Health and environmental benefits related to electric vehicle introduction in EU countries
Highlights
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External costs (ExternE) for health and climate change were analyzed.
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Electric vehicles (EV) cause less air pollution in countries with clean energy fuel mix.
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Countries with carbon intensive energy fuel mix may not profit from EV introduction.
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Time of charging EV has minor impact compared to not-driving classic car.
Introduction
Conventional cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) are still a major source of air pollutants such as carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), black carbon (BC) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5; particles with an aerodynamic diameter <2.5 μm) (Hausberger, 2010). Some of the emitted pollutants cause severe health effects, including premature mortality (Dockery et al., 1993, Pope et al., 2004, WHO, 2005, Brook et al., 2010). The World Health Organisation WHO presently considers PM2.5 mass as the most relevant indicator for assessing the impact of air pollution on human health (HEI, 2013). Although ultrafine particles are often blamed for causing health effects (Seaton et al., 1995), coarse particles from tire and brake wear could be implicated as well (Riediker et al., 2008, Gasser et al., 2009). In urban areas the contribution of conventional transport to PM2.5 concentrations is relatively large (Keuken et al., 2013). Direct emissions of ICE cars have an effect on public health as well as on crops, buildings and the natural environment. From an environmental point of view, the replacement of ICE cars with electric vehicles (EV) may be beneficial for the climate because of the possible reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2 (Thiel et al., 2010, Van Vliet et al., 2011). On the other hand EV are also not 100% clean. When EV are charged, the electricity required is produced by a wide range of different power plants (e.g. nuclear, gas, coal, …), which may also be sources of air pollution.
It’s a generally accepted strategy to find a common denominator to express different public health and environmental impacts in order to compare them. A standardized methodology is to convert emissions into monetary values proportionally to the damage of the externalities they cause (Bickel and Friedrich, 2005, Maibach et al., 2008). This approach has been used to compare the impacts of different fuels and engine technologies for cars (Int Panis et al., 2001, Int Panis et al., 2002, Int Panis et al., 2004). External costs for electricity production are mainly determined by health effects and greenhouse gas emissions (Nijs et al., 2011). Other categories considered are impacts on agriculture and on materials and buildings, biodiversity loss due to acidification and eutrophication, impacts of the emissions to air of heavy metals, of emissions of radioactive substances and risks of waste disposal, of biodiversity loss due to land use, accidents and noise and visual impact. In terms of external costs related to electricity generation these categories are relatively less important than the effects on health and climate. Health effects are driven by particulate matter pollution.
When EV are introduced in the car market and replace ICE cars, the emissions of air pollutants will increase at the site of the power plants while the emissions of local road pollutants, often urban, will decrease. These differences in the type, size and location of emissions need to be weighted in order to give an overall picture of environmental and health impacts and related external costs. This study was set up to answer the following major research question: What are the differences in health and environmental impacts of air pollution for each EU country when 5% of the ICE vehicle fleet is replaced by EV in the years 2010 and 2030? Additionally we study the maximum within-country difference in health and environmental impact of air pollution related to the annual variability in electricity generation.
The latter analysis requires detailed time specific information on the country’s electricity fuel mix which is prone to high fluctuations. This detailed information was only publicly available and found for Belgium,1 France,2 Portugal,3 Denmark,4 the U.K.5 and Romania.6
Electric vehicles considered in this study are entirely battery powered electric vehicles (BPEV). The impact is expressed in external costs for each of the EU-27 member states. Data were not yet available for Croatia.
Health effect related pollutants for which external costs are available and which were studied here, are ammonia (NH3), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), fine (PM2.5) and coarse (PM2.5–10) particulate matter and non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) (Nijs et al., 2011). For the climate change impact we consider CO2 emissions as most of the environmental impact is related to this (Ayalon et al., 2013). This study was done as part of the EU 7th Framework DATASIM project (http://www.datasim-fp7.eu/).
Section snippets
Methodology
In general air pollution emissions related to electricity production and exhaust emissions for conventional ICE cars (including well-to-tank emissions (WTT) and tank-to-wheel emissions (TTW)) were calculated for each of the EU-27 countries and multiplied by the specific country’s external cost per tonne of emission. An overview of major assumptions made in this calculation exercise is given in Table 1. The WTT emissions were taken into account to get a more complete picture of the emissions
Electricity production
Air emissions resulting from electricity production depend on the fuel mix which differs by country and varies over time. For this study we have used the annual current (2010) and prospective (2030) energy mixes (EC, 2010). Nine fuel sources are considered: nuclear, oil, hard coal, lignite, gas, hydro, wind, biomass and photovoltaic. The individual percentage coal as well as lignite in the country total fuel mix, was calculated based on the country profiles provided by EURACOAL (2010) and the
Electricity production
The weighted average external cost from electricity production in terms of health and environmental impact for producing electricity in the EU-27 in 2010 was equal to 1.2 Eurocent/kWh (see Table 4). Lowest external cost was equal to 0.2 Eurocent/kWh for Sweden and largest cost was equal to 3.3 Eurocent/kWh for Cyprus. External costs for countries with a larger proportion of energy production by nuclear power like France and Belgium were 0.4 and 0.6 Eurocent/kWh, respectively. The fuel mix in
Conclusions
The study goal was to get an estimate of the impact on environment and health for the replacement of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by electric vehicles (EV) and this for all EU-27 countries. The impact was expressed as external costs conform the European ExternE methodology. The energy for EV comes from electricity production plants that differ in technology and fuel between countries and over time. Annual benefits range from 104 MEuro in France for a 5% market penetration rate, an
Acknowledgements
The work was supported by the European Union through the FP7 project DATASIM (http://www.datasim-fp7.eu/). We thank Wouter Nijs for providing us with the original calculations and data from the FP6 project CASES and the electricity transmission grid operators for making the detailed electricity generation data by fuel source publicly available.
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