http://www.greenpeace.

org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-tesladream/blog/56609/
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1091577_tesla-gigafactory-seeks-northamerican-raw-materials-to-cut-pollution
Greenpeace and Tesla

How much will electric vehicles slow carbon emissions?

citizens perish in 51C heat in India, unseasonal fires rage in the Canadian tar
sands, methane escapes from arctic permafrost, Earth approaches the
+1.5C Paris Accord "goal," and hoping to stop at +2C appears increasingly
naive.
Automobile companies have finally adopted the electric vehicle (EV), led by
Tesla Motors and founder Elon Musk

Will EVs slow carbon emissions, and by how much?

Embodied energy
Every product sold requires energy to produce and deliver
This includes; mining, shipping and processing raw materials, and assembly and
shipping of the product
Most of this energy comes from hydrocarbon fuels
the embodied energy of any vehicle accounts for 20 to 40 percent of its
lifetime emissions
Hybrids and electric vehicles tend toward the high end of this range because
they are complex machines, Electric trains, per passenger-kilometer, carry
significantly less embodied energy
A kilogram of steel produces about 15 kilograms of CO2 in the atmosphere VS. A
kilogram of plastics, rubber, or copper produces three times the emissions,
about 40 to 50 kilograms of CO2
An electric-powered Tesla Model S, at about 2240 kilograms of steel, plastics, metals
and rubber, produces the CO2 equivalent of about 60,000 kilometers of driving a
conventional vehicle three to four years of typical driving and fossil fuel burning
before it is purchased.
Lithium race

The electric car industry requires mining for nickel, bauxite, copper, rare
earth metals, lithium, graphite, cobalt, polymers, adhesives, metallic
coatings, paint and lubricants
Mining runs on hydrocarbons; these materials carry a large embodied CO2 cost
and leave a trail of pollution

Tesla's current planned production will require some 30,000 tonnes of

graphite per year for the batteries alone, requiring six new graphite mines
somewhere on Earth
EVs need cobalt, and the leading supplier of cobalt is war-torn Congo, where
the mining industry has a legacy of carbon emissions, pollution, habitat
destruction and civil rights violations

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Tesla's lithium demand for batteries will require 25,000 tonnes a year,
increasing global lithium mining by 50 percent, using water resources and
typically leaving behind toxic chlorine sludge.

is attempting to limit lithium

mining at a pace that avoids ecological and social disruption, but electric vehicle
and mining corporations are applying pressure
Saul Villegas, head of the lithium division in Comibol, Bolivia

"Like any mining process," said Guillen Mo Gonzalez, leader of a Chilean lithium
delegation, "it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and
pollutes the earth and the local wells. This isn't a green solution. It's not a solution
at all.
~ some ten billion kilograms, could supply the batteries for about four billion electric vehicles

not all of this reserve is recoverable, and current production is used for phones, computers,
camcorders, cameras, satellites, construction, pharmaceuticals, ceramics and glass
Eric Eason; Stanford University, in 2010, physics student - concluded that converting the
world's fleet to electric vehicles ".. seems like an unsustainable prospect

The impact of electricity

Electricity generation accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas

emissions. Most electricity (67 percent) is produced by coal and natural gas;
20 percent by nuclear, another carbon hog; while renewables hydroelectric
dams, wind and solar account for about 13 percent of electricity.
We must remember that even so-called "renewable" technologies have social
and land-use impacts, and they carry an embodied carbon cost from mining,
steel production, cement, manufacturing, shipping and decommissioning.

In some regions Norway and western Canada, for example hydropower makes up
a large share of electricity generation, and in those regions, purely electric vehicles,
over their lifetime, can save carbon emissions. However, there is more to the
calculation. The Morten-Walnum study does not account for land use changes, water
flow disruption, habitat destruction and the social impacts from hydroelectric dams.
In British Columbia, we feel fortunate to have a plentiful supply of hydroelectric power, producing
considerably less carbon emissions than coal-fired electric plants. However, we also experience the
impact of dams on local rivers, salmon runs, agricultural land, wilderness and rural communities.

Genuine solutions
With global population growing at about 1.1 percent per year, resource
consumption, waste and land use impacts are growing at about 3.5 percent per
year, doubling every 20 years
Since 1946, the world's vehicle fleet has grown by 4.2 percent per year, doubling
every 16.5 years. At that rate, we'll be looking for steel, plastic and lithium for two
billion vehicles by 2032 and for four billion vehicles by 2050. Electric vehicles now
comprise one 20th of one percent of that fleet, but even if we could change that to
75 percent by 2050, we would deplete the world's lithium supply and still have a
billion gasoline vehicles, the same number we have today.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-tesladream/blog/56609/
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1091577_tesla-gigafactory-seeks-northamerican-raw-materials-to-cut-pollution
We will need to change our growth economics to an ecological economics. We will
need to stabilise human population and support population decline over time
(primarily through universal women's rights and available contraception).
Genuine transportation solutions should avoid individual vehicles and focus on lightrail, electric public transport, bicycles and walkable neighbourhoods.