Onshoring the EV supply chain to Europe would cut the emissions of producing a battery by 37% compared to a China-controlled supply chain, according to new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). This carbon saving rises to over 60% when renewable electricity is used. Producing Europe’s demand for battery cells and components locally would save an estimated 133 Mt of CO2 between 2024 and 2030, equivalent to the total annual emissions of Czechia.
But over half of Europe’s battery production plans are at risk without stronger government action, the researchers say.
Less than half (47%) of the lithium-ion battery production planned for Europe up to 2030 is secure, the report also finds. This is up from one-third a year ago following a raft of measures put in place to respond to the US Inflation Reduction Act. The remaining 53% of announced cell manufacturing capacity is still at medium or high risk of being delayed, scaled down or cancelled without stronger government action.
Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and emobility supply chains at T&E, said: “Batteries, and metals that go into them, are the new oil. European leaders will need laser sharp focus and joined-up thinking to reap their climate and industrial benefits. Strong sustainability requirements, such as the upcoming battery carbon footprint rules, can reward local clean manufacturing. Crucially, Europe needs better instruments under the European Investment Bank and EU Battery Fund to support gigafactory investments.”
France, Germany and Hungary have made the most progress in securing gigafactory capacity since T&E’s previous risk assessment last year. [1] In France, ACC started production in Pas-de-Calais last year while plants by Verkor in Dunkirk and Northvolt in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, are going ahead thanks to generous government subsidies.
Finland, the UK, Norway and Spain have the most production capacity at medium or high risk due to question marks over projects by the Finnish Minerals Group, West Midlands Gigafactory, Freyr and InoBat. T&E called on lawmakers to help lock in investments by doubling down on EU electric car policies, enforcing strong battery sustainability requirements that reward local manufacturing, and beefing up EU-level funding.
Securing other parts of the battery value chain will be even more challenging given China’s dominance and the EU’s nascent expertise. The report finds Europe has the potential to manufacture 56% of its demand for cathodes – the battery’s most valuable components – by 2030, but only two plants have started commercial operations so far. By the end of this decade, the region could also fulfil all of its processed lithium needs and secure between 8% and 27% of battery minerals from recycling in Europe. But T&E said processing and recycling plants need EU and state support to scale quickly.
Julia Poliscanova said: “The battery race between China, Europe and the US is intensifying. While some battery investments that were at risk of being lured away by US subsidies have been saved since last year, close to half of planned production is still up for grabs. The EU needs to end any uncertainty over its engine phase-out and set corporate EV targets to assure gigafactory investors that they will have a guaranteed market for their product.”
Ya know what would reduce carbon even more and pretty much eliminate microplastics: Rail. Like all the problems with pollution from transit are mostly solved like 200 years ago with trains and trams, why do people insist on reinventing the wheel?
Container shipping is more efficient than tail though per km travelled. Just look up the figures.
Rail would be great instead of trucks, but there’s quite a few complications to go from truck to rail.
Trains can run on renewable energy. For now almost all container ships use bunker fuel, which is absolutely terrible. Would be great to see them switch to renewables energy like sails and solar panels.
Oh yea, shipping by water is obviously more efficient but creating waterways everywhere is quite a lot harder and expensive than building rail. I’m mostly addressing transit for humans but for ships nuclear may be a better option for pollution but that’s not something I have looked into.
We all want fewer cars on the road. Objecting to cars/buses/other road-using vehicles (which will certainly be here for the short-medium term future whether people like it or not) transitioning to using clean energy in both the production and usage stages of their lives achieves nothing other than keeping us burning fossil fuels for longer.
Even if everywhere could use rail, it will take decades to build that infrastructure out everywhere. In the meantime, cars, buses, vans, and lorries exist and they should be as clean as we can make them. You’re letting perfect be the enemy of good.
The money used to maintain car infrastructure could be used to build all rail ever. Rail is both insanely cheap to build and maintain compared to asphalt roads. If every larger city builds a tram network in the next 5 or so years instead of doing endless road maintenance that will have more impact than any investment in electric vehicles ever could in the same timeframe.
Also electric vehicle adoption is far slower than building public transit as only very wealthy countries have any chance of mass adopting while everyone else will keep buying 10 year old ICE cars. So any chance of electric cars being a solution is pretty much null. It’s fine to develop them but any government investment has to go to more effective solutions, like building a rail network to replace air travel.
That might be possible in cities (if we’re being extremely generous to your position). But not everyone lives in cities, some of us aren’t that privileged. What do those people do, stay at home?
You’re living in another universe if you think it’s possible to move away from road vehicles in the short term.
Road vehicles will exist for the foreseeable future. So they may as well be as clean as they can be.
People who live away from all settlements make up maybe up to 5% of population if being generous and they can all roll coal and it would still be a net win if the vast majority of people take a tram or train instead of a car or plane. Also people living in the middle of nowhere have no infrastructure to recharge their cars anyway if they need to drive outside the car’s range so it’s not like electric cars help them.
You are not living in reality if you think electric vehicle adoption can be fast enough to have any effect on climate change. Building a proper electric train and tram network on the other hand is doable in a short timeframe while being cheaper.
You made that up.
Or they could drive EVs while the places where it makes sense to build out rail can build out rail. That would be better. Encouraging sticking to petrol/diesel for cars/buses/vans/lorries is worse.
???
Believe it or not, people who live outside of cities still have electricity. I even have running water, too.
Never said it would solve climate change or anything. I said it’s better than what we have and would be a preferable change. We can’t go all rail in all circumstances any time soon. Probably ever.
No it isn’t. It’s doable in some places and takes a long time. Seriously, have you not seen how long large infrastructure projects take? Now imagine you try to do the same projects everywhere all at once. There wouldn’t be the resources or the expertise for it.
What you are asking for is more pollution.
Look, I get that you’re young and privileged enough to live in a very urbanised area, but not everybody has that luxury.
Cars will be around for a long while. You can plug your fingers in your ears and pretend they won’t be, but they will. It’s weird to want them to continue polluting (or even roll coal) when there’s an easy way to make it better.
This sounds exactly like when people oppose nuclear because it’s not “pure” enough. You know what that causes? Sticking to coal/gas for longer.
Wait, so you want government investment to focus on electric cars even though it won’t have an impact on climate change? I want that investment in rail because rail is most likely to have the largest impact while being doable in a short term for the vast majority of the population. Electric vehicle adoption has zero chance to reach a point where it would have an impact.
I get that your an American that car companies have propagandised to oblivion but public transit works and it works better than electric cars for most people. If you are a farmer living 200km from any other human you aren’t using an electric vehicle anyways.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t jump to conclusions about what I said.
I want governments to enforce moving away from ICE vehicles and towards BEV ones as they are demonstrably far cleaner both in terms of climate change and particulates that affect the local environment.
No, BEVs alone can’t reverse climate change. Neither can rail. They can both only be one part of the solution, which will obviously be a multi-pronged approach with many changes required in almost all aspects of our lives, not just transportation.
You speak as if I don’t. I was very clear that I do want that.
And this is where we differ. Building out rail will take decades, and even then won’t even come close to serving all populations or all usecases. That means for the time being, cars, vans, buses, and lorries will be used for a long time to come. My position is that while these exist, they should be as clean as possible, your position seems to be switching between “let’s get rid of them immediately” (which isn’t feasible for obvious reasons) and “get rid of environmental regs and let them roll coal”, which I don’t like the sound of.
I’m not. Since I’m posting in the Europe community, you’d think it’d be obvious that I’m from Europe, but oh well.
Like I said, but you refuse to listen to, I like public transportation and want more of it. Please stop deliberately strawmanning. You’re the one who wants to get rid of buses - an extremely effective form of public transport - and seemingly wants to scrap environmental regulations on cars. I should be asking you if you’re some kind of auto-industry shill.
Assuming that’s true, what of the rest? Fuck them? What of those who need ambulances called out? Let them die? Firefighters shouldn’t have access to roads to get to places and put out fires? Lorries and vans shouldn’t be able to deliver to places? People who live rurally (~5-35% of the population depending on where in Europe you are) can get fucked?
You seem to have an issue with making assumptions while going out of your way to assume and strawman everything. Even the comment at you being American was a jab at you for assuming I’m young though I’m in my 50s, I was hoping you notice that and stop making assumptions.
I said government funding for transit should focus mainly on rail as that would actually reduce pollution. Private entities should obviously be free to develop EVs but I never advocated for the removal of busses, ambulances, firefighters and enviourmental regulations. Where the fuck did you even get that, or are you arguing with someone else?
EV adoption would take far longer than decades since it relies on each person to switch over which will not even start happening in the next decade if you can stop all ICE vehicle production tomorrow. Outside of really rich people most buy used cars that are at least 5 years old, commonly even 10 years. If you want EV mass adoption there needs to be used EVs available for around 5000 to 2000 euros that don’t need a new battery before you can use it. That kind of tech doesn’t even exist yet.
To fix climate change you don’t need to serve literally everyone with EVs, you need to reduce emissions enough and rail would serve the transit needs of more people than EVs ever could so that’s where I want government funding for transit to go to. You seem to be more in the camp that we need a perfect solution that serves every person on the planet but EVs can’t even do that.
All in all getting rid of carbon credits and taxing all emissions no matter where you are in the world would help even more but this post is about EVs.
Where I live, everyone has photovoltaics on their roofs. Of I drive to a friend’s place, I’ll just hook the EV up to his charger. No problem… If I could afford a goddamn EV that is.