E-mobility not the be-all and the end-all to reducing carbon says Deutsche Bank
Clean Energy Wire
Electric passenger cars are being given too much focus as a way of reducing carbon emissions, analysts at Deutsche Bank Research said in a paper, titled 'E-mobility: Without subsidies (still) a niche'. The paper says that "e-mobility remains a very expensive way of avoiding CO2. Government support for e-mobility is another example of the lack of focus on cost-efficient climate protection." The structural shift towards e-mobility, Deutsche Bank notes, has been driven by governmental regulation and less by market forces. In the EU in 2019, the market share of new electric car registrations was only 2.6 percent. However, a market share of 30 to 50 percent by 2030 would be needed in order to achieve the targeted CO2 limit value for new car fleets, the report states.
Germany's influential carmakers have all announced ambitious plans to increase the share of e-cars in their product portfolio over the next years. The German government had aimed to have a million electric vehicles on its roads by 2020, but has since said this target will likely only be reached by 2021 or 2022. The coalition government is under pressure to bring about changes in the transport sector, which has not significantly reduced its greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. "For Germany as an automotive location, the gain in market share for electric cars is likely to result in a loss of jobs, which will probably have to be absorbed due to evolutionary developments and demographic aspects," writes Deutsche Bank.
