, rather try to phase out a personally owned vehicle².
Footnotes
- When it comes to the choice of vehicle I am quite often surprised that, apart from non-articulated and non-admitted psychological reasons such as vanity and hubris, many people seem to be going for a vehicle that meets the use case with the largest space requirement and not the most common case. For instance, once a year a 7-seater is needed to chauffeur the in-laws, and another time to move the son’s belongings to university. The main use case however is one person driving to work; this what the car should be optimised for. The rare cases could be covered by rental vehicles.
- Personally, I often ponder replacing our family car with a BEV, but then my reasoning is as follows: first, let’s try to walk and cycle as much as possible; for the few remaining miles, let’s ride our vehicle to the bone as long as possible, delaying the purchase (and hence production) of a BEV. Perhaps by the time we would need to replace the car, a better infrastructure is in place, e.g. shared shuttle buses on demand and a dense cycling network, and we would not need a car at all.
