“Generally speaking, if a supposedly green machine costs more than its conventional rival, then more resources had to be claimed to make it possible.”
The cost of electric cars and other expensive green technologies reveals their hidden environmental impacts, according to two new articles published in IEEE Spectrum. The first report, Unclean at Any Speed, describes how the subsidies for electric cars may cause more harm than good after considering full electric vehicle life cycles. It advocates directing electric vehicle subsidies toward initiatives such as emissions testing, bicycle infrastructure, public transit and land-use changes.
The second article, a response to electric car proponents published yesterday in the same journal, describes how the high cost of electric cars and solar cells exposes the substantial amount of fossil fuels that their manufacturing employs.
The author, Ozzie Zehner, is a visiting scholar at the University of California – Berkeley and the author of Green Illusions . Zehner once built his own electric hybrid, but is now more cautious about promoting costly high-tech strategies.
“Stating that an electric car is clean is like saying that a light bulb is clean. Light bulbs do not produce exhaust, but it doesn’t mean we can use them with zero emissions. The same holds true for electric cars,” said Zehner in an NPR interview Monday.
