Is the electric mobility really green? A Life Cycle Thinking approach

The effect of transport on the environment is one of the major problems worldwide. Among the most impacting sectors, the transport one accounts for 24% of the total emissions and for 33% of the total energy consumption. Road transports are the most used in the world, above 70 %. This kind of transport required up to 75% of the energy demand in the transport sector. In the recent year a new kind of transport is spreading, the electric mobility by offering a major opportunity to solve the negative effect of vehicles generally used for the transports by road. Some electric vehicles have a negative impact particularly in the production and using step, it depends on the type of electricity that is utilized. This study asses the impacts on environment, human health and resource scarcity of electricity coming from different sources (coal, peat, lignite, diesel, natural gas, hydropower, wind, municipal waste incineration, photovoltaic and biomass) by means of Life Cycle Thinking approach. From the Life Cycle Assessment results that lignite was the most impacting for the human health, hydropower for ecosystems and diesel for the resource scarcity. Instead, the more sustainable electricity energies were the ones coming from wind and biomass. The analysis of production cost pointed out that natural gas is the cheaper sources while photovoltaic the more expensive one.