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| The transformer of the Droogfontein solar power plant outside Kimberley was shipped from Portugal, underlining a new study on the wide impact of making ‘green’ technology. (Photo: Emile Hendricks) |
“ELECTRIC cars lead to hidden
en-vironmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than
gasoline cars and other transportation options,” according to a peer-reviewed
report published this week in IEEE Spectrum.
Electric Cars Report states that the paper’s author, Ozzie Zehner,
was once an electric car enthusiast but has since changed his position.
“Twenty years ago, I myself built a hybrid electric car that could
be plugged in or run on natural gas.
“It wasn’t very fast, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t safe. But I was
convinced that cars like mine would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel
dependence. I was wrong,” stated Zehner, a visiting scholar at the University of
California.
His paper, “Unclean At Any Speed”, identifies how electric cars
merely shift negative impacts from one place to another and points out how
corporate-sponsored electric vehicle research is “not necessarily wrong, but the
researchers are too frequently asking the wrong questions”.
“Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fuelled vehicles
to electric cars starts to appear tantamount to shifting from one brand of
cigarettes to another.”
His report details how political priorities and corporate influence
have created a flawed impression that electric cars significantly reduce
transportation impacts.
“Electric car makers like to point out, for instance, that their
vehicles can be charged from renewable sources, such as solar energy. Even if
that were possible to do on a large scale, manufacturing the vast number of
photovoltaic cells required would have venomous side effects. Solar cells
contain heavy metals, and their manufacturing releases greenhouse gases such as
sulfur hexafluoride, which has 23 000 times as much global warming potential as
CO2, according
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” stated Zehner.
He said electric car assessments must analyse the vehicle’s entire
life cycle, from construction, through its operation and on to its eventual
retirement at the junkyard.
“At the end of their useful lives, batteries can also pose a
problem. If recycled properly, the compounds are rather benign — although not
something you’d want to spread on a bagel. But handled improperly, disposed
batteries can release toxic chemicals. Such factors are difficult to measure,
though, which is why they are often left out of studies on electric car
impacts,” stated Zehner.
