Can Buying Tesla Electric Car Help In Climate Change?
According to a new report, buying a Tesla electric car or any other EV for that matter alone won’t stop climate change. A report from the CREDS aka Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions claims that buying an electric car without a proper strategy to improve public transport won’t achieve the intended objective of stopping climate change.
CREDS is a community comprising of more than 80 academic professionals across the UK. The report argues that simply by replacing gasoline cars with electric ones won’t solve environmental issues, even if those cars are powered by clean energy like solar or wind. In order to truly make a dent, a comprehensive plan to promote walking, cycling, and public transportation is needed.
Buying a Tesla Electric Car Is Still Better
The objective of the report is not to bash on the growing interest in electric car manufacturers like Tesla and Rivian but to supplement the innate objective of bringing electric cars in the first place, to save the environment.
The plan clearly states that cities need to be made more human-friendly, meaning plenty of public transport and big spaces to walk and cycle around.
Keeping climate change in mind, the UK Government has spent almost £2 billion to improve the promotion of cycling and walking in cities. In contrast, the same government spends almost £50 billion on fortifying roads.
The CREDS report claims that the UK Government is not accounting for the problem of mass purchase of personal vehicles and that it is harmful to the environment.
But for long it has been proven that electric cars are much better for the environment than gasoline powered cars.
In a paper titled “Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicle,” the authors have proven that electric cars do have a significant impact on global warming.
“We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km “
More importantly, this paper was published in 2012. Since then, several countries, including many in the European Union like the UK, have shifted to making electricity via renewable energy.
Furthermore, electric cars like the Tesla Model 3 have seen a significant improvement in battery range since it first launched.
If Buying Electric Cars Is Better, Then What’s The Problem?
As I said, the report isn’t meant to bash electric cars. The younger generation looks at EVs as the one fix for all the environmental problems. The report simply reaffirms that people need to do more. They need to change their diet, they need to exercise, reduce obesity, and take more public transport to really counter the rate at which climate change is happening.
The good news is that the report shows that car ownership is declining among millennials. It is not just a reality in the UK but also in several parts of the world. In countries like India, car sales have been down for the past several months. More young people prefer to choose public transport, walking or renting a car instead of buying one.
Furthermore, the report discusses a major problem that electric cars face, i.e. charging stations. The upcoming driverless cars are also a cause for concern as owners will start using their cars as movable offices while stuck in traffic jams, the report adds.
The report from CREDS takes into account the entire spectrum of actions which the UK government is taking and it provides very valuable feedback. Electric cars used to be the favorite of scientists but since then climate change and global warming have caused quite a significant damage to the environment.
That’s why it seems that scientists are no longer aiming for zero-emission, they want positive actions which can achieve negative emissions.
Also Read: Tesla Model 3 Gets “5 Stars” In European Crash Test
