Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World

by Vaclav Smil

As a global mean, more than three-fifths of the electricity for an EV still comes from fossil carbon, but that fraction varies widely among countries and within them. EVs in my home province of Manitoba, Canada (where more than 99 percent of all electricity comes from large hydro stations) are clean hydro cars. Quebec, Canada (about 97 percent hydro) and Norway (about 95 percent hydro) come close to that. French EVs are largely nuclear-fission cars (the country gets some 75 percent of its electricity from fission). But in most of India (particularly Uttar Pradesh), China (particularly Shaanxi province), and Poland, EVs are overwhelmingly coal cars. The last thing we need is to push for the rapid introduction of a source of demand that would summon even more fossil fuel–based electricity generation. And even if EVs all ran on renewable sources of electricity, greenhouse gases would still be emitted during the production of cement and steel for hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and photovoltaic panels, and of course during the manufacture of the cars themselves (see WHAT’S WORSE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT—YOUR CAR OR YOUR PHONE?, p. 287).