Tag Archives: electric cars

Electric cars will not save us

A nice picture of a two-way protected bike lane, with lots of bikes using it.

In addition to lots of twitter arguments about the Green New Deal, my feed has also been full of arguments about the relative role for electric cars.

I get the appeal of electric cars: it’s hard to envision any scenario where we address climate change without relying on electrification of our vehicle fleet. It’s a technology that has lots of promise. These cars appeal to our desires for innovation, yet still recall previous moments of national pride.

All that said, the simple math on emissions remains clear: electric cars alone won’t solve our surface transportation GHG problems. We have to drive less.

A number of articles in recent months have tried to emphasize this point, but they don’t often seem to break through. I’d like to highlight this one from Meredith Hankins:

…when we’re all driving zero-emission vehicles that plug into a zero-carbon grid, our transportation emissions will indeed be extremely low carbon. But here’s the thing: that future is a long way off. California’s ZEV mandate calls for only about 8% of new vehicle purchases to be ZEVs by 2025–and that’s just new vehicles. The average car sold today will be on the road for at least 11 years, locking in a decade plus of GHG emissions for every non-ZEV sold. In addition to our long-term electrification plans, we have to focus on strategies to reduce emissions from those non-ZEVs in the near term by getting them off the road.

The basic facts about cars (regardless of their power source) haven’t changed. They’re remarkably large and inefficient vehicles. They take up large spaces and require lots of energy to move.

Since the ultimate goal here is to reduce GHG emissions, making transport more energy-efficient in total is an important intermediate objective, we need to not just shift the energy sources to electricity, but also consider the overall efficiency.

Limiting automotive GHG emissions isn’t simply about making cars cleaner, but also about limiting how much we use these inefficient modes of transport. In other words, driving less.

Don’t take my word for it, just listen to the IPCC. Here’s Meredith Hankins again:

But here’s the thing: we can’t afford to ignore significant climate mitigation measures just because they are politically difficult.
The IPCC’s recent bombshell report notes that “demand-side mitigation and behavioural changes” are going to be needed to avoid the worst climate change impacts. Transportation mitigation pathways for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees require not just “[t]echnology-focused measures,” but also strategies based on “[s]tructural changes that avoid or shift transport activity” that have “received lesser attention in most global transport decarbonisation pathways up to now.”  

(emphasis added)

To make things a bit more tangible, here are the kinds of targets California thinks they need to hit:

  • Quadruple the proportion of trips taken by foot by 2030 (from a baseline of the 2010–2012 California Household Travel Survey).
  • Strive for a nine-fold increase in the proportion of trips taken by bicycle by 2030 (from a baseline of the 2010–2012 California Household Travel Survey).

Dramatically increasing bike and walk trips (and doing so immediately) is both a simple goal, yet a radical one. It’s a radical change from the status quo, but also something simple enough to do. Meeting these goals doesn’t require any technological miracles (or even any new technology at all).

Breaking it down a bit further, hitting those targets realistically requires policies that impact both the supply of places that support bike and walk trips, as well as policies that increase demand for them.

On the supply-side, hitting these targets means increasing the supply of places suitable for bike and pedestrian trips: safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure, expanded at a massive scale. These are proven and relatively simple tasks, but the scale called for here is still daunting. Ask anyone who’s worked on these projects about the effort required to build 9x as many protected bike lanes.

Additionally, all of these supply-side elements are things local governments can do. For all of the Mayors out there talking a good game on climate, here’s the biggest bang for your buck. Furthermore, places that are already walkable and bikeable will be far better suited to accommodate shifting behavior. It’s entirely plausible to picture a nine-fold increase in biking in a big city.

The demand side perhaps more important in shifting behavior, particularly for pricing incentives (against cars, for walking/biking/transit). Some of this can happen at the local level (parking policy, pricing) while others will require state-level and national action. Just look back at the increases in transit usage when gas prices go up.

Transportation and the Green New Deal

If you follow the people I follow on Twitter, the last few days have included lots of chatter (often pained) about the transportation elements – or lack thereof – in the Green New Deal. Given that transportation is the single largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions (and because the sector relies on direct use of fossil fuels more than, say, buildings), transportation ought to the focus of any climate policy.

So, why isn’t it? The Green New Deal was (and perhaps still is) more of a slogan than an actual policy proposal. Earlier, the think tank Data For Progress released their policy proposal.

The key transportation elements include fairly weak language about increasing “access to” transit and bike facilities, paired with much stronger language about electric cars:

  • 100% Zero Emission Passenger Vehicles by 2030
  • 100% Fossil-Free Transportation by 2050
  • Modernize Urban Mobility and Mass Transit
    The growth of cities, the rapid change in vehicle technology, and the need for low-carbon transportation means that the way in which we move ourselves and goods from one place to another is going to change forever. This transition needs to be executed thoughtfully to meet the needs of cities and the scale of change required. Large investments are needed to increase access to safe pedestrian and bicycle travel, low-carbon bus rapid transit, and electrified light rail.

The twitter commentary jumped all over this: why not address land use at all? Why such wishy-washy language on transit and bikes? Why not mention any host of technocratic ideas and policies that will be useful tools in decarbonizing transportation?

A few arguments in defense of this proposal:

  • These things are popular. Data for Progress has done a great deal of polling and message testing. They make a convincing case that these elements are not just effective, but popular. As important as land use is to addressing climate change, I can understand how it’s not the best item to lead with.
  • Lead with strong messaging. Support among technocrats and wonks is required to execute any idea, but the technocrats are often bad at messaging and not a natural fit to build a successful coalition (Jeff Tumlin has made this point regarding road tolling and congestion pricing)
  • It’s better than anything else on the table. The proposal, as it stands, is light years better than anything else anywhere close to the agenda of anyone in power.

Still, the critiques aren’t wrong, per se.

  • Nothing on land use. Slipping in a plank to abolish single-family zoning might be unpopular (Minneapolis’ recent planning efforts aside), particularly at the national scale.
  • Transportation should be a bigger focus: Alon Levy made a persuasive case here for why the GND must focus on transportation. And, naturally, lots of transportation elements are indeed quite popular – and could be framed to emphasize that popularity.
    • Stronger language for transit and safety mandates (something simple yet radical, like vision zero) could be a more popular way to frame the trade-offs required to meet these aggressive goals.
  • Nothing is free in this world. Leading with a popular message framework for something as big as a new New Deal is by definition incomplete; a first step. But there’s a risk of politicians skipping over the trade-offs required to implement the plan. This might be premature, but something that needs to stay on the radar.

Given how early in the process the GND concept is, we should all give the benefit of the doubt, particularly given Data for Progress’s efforts on polling and messaging. But decision-makers still have to grasp the trade-offs involve.

As an example, read Alissa Walker on California, electric cars, and the disconnect between the Air Resources Board and the state’s Transportation Commission. Both bodies are charged with addressing climate change, but they operate in silos. The Transportation Commission has assumed electric cars will do the trick, while the CARB has done the math, and shown conclusively that electric cars are not enough – the state needs to drive less.

This is the big concern: setting a big goal is vitally important, both because of the scale of the problem and because of the potential motivation for a radical change. But radical change will require trade-offs, and it doesn’t help to mislead the public about the nature of the trade-offs involved – just look at the omnishambles that is Brexit.