Explained: How green is your electric vehicle?

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Editor's note: While speaking at the recent ETAuto EV Conclave, R.C. Bhargava, chairman of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, made a rather unexpected point. Unexpected because it was an event to promote electric vehicles. “In a country like India, where per capita incomes are a fraction of those in Europe and the US and coal is the major source of electricity, electric vehicles will not give the intended reduction in carbon emissions for the next 10-15 years,” he said.  Bhargava even questioned the government’s rationale in taxing compressed natural gas-powered cars at the same level as petrol and diesel cars, and said alternative technologies using CNG, bio-CNG and ethanol, which emit lower levels of greenhouse gasses, must be promoted. “Coal tends to be the critical factor,” Jeremy Michalek, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said in this New York Times report. In essence, he explained, if all EVs are charged with electricity drawn from thermal coal-based plants, the climate benefits might not be very large and pollution levels could even rise in the medium term. Clearly, there’s more to …