So, The Guardian published this opinion piece: Are electric vehicles really so climate friendly? by Hans-Werner Sinn. In it he argues that with the German electricity mix, electric cars produce more emissions than diesel cars.

It’s a curious piece to be honest. Most of his actual quantitative argument is contained in a linked paper that’s written in German. FT Alphaville digs a little deeper into this to provide a rebuttal. There’s also another rebuttal on The Guardian.

My first thought when I read the piece was: “I can run these numbers! And so, I present, a small piece of rebuttal from me. This is totally ballpark, and mostly an exercise in “How can we think about these things quantitatively”. I’m using the emissions from this site – It’s definitely worth asking whether or not it’s accurate or not.

@Emissions for various fuels: 

Lignite (Lusatia): 0.41 kg CO2 / kWh

Hard Coal: 0.34 kg / kWh

Natural Gas: 0.20 kg / kWh

Biomass: 0.38kg / kWh // I don't have numbers from that site, so let's pretend it's about equal to peat. 

@ Germany Electricity by Source 2017: 

// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

// ( × ): Emitting sources

 Nuclear: 13.2%

 (×)Brown Coal: 24.5% // For the purposes of this analysis I'll use brown coal == lusatian lignite

 (×)Hard Coal: 14.9%

 (×)Natural Gas: 9.0%

 Wind:  18.9%

 Solar: 7.0%

 (×)Biomass: 8.7%

 Hydro: 3.7%

// Nuclear, Wind, Solar and Hydro are zero-emissions electricity sources

// So let's compute the carbon emissions of a 'prototypical' kWh in Germany.

24.5% × 0.41 kg/h kW + 14.9% × 0.34 kg/h kW +  9% × 0.2 kg/h kW + 8.7% × 0.38 kg/h kW + 0 x (non GhG emitting sources)

According to the same site, emissions for gasoline are 0.25 kg / kWh Diesel is 0.27 kg / kWh, so the electric car is already the winner.

Now, I learned from the FT Alphaville rebuttal that Mr. Sinn’s analysis is really dependent on the increased energy required to produce an electric car, so I really didn’t rebut his argument directly, but I think it’s worth showing how we can do the math ourselves.

There’s another couple points I think are worth making: Remember that internal combustion engines are insanely inefficient. Furthermore, electric vehicles will all get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner: Germany has plans to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038.