Hello everyone, I am the president of the Electric Vehicle Commune.
In 2016, there was a bizarre incident in Singapore. A senior vice president of a network research and development company bought a second-hand Model S from Hong Kong for $51,000 (about 332,000 yuan).
The Singapore government has always welcomed energy-efficient vehicles, and if tested by the local traffic control department and comply with the emission regulations at the time, owners can receive a $10,000 tax refund.
Therefore, according to the normal process, he handed over the Model S to the Singapore traffic management department for environmental protection testing.
After waiting for more than 1 month, he finally received a call from the traffic management department, but the result surprised him.
The phone told that the Model S exceeded the carbon emission standard, belonged to the "non-environmentally friendly model", not only could not receive a tax refund, but also had to pay an additional $10,000 fine.
Hearing this news, he was momentarily confused, and the electric car that did not burn oil at all would also be fined for exceeding the carbon emission standard?
The traffic management department responded to him: "In Singapore, every kilowatt-hour of electricity used will produce 0.5 grams of carbon emissions, your car consumes 44 kWh of electricity per 100 kilometers, and the equivalent will produce 22.2 grams of carbon emissions per 100 kilometers." Such a high carbon emission is already a C3 car. ”
The embarrassing encounter of the Model S owner reached Musk's ears. Musk also said that he could not understand, so he also called SingaporeAny Lee Hsien Loong.
Later, after investigation, the incident was caused by the loophole in the measurement standard of the traffic management department. In the end, the owner was not fined.
However, putting aside this matter, the issue of driving an electric vehicle ring is not environmentally friendly has always been a relatively large controversy.
As more and more people begin to pay attention to electric vehicles, we often see some such comments in the background of our public account:
"Electric vehicles are just surface zero emissions."
"When will we not use thermal power to talk about environmental protection again!"
"Electric vehicles = coal cars."
……
That's why Akio Toyoda has resisted electric vehicles in the past: "In a country like Japan, which relies heavily on coal and natural gas for power generation, electric vehicles have not helped much to improve the environment." The more electric vehicles we produce, the more carbon dioxide emissions become. ”
Although, a few years after making this point of view, he has now . . . Really fragrant...
Nowadays, the power consumption of electric vehicles is getting lower and lower, and the power generation technology of power plants is no longer what it used to be. Now at this point in time, let's go back and look at it, is the electric car environmentally friendly in the end? Does it help improve the environment? And through the huge industrial chain and new development trend of electric vehicles, to truly achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in the field of transportation?
01. Are electric vehicles really environmentally friendly?
To say that the electric vehicle ring is not environmentally friendly, in addition to talking to you about the current power generation structure of our country, we also need to count with you.
Is there more or less carbon emissions in the phase of use of electric vehicles? There are two key influencing factors, one is how much carbon emissions will be generated by the power plant generating one kilowatt hour of electricity, and the other is the level of electricity consumption of the car itself.
From the current power generation structure of the mainland, thermal power accounts for more than 70%, that is to say, the vast majority of electricity charged by electric vehicles does come from coal.
According to the International Energy Agency, in 2020, for every 1 kWh of electricity generated in China, about 0.6167 kilograms of carbon emissions will be generated.
The process of electricity consumption is actually a loss, this loss includes the process of the power grid to transmit the electricity of the power station, but also includes the process of charging the electricity into the battery, using the drive motor to convert it into mechanical energy to drive the wheel forward, the heat loss in these two processes, roughly estimated to be a total of 20%. In other words, you charge the electric car with 1 kWh, and the power station in the suburbs needs to charge 1.2 kWh.
Take the Tesla Model 3 as an example, the power consumption of 100 kilometers under the urban expressway is about 16 kWh, which is equivalent to every 100 km run, and the power station needs to generate 19.2 kWh of electricity. Then the Tesla Model 3 will generate 11.8 kilograms of carbon emissions for every 100 kilometers it runs.
Let's compare the same level of fuel cars, assuming that according to the fuel consumption of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the fuel consumption per 100 kilometers is about 7 liters (although the actual situation is generally higher), and the carbon emissions per liter of oil are about 2.4 kg. Then, the fuel car will produce 16.8 kilograms of carbon emissions per 100 kilometers, compared to the Model 3's 11.8 kilograms of carbon emissions, which is 42% higher.
Therefore, from the perspective of using a car, the fact that electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than fuel vehicles is indeed a foregone conclusion.
However, we still seem to have overlooked some details.
Although electric vehicles are indeed environmentally friendly to use, is the production process environmentally friendly?
Compared with the production energy consumption of electric vehicles and fuel vehicles, there is no difference between the two shells, and the main energy consumption gap has to be seen: whether it is the high energy consumption of the battery motor electronic control, or the high energy consumption of the engine gearbox.
The engine and gearbox of the fuel vehicle itself is a cast part, the manufacturing process is essentially different from the car shell, but the electric vehicle is not the same, the battery itself is a high-energy energy storage chemical pool, which also makes the battery manufacturing not easy, the energy that needs to be consumed is more, and the process will produce more carbon emissions.
According to industry data, to produce an 80-degree ternary lithium battery, it takes about 6200 kWh of electricity (including the positive and negative poles and the assembly stage), which means that about 3.8 tons of carbon emissions will be generated in the process.
For comparison, a fuel vehicle with a fuel consumption of 7 liters per 100 kilometers has a mileage of about 10,000 kilometers a year, and the carbon emissions of this car in a year are about 1.68 tons.
It is equivalent to the carbon emissions generated by building a power battery, which is basically equivalent to the carbon emissions of a fuel car for about 2 years, which is equivalent to burning 1400 liters of gasoline! I really don't know, I am shocked.
Therefore, from a comprehensive point of view, the subsequent stage of car use of electric vehicles is indeed more environmentally friendly, but the high energy consumption of the production and manufacturing process has "dragged down" the environmental protection of electric vehicles.
02. Zero-carbon batteries are becoming a reality
Even light industries such as food and textiles have a difficult time achieving zero carbon through energy conservation and emission reduction. For the battery manufacturing industry, which consumes extremely high energy, it is bound to be more difficult to achieve zero carbon.
However, what the president did not expect was that there were really battery companies that knew that there were tigers in the mountains and were biased towards the tiger mountain line.
Just a few days ago, Envision Power released the world's first zero-carbon battery.
For mass consumers, the name Envision Power sounds a bit strange, but no one should be unaware of the mention of Mercedes-Benz, and Envision Power is one of the main battery suppliers of the EQ series released by Mercedes-Benz not long ago.
The reason why Mercedes-Benz will choose Envision as a battery supplier is largely because Envision can provide relatively complete solutions in the field of carbon neutrality.
In fact, the old bank of the vision is not to do batteries, but to do wind power and energy Internet, in these two areas of vision can be regarded as the first echelon.
Envision acquired AESC, Nissan's electric battery factory, in 2019 and officially entered the electric vehicle industry. Different from the CATL era's main domestic strategy, Envision's battery business is global-oriented. After the completion of the acquisition, Envision Power has successively obtained orders from many international car companies, while Envision is further expanding production.
Envision Power's Tennessee plant in the United States
It is worth mentioning that before Envision acquired AESC, AESC became the world's second largest electric vehicle battery producer in 2014, second only to Panasonic, by supplying power batteries for the world's first mass-produced pure electric vehicle Nissan Leaf.
More critically, from 2010 to the present, a total of 650,000 Nissan Leaf has been sold in 12 years, and no car has spontaneously ignited the battery, which is one of the reasons why AESC has been favored by the long-term vision.
The perspective returns to "zero-carbon batteries". If you want to achieve zero carbonization of battery production, the core problem is to solve the problem of electricity cleaning.
On April 8 this year, the first phase of the Envision Ordos Zero Carbon Industrial Park was completed, and the first phase of the Envision Power Battery Factory in the park was put into operation with a 10GWh production capacity.
It is also very interesting to drop the zero-carbon battery factory to Ordos, after all, who will run to the Great Gobi to build a battery factory?
As we all know, the great northwest of the mainland is very abundant in both wind and light resources. And wind and photovoltaics, this is the "housekeeping skill" of the vision.
It is understood that at present, 6 wind turbines have been erected near the zero-carbon industrial park (there are more plans in the future), and a microgrid system of wind and solar storage has been built, which is expected to generate 100 million degrees of "green electricity" per year. 80% of the electricity in the park can be directly supplied by wind, photovoltaic storage and renewable energy generation, and 20% is used for grid trading, achieving 100% green zero-carbon energy supply.
In the past one or two months, the price of power batteries has risen, which has made many electric vehicle companies miserable, forced to raise prices against market pressure, otherwise it is really a loss to sell one.
In this way, everyone may ask, the battery is already very expensive, is it not more expensive to make zero carbon?
Two days ago, just through the landing of this industrial park, I had the honor to interview Zhao Weijun, executive director of Envision Power and president of China, who gave a set of data: the "green electricity" generated by wind power and photovoltaic self-use in the zero-carbon industrial park is almost 20% cheaper than the local industrial and commercial electricity price. As renewable energy becomes larger and more sophisticated, the cost will continue to decrease.
In addition, at present, many countries in Europe are becoming more and more stringent for local and imported product carbon emission standards, and many car companies have been fined for carbon emission non-compliance.
China's carbon emission standards for enterprises are also gradually tightening, and if it is compared with Europe, it is likely that the fine cost of carbon emissions will accumulate on the battery, resulting in a further increase in the price of electric vehicles. Zero-carbon batteries can make car companies worry less about emissions.
Perhaps, the low cost of zero-carbon battery production may really become a "booster" for electric vehicle price reduction in the future.
From last year to now, in addition to Mercedes-Benz, there are many car companies, such as Renault, Nissan, Honda, FAW, etc., discussing issues such as zero-carbon battery supply and zero-carbon system solutions with Envision. Zero-carbon batteries are becoming a "plus" for car companies to choose suppliers.
However, when you produce it yourself, there is no carbon emissions, even if it is a real zero-carbon battery? Obviously not.
In the production process of a power battery, about 60% of the carbon emissions come from the assembly process of the battery, and about 40% of the carbon emissions come from the production of raw materials.
Dr. Qiu Lin, Chief Scientist of Zero Carbon Products of Envision Technology Group, told us: "Compared with the carbon neutrality at the operational level of battery factories, to create a true zero-carbon battery, it is necessary to measure and neutralize the carbon emissions of the whole life cycle of the product from the 'cradle to the grave', that is, upstream mineral mining to battery production, and then to battery scrapping. ”
In the interview, we asked, how can we find a way to make the supply chain also achieve emission reduction or truly achieve zero carbon?
"The first thing is to calculate clearly," Qiu Lin told us that Envision has a "Ark Energy Carbon Management System" that can be used to track the "carbon footprint" of the product's entire life cycle.
How powerful is this system? For example, how much carbon emissions are generated by cathode material companies in the process of mining, how much carbon emissions are required to transport the mine to the cathode material factory, and how many carbon emissions are generated at each step and each small link on the production line, the system can clearly list and calculate them.
With this detailed "carbon inventory", upstream and downstream enterprises can establish a monitoring and tracking system for the carbon emissions of the whole life cycle of products, and then formulate reasonable emission reduction measures through accurate carbon footprint analysis.
So, after calculating clearly, how can the industrial chain "prescribe the right medicine" for carbon reduction? Zero-carbon industrial parks are perhaps one of the most effective "medicines" at the moment.
As long as these suppliers, like Envision, also use the carbon management system and 100% "green electricity" of the zero-carbon industrial park, the problem of high carbon emissions will naturally be solved.
"The vision has made the 0 to 1 in the industrial park, and with the infrastructure, we just need to 'plant trees and plant flowers' in it." The chairman of a battery upstream and downstream company who came to the Envision Ordos Zero Carbon Industrial Park said so.
At present, a number of upstream and downstream battery companies, including FAW Jiefang and Shengvanadium Technology, are successively settling in the Ordos Zero Carbon Industrial Park.
However, from the perspective of the whole life cycle, even if all the green electricity is used, there will still be some unavoidable carbon emissions, how to deal with this?
Qiu Lin introduced: "This part of the carbon emissions, the vision will be offset by the development and purchase of forest carbon sinks. "It is equivalent to planting trees and contributing to environmental protection."
Having said all this, some people may wonder, why is Vista the first to stand up and do zero-carbon batteries?
In addition to the background of starting from renewable energy, there is another important reason: the vision of Earth Day 2021 has set a flag for itself: to achieve global operations carbon neutrality by 2022 and carbon neutrality across the value chain by 2028. Envision Power is its business unit with the largest carbon emissions at the operational level.
Just this year's Earth Day, Vision released its Carbon Neutral Action Report 2022, a 70-page report detailing Vision's carbon neutrality achievements over the past year.
The report shows that in 2021, the carbon intensity per GWh battery delivered by Envision Power decreased by 16% year-on-year. Carbon emissions are effectively reduced mainly through process transformation, energy conservation and efficiency, renewable energy power development and use, and green electricity trading.
After the zero-carbon battery is produced, it will be labeled with a "zero-carbon green code" certified by an international authoritative body in order to trace the carbon footprint of all aspects of the battery and the means of neutralization.
After the interview, I also privately found them, asked for a piece of the latest zero-carbon power battery electrodes, scan the "zero carbon green code" on it, you can track the carbon footprint data generated in the production process, it should be very interesting.
When the electrodes come, I'll show them to you.
03. Write at the end
The president once contacted a friend who did photovoltaic project development, and his usual job was to install photovoltaic power generation systems for factories and farmers, and climbing the roof against the big sun has long been commonplace.
I asked him, "Is this work hard, and will it fall off the roof?" ”
He just smiled and said, "Usually climbing the roof without protective gear, I really have to be careful." ”
In the process of chatting, he found that he knew exactly how many capacity photovoltaic power plants could be installed in each apartment, which direction the photovoltaic module installation generated the most power, where the inverter was safest, and how many years customers could make money by installing photovoltaics.
He began to do photovoltaics in 2015, and now in the past 7 years, he is definitely an "old photovoltaic person". For him, when the photovoltaic subsidy fell sharply in 2018, it was the most difficult, and he still remembers it vividly.
"At that time, many brothers who worked together changed careers, some did e-commerce, some did IT, and some went home to do business."
I asked him: "They are all gone, why do you insist on staying in the PV industry?" ”
"Maybe, at that time, I already liked the industry." I always feel a sense of mission to personally promote energy change. ”
In the century-old automobile industry, after the electrification of the new era, the three words "new energy" are really no longer just names, but have become a mission.
Perhaps, this sense of mission also exists in the vision.
After the epidemic stabilizes, I have the opportunity to take you to Ordos to see what the so-called "zero carbon" is. I think it should shock everyone standing in that land.