Greenwashing activities – today: by the Union of Concerned Scientists

Thanks to an article by e-car fan Tim Levin in the „Business Insider“ of 17 December 2022, I have just had the opportunity to add another one to my list of greenwashing studies on e-cars.

The Union of Concerned Scientists seems to be ideologically motivated in a similar way to Scientists for Future, which is active in the DACH countries. This can be seen in their paper „Driving Cleaner Electric Cars and Pickups Beat Gasoline on Lifetime global Warming Emissions“.

Anyone who wants to make serious statements about the climate footprint of new electricity consumers must take into account that electricity from renewable sources already has consumers almost everywhere in the world and cannot be consumed twice. If additional consumers are added, only controllable power plants increase output. Because these are predominantly fossil-fuel power plants, the green power quota is reduced. Serious scientists must therefore either take this effect into account in climate balances or calculate with the (often twice as high) emissions of the marginal instead of the average electricity. The choice of the right approach is elementary for the plausibility of the results.

A current example of sound scientific work is this one:

A Data-Driven Greenhouse Gas Emission Rate Analysis for Vehicle Comparisons

Quote:
„U.S. vehicle comparisons using the average mix emission rate introduce large errors. Projections based on assumed future average electricity mix compositions are not expected to achieve predictive results. … In summary, there is limited evidence that immediate widespread adoption of BEVs in the United States will lead to a substantial positive impact on GHG emissions over vehicle lifetimes in the near term in comparison to FHEV and PHEV alternatives, especially after considering the emissions cost of the required infrastructure upgrades.“

Nevertheless, German professors in particular often decisively reject the marginal approach and resort to sometimes adventurous justifications for it:

• Prof. Max Fichtner, Director of the Helmholtz Institute in Ulm, is not afraid to speak of marginal current nonsense
• Prof. Martin Doppelbauer from Karlsruhe replied in an interview: „It’s not really conceivable how someone who scientifically deals with the subject of energy can share this view.“ (in German translation)

Unfortunately, it now appears that the Union of Concerned Scientists is also not interested in scientifically based and serious statements on electromobility and blithely uses the average electricity mix. What is their reasoning?

„When estimating emissions from charging an EV in a particular region of the United States, we use average emissions: these are emissions averaged over the full mix of the region’s electricity sources. An alternative approach would be to consider only marginal emissions: emissions from the power plants that operate to meet new electricity demand on the grid. Our analysis uses average generation because it can be calculated from historical generation data without making assumptions about such factors as charging behavior (e.g., time of day) or the response of electricity generation units to an increase in demand.“

(Quote from page 7)

In other words: Because they lack data for calculating the marginal mix and want to avoid assumptions about the influence of the time of charging, they opted for average electricity. One can assume that they knew exactly what effect this would have: namely, that the emissions of the additional e-car consumer would drop by a good half. That’s how greenwashing works.