Driving with the sun: Why environmentally benign electric vehicles must plug in at renewables

• Electric vehicles must use electricity from renewables to be environmentally benign.
• CO2-based fuel and registration taxes are important instruments to support this.
• In urban areas the most important measures is to introduce emission-free zones.

In recent years electric vehicles (EVs) have been promoted in many countries. Their use has been recognized as a way for reduction of GHG emissions from transport sector. They are often called zero-emission vehicles. However, this can be only true for the point of use where some types of EVs have zero-emissions. But looking at the whole energy supply chain this is not true for any type of EVs.The major contribution of this paper is to investigate the environmental benignity of various types of EVs, their economics and corresponding promotion policies implemented in various countries.The major results and conclusions are: (i) All EVs can contribute to a reduction of CO2 emissions compared to conventional gasoline or diesel cars with the exemption of EVs powered by electricity generated purely from old coal power plants; (ii) Yet, to harvest the full environmental benefits of EVs and to really contribute to heading toward sustainability in transport it is most important to ensure that EVs are using electricity from renewable energy sources; (iii) The implementation of proper policies could increase the number of EVs. Yet, for a continuous and environmentally friendly support of EVs promotion strategies has to depend on the carbon content of the electricity used in cars.