Your EV batteries come with lots of carbon “loaded” in them – Data Matters at Clidemy
𝘉𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 60% 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘎𝘏𝘎 𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘌𝘝𝘴
𝑫𝒂𝒕𝒂 𝑴𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 from CliDemy – the Climate Academy is a series that provides actionable insights for key stakeholders based on relevant data points around climate, climate action and decarbonization.
Embedded emissions are those that come with the product – so these are emissions that happen while the product is made.
Thus, when you buy a product, you “buy” embedded emissions, and there is nothing you can do to reduce them from then on – they are “sunk emissions”. When you buy an electric car today, you thus are already buying tons of emissions along with it!
In future, when EVs are driven solely by renewable power, their operational carbon footprint might be minimal or even close to zero. But their embedded carbon footprint could be quite a lot – some estimates suggest these could be as much as 10 tons of CO2 per electric car.
Imagine a time in future when about 100 million electric cars are produced annually (today, the world produces about 80 million cars). That would mean a billion tons of CO2 embedded emissions coming online, should the electric car production have a carbon footprint similar to what it has today.
And out of this, upto 60% of the embedded carbon emissions could be contributed by batteries alone – or, in the above scenario, about 600 million tons of embedded carbon will be put on roads every year.
Of course, all the above are hypothetical, but they all could serve to drive home the point –
𝐁𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫, 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐳𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦.
On the positive side, all these hopefully mean new opportunities, and open up new avenues of innovations to make Li-ion battery production as low carbon as possible.
See my LinkedIn post on this topic.
How Does Incubate Hub Bridge the Gap Between Corporates and Startups?
