Electric cars are often presented as 'non-polluting' or 'zero emission' vehicles. But they are not necessarily less polluting than conventional vehicles!
How the energy used is generated?
An average of 60 % of the electricity produced in the world comes from coal and gas, i.e. fossil fuels, but there are each year more energy coming for renewable sources, and country are investing more and more on clean energy, wich is a good sign.
Environmental impact of car manufacture:
An eletric car will be responsible throughout its life for CO2 emission: from manufacture, supply and use, to recycling of the parts. Manufacturing batteries involves the use a lot of energy and often creates a lot of pollution.Then, to produce batteries, extracting the lithium or cobalt needed often weighs heavily in environmental and in human terms. Not to mention the huge problem of recycling.
Are electric cars as polluting as fossil-fuel cars?
There is some ambiguity regarding this topic, that even experts cant agree with. In order to draw up their calculations, scientists not only rely on known data, but also on hypothesis as well as possible scenarios. Depending on the assumption, electric cars are either a lot less, equally or sometimes even a lot more polluting than engine powered traditional cars.
But one thing is for sure:
Diesel and petrol cars also emit other harmful air pollutants particles such as NOx, which are considered to be carcinogenic
These particles, invisible to the eye, may find their way into the lungs. And one fact, it's that they are responsible for more than 12,000 premature deaths a year in Belgium!
With this text, we can conclude, that both types of vehicles pollute at some level, and what better way to avoid it than try use the car, as many times as possible ;) .
