| Abstract [eng] |
Electric vehicles are considered to be the transport of the future. This especially can be seen in the cities, because more and more people are living in urban areas. Air pollution in metropolitan areas is getting unbearable and more and more people are getting serious health issues because of that. Air pollution has led to an increase in the number of fatalities. The European Union is strongly promoting the development of electric cars and has various benefits for its owners. European countries that want to further electrify their urban transport systems are giving their residents even more incentives to buy and use electric cars. However, we have to keep in mind that an electric car is not completely clean. Electric vehicle will pollute air, but air pollution will be transferred outside the city. That is why it is very important what kind of electricity the electric vehicle will use to avoid creating even greater pollution than conventional vehicles. The proposed solution to pollution in many research papers is the use of renewable energy resources to charge the electric car. One of the most popular and most recognized ways to determine the pollution of a product or process is the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA method was also applied to this study, which was aimed at finding out the pollution that an electric vehicle will generate in Lithuania. The results were compared with pollution that an internal combustion engine vehicle would generate. In his study LCA was conducted for the most popular electric vehicle model “Nissan Leaf”. The newest “Nissan Leaf” model data was considered. The most important part of this life cycle is Lithuania’s mix of electricity, which was focused on the most. For this purpose, Lithuania’s electricity mix for the year 2015–2050 was used for the study, because this electricity will be used to charge the electric vehicle. This is especially relevant as Lithuania is promising to switch to electricity that will be fully extracted from renewable energy sources. The life cycle assessment of conventional vehicles (petrol and diesel) has also been carried out in order to compare the environmental impact of these cars. Six environmental exposure categories were considered: human toxicity, fresh water eutrophication, terrestrial acidification, fossil fuel depletion, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and particulate matter formation. The results of the study showed that the electric car charged with 2015 electricity mix will cause higher GHG emissions than conventional vehicles. It would also cause higher fresh water eutrophication and toxicity to humans. However, if an electric car will be charged with 2050 electricity mix, its GHG emissions would get lower than the conventional vehicles. It has also been noted that if the vehicle will be charged with mainly renewable energy than the main air pollution with be caused by the manufacturing of the car, but not the use phase. In addition, it was found that in the three categories of damage, the lowest total damage would be caused by an electric car charged in 2050 and the most damage would be caused by petrol vehicle. |
