Environmental impact assessment of the electric vehicles: A case study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Most of the air pollution originates from combustion processes, where traffic is one of the most important sources. Thus, road traffic’s contribution to pollution and overall emissions is very important. One of the popular methods for reducing pollution in urban areas is the introduction of electric vehicles (EV), and this is the main reason why fully electric vehicles, as an alternative to conventional fossil fuel vehicles, are becoming more popular. Although EVs emit no tailpipe pollutants, the power plants in national grid systems may emit them. This is the case with coal-based energy systems, like the one in the Republic of Serbia. In this study, the analysis of direct and indirect emissions of CO2 and NOX from ICE and EV is presented. The analysis has shown that the average specific emission factor for EVs, if charged in Serbia, is almost the same in terms of CO2 with 194.7 g/km in comparison with 159.6 g/km, while in the case of NOX, the specific emissions factors for EV almost doubles, from 0.71 to 1.30 g/km. Further analyses have shown that decarbonizing the national power grid to reduce the complete replacement of the fleet with EVs for achieving net zero emissions requires all the available solar, wind, and hydropower resources of the Republic of Serbia. On the other hand, EVs could be used as battery storage for discontinuous energy sources covering the needs of over 25% of a personal vehicle fleet.