Electric cars: How do they reduce environmental impacts?

New research project started by Oeko-Institut and ISOE

In the context of climate protection efforts electric cars are attracting increasing interest as an alternative to conventional passenger cars. They enable the use of renewable energy sources, are significantly more energy-saving and quieter than conventional vehicles, and do not emit any air pollutants when driven. “E-mobility can make an important contribution to sustainable mobility in the long term,” says Dr. Wiebke Zimmer, researcher at Oeko-Institut and an expert on sustainable mobility. “For that to happen, however, the existing challenges have to be resolved, gaps in knowledge closed and the framework conditions designed with climate protection in mind”, she says. In a new project Oeko-Institut is analysing, together with the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), how the environmental benefits of electric cars can be maximised in the future. Funding for the two-year research project is being provided by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

The aim of the project is to gain new insights into the acceptance of electric vehicles and the interactions between electrically-powered vehicles and the energy market. These insights should enable policy, technical and economic framework conditions to be designed in such a way that electric cars contribute in the long term to the substantial reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transport sector.

In a first step, the project examines how attractive and accepted different concepts of electric mobility are in Germany. On this basis the researchers derive different scenarios – on the market potentials of vehicles, typical usage patterns – so that that the total energy demand of electric cars can be shown for different scenarios.

In order to determine the quantity of climate-damaging GHG arising within the life cycle of electric cars, the researchers are also considering possible interactions with the energy market. By means of a comparison with the GHG balance of conventional vehicles, it will subsequently be possible to assess the environmental benefit of an increase in the use of electric vehicles under diverse framework conditions.

The research project – “Maximising the reduction of environmental impact by means of electric vehicles: Integrated analysis of vehicle use and the energy sector in Germany” [Optimierung der Umweltentlastungspotenziale von Elektrofahrzeugen - Integrierte Betrachtung von Fahrzeugnutzung und Energiewirtschaft] – will run until the end of 2011.

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