April 19, 2024
Global Renewable News

DRAX
Emissions from electric vehicles fall by two thirds thanks to greener electricity generation

August 21, 2017

As more renewables replace coal on the power system - the electricity we use is getting cleaner, making electric cars and SUVs better than ever for lowering our carbon emissions.

The latest Electric Insights report, produced by researchers at Imperial College London, in collaboration with Drax, analysed electricity generation data from April to June this year. It showed that the power produced during this quarter contained 199g of CO2 per kWh - 10% lower than the previous minimum set last year.

Dr Iain Staffell from Imperial College London explained: "It is widely accepted that electric cars dramatically reduce air pollution in cities, but there is still some debate about how clean they actually are - it varies depending on where the electricity to charge them with comes from.

"According to our analysis, looking at a few of the most popular models - they weren't as green as you might think up until quite recently, but now, thanks to the rapid decarbonisation of electricity generation in the UK, they are much better.

"For example, producing the electricity to charge a Tesla Model S back in 2012 would have created 124g of carbon per km driven. Nowadays emissions from charging the same car have halved to 74g per km driven in winter and just 41g per km in summer - thanks to the decarbonisation of electricity generation in the UK.

"Smaller electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3 can be charged for less than half the CO2 of the cleanest non-electric car on the market - the Toyota Prius hybrid."

In the UK there are now more than 100,000 electric vehicles on the roads - pure electric and plug-in hybrid numbers have grown 30-fold in four years, representing 1.8% of new car registrations.

The full report can be read here

Click here to read the full press release.

For more information

Drax

www.drax.com


From the same organization :
65 Press releases