Electric vehicles alone can’t solve transportation’s climate problems

Transportation is the largest source of heat-trapping emissions in the United States and one of the largest globally, so there’s an urgent need to move away from fossil-fuel-powered engines. But with relatively little fanfare, many government officials across the globe are cautioning that while EVs are necessary, they’re not sufficient, for a number of reasons.

“There is a strong lobby to simply saying, ‘Well, you just need to give people electric cars and that will solve the climate problem with transport’ — and that’s clearly not true,” said Lee Waters, the deputy minister for climate change in Wales. “We need to reduce tailpipe emissions and carbon as well as reducing the overall number of car journeys.”