CO 2 Emissions of Battery Electric Vehicles and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

Lucian-Ioan Dulău ()
Additional contact information
Lucian-Ioan Dulău: Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Targu Mures, Gheorghe Marinescu 38, 540142 Târgu Mureș, Romania

Clean Technol., 2023, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: During the last few years, electric and hydrogen vehicles have become an alternative to cars that use internal combustion engines. The number of electric and hydrogen vehicles sold has increased due to support from local governments and because car manufacturers will stop the production of internal combustion engines in the near future. The emissions of these vehicles while being driven are zero, but they still have an impact on the environment due to their fuel. In this article, an analysis of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions for two types of vehicles: battery electric vehicles (BEVs) powered by electricity and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) powered by hydrogen, is presented. The analysis considers different values for the mix of power generation and hydrogen production options in comparison to other studies. The CO 2 emissions were calculated and compared for the two types of vehicles. The results show that the CO 2 emissions of BEVs are lower when compared to FCEVs if the hydrogen is obtained from pollutant sources and is higher if the hydrogen is obtained from nuclear power and renewable energy sources. When compared to conventional combustion engine vehicles, BEVs have lower CO 2 emissions, while the emissions of FCEVs are dependent on the hydrogen production method.

Keywords: battery electric vehicles; fuel cell electric vehicles; hydrogen; hydrogen production; fuel consumption; CO 2 emissions; power mix; battery capacity; tank capacity; environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2571-8797/5/2/35/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2571-8797/5/2/35/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jcltec:v:5:y:2023:i:2:p:35-712:d:1161441

Access Statistics for this article

Clean Technol. is currently edited by Ms. Shary Song

More articles in Clean Technol. from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().