I'm trying to inform myself better as to the real differences in carbon impact between ICE vs EV and also between different choices in other aspects of life, like home heating.
It's easy enough to estimate from a certain point in the chain onwards. So tailpipe emissions of an ICE and emissions associated with running an EV from published grid carbon intensity numbers to miles travelled.
However I am drawing a blank on upstream emissions. Is anyone aware of data from which can be drawn some estimate on the emissions impact of extracting, refining and transporting a litre of eg diesel to the pump?
One method would be to take the emissions associated with the oil and gas industry as a percentage of the country's (or the world's) whole, same for road transport, allocate a percent of each to the car and then use the ratio between those numbers to multiply up the tailpipe emissions. However so many unknowns - so I'm not sure this approach works. (I read that UK oil and gas industry is about 3% of country total but I don't think that refines the oil or tankers it to the local Texaco; equally, it's mostly gas - conclusion: not the right info).
Equally I'm unsure on whether "grid carbon intensity" (I read average 180gCO2/kWh in 2018 UK) is just the emissions from the power station or whether it includes upstream and associated activity. I suspect it excludes upstream gas, construction of power stations and more besides but it's probably still a much lesser impact than the missing number on the side of petrol/diesel to the pump, because "upstream" in ICE is everything upstream of the petrol station, plus it's all fossils, whereas in electricity we've already gone back to the power station so missing is just upstream of that, plus much of the generation is non-fossil.
Dozens of reports on this but the conclusions range from "EV saves 90%" to "EV's a bit worse than ICE." Which is clearly a range so massive that at least one of those extremes has almost certainly to be plain wrong. And none of these people show their workings.
So at risk of being flamed here is a snapshot of my simple analysis, which gets me to a starting view that UK grid charged EV is about half of ICE emissions before we look at upstream. First stab...
If I could fill in the two numbers highlighted yellow I think i'd have a "complete" (but not to say correct - plenty of subjective points and maybe human error) analysis.
It's easy enough to estimate from a certain point in the chain onwards. So tailpipe emissions of an ICE and emissions associated with running an EV from published grid carbon intensity numbers to miles travelled.
However I am drawing a blank on upstream emissions. Is anyone aware of data from which can be drawn some estimate on the emissions impact of extracting, refining and transporting a litre of eg diesel to the pump?
One method would be to take the emissions associated with the oil and gas industry as a percentage of the country's (or the world's) whole, same for road transport, allocate a percent of each to the car and then use the ratio between those numbers to multiply up the tailpipe emissions. However so many unknowns - so I'm not sure this approach works. (I read that UK oil and gas industry is about 3% of country total but I don't think that refines the oil or tankers it to the local Texaco; equally, it's mostly gas - conclusion: not the right info).
Equally I'm unsure on whether "grid carbon intensity" (I read average 180gCO2/kWh in 2018 UK) is just the emissions from the power station or whether it includes upstream and associated activity. I suspect it excludes upstream gas, construction of power stations and more besides but it's probably still a much lesser impact than the missing number on the side of petrol/diesel to the pump, because "upstream" in ICE is everything upstream of the petrol station, plus it's all fossils, whereas in electricity we've already gone back to the power station so missing is just upstream of that, plus much of the generation is non-fossil.
Dozens of reports on this but the conclusions range from "EV saves 90%" to "EV's a bit worse than ICE." Which is clearly a range so massive that at least one of those extremes has almost certainly to be plain wrong. And none of these people show their workings.
So at risk of being flamed here is a snapshot of my simple analysis, which gets me to a starting view that UK grid charged EV is about half of ICE emissions before we look at upstream. First stab...
If I could fill in the two numbers highlighted yellow I think i'd have a "complete" (but not to say correct - plenty of subjective points and maybe human error) analysis.