Electrifying Australian Transport: Carbon footprint of a transition to electric vehicles and renewable electricity

Recent life cycle assessments confirmed the greenhouse gas emission reduction potential of renewable electricity and electric vehicle technologies. However, each technology is usually assessed separately and not within a... [ view full abstract ]

Recent life cycle assessments confirmed the greenhouse gas emission reduction potential of renewable electricity and electric vehicle technologies. However, each technology is usually assessed separately and not within a consistent macro-economic multi-sectoral framework. Here we propose a multi-regional input-output based hybrid approach with integrated scenarios to facilitate the carbon footprint assessment of all direct and indirect effects of a transition to low-emission transportation and electricity generation technologies. In addition, this work takes into account on-road consumption values that are more realistic than official drive-cycle consumption figures used in previous work. Accounting for these factors as well as for Australia’s grid electricity, which heavily relies on coal power, electric vehicles are found to have a higher carbon footprint than conventional vehicles, whereas hybrid electric vehicles have the lowest. This means that – from a carbon footprint perspective – powertrain electrification is beneficial only to a certain degree at the current stage. This situation can be changed by increasing shares of renewable electricity in the grid. In our best-case scenario, electric vehicle carbon footprints can be cut by 66% by 2050 relative to 2009.