That list is only scale (e.g. 40 Gigatons saved by onshore wind or utility solar by 2050) and even on that measure EVs do pretty well at 10 Gigatons.
But they do even better if you consider cost since the TCO of many electric vehicle classes is lower than the alternative, so you save money and carbon.
These tradeoffs are displayed on a marginal abatement cost curve:
> Technologies: Many measures in the power and transportation sectors are cost-effective right now, including several electric vehicle classes, electric efficiency, high-quality solar PV and onshore wind resources, and nuclear relicensing. The use of heat pumps in buildings is also available.
> Emissions: Together, the measures in this range represent more than 1 gigaton of potential annual emission reductions by 2050 or 22% of way toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
But many analyses actually find that the emissions reductions from switching to electric vehicles are quite minor.
Paul Hawken, for example, doesn’t put electric cars in his top 10 climate solutions. In fact, it’s number 24 on his list, with almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants which are powerful greenhouse gases, and behind solutions like tropical rainforest restoration (about 5 times as effective at reducing emissions as is switching to EVs) and peatland protection (more than twice as effective).
Producing a single electric car releases a lot of greenhouse gas emissions—about 9 tons on average. This is rising, as the size of electric cars is going up substantially. That means that even if operating electric cars reduces emissions overall, it’s not going to reduce them much. One calculation estimates reductions of 6 percent in the United States. That’s not enough to make much of a dent in warming.
