Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well I'm in over my head. No one told me trying to keep my footprint. Smile was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Trying to save the planet over someone, please save me, trying to save the planet over someone. Please save me.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to in over my head. I'm Michael Bartz just a quick note that all our transportation interviews were conducted over the phone. So the audio quality isn't at a studio level. Hopefully your ear can get accustomed to it and you'll still enjoy the great conversations. My guest today is Dr. Alex Milovinoff. Dr. Milovanoff is a post-doctoral researcher in the school of environmental engineering at the university of Toronto. His research aims to support the development of sustainable energy through systems level approaches to address complex environmental questions. His work has been featured in scientific American, the daily mail, the globe mail and the Washington post Alex is also a science communicator and has been feature on BM Bloomberg, CBC radio, global news radio, and more well welcome to in over my head, Dr. Malovinoff.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
hank you, Michael.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So I bring you on today to talk about electric vehicles, because the idea of someone buying electric car seems like a no-brainer if they wanna reduce their environmental impact, but I have a hunch that there might be more to it than that. I don't think it's as simple as people might have been led to believe. So in your work, you talk about lifecycle assessment for determining how effective electric vehicles can be for climate mitigation, considering all the factors compared to a combustion engine car, what is the environmental footprint of an electric car?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That's a very good and important question, Michael, and you're right. There's way more to it than, than what we, we may think. Very often we refer to electric cars as zero emission vehicle, and I really dislike this term cause there are no zero emission vehicles from producing the minerals refining them, manufacturing, the vehicles, assembling to using and, and producing the energy fuel up to the end of life. You have some environmental damages along the way, and that's what we refer to lifecycle assessment. It's pretty much the process of looking at all those different stages for different technologies. And then to trying to understand what are the environmental impacts of different technologies or behaviors or actions or policies. So regarding electric vehicles, very often, we tend to find that they usually shift the sources of time to impact upstream. So the vehicle operat which is usually the core issue for conventional vehicles, fact, we burn gasoline or diesel and thatit directly renal gas emissions, or all the, to types of air polluted emission. This is not an issue for electric vehicle because they have no tailpipe emission. There are literally no emission that goes out of the vehicle when it's being driven. But electric vehicles require some new Cnce, which as large batteries that are very energy intense to produce and force electric vehicles rely on an energy vector, which is called electricity and which is also not free emission free and environmental burden free. So that's why usually we say that they ship the emissions upstream to places that we don't really see the emissions are here.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Okay. And so we can talk a bit more about that. You talked about the energy sources, so electrification. So for example, many people make the argument that great you're driving electric car, but you're plugging into the grid and that electricity is coming from coal, which, and I'm here in Alberta and 90% of our power is currently coming from coal. So then is an EV no better than a combustion engine vehicle in that case.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, I think that's a great example where indeed in Alberta driving in an electric vehicle is no better than driving a conventional vehicle. It is, it is a very complex picture. So first of all, I think the key question we wanna ask is what is the environmental, you know, perspective of 10 point we want to look at? Right? So from a climate change perspective, I've actually done some assessment in, in, in Alberta. And we tend to have very similar climate change impacts from the conventional vehicle and from an electric vehicle. So electric vehicles are actually not really worse. They're just pretty much the same, but there is there, there are two very important things that we need to mention. First of all every single provinces in Canada are planning to decarbonize electricity system. And Alberta is part of this. And Alberta is going to decarbonize, has some plans and finances and investments to deploy more renew of resource and reduce the dependent on tons controls.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
It is very, very likely that in about five to six, maybe 10 years Alberta will have decarbonized at least partially decarbonized electricity grid, and that will make electric vehicles way better. So that's why I think there is currently electric vehicles are maybe not cleaner everywhere in the world, but the potential they have for being cleaner is huge. And of overall, there is actually very few places in now in the most economy of countries where electricity derives from coal, I mean, coal has had so many environmental health problems, for example, at the 26 at Glasgow. So many people have decided and have sort of committed to phase out coal, if not, of course, as easy as that it's gonna take couple of decades. But the point is that electric vehicles tend to be cleaner from a use space perspective, from a pollution perspective, it is sometimes easier to deal with centralized pollution systems, decentralized pollution sources.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So for example, if you have the coal power plant that emits all those chemicals, I mean, pollutants in greenhouse gas emissions, it is actually easier to clean the flu gases in the exhaust gases of this pipeline and to clean the exhaust emissions from the vehicles. And so even if you assume that coal is being used to produce the electricity, there is actually a potential to capture C2 from coal or to clean the airport emissions. So overall I really think from this perspective of refusing the vehicle electric vehicles have lower enzyme to impact and have a potential to have close to zero enzyme to impact.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well, it's really interesting that that sounds hopeful. So within the next decade or two, we could have a lot more cleaner sources of electricity, which would make electric cars better ever, always talks about batteries. What's the environmental footprint of a battery for electric cars. So
Speaker 3 (06:42):
The in depth footprint of a battery is highly dependent on how we produce it and how independent of what happens to this entire life cycle to produce the battery. We need critical materials. So we need electric vehicles to batteries. Chemistry are we ion batteries? And they rely on lithium nickel, manganese cobalt. Those different elements need to be mined, need to be defined, need to be transported and need to be manufactured together. And this manufacturing process is very energy intense. So producing the batter is also very energy intense process, which requires heat electricity. And so the environment food twin could be quite large if you know, the electricity derived once again from fossil fuel based energy. I mean, usually mining the different metals have huge time to impact. So I think the same question here, what is the environmental perspective? We're taking it from a greenhouse gas emission perspective, producing a battery for another cars, such as the Tesla model three.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And it's about six ton of C02 equivalent. When you include mining all the metals and assembling them and using all the energy to manufacture the sales. Cetera, if you compare this with producing the conventional vehicle, including the model, cetera this is even higher because producing a convent vehicle is about four to five ton of tier two equipment. And of course you need to produce the body of the vehicle itself. So as a sort of a quick estimate we can pretty much estimate that producing electric vehicle in it two times the months of greenhouse gas emission that producing conventional car. But overall, what, what is really working is as the use phase is usually lower emission and, and, and the use phase is really the critical stage of the lifecycle of, of, of vehicle. So that's why it takes a couple of years for an electric vehicle to sort of upset and to sort of catch up their initial and burning emission.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
But usually for example, if you're tough, think about Canada. When you have very clean sources in just about one or two years, the electric vehicle will tend to have lower emission than a conventional vehicle. And in places where the electricity is slightly to be carbonized, you can take maybe, you know, four to five years, but usually it's it's within the vehicle last time. But I, I mentioned before, this is for only for climate change perspective, because I think the real issue here is that producing and data to batteries also imply all the types of environmental problems that we need to, to be aware of. For example, there is a huge water conception associated with mining, the different components lium, which is one of the key metal that goes into the battery, requires a huge amount of water, for example, half a million gallons of water metric ton of lium.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And the, the issue is that lium is mostly produced in Latin America, Chile, and, and around that place where places that don't have much water resources. So that creates a stress for local communities, for farmers, et cetera. And you can have issues of water contamination too. Mining itself can create some other types of issues, degradation of ecosystems decreasing the quality of ecosystems in implying contamination of underground water resources. So there's sort of all the types of issues that we need to be careful with when you talk to batteries, but ultimately it's possible to sort of, you know, limit and mitigate the issues, especially with battery prediction
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And for what you're saying. It, that definitely makes me feel like when I talk about feeling in over my head, what are the other side effects of, of buying electric car and had no idea about how much water it took and, and where that source was coming from, but do you, but do you see, even if that's the case, electric cars being better for the environment overall, then Combu engine vehicle.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, I think you said it right. Electric cars in my opinion, are better for the environment than conventional vehicles, but it doesn't mean that they are good for the environment. It doesn't mean that they are the best solution and transportation solution for the environment. Cause that's one key points that I think is not sufficiently shared or not sufficiently talked about is that we are coming from a place where transportation is one of the most polluting activities that we are doing as humans, transportation accounts for a huge share of the global greenhouse gas emissions, which results in, you know, millions of deaths per year across the world because of, you know, respiratory diseases and even short term acutes and long-term effects. So transportation is one of those activities that is so polluting that we need to do something about it. And electric vehicles are part of the solution because as I mentioned, electric vehicles have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have the potential to reduce it drastically.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
If we respect, as, as we said before, as we talked about some key requirements regarding how we produce them, how we manufacture them, and more importantly, how we produce the electricity, but all the types of huge environmental benefits because electric vehicles have no disaster emissions. The potential for improving air quality in urban centers is huge. And the, the, the impact on the health systems and even mean it's even, you know, sad to say. I know that it's, I, I pretty much hate those kinds of metrics, but from an economic perspective, the savings associated with reduced death and reduced health effects of air pollution is also a huge economic incentives for lecture vehicles. So yes, they're part of the solution. But now a question that I really want to ask, which I have some ideas of answers is are electric vehicles the best solution to reduce the impact of transportation. And I don't think they are the best solution because in my sense, the best solution is the mix of pathways, behavior changes, policies, and technology. So we can talk a little bit more about that, but I think to answer your question, they are better than conventional vehicles, but it doesn't mean that they're good for the environment mm-hmm
Speaker 2 (13:02):
yeah. Let's explore that what you were talking about. So let's talk more about the other solutions.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah, sure. So from a sustainable transport perspective, we know that we can add the solution instead of three big buckets and the three big buckets for corals avoid shift and improve. So what does that mean? It think that different solutions to reduce the end environ transport, you can either try to first avoid the need for travel. It makes sound for intuitive because we are in this culture of, you know, always more consuming, more traveling, more, etc. But if you think about it, of course, the more we travel and the more energy will be associated with traveling, the more advantage impacts will be associated with traveling. And, and there are some key solutions that are not easy to implement those that are definitely feasible to impact our total travel needs. And this is really related to how we build our cities because we have a huge urbanization rate in north America and many European countries.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And we have an ization rate in big countries such as China or India. So what does that mean? It means that people are living closer to each other, but sometimes it doesn't mean that people will sort of reduce the travel need because from one side of the city, they need to go work on the other side of the city, or you may need to, you know, take your car to do your groceries or take your car to go to have a dental appointment, et cetera. And this is really because these deals are cities in north America and Europe, the around this idea that, you know, the car way that's gonna move us. And so this is a car-centric perspective in building cities. We tend to sort of not have neighborhoods that have what we call mixed use neighborhoods that have multiple centers, you know, multiple residential areas and working as their areas versus et cetera.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So that's one key asset, you know, working on how can we improve density and urban designs? How can we improve biking and walking cross, which, you know, can, will definitely reduce the motorized travel need. The similar aspect is what we call shift. And the idea is pretty much once we know that people need to travel from one place to another. Now the certain question they, they should ask themselves are what are the motive transports they could use? And so we tend to rely on private vehicles and that's where electric vehicles make a big difference, but we can talk about buses and we can talk about trains and subways. And that's, you know, it's very much a matter of to high have the infrastructure, all the investment, deploy these different networks because the bus ultimately is just a better system to move people. I mean, you move, you know, 10, 15, 20 people at once with one vehicle.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
So the energy per trip and per passenger is way lower than any private vehicle. And ultimately if we electrify buses, then we even have better benefits from electrification because you'll have a system that is by principle, energy efficient, and then you electrify, which doubles the energy efficiency in the sense that an electric vehicle is more energy efficient technology than the conventional vehicle. And so the, that that's the last component it's called. The improve C is once we have set, and once we are able to sort of implement remote choices, then you can look at the technology and that's where electric vehicle plays a huge role because they're more energy efficient because they can rely on an energy vector that is, that doesn't have to be carbonized. And this improve component is pretty much where I feel we are focusing on energy or focusing on discussion, you know, at the, the 26th conference of Perla, there was a transport day.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And at the end of the transport day, they did a declaration for zero emission deployment. They created a zero emission. I mean, they didn't create that that year, but it's a couple of years ago. And we had a, a meeting of the zero emission cocktail meeting, et cetera. So we can really see that there is a huge focus on deploying SUV vehicle, but why don't they have, you know, a declaration of two big transit investment, you know, funds, I mean, improving the funds for big transit or declaration on, on making our cities safer for bikes and walking pretty much, it's not very economically interesting for them. And it's not part of the key solution that focus to us.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah. And, and that's, I think that's what was my hunch that it's not just about everyone going out and buying electric car. And, and I understand also that it's not as sexy, put more infrastructure into buses and, and walking than it is to have a Tesla running around,
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Even from an infrastructure perspective, right? Deploying all of these electric cars requires bold investments and bold commitments for municipal federal potential governments for pretty much everybody involved. That's why ultimately what is interesting is that, you know, they're making the choices of going toward a solution that is still intense in terms of what needs to be done, cuz we can just not deploy electric vehicles with the current system. I feel there is a lack of discussion in terms of where, where should this investment go? So I don't actually like to talk about kind of the, you know, key barriers to deploying electric cars.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah. I'd love to talk about that. So you talk about the investment side of things, but what are some other barriers to deploying electric cars?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
So currently as of 2021, what are the, what are the reasons that prevent people from buying it electric cars? And usually we tend to, you know, we tend to find three reasons when we survey people. The first key reason is the lack of charging a fraud fuel because electric cars are slightly different than conventional cars, right? When you have the conventional internal condition engine car, what do you do? You go to the refueling station every, you know, once a week, every, every other week or once a month, an independent, how you use it, you, you put your gas into your tank and then you go, go back home or you, you know, finish your trip. So this is not a very complex problem. And we're used to it. Electric cars are different because of course you need to charge them with electricity. So the charging infrastructure is different.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Charging is slower process, but that's one of one good thing about it is you can actually charge at home because all the other two cars in the market, now you can plug them to a normal plug. The issue is it's low, but very rarely you come at home with a battery that is completed, completed, and you need to charge it from zero to 100%. And so it pretty much mean that if you charge your vehicle when you arrive at home, then the next morning your vehicle will be, you know, worst case will be half charge and bed case will be completely charged. So the behavior is quite different. But I think one aspect of the charging infrastructure, which creates a lot of anxiety is when we do longer trips because electric cars have shorter driving ranges than conventional cars. So right now, if you talk a about sort of the entry level types of cars you have between 200, 300 kilometers of range and the longer range vehicles of about five to 600 kilometers.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So a conventional vehicle, usually you have seven to 800 kilometers or maybe above 1000 kilometers. So this is a changing behaviors in the sense that you, if you have a short range of electric vehicle, you'll like to go on a trip. You you're live in Toronto and you wanna go to, to Montreal or you leave in Alberta and you wanna go to Vancouver, which is very long ride. Then, you know, you'll not be able do that in one trip. I mean, you'll not be able to do that without stopping. And so you can see here the limitation, right? And that's great. We call the range anxiety, which is sort of the second key reason why people don't buy electric vehicles is they they're convinced that if they buy electric vehicle with the lower driving range and with the lack of travel, the pasture, they will not be able to travel the same way they were traveling before.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It's true. But now if wanna plan longer trips, you need to plan ahead and exactly see where you're gonna stop. And of course, last and most important aspect. I mean, one of the most important aspects is that currently capital costs for B visas are higher. And so chasing an electric vehicle is, is a, is a huge commitment. In Canada, if you buy a new conventional vehicle, cheapest vehicles, you can buy, you can buy are about, you know, between 20, $25,000. The cheapest electric vehicles you can buy in Canada are around between 35 and $45,000. You can see there is a huge difference in cost. There is about, you know, 15 to 20 K difference. So no sort of the key big areas to deploying issue because the reason why we don't buy them.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Now, one thing I wanted to touch on also is winter cuz in Canada, winter is a reality. So how do electric cars do in winter?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
So in winters you have an increased conception from driving the electric. And I think there are two key reasons to this. The first one is that the battery chemistry, you know, it's a complex piece of technology that requires sort of an ideal temperature to perform correctly. Even the efficiency of the battery itself is affected with the temperature. Roughly when you look at different studies, where they found is that if you drive an electric vehicle a about minus 20 degrees, Celsius, you consume about roughly 35, 40% more energy compared to driving the civic vehicle at sort of 23 degrees Celsius so, you know, a third more energy consum, what does that mean actually means that you have about a, a third of ranges that you lose, right? If you consume more energy, then you actually have a lower driving risk. So that's a huge impact. And if you actually drive on the highway at a high speed, with a very low temperature and you have the hitting seats and the hitting wheels, et cetera, you actually can go up to consuming roughly 50% more energy potential anymore. So the key issue of electric vehicles is that during winter, they will use more electricity. They will not be like safe. They will not be, you know, they will not affect the, the battery itself, but it will actually just mean that you have a lower driving range, which can create an even higher feeling of range anxiety. And so manufacturers now have been working on this for a long time. I've been trying to improve the thermal management systems. And I think looking ahead, we can expect some improvements in that regard.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah. Cuz it's one thing to get stuck on the highway in a sunny day in August, but then a different thing if it's minus 30 in February, but that's good to know that they're, they're still able to function in the winter. There's the range is reduced. So we've talked about electric vehicles quite a bit. A lot of manufacturers say that they're not going to be producing combustion engines after a certain date, along those lines are hybrid cars, an effective way to reduce our environmental impact or should we be focusing just on electric cars?
Speaker 3 (23:50):
I feel this is the million dollar question. I will even say the billion dollar question. And I think questions that lots manufacturers are asking and, and some of them are making some low commitments and some of them are, think the questions often. So the point is on the short term, we will not be able to deploy, you know, millions of electric vehicles at once. Because as we mentioned before, there is just a lack of basic infrastructure. And also just, you know, the electrics are not accessible. We haven't reached the critical mass that makes them great from an economic perspective. Right now it's more expensive just to buying electric vehicle, even though you may save some cost down the line because operating in electric vehicle is cheaper. But the overall total cost of ownership is still slightly more expensive for electric vehicle hybrid vehicles are slightly different because they are more fuel efficient.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
They are cost effective actually for most of them. So from an economic perspective, hybrid vehicles are reach to place where it actually become a smart investment choice, but from an an perspective, electric cars still have lower end footprints. So that's where the complexity lies is. Of course, if you're in Alberta right now, and if you assume that the electricity will not change in the next decade, then hybrid actually makes more sense in Alberta than in other places. But in many other places in, in Canada, electric cars make way more sense than hybrid vehicles. So there is this question, right? Nobody really knows the manufacturers. There's some key manufacturers that have just said, we're gonna deploy electric vehicles and we can only sell calls at a certain time. And so, you know, to me, it's pretty clear to them that they will not commit in producing a lot of hybrid technologies after a given time.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
But I think there is actually some other manufacturers that, that are keeping this question up and another saying hybrid technologies are at worst, the transition technology. So maybe for the next decade, it'd actually make more sense for them to purchase on hybrid technologies because the cost is now are lower because the benefits are here and the charging and infrastructure, the other aspects are not already an issue. And so who will really decide will be a mix of us. You know, the, the drivers people will make the choice, but ultimately it's also driven by cost. And so the second aspect are the governments and, and the people that, you know, set the subsidies in Ontario, for example, there was a subsidy to buy electric vehicles and then the new government scraped the subsidy. I mean, it was a couple of years ago. And when they scraped the subsidy, then you had, you had a huge drug in vehicle sales.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So ultimately you see how governments can influence the choices. If, you know, they decide to have a $10,000 subsidy for the cheapest electric cars. So I'm not even talking about subsidizing, you know, the most expensive electric cars for the millionaire. I'm actually talking about subsidizing the cheapest electric cars for the people who can potentially afford them if they are 10 K cheaper. And for the people who will buy, for example, as first, then, you know, that will, that will, could potentially be the, the, the, the element. And they will just have, they will just pressure electric vehicle for being deployed, help them reach a critical mass, help them decrease their production cost because the more you produce a certain technology, the cheaper it is to produce them, push the deployment of charging faster. And maybe in about five years, you're gonna only see electric vehicles being sold.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
I mean, not five years, but you see my point, nobody really knows what will happen because there is sort of a set of things that need to happen to make electric vehicles fully deployed, or to have sort of a transition technology while we're waiting for electric vehicles to be here. And my last point that I would like to make is part of my research. We sort of asked the question of what is the deployment level that we need to reach for this scientific technologies to meet our climate goal. And what we found is we actually need to deploy electric vehicle. If we don't change, you know, the way we build our transportation system. So meaning that if most of us keep on relying on private vehicle, what we found was that we actually need to deploy electric vehicles by 2035. So it means that by 2035 having 100% of sales being electric vehicles, and if that's the case, then I don't think we can actually have forward having a transitional technology.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I don't think we can afford having hybrid vehicles, you know, being the key dominant technology for the next 10 years, because in order to reach a 100% sales of electric vehicles by 2035, it means that we need to reach a critical mass in the next couple of years. So it's also, it comes back to the question of, do we the only want vet on private vehicle technologies or do we also want a debt on all the solutions that work, as I mentioned before helps reshaping our city deploying banking, etcetera. So trying to reduce our dependence on private vehicles, because if we reduce our depends of electric vehicles, we actually don't need the has fast development regulatory vehicles, right? Because we will have lower tensions, lower stresses, lower environmental footprint from the transfusion systems themselves. So you see so many components in complex species to answer such a simple question, but you know, nobody really knows
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Mm-Hmm yeah, no, that's really helpful, Dr. Milovanoff enough, because that makes sense to me that it's not the silver bullet is the electric car. It's, it's part of a overall solution that includes other sustainable transportation, active transportation. So that's great because if someone really, really needs to drive for, for their work or their lifestyle, they can get an electric car, but if they're in town, they can perhaps use public transit. So this sounds like a, a, a great thing. So yeah, we'll wrap it up there. So thanks so much for your time and have a great
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Day. Thank you, Michael. It was low. I'll be discussing with you and have a great day too.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Well, that was my conversation with Dr. Malovinoff. I love that we got into so much detail about electric cars from range anxiety to using them in winter batteries and, and where our power comes from. Those are all things I was wondering about. And I'm so glad that we could talk about them. I think my takeaway was yes, electric cars are part of a more environmentally friendly future, but as we've learned, it's, it's not the only part. So if you can use other forms of sustainable transportation, use those. If you need to use a car, an electric car sounds like a great choice. Well, that's all for me. I'm Michael Bartz. Here's the feeling a little less through over our head when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see again, soon in, over my head was produced and hosted by Michael bar original theme song by Gabriel Thaine. If you would like to get in touch with us, please email info at, in over my head podcast.com special. Thanks to Telus STORYHIVE for making this show possible.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I'm trying to save the planet or, oh, will someone please save me?