Environmental impact assessment of increasing electric vehicles in the Brazilian fleet

Abstract

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are viewed as an option to reduce the environmental impacts of Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs). EVs, however, also cause environmental impacts. To compare the impacts of EVs with the impacts of ICEVs, several Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies have been performed, showing that the results are largely dependent on the energy source. In the Brazilian case, however, the energy sources are different, considering that the electricity mix is mostly comprised of hydropower and that ICEVs can use ethanol. The main purpose of this study is to identify the environmental impacts of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) in the Brazilian lightweight fleet, using LCA. A decisional approach was used, but, due to the lack of data, was focused on use phase, including energy consumption, whereas attributional data were used for the vehicle production stage. Government projections were used as the source of decisional data. The BEV considered was better for abiotic depletion, global warming, ozone layer depletion and fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity. In these categories, however, the lack of advance planning, leading to thermal electricity generation, could diminish BEVs benefits or make them worse than ICEVs. As for the other categories, at least one ICEV option performed better than the BEV. Vehicle production was also responsible for a good part of the impacts in many categories, so that early replacement of ICEVs with BEVs could also result in larger impacts. Public policies could target BEVs, but should encompass measures to reduce the impacts of the BEVs in the categories they perform worse than ICEVs. Among the limitations of this work are the use of attributional data for many of the processes, including vehicle production and disposal, and also the fact that second and third generation ethanol were not included. These could be dealt with in future research.