Why Switching to an EV Matters So Much for the Climate

Electric vehicles? Really?

Is it really true that Heatmap looked at every way that you can decarbonize your life, meditated upon the politics, did the math, and concluded … that you should buy an EV? Are EVs really that important to fighting climate change?

You’ll find more thorough answers to all those questions throughout Decarbonize Your Life (plus our guide to buying an EV), but the short answer is: Yes. If you really need a car, then switching from a gas car to an electric vehicle (or at least a plug-in hybrid) is the most important step you can take to combat climate change. And it’s not only good for your personal carbon footprint, it’s good for the entire energy system.

Here is why we make that recommendation — and why you should trust us:

Electric vehicles produce significantly less climate pollution than internal combustion vehicles

The best reason to use an electric vehicle is the most straightforward one: Driving an EV produces fewer greenhouse gases than driving a gasoline- or diesel-burning car. The Department of Energy estimates that the average EV operating in the U.S. produces 2,727 pounds of carbon dioxide pollution each year, while the average gasoline-burning car emits 12,594 pounds of carbon dioxide. Even a conventional hybrid vehicle — like a Toyota Prius — emits 6,800 pounds of CO2, or roughly 2.5 times as much as an EV.

These gains hold almost regardless of how you analyze the question. Even in states where coal makes up a large share of the power grid — such as West Virginia, Wyoming, or Missouri — EVs produce half as much CO2 as gasoline vehicles, according to the DOE. That’s because EVs are much more energy efficient than internal combustion vehicles. So even though coal is a dirtier energy source than gasoline or diesel, EVs need to use far less of it (in the form of electricity) to drive an additional mile.

EVs retain this carbon advantage even when you take into account their full “lifecycle” emissions — the cost of mining minerals, refining them, building a battery, and shipping a vehicle to its final destination. Across the full lifetime of a vehicle, EVs will release 57% to 68% less climate pollution than internal-combustion cars in the United States, according to a landmark analysis from the International Council on Clean Transportation. (As the publication Carbon Brief has shown, many analyses of EVs versus gas cars fail to take into account the full lifecycle emissions of the fossil-fuel system: the carbon pollution produced by extracting, refining, and transporting a gallon of gasoline.)

The carbon advantage of an EV improves the more you drive, and they are likely to improve over time

Even if you only care about emissions math, two more important reasons justify switching to an EV.

First, when you switch to an EV, you cut down enormously on the marginal environmental cost of driving an additional mile. Most of an EV’s environmental harm is “front-loaded” in its lifetime; that is, it is associated with the cost of producing and selling that vehicle. (Most electronics, including smartphones and laptops, have a similarly front-loaded carbon cost.)

But the carbon emissions of driving an additional mile are relatively low. In other words, converting an additional kilowatt of electricity into a mile on the road is relatively benign for the climate.

That’s not the case for an internal combustion vehicle. In a conventional gasoline- or diesel-powered car, every additional mile you drive requires you to burn more fossil fuels.

Don’t overthink it: There is no way to operate a gasoline or diesel car without burning more fossil fuels. Conventional ICE cars are machines that turn fossil fuels into (1) miles on the road and (2) greenhouse gas pollution. This means that — importantly — using an internal combustion vehicle, or even a conventional hybrid vehicle, will never be climate-friendly.

That’s why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that switching to an electrified transportation system — in other words, switching from gas cars to EVs — is “likely crucial” for cutting climate pollution and meeting the Paris Agreement goals. As the International Council on Clean Transportation concluded recently, “There is no realistic pathway for deep decarbonization of combustion engine vehicles.”

This calculus is likely to improve over time. Over the past decade, the U.S. power grid’s climate pollution has plunged while emissions from the transportation sector have slightly risen; we anticipate that, over the next decade, the U.S. power grid’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely to decline at least moderately. Energy experts also expect more renewables to get built, and that natural gas will continue to drive coal off of the grid. These changes mean that the per-mile cost of driving an EV will likely fall. (If you’re in the market for an EV, Heatmap is here to guide you.)

Switching to an EV helps ramp up an important supply chain

When you switch to an EV, you do something else, too — something that may sound self-evident but is actually quite important: You increase demand for EVs and for the EV ecosystem.

To be painfully direct about why this is important, this means that you stop spending so much money into the gasoline-powered driving system — the network of car dealers, gas stations, and oil companies that subsist on fossil fuels — and begin paying for products and services from the car dealerships, charging stations, and automakers who have invested in the new, low-carbon future.

This is more important than it may seem at first. In the United States, automakers have struggled to ramp up their EV production in part because consumers haven’t been buying their EVs. EVs are a manufactured good, and the world is betting on their continued technological improvement. The more EVs get made at a company or industry level, the cheaper they should get. When you buy an EV, you prime the pump for further improvements in that manufacturing chain.

Your actions are unusually important because if anything is going to drive the EV transition in the United States, it’s most likely to be consumer demand.

Under the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency has adopted rules that could make EVs more than half of all new cars sold by 2032. But those rules are somewhat flexible — automakers could also meet them by selling a lot of conventional and plug-in hybrids — and they are under legal threat. If Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election, then he will almost certainly roll them back, much as hereversed the Obama administration’s less ambitious car rules. And even if Kamala Harris wins, then the zealously conservative Supreme Court could easily throw out the rules.

Under most future scenarios, in other words, American consumers will have considerable power over how rapidly the country switches to electric vehicles. Even in a world where the federal government keeps subsidizing EV manufacturing and offers a $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers, the country’s transition to EVs will still depend on ordinary American families deciding to make a change and buy the cars.

So if you want to decarbonize your life, switching to an EV — provided that you drive enough for it to make sense — is one of the most important steps that you can take.

When you switch to an electric vehicle, you are doing several things. First, you are cutting off a source of demand for the oil industry. Second, you are creating a new source of demand for the EV industry. Third, you are generating new demand for the companies and infrastructure — such as charging stations — that will be needed for the entire transition.

Buying an EV is a climate decision that makes sense if you want to cut your carbon footprint and if you want to change the American energy system. That’s why it’s Heatmap’s No. 1 recommendation for how to decarbonize your life.