
Life Cycle Energy Consumption and GH Gas Emissions from Li-ion Batteries [pdf] - shaqbert
http://www.ivl.se/download/18.5922281715bdaebede9559/1496046218976/C243+The+life+cycle+energy+consumption+and+CO2+emissions+from+lithium+ion+batteries+.pdf
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spenrose
"This review shows that assuming the current level of emissions from
manufacturing, the electricity mix of the production location greatly impacts
the total result. This is due to the fact that the manufacturing is a large
part of the life cycle, and that most of the production energy is
electricity."

If the world's energy systems continue to be dominated by fossil fuels, then
manufacturing and transporting goods will continue to generate GHG. On the
other hand, if we manufacture lots of Li-ion batteries to electrify our cars
and run them on solar- and wind-generated electricity (which we make more
useful by incorporating Li-ion batteries for peak smoothing), then their life
cycle emissions will decrease.

If you intend to change a system, the system will not yet be changed at the
beginning of your effort. Boy you are bad at changing things!

If you are going to count to 10 on your fingers, when you say "1", you haven't
counted very far, have you?

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mikeash
The interesting question is what greenhouse gas emissions will look like once
transport becomes mostly electrified and electrical generation becomes mostly
non-emitting.

It's no surprise that producing batteries in the current carbon-heavy economy
emits carbon. The big benefit will come when you can start to close the loop
and take advantage of these non-emitting technologies in order to build more
non-emitting stuff.

To make a crappy analogy, imagine pushing cars in the late 19th century as a
solution to the problem of hose droppings accumulating in the streets. (Which
was a real problem at the time.) It might be interesting to look at how many
horse droppings are produced just supplying an automobile factory and how that
compares to the horse droppings saved by the automobiles they produce, but it
doesn't really tell you what the world will look like when automobiles become
common, and especially when they can start being used to transport materials
and workers to the automobile factories.

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aflessner
Where in the study did it cite 8.2 years as a break even point?

By comparing to a gas car, you would need to calculate the CO2 cost of
manufacturing an internal combustion engine, fuel pump, transmission,
catalytic converter, etc

I think the headline you posted is quite misleading.

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jimlawruk
also the CO2 cost of extracting and refining the oil for the gas

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wiz21c
I wonder what's better : decentralized burning of oil in heat engine cars or
centralized burning of whatever to produce electricity for electric cars...

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davedx
Centralized burning is more efficient.

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shaqbert
TL'DR:

\- this swedish government study analyses CO2 emissions from battery pack
production

\- for a Tesla S3, the emissions at purchase are 17.5 tonnes of CO2

\- That means 8.2 years of driving to just break even with an equivalent
petrol car [0]

\- for the smaller battery Nissan Leaf, it is 5.2 tonnes of CO2 and 2.7 yrs of
driving to break even

\- vast advances in battery production are needed to have climate impact w/
electric vehicles.

\- Or battery production close to abundant clean energy sources.

Additional source: [0]:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fing.dk%2Fartikel%2Fsvensk-
undersoegelse-produktion-elbilers-batterier-udleder-tonsvis-co2-200080&edit-
text=)

~~~
telchar
The analysis in your link of this document is very flawed. They only consider
tailpipe emissions from a gas vehicle. Without considering the GHG cost of an
electric car in total vs cost to manufacture an​ equivalent gas vehicle in
addition to the lifecycle GHG cost of extracting, refining and burning fuel,
the time to payback is artificially inflated. An apples-to-apples analysis
results in electrics having a much more favorable outcome (I have done this
myself in the past).

Also, as more renewable electricity production comes online the numbers will
continue to become more in favor of electrics.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Yes, that would seem to be nonsense, the general estimate you see floated
around is that the manufacture of an IC engine vehicle generates emissions
equal to those from its operation[1]. Clearly the battery pack in an EV /
(P)HEV will also create some, but it seems unlikely to be as large a delta as
all that.

1: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/20...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car)

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1dundundun
Good try Swedes. It'll take more than that to keep me from my sweet Model 3.

