Electric cars in Europe, bad for the environment – New Technology

Car with efficient internal combustion engine still greener in Europe than vehicles with batteries and fuel cells. The snag is the electricity mix in the EU, which contains the small proportion of renewable electricity.

Environmental friendliness of fuel cell vehicles is totally dependent on hydrogen from renewable sources, such as produced by electrolysis using electricity from wind turbines. The Swedish energy mix allows the fuel cell to a winner, but dirty Europael make it an environmentally inferior alternative to battery-powered cars, which in turn is worse than efficient gasoline cars.

This is an international research group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Materials Science and Technology, the EMPA, which conducted a comprehensive life cycle analysis on cars with fuel cells, batteries and internal combustion engine. Scientists have counted on all environmental impacts from production and use to recycling.

The researchers’ main aim was to check if fuel cell cars are truly greener than cars with the internal combustion engine.

– The answer is yes, but only under the condition that the hydrogen gas that drives the fuel cell comes from renewable sources, says Empa researcher Dominic Notter to Springer für Professionals.

Hydrogen from natural gas emits virtually no environmental benefits compared to an efficient internal combustion engine and hydrogen electrolyzed with electricity from the European network makes the fuel cell vehicle to an even worse option.

Although battery cars recharged from the European network is in his lifetime environmentally worse than a needle petrol, say the researchers. Battery cars are, however, thanks to higher efficiency remains environmentally better than the fuel cell vehicle.

– This relationship changed totally on society generates its electricity from the sun , wind and water. Then the fuel cell car competitive in that it uses less energy to produce, says Dominic Notter.

The researchers in this study used three vehicles (a fuel cell, a battery car and a gasoline-powered car) with power 55kW.

Petrol car showed a consumption of 0.61 l / mil. After 15,000 kilometers of driving, and taking into account the environmental impact of manufacturing and recycling, so gave the car battery when charged with Europael, an environmental impact equivalent to 0.64 l / mil and fuel cell vehicle corresponding to 1.21 l / mil.

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