Motor Mouth: SUV owners are completely to blame for rising emissions

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I’ve got a message for all you SUV owners out there: It’s all your fault. Just you. No one else. You — and you alone — are the reason that automobiles continue to pump out more carbon emissions than ever despite the massive increases in internal-combustion efficiency.

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For those of you looking to write angry denouncements in the comment section below, save your keystrokes. I’m only the messenger. And the message is simple: According to the International Energy Agency — one of the most august bodies studying the future of energy and mobility — “ carbon emissions fell across all sectors in 2020 except for one — SUVs .”

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In fact, so dramatic is the growing number of SUVs prowling the planet that they have completely negated the carbon-reduction effect of all the electric vehicles sold so far: “The reduction in oil demand from the increased share of electric vehicles in the overall car market — around 40,000 barrels a day in 2020 — was completely cancelled out by the growth in SUV sales over the same period.”

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The effect of increasing SUV sales is almost stupefying. According to the IEA, for instance, 2020’s pandemic’ed pullback saw “the world’s overall energy-related emissions [fall] by an estimated 7 per cent, the largest drop,” says Laura Cozzi, the IEA’s chief energy modeler, “in history and five times the size of the decline in the aftermath of 2009’s financial crisis.” And yet, “despite the effect on the pandemic on overall car use, SUVs consumed more oil last year than they did in 2019.”

That’s because, according to Cozzi’s estimates, “sales of fuel-hungry sport-utility vehicles grew to a record 42 per cent of global car market in 2020,” cancelling out all the declines in oil consumption that resulted from COVID-19-related lockdown measures. In fact, the IEA says that “over the past decade, SUVs were the only area of energy-related emissions growth in advanced economies.” Across all other sectors of the economy – electricity generation, heating of buildings, manufacturing and heavy industry – and other forms of transport, carbon emissions remained flat or declined. In other words, we may have driven less in 2020, but we more than made up for it by driving ever more wasteful vehicles.

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A few things came to mind as I read the study. The first — and, for me, the most glaring — is the hypocrisy of consumers who fill out survey after survey saying they want to do their part in reducing our carbon footprint by going electric. When it comes to actually taking action to curb their consumption, however, they instead choose to buy big sport-utes and guzzle even more gas.

Secondly, if our own Timothy Cain is to be believed — and he is the best number-cruncher in the biz — the reason for much of this wastefulness is simply because we can’t stand the image of ourselves behind the wheel of a minivan. According to Tim, much of the move to seven-row sport utes has been at the expense of minivans (which traditionally get superior fuel economy). In 2020 alone, says Cain, minivan sales were down some 29 per cent, while sales of three-row seven-passenger sport brutes like Ford’s Explorer, the Toyota Highlander, and  Volkswagen ’s Atlas were up a corresponding 30 per cent. In fact, the segment grew at more than twice the rate of the overall market, all, again, so we don’t have to be seen driving a Magic Wagon.

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Perhaps more importantly, the issue of an SUV’s greater energy needs will not disappear with combustion engines. Moving (huge chunks of) metal requires power and whether they be fossil-fueled or battery-powered, that requires energy. Currently, the biggest battery in a traditional sedan is about 100 kilowatt-hours and the average, the IEA says, is somewhere in the region of 50 kWh (they must be including all the NEV [Neighbourhood Electric Vehicle] put-puts China is foisting on consumers, because the average here in North America is significantly bigger).

The batteries needed to power electric SUVs, meanwhile, are much larger. The smallest battery in Ford’s relatively compact Mustang Mach-E, for instance, is 75.7 kWh.   Projections for the real big boys — Rivian, GMC Hummer, et al — are projected to top 200 kilowatt-hours. That, just by way of wild-ass guesses, represents about 1,100 kilograms of battery. For those metrically challenged, that’s more than 2,400 pounds of lithium, cobalt, and nickel just to push your ego around. Oh, sure, some of that is coolant and casings, but all those (semi-)rare metals would still weigh about as much as an entire Mazda MX-5.

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Across all other sectors of the economy and other forms of transport, carbon emissions remained flat or declined.

Which brings us to the second IEA study, this one — The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions — not nearly as inflammatory as the first. According to Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, a typical electric vehicle will require six times the mineral input as a conventional car, and the offshore wind plants needed to keep our grids ‘green’ will need nine times as much minerals as a gas-fired power plant. In fact, according to the IEA, we’ll need 40 times as much lithium as we’re producing today — a preponderance of that for EVs — and 20 to 25 times as much graphite, cobalt, and nickel.  

Most troubling is that, according to the IEA, “production of many energy transition minerals today is more geographically concentrated than that of oil or natural gas.” China, for instance processes 90 per cent of world’s rare earth metals (which are currently used in about 80 per cent of EV electric motors) and 60 per cent of our lithium. The Congo mines almost three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, while Indonesia has the lion’s share of nickel extraction.  

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Nor does that address what we do with all those lithium-ions when their energy is spent. According to the IEA, there will be something like 1,200 gigawatt-hours of spent batteries that will need recycling by 2040, the vast majority from electric cars. I’d tell you how much more that would be than today, except we consume so little at the present time that no comparison is possible. In other words, while EV proponents have promised a pretty much seamless transition to electric mobility, there would seem to be numerous potholes in the road ahead. Consuming more of our precious energy sources than necessary because we all insist we need to drive a sport-utility vehicle will just exacerbate whatever problems lie ahead.

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Charles “Boss” Kettering — the man behind the modern high-compression ICE engine — didn’t start putting tetraethyl lead into gasoline because he wanted to knock a few points off the IQ of American children. He did it because it was the best technology available at the time to increase both performance and fuel efficiency. Likewise, I can assure you that the European activists who so successfully pushed diesels on the EU did so with the same pure intentions — they do dramatically reduce CO2 production compared to gas engines, after all — as those now demanding a switch to battery-power. And just as they promised problem-free conversion to then new technologies, so too do EV proponents now envisage a rose-tinted battery-powered future — visions of wind mills and solar panels dancing in our heads — devoid of negative consequences.

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I have no idea what the ramifications of our full-fledged conversion to electric mobility will be. I do know, however, that, 20 years hence — maybe sooner — we will be discussing side effects that we cannot today conceive. To believe that there will be no unintended consequences of powering every car on the planet with lithium-ion is to reject all the lessons that history begs to teach us. But worse yet is thinking that simply switching to battery power will allow us to continue our wasteful ways. Think about that when you buy your next gargantuan SUV just so you can pick up your kids from soccer practice in style.